paulmaglev's game Reviews on Newgrounds

['DUCKS!']

I feel this game is pretty good due to its depth, mechanics, puzzle difficulty, music and sound. The music and sound particularly matched perfectly with your drawing style and the genre your game falls under, an overhead isometric puzzle game like they made back 'in the old days.'

Suggested Future Improvements:

-inertia of the characters could use some work, since it feels like I'm walking through a tar pit
- I get stuck on corners too easily, I'd appreciate it if you addressed this.

Butzbo responds:

Glad you liked it!, it was motivating to work with a sub-genre of puzzles we don't see that much in these days.
Also, I especially agree with the inertia bit, I didn't put that much thought while setting things up, but they do feel slippery! not the most ideal for this kind of game where precission is required, I also have to check some hit-boxes, heh.
Thanks for the suggestions! :)

[Kill the Rabbit]

It's cute. I can't finish your work because the controls act up. I can dash to the right after double jumping but I can't dash left after double jumping, making one part of a stage inaccessible. Please fix this.

trixelbit responds:

Sorry that you had problem with the controls. It seems like the game can be inconstant with that, with instances of players who have trouble with that and other players who breeze through it. Hopefully I can fix the issue. Thank you for playing, hopefully you'll get to experience the rest of this.

[Bosses Forever 2.bro]

I'm pretty sure this would be an awesome game to play, but the controls were wonky, so I tried to fix them and accidentally screwed up; I tried again and completely ruined the control scheme in a way that stopped me from reconfiguring the controls permanently (since the new ruined control scheme skips the control-changing icon every time). It serves me right for messing up the controls, but it would be nice to have the ability to only change individual key strokes one at a time and not in succession. It would be nicer still if there was an option to revert controls to the default. Sorry TooDX, I broke your game with my NG login. :C

TooDX responds:

Update: You can still use the Arrow keys and Enter to get into the controls screen. Use that to start customizing your controls.
oh man paul I'm sorry to hear that. You can give the flash version of the game a shot at our website, or download it - I am curious though, what is your current keybind, where you can't get back to fix it?

[Str1ngle]

I feel this game is good, I guess it's my personality that's not into it. Never in a million years did I expect a game where a basketball on a rope smashes ninja stars, and that originality that I like the most. It's a tough game but I'm sure plenty of people liked this game and will play it over and over. I wish this game had a mouse control option though, that's all that's missing to me.

Zanzlanz responds:

Thanks Paulmaglev! :)

Actually, the game was originally going to be mouse based, but I felt there's more control with a keyboard. If I am going to make a sequel, I will have to put in a mouse option, because I plan on porting it for mobile. I think that would be cool.

[You Are Disabled]

This is an impressive game with sadistic stage design and marvelously malevolent game mechanics. There's a reason your game made it to the first page, and it is ingrained within pure challenge and learning curve that could only be conceived by a game designer for game designers. I'll go over what i like and aspects worth improving upon to tailor the game to a larger demographic; all this, while making suggestions to preserve its difficulty level after modifications if I get to that.
The 'crippled' mechanics were too sluggish for my taste, but unlike me, plenty of your audience members (young adolescents and kids who don't follow Newground's age ratings) may run out of patience and quit the game entirely before seeing all that it has to offer. I suggest increasing the character speed by a few more pixels per second so the audience's attention span does not expire due to a lack of activity at first. The difficulty here stays the same regardless of the recommended change and I like the difficulty level here very much (where else can I choose the wrong spellcaster to teleport me into a pit of lava, that's awesome)
The 'illiterate' mode mechanics serve as the basic template for understanding the the stage design and how to navigate it. It does not appear to have any other purpose than that, but that does not mean it does not have any worth, it might be my favorite stage because it taught me so much. This stage requires no modification and I have no recommendations.
The 'spastic' mode mechanics can get very annoying; I'll be honest that gave me a hard time since there was no ability to predict when the 'spasms' would occur. I recommend two crucial changes to this mode. The first is the mechanics behavior; instead having your code generate random movements in a single uniform direction for long lengths of time, modify the mechanic so the character randomly shakes, oscillates left and right, or jumps lightly; if that is not to your liking I suggest reducing the amount of time a random direction is locked in. The second change in the spasm mechanic I recommend adding to the game is to grant the player some priority in movement so they can combat spasms by allowing both commands (the game spasm command plus the player) to occur in a fashion that moves the character slowly in the desired direction; for example, if the game wants the character to move left, but the player can move right, the character can move slowly in the player's desired direction but slowly. The current spasm mechanics have deleterious effects on the game play of this mode. The normal time span of a random act or 'spasm' is too long to fight against in order to survive over or by lava, requiring more deaths than necessary. What's more the only way a player can fight a spasm currently while moving to the left, for example is, only by pressing the key to move right, which neutralizes all horizontal actions in some cases as long as 3.5 seconds if not more. Occasionally the spasm command locks up and the character continuously moves to the left, but never the right, which means walking back into a previous stage to die, only to re-spawn on the beginning side of the previous stage with the same command taking effect. This terrible process can repeat up to three times if player tries to fight it, but the player could backtrack as far as 6 stages if the player let the game take control of the character entirely with spasms. Most people would rage quit in the early stages of this game mode, but I managed to find a cheaty exit through a jumping spasm along the way and used the discovery to circumnavigate the second half of the map. I'm not sure if that's an Easter egg or not, but it definitely is the ace in the hole that makes this mode playable
The final game mode of near blindness is impossible to play on the first try. I only got as far as I did since I played all the previous modes before this one and memorized the stage layouts. Having only a limited scope to see in by blacking out the whole stage aside from a radius around the character, equal to the character's height, makes it impossible to even use trial and error on some stages since it's hard to gauge which platforms spawn where and how far away they spawn. The only solution to this is to change the mechanic so everything is not blotted out in darkness, but instead blurred and pixelated like my distance vision in real life, but even that would not be enough to play this mode all the way through if I played that mode first instead of the others. It is hypothetically possible to use the secret exit I found to circumnavigate the map, but not a lot of people know about it.
All in all its a crazy game worthy of its position on the first page. I can see why this game has plenty of potential but I also see there is much more to be desired. Just remember to never give up. Lastly, remember that artistically speaking, your original concept art or brain child might be your darling, but whether it is or not, it's okay if we murder our artistic darlings by completely changing key aspects of their composition.

Kcori responds:

Thanks for the feedback. I agree with a lot of what you said. The spastic movement isn't done in the best possible way and would probably have been better had I had the time. For walking, it basically simulates key presses and releases and can actually be canceled by pressing the same direction again, but if you move into a new area, the movement never naturally cancels itself as it would had you remained in the same scene. So basically it doesn't remember whether or not a key was simulated as being pressed. I might fix it up, as well as making it so you respawn on the proper side of the room. I'm not going to make any major changes to the behavior since it's already out and I'd like to move on, but I appreciate the suggestions.

Thanks for playing and leaving your thoughts.

[Aurorae]

This game has plenty of potential. I recommend that you work on the tunnel section since it was not obvious to me that the collision polygon of the front of the train sloped with the contour of the train's neon frame, because the train's segmented diaphragms do not follow the same collision box logic; I also recommend further tweaking the section where the conveyor belt leads to the pit, since my character cannot jump high enough to reach the adjacent ledge and progress, so I fall into the pit of death. One crucial feature that is missing is a pause menu; when my computer tabbed out of the game to remind me of something, the game environment kept moving and I died unintentionally. Change these elements and you will have a stellar game. I hope this input helps, and remember to never give up.

semaphor responds:

Thanks

Tunnel: Easy enough to add into the next update but really I think the slope is large enough for it to be obvious that its a slope and will work like one.

Conveyor belt pit: Jumping from the conveyor belt isn't the way to do it, it's a puzzle. Pro-tip: Think outside the frame.

Pause: Will be hard for me to do but I can try. No promises though.

[Potato The Destroyer]

I appreciated the effort you put into the game; it created a nostalgic reflection on my childhood game play and truly fulfilled your objective of making it challenging. I recommend easing up on the challenge though, since the frequency enemies fire their bullets and the monolithic size of the boss potato's health can be too frustrating at times. I hope this input helps.

Kcori responds:

I only got to watch one person play the game, and he did pretty well at it. But difficulty is something I really need to work on. I've been considering adding optional ways to make my games easier, but I didn't have time to implement them in time for the competition deadline. I appreciate the feedback though and I'll certainly work on making my stuff less frustrating.