Coop's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lost Catacombs]

Addictive

Wow, those controls are surprisingly hard to master, considering that they are based 45 degrees to the true planes that you're working along. I was really struggling to get going and then the spike traps really got me on the first run, so maybe I'll come back to them later... much later.

Not that I'm put off, this game is pretty neat, with good puzzles, decent music and pretty funny graphics, which keep everything together, giving a very nice presentation to the final product, which I'm surprised to say has not achieved anything spectacular, with a score of just over 3.5, no medals and all of this despite having medals attached to it! Surprising, to say the least.

If I were to suggest anything major, I'd rotate the screen, so that the controls are easier, because I've played a few games in my time and I think it would make the game easier to play and therefore more accessible to the masses, should they be after a good Indiana Jones / Ancient Egyptian themed game.

Just a quick aside, when you get resurrected, it's almost like you were cuboy, which I found a nice way of flattering Messrs Arbuckle and Dennis, for their aforementioned work.

Keep up the good work, give us more games and medals to play with, I'll be back to see if I can achieve the medals for this momentarily!

[Review Request Club]

SantoNinoDeCebu responds:

Yeah, the 45 degreesness was a terrible idea. It looks cool, and I'm well versed in old isometric games which had these sort of controls Mario RPG etc so its the norm to me, not realising how different it is to control for anyone else...

Rotating the entire thing 45 degrees is easy in code, remove lines and tada, the problem is all of the art assets require being drawn at a different angle so it wont be an update to the game. If there is a sequel however, it will be straight on!

Cheers

[Flying Barry...]

I am the fucking bomb, apparently

Not bad, but a few issues that need resolving, before I'll call it great.

I like the quirkiness to this game, with the idea that you're effectively trying to recreate Elvis in a porcine form, which of course has its own hilarious offshoots. The music is fun, as are the sound effects, though with how long it took me to get into the game, means that either I suck or the game does a little. I'm willing to go so far as to say both, because I'm not the greatest gamer out there.

1) The controls - why does the pig bounce? I can understand that being a hefty porker, it would slowly come back down towards earth, when you direct it upward. However, if you direct it down to the bottom of the screen, it will bounce off the cloud cover and fly back upwards (usually into some spinach, but that's just my luck). I was wondering if the physics programming had gone a little awry.

2) I think it would benefit from levels or days to get from being a basic pig to being worthy of being a joint of the best pork product that money can buy, just by being cool. Perhaps you can buy upgrades, like the Elvis wig and various other accessories / improved controls, such as are features of similar themed games on the market.

3) In your plot, I'm not sure that you explain why or how Barry can fly. Just a little issue that I have here and I'd like to see it addressed, for clarification, if I'm honest.

Certainly a game worthy of losing an afternoon on, I'll be honest.

[Review Request Club]

ArtyomL responds:

Thanks Coop,
Yes, an upgrade system is indeed a great way to make a game addictive, but I didn't want to implement it here. Maybe next time...
As for the fact that Barry is flying, I didn't explain much because I wanted to keep the obscure feel of the game. I wanted the player to kind of not understand what is happening, but just take it as if it had to be that way. Like in a dream. Or a tripout.
Anyway, people seem to hate the controls, I'll keep it in mind.

[I Want Your Blood!]

Good, but some issues

I think that this is a well thought through piece, though I'm not sure about why you would theme this around Halloween, since the stuff that you would focus on for that would be vampires, which isn't going to help anyone with wanting to give blood, surely?

The programming was decent and so was the message, though I won't be rushing out to give blood. It's not that I don't approve, I just have a really awful thing about needles, so nice try.

A good set of questions and a well balanced set of breaks, to avoid having to restart the entire quiz from the start. Between the sets, there was one part where the witch on the broomstick flew past and the animation jumped back a few frames, before progressing to the next part of the quiz. I found this strange. Also, on one of the sets, I got a later question in the set wrong and had to restart the segment - the music started again, over the top of the currently playing track. This was probably the worst niggle in the game possible, so that desperately needs working on.

On top of that, I thought I got the penultimate question wrong and still got sent through to the final question that warns you about dropping back to question 10. I assume that it was the end of the quiz, but never made the step, to check.

[Review Request Club]

IceDragon64 responds:

Thank you. The reasons for giving it a halloween theme were as follows:
1. We were hoping to get in the H 2011 collection
2. We thought it would be fun to make it look like a horror submission with the title "I want your blood"
3. I wanted to re-use the funky buttons
4. I thought the theme would be a bit more lively than just blood donation
5. We were aiming for submission at that time

I had an awful thing about needles- I fainted at a blood test- pervesely that is part of the reason why I did it- I don't have that thing any more. There are no excuses- just do it!

the witch thing is annoying, I can't see why she does that, it should be a simple tween- I will redo it yet a gain and try to fix it.

I will test my way through the music again.

There are no right answers to the penultimate question!

Why didn't you? How daft- you missed a big chunk!

[=Button Tutorial 2=]

Over-complicated layout

The information was there, but when considering the layout of a piece like a tutorial, try to make it flow. I want to see a piece telling me the steps in order. I don't like to be treated like someone who does not understand the concept that page 2 follows page 1 and that every time I've seen a page, I need to go back to the contents. Yes, the contents option is great, but there should be an option to just continue.

... Oh, it does. I'm sorry, the buttons got confusing, by putting B and F on them - why not have arrows, pointing one way and another? Yes, I understand that your tutorial covers buttons and you need to show off that you can make them, but designing functionality into the button really helps. Hell, even if it said "forward" and "back", this would be a step forward on making it more user friendly.

I'm not sure about the choice of music, but thankfully, you had given us a pause button, so thank you for the small mercy there.

[Review Request Club]

Phantox responds:

What do you mean by "every time I've seen a page, I need to go back to the contents. Yes, the contents option is great, but there should be an option to just continue."? I tested this out to make sure it wasn't a bug and it leads goes step by step and not to the index.

Now that you mention it, I could have made it easier to follow with arrow buttons.

The music was chosen after playing Ocarina of Time for the first time in years. That song was my favorite from the whole game.

Thanks for your review

[Ballz! Bounce]

I couldn't get into it

Right, I read the instructions and had a go, but the game is just too annoying, even on easy to get into. Programming issues really took away from the prospect of this being entertaining, as clicking the ball between the centre and the lowest point should still send it upwards, not down faster.

The music annoyed the crap out of me - every time tou restarted the level, the tune went from the beginning, which after one play through was bad enough, but to have the same snatch of tune a) really doesn't do the audio any justice and b) more than puts you off your game.

Touch pads are not designed for a game like this - if you want to play this game, a mouse is recommended. A shame I didn't know that before trying to play.

Now, to balance it somewhat, the graphics were quite good - the font for the instructions was quite annoying, but other than that, it was an aesthetic work, that was let down by the game mechanics, the physics and the programming. Work on those areas and the game could easily become passable, I'm sure.

Clearly, the voting public don't pay enough attention to a critically flawed piece such as this to reject, so that the modifications could have been made in the first place, eh?

[Review Request Club]

Gimmick responds:

1) I understand, I'll add a mute button. I actually didn't know that there was no mute button until now X|
2) Ah, well. Some types of games are just not built for touchpads. Any suggestions to improve?
3) Okay.

I'll submit a better version based on all you guys' feedback, thanks for the review.

[NG Audio Elevator]

It's been done

Yes, it's a novel piece of programming, but a user named Cyberdevil did this idea literally to death a few years back. Granted, yours is more all encompassing than his, but it's still a direct port to the Audio Portal, though severely limited.

A play / pause button should be able to play and pause the track. This just plays a new track from the start over the top of it, making the whole thing a horrid mess. You really need to work on the programming, to make things like this work, even something as basic as a program like this one.

Ideas to go forward that I could give you would include a playlist function - something that prior to the 2011/2012 redesign, the Audio Portal does not have, where you line up half a dozen or so tracks and let them fly. This could also be incorporated with a random "shuffle" function, where people could tab certain genres that they wish to listen to, which could generate a few bits and pieces to assist the user. A display feature, which shows a few key pieces of information about the track - genre, title, author, date and so forth would be useful, otherwise, I'm not seeing any benefit in listening to a piece from the Audio Portal, without actually going there myself.

What's the target market? Are you aiming to export this to other sites and have people come to Newgrounds from there? If so and your programming works, a great little piece of viral marketing. If not, this seems to be a dead end piece that you've merely used for practice.

[Review Request Club]

Surn responds:

I looked up Cyberdevil's account and I didn't see anything that looked like any audio programs. So to those out of the know I should be safe.

As for the play pause button, it does actually pause and play the music, (at least when I try it). I tried it with 3 different songs and it works properly. What I did find, in light of your statement, was that it does malfunction if you try it before the song is loaded. Perhaps there are technical difficulties on your end.

As for your suggestions on improvements/additions they would be indeed nice to have. I do believe I could integrate a user-specified playlist function and perhaps even a shuffle function for that too. However, that's not the point of what I'm going for with this. As for genre specifications/filters, that would also be nice to have, especially if there are particular genres one find offensive (like rap). If I could make it I probably would. As for title. author and date (ID3 information) I can do that, but it only works as a desktop application. I was going for simplicity with this application, so minimalism/lack of other functions is arguably it's charm.

As for not seeing the advantage of this: its primary use is to automatically play songs one-by-one as the user does other things like animate or play Minecraft. When one song finishes or is skipped the player automatically pulls and plays the one before it without need for user input. With just the audio portal, you could accomplish the same effect by sitting there listening to the song, subtracting 1 from the audio number and hitting enter when you're done with the song- but then it would require more attention.

As for my target audience I really didn't have one in mind. As for my goal: I mainly wanted to make a more convenient way to listen to the recent audio portal submissions while otherwise occupied. I thought "hey, why not make it a flash submission? Other people might like it.". So I sent it into Newgrounds.

Thanks for reviewing.

[Madotsuki's Dream Dock]

Am I supposed to review the music?

Well, as far as I'm concerned, this isn't really a Halloween piece, so if you're going to try and get that sorted, generally people need something scary, as opposed to mournful - that would be for All Saints Day, on November 1st, when all of the horrors have gone to bed for another year and the good in the world comes out to clear up the mess.

I've watched this piece, clicked all that I could and found nothing scary, creepy or indeed worthy of Halloween, to be honest. The buildup spent far too long to get to a bit of a damp squib of an ending, so I'd recommend that you go back to the drawing board and get something a little less long-winded and boring, to give us more entertainment, otherwise the warnings just make it even more of an anti-climax.

Switching the character for other bits and pieces weren't enough to keep me entertained for the duration of the song, so I was quite disappointed with the presentation as a whole.

[Review Request Club]

Pienkaito responds:

I guess, you didn't find that final (and true) ending of the interactive animation.
Because that was why there's a warning in the first place. =P

Anyway, I'm sorry for letting you down.
It was never indeed to be scary. (except for that one part)
I wanted to create an atmosphere, that varies on different people.
Some people found it depressing and some found it calm. There were a few people who think that this was actually scary, because of the weird shit that is happening.

Like I said, I'm sorry for the disappointment, but I'm still thankful for the well-written review.

[Pilo]

Some skill involved, but not addictive enough

I think that this game has potential, though in needs some sort of other gimmick to set it aside from the other sorts of games available to the casual consumer. If you get someone to look at your game, you need a big juicy carrot to keep them coming back for more.

Yes, there is a certain degree of skill involved in the game, which I appreciate. After a few levels, it starts to make my wrist hurt, so I need to consider wrist supports for the benefit of playing the game.

A plain white background takes so much out of the game - you can quite easily throw other images in there and get yourself more of a name, almost instantaneously. The music is fairly generic, as is the message of the game - collect a set number of coins to pass this level. Why not have to collect a coin, deliver it to a container and then go after others? That's a little more programming, something different within the game mechanics and the player is even more thoroughly tested.

The physics of the game were decent, but there is no way to tell what is going to happen, in different areas of the board. Sure, it's a reaction test, but what about objects that you can move, such as fans for side-to side movement, platforms you can bounce off, gravity plates that pull you in towards spikes, repulsor plates that push you away in the same way and so forth? These things affect certain areas and the skillful players not only use their motor functions to navigate these mazes, but also their forward planning skills, to get through as quickly as possible.

Make some sort of timed scoring system, so that there can be a leaderboard and the most determined and chisel-jawed among us can really prove our worth to the wider world. I've thought about this for minutes and have come up with a decent shopping list of things you need to do, before you will progress beyond the limitations of this game, as it currently is.

[Review Request Club]

norfor22 responds:

Thank you for reviewing this game :)

I will think about making this game a little more of a puzzle then a.."platform" game(although it's not realy a platform game :P).
Thanks for your suggestions!

[Madness Lunacy]

Nice, but slow

Don't get me wrong, this game looks like Madness and it seems like there is going to be a good story within it, but you've made the controls slow, clunky and a little unresponsive for me.

The artwork is fantastic, it's not traditional Madness, as you've given us a little more colour than we are used to, but that's how you make it your own style, within a style. I did enjoy playing as both Hank and Sanford, as they both have differing abilities, which really helps to give the game a new dynamic, which I've not seen in other Madness games available to the discerning consumer.

To couple with the slow controls, the idea that you can only move left or right really hampers the game - you can jump, but not crouch and not being able to move in three dimensions within the game area makes the game seem less technically accomplished than Streets of Rage. The speed that projectiles fly through the air isn't up to much and I'd say that everything needs a good dose of tempo, to bring it up to scratch. Working on the control issues will help you, as you could bring cover into play. Sure, all of the mobs of goons don't fire at the same time, which makes it seem like they are lining up for me to kill them.

I have every faith that you can improve this game thoroughly!

[Review Request Club]

Spudzy responds:

Thanks for the nice and honest review.

[Time In Three Formats]

If only...

You should have waited a month and nine days to submit this - Clock Day would have been the perfect time to enter this onto Newgrounds and you'd have gotten a lot more exposure.

Never mind, at least the animation of the clock face looks very realistic. Hopefully, you can come up with some sort of Clock Crew animation and use that clock face scaled down as a face plate for on of the clocks? Antiquated and very well programmed.

A nice test, that shows you've been capable of all that you required. I wish that I could say more, but it's just something you can apply to later projects.

[Review Request Club]

51lver responds:

You are right, I should have waited for clock day. The exposure it would have got would have been enormous, maybe next time I'll see if my project has any underlying themes to any upcoming dates to make the release and them coincide :) Thanks for the review