Coop's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Running Cycle Tutorial]

Good tutorial, but a little basic

Don't get me wrong - everyone needs to start somewhere. I've been there before with different tutorials and have seen better set out examples. What I'd have suggested was that you show the audience a more expanded version, where individual frames, tweens or so forth are shown how to be made and incorporated.

An end product of the running cycle would have been nice to see, rather than just giving people the links to your productions set up for various versions of flash. You're not running out of space, why not have half of the screen showing your animation up until that part of the tutorial, as opposed to whoring out an advert, which I declined to click on the principle that you're trying too hard.

If you've not shown people how to tween or use other facets of the program, then educate them on those and link to other tutorials through some buttons that are available on certain parts of the tutorial. I'd work on the drawing of the buttons, just to make it look more polished and professional. The stick figure / mannequin can be tolerated, as we know that is a work in progress, but the button is something that should look tidy.

Tutorials are a great way to help other authors and hone your skills at the same time. Keep working on them and they will come good.

[Review Request Club]

[Hoshinofuru 2]

Lacks direction

What we have here is a decent game, that is pretty easy to fathom out (for the basics), but it really suffers, as it seems that there are no clear-cut boundaries for the play, no plot of any sort to adhere to (the benchmark that you seem to be aiming for is something along the lines of Epic Battle Fantasy, I'd guess) and you end up as a player wandering around trying to get your bearings.

Solve this by having an introduction, giving us some back story to the characters, what they are doing here and why they are doing it. This could lead to a few Final Fantasy style cutscenes in the middle and a longer one at the end.

Where this piece for me really falls down was that I was thrown in at the deep end and I pretty much drowned. To prevent this, some sort of tutorial on how the interface works would also help. Sure, the game of charades that you played with us and the picture cards for the action sub-menus was a little easy to figure out, but you'll get hold of a much improved demographic of players, if you appeal to as many people as possible.

So much potential, I'd love to see you develop this more and get to somewhere that may prove this game even more rewarding.

[Review Request Club]

[Space Bound]

Decent effort

I think that you're getting the hang of Games Factory workings nicely here, though the game could still use some work, to make it pan out properly.

The stages seem a little long and having to spam press S to fire is a bit of a problem. Consider having some sort of programming that allows it to "auto fire", just by holding the button down. How exactly are you supposed to shoot laser fire out of the sky? I don't know the physics of it myself, but I was doing it with pretty good accuracy.

Some of the powerups, while useful seemed pointless, when there was just the one type. There is no score, so there feels to be no end goal and motivation to progress with the game, so adding a score tracker would encourage people to continue and maybe even to take more risks within the game, so they can get greater score? Higher points for the grey asteroids, as opposed to the brown ones, perhaps?

Keep working at it, you've got a decent concept, so just developing it a bit will be very rewarding for this game.

[Review Request Club]

ninty96zie responds:

I wasn't going to add a score.. as this is an adventure game, and the first part only lasts for about 1 minute and a half, i might however include a score based free play space battle mode, rather than add score to the actual game, thank you for the review though :D

[BubbleLand]

Nice little game

I've seen this format of game before and it's a nice way to kill a few minutes, but the game comes across as aimed at a different demographic than mine. Still, I gave it a shot and there's a surprising amount of skill involved for a game that initially presents itself as simple.

I think that the balance was needed between the music (or lack thereof) within the game was a factor in the lack of an overall experience with it - perhaps consider a soundtrack, which can be muted at the player's discretion. Granted, it makes the files slightly larger, but when you're talking this small, you'd only push it up to about 500kb.

The graphics are of a good standard and I think that with the large variety of teddy bears available on the market, perhaps you could have a small range of collectables that you can pick up during levels (would these give powerups?) and even a small range of different bears available to play as.

[Review Request Club]

gameonade responds:

Wow, it is great review. Thank you for excellent ideas. I'm not sure that I will be able to do this in this version of the game (as it wasn't prepare for this) - but in the some sort of sequel I will definately do different teddy bears and some upgrades to select between the levels.

[Mage Arena]

A unique challenge

Hmm, a very interesting little game that you've produced, complete with a range of various enemies to offer a challenge to the discerning gamer.

While I would have appreciated an indication of how these opponents would come at me, before they actually did and what they could do to me, the simplicity is applaudable. I like the graphics and the challenge of enemies entering through all three doors at once really keeps you on your toes.

I think that a Doom style game where you enter rooms (though keep the top-down aspect) and the enemies swarm you from there might have been a better option, you've still created a very good game.

[Review Request Club]

kcnh responds:

Thank you for your review.

[Waterboy]

Has roots in SMB

A nice little game that, much like the aforementioned Super Mario Brothers, I lack the skill to complete. Still, I shan't let that hold me back.

The main difference between this and the interface for Super Mario Brothers is that you can go backwards - in the Nintendo series, you can only move forwards and once something falls off the left of the screen, you can't go back and see it again. Personally, I like this and wouldn't ask you to change this, though some purists might.

How are you supposed to get up to the additional life points that seem out of reach? I cannot find a way to get these, nor the coins surrounding them, which is annoying. Perhaps it is my lack of experience with these side scrolling platformers that causes me this issue, but I shouldn't complain, unless it is a programming issue.

I liked the quirky graphics and would have appreciated some plot to start the story and perhaps act as a bridge between worlds, just to flesh it out a little. The game is good, but something to bring it all together would have been a really nice addition.

[Review Request Club]

kcnh responds:

The additional life points are reachable if you jump on a shelled turtle, a turtle will retreat in its shell if you shoot a waterball at it. Thank you very much for your review.

[1-bit jumper]

Not bad

Quite a simple little game that increases in difficulty as the points rack up. The changing colours of the hurdles could have indicated different things about them, with perhaps taller ones that you have to run under for two points, spike trapped ones, electrified ones, glue traps and so forth that mean you could be chasing your tail relentlessly for the piece, to get all of the hurdles in place for the points.

I noticed that you only scored people for collecting coins - would it have been better to give points for leaping hurdles, as they were worth a little as well, since that was the primary objective of the game itself. What if something was chasing you?

[Review Request Club]

kcnh responds:

Thank you very much for your review!

[Crossroads:2D]

It could certainly use colour

Well, this was a simple little game that really hit home with the fact that you can get to four rather simple endings all pretty quickly. A shame that the game which showed so much promise didn't really come to fruition, leaving us with four very linear plots to pursue for the medals. I got them all within about 10-15 minutes, so I'd say that it was too easy for a collect and deal with game. Granted, I can see that each of these endings for the tale are based upon different choices, but you still have to go one way or another to get to the end.

If you'd have put a medal in there for collecting blackberries and then dotted them around the map, making that larger as well, perhaps you'd have been able to convince the baker to bake a blackberry pie, which could be the medal. Little things make games more engrossing and rewarding.

With the interface, a big issue was the WASD was set as a control to allow you to walk, as were the cursor keys, though when you get to a menu, you can only navigate them with cursors. Please sort this out, so that WASD will work there as well.

I'd love to see some colour in these proceedings, as while it looks good without colour, I feel it would look better with some. Also, the music does get a little annoying, so I just put my own on. Perhaps search the Audio Portal for a more suitable two or three ambient tunes that you could use?

[Review Request Club]

kcnh responds:

Thank you very much for your review! I will take in consideration the suggestions that you have made. However, I do not agree with that you said the music was annoying, because I think it is very neutral background music. But, it is a good idea, as you suggested, to add multiple songs so it is perhaps less repetitive.

[Santa With A Shotgun]

Needs a little refining

Well, that was an enjoyable festive game, that sadly has one or two small bugs to be fixed, but I'm sure you can work through them, with not a lot of fuss.

It's a nice setup that gets Santa towards recovering his reindeer in a sort of Sonic the Hedgehog meets Evils Dead sort of game. The Coin collecting does get a little tiresome after a while, so the first thing I'd suggest you do is allow an upgrade that attaches magnets to Santa, so the coins just fly in towards him. From there, you'll have a much better experience, as opposed to getting people blown up in pursuit of more and more riches, for better upgrades.

When a boss dies, I found that there was a very short amount of time between the death of the boss and the continuation of the game. These things drop a lot of coin and as a result, I felt that they needed to get more time to collect what I could and maximise the profit, particularly in the early going.

I found a glitch in the upgrades screen - I had a balance of over 200 coins, then purchased a shotgun shells upgrade for 200, then saw my coin balance set to -135. This prevented me from buying anything for one of the levels and being handcuffed like that doesn't make for a happy gamer.

I killed the second boss and as I was off to collect the coins dropped from that, I was killed by the existing ordinance that had already been fired at me. Most games have a script that neutralises enemy fire on the demise of the boss, so that you can go crazy.

Of course, you're setting yourself up for Newgrounds Medals as well, which seems to be the way to go. Good luck with this :D

[Review Request Club]

[Ostrich Jump XMAS]

Interesting but a little tedious

I've never really been a fan of this sort of game, but you have put it together well - the graphics seemed a little "samey" though and the ostrich never looked more battered and bruised by the concussions that it received from the contact with various obstacles.

The fact that they are well known not to fly makes it slightly unbelievable that they can clear some higher obstacles although this wasn't the main reason I disliked the game. I was always more of a fan of the side scrolling games of this ilk, as you get marginally more time to react, as opposed to the way that some objects get obscured by the waving neck and head here, cutting down my think time, before pressing the right key.

A tutorial level would have helped, rather than writing "space bar" on the compactors and just throwing the hurdles at us, that I initially thought that I could duck under - one decapitated ostrich too many for my liking in those circumstances.

[Review Request Club]