Coop's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Floorsland 2]

Needs a few things

I'll just give you a quick list of what this game could do with below and hopefully you can work on these points, to make the game more engrossing:

1) Sound - get some sound effects via Google and perhaps a backing track from the Audio Portal. This would make a much better sounding piece and start to compliment the other areas.

2) An animation tune up - particularly when it comes to the lever, you might wish to look at where the animation pivots - don't forget, when the lever leaves the shot, it doesn't end. Attaching it to one area and cutting that part of the animation off screen might help you.

3) Better looking characters would help, as would voices for these characters. See also numbers 1 and 4 for this area.

4) A plot - Yes, you collected a giant crystal at the end, but we never find out why. Giving the player some sort of reason to get this going would really help and allow the piece to step forward, since the players want to play it and you'll be excited to get the next part released.

5) A little work on the drawing side of things never hurt and don't be afraid to take more time. Don't rush these things, just don't sit there doing nothing over them. Work on them and they will all come together for you.

[Review Request Club]

telinc1 responds:

Thank you!

[Richochet 2]

Controls failed

Igt looks nice and I'm sure it's a good game, but after the first contact with the paddle, the game freezes - you can't move the paddle from then and I just die. Playing through a few more times, I notice that you drive off the left hand side of the board and get stuck.

Defining the walls of the play area more fully would help here, so that you stay away from getting trapped in this "garage" area, so work on that and I'm sure that it's a great little game. Sadly, this flaw for me proved fatal. Hell, at least it's not choco break :P

[Review Request Club]

[Droid Grids Beta 0.19.1]

Not too bad, but still has issues

This isn't a bad game, but there are still issues with the piece itself - I think that while the mechanics are improved and the game seems to flow better, it still lacks a basic tutorial and perhaps even a plot-based explanation of why you're fighting. Is it training, fighting off some sort of rebellion or revolution or something similar? With a plot in place, you might get a situation that people to gain an affinity for our main character, so that they try to keep him alive.

The graphics need some work on making it look less "chunky" and block-like. Robots these days don't have all that much in the way of square and cubic parts, where the aesthetics are more favoured.

I think that you've got a good setup for the game and it is developing, though I would urge you not to keep deleting the games as you release a new one - it just looks like a resubmission, as the changes are largely minor. Sure, when you come to the alpha phase, you might want to bin the old projects, but why not have a large showcase of where you've come from?

[Review Request Club]

glider521al responds:

Hey Coop, thanks once again for posting an awesome review.

TUTORIAL/PLOT:
Yeah I agree that in game text messages are no substitute for an actual interactive tutorial.
The tutorial will come later once, once I've added in some more gameplay features and polished the graphics. For now I'll be trying to make the gameplay as intuitive, challenging and fun as possible.

I've been thinking of adding a campaign mode to explain the story of why you're fighting, but this will probably happen towards the
end of the development cycle.

SPRITING: In a few updates time I hope to enlist the help of a 3D modeller/Isometric artist, to help me make appropriate images for the robots.

DEVELOPMENT: Don't worry, I've learnt my lesson, I won't be binning my old submissions from this point on (especially as newgrounds have the same default page for manually deleted submissions as blammed submissions).
I particularly like the idea of showing people the development cycle.

A reviewer, posted to my profile to suggest I make a new submission for every significant set of updates.
Also, this way I can quickly get feedback of what new features people liked/hated, and adjust the game accordingly. I've taken his advice.
Next major update (aside from the minor changes to this submission), will have a focus on adding in an armoury and later 2 other enemy types...

[Falsely Imprisoned!]

Not all that impressive

The preloader took an age to load and that left us with a white screen for such a long time. That puts gamers off, so I'd suggest that you simplify that, so that it loads quicker. This will improve everything about it.

When it comes to the gameplay, you haven't really put that much of a learning curve in there for the newbie gamer. It's straight into the action and the guards are so unforgiving. Granted, they would be more difficult in real life, as usually one bullet would stop you dead, but that's the beauty of poetic licence. I'd certainly say that you need to get yourself things in there like health powerups. Back to the poetic licence with them being present in the vent system, but you've got unguarded blades spinning around there, so why not?

The animation and the drawing is great. I love the fluid movements of the characters and the only thing that could be improved here is the addition of voices for the characters. It's all working out nicely, so just a few more tweaks here and there will make this game a very good one, that people play, talk about and beg for medals on.

[Review Request Club]

Skeik responds:

You're right about the HP and the guards. A lot of it is misdirected (Why bother having health when you get shot if getting noticed at all is instant death?). The source file just became hard to work with. The decompiler broke a lot of things, made the preloader load secondary to the game and made it extremely difficult to edit past levels and mechanics.

[Puzzling War]

Not bad, but certain limitations

I think that keeping the game map so small, you did lose out on the chance to make the game much more complex. After all, we're dealing with sprites here, which look so much better as you make them smaller. Why not have later levels with up to a 10x10 grid, instead of the 6x6, as that gives the players so many more options.

With the powerups, perhaps you could buy upgrades that improve them and on the bigger grid games, you stand more likelihood of being able to do all of the powered abilities. The four powerups that you have are great and well planned, but when the opponent gets the ability to nuke your troops, it can make the levels very hard to play, especially if they get the jump on you and your first few seconds are spent looking furiously for the first few matches to get the ball rolling.

Quite addictive and well designed, but still with room for more, I'm impressed, but I would like to see more things added to this game. A plot to keep the more-than-casual gamer occupied would also be a very nice thing. Perhaps some sort of script? Finally, I'd suggest something that allows you to turn the music off, as when you've played 20+ levels of this game, that does get very repetitive.

[Review Request Club]

[Icy Gifts]

Stunningly simple

Well, that's probably one of the most simple and effective physics games that I've ever encountered. The concept is fantastic, the artwork effective and the sound effects too good to be true. What I would say against the game is that it's too short, with total completion from start to finish in around half an hour, so I was expecting to see something a little more substantial, but you can't win them all.

I love the tactical element of this and a scoring system could be developed by timing it, additional points gained for combos, click explosions not used on the levels where you can ear extra and throwing in a high scores board, so people can get really competitive.

It's fact paced, really well thought through and it certainly gives you a lot to think about, when it comes to where your explosions will take you.

[Review Request Club]