KoniWorx's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Impact-Effect]

I think it's a really, really polished game jam game.

It's polished to the point where I wish it was even better, actually. It has so much potential. The game loop is a lot of fun, and it has a lot of addictive qualities that I think would work well for a full release for an app for instance.

Where I find it falls a bit short is how the difficulty is designed. I don't like that the rockets are gray with this tiny triangle for visibility. Using these visuals as a type of difficulty design I think takes away from the experience. Because if you made the rockets entirely orange or white, you could push the difficulty curve of the introduced mechanics more aggressively.

This is where the game became slightly dull for me. I got to level 10 and at that point I felt like I had gotten so many powerups that I could survive most stuff. The damage I took was from not seeing the projectiles due to the dark gray design. So, the difficulty isn't really coming from the game mechanics very much, but the visual design.

One more thing I think could have been better is the placement of the timer. I find that having the timer dead-center of the game messes with your perception. You really need to stay alert of your surroundings in this game and having a timer taking up screen space with projectiles zipping over it, is an unfair design choice in my opinion.

All these feedback points comes from me enjoying the game and seeing potential in it. Perhaps it could be useful to be taken into consideration if you push this further some day in the future.

Cheers!

IdeasPerSecond responds:

Thank you for the detailed review, KoniWorx!

If I do go for a full release of this concept, the game's progression would be completely different from its current state. This game was only designed to be played for a short while; a full release would need to stay fun for much, much longer, requiring many hours of playtesting to develop a satisfying progression system. I also agree the color of the various projectiles would need to change; gray just blends in too well!

Thank you again for leaving such a detailed review! Your observations are truly invaluable to me!

[Walk with Frog Wife]

bro just let me shoot my wife, problem solved

Burger-Kurger responds:

she would eat the bullet

[Kill-BOI 9000]

Are you supposed to be attacking automatically? Am I missing something?

PlayWithFurcifer responds:

You should attack automatically.
We greatly improved the attack in the version uploaded today

[Jobbie]

It took me a while to understand the game. I think a tutorial or some text in the beginning would be helpful.

Also.. lmao.. I love the humor in this game. Great job on that!

Really simple game and pretty straight to the point. Which I appreciate! I would have liked some more audio to this. I think that would also amp the humor a bit. Maybe some voice acting on the boss or something - it wouldn't even have to be good voice acting. Some keyboard stroke sounds on the button presses would be nice too I think.

It's a bit weird that once you miss a letter, and you press the key coming up next, it tells you it's wrong. It's especially weird if that letter you missed is really far gone and there's a lot of letters left on screen. Putting them in sequence might make the game too easy.. but it would be good for the player to at least have a chance to find the sequence when there's a lot of letters on the screen at once and you missed one letter. I feel like sometimes I AM pressing the right letter, but there's some letter off screen I didn't press so the game tells me I'm doing it wrong. This is probably my biggest gripe with the game.

For a simple game like this - score is great. Having something like the numbers of letters typed, or maybe even bosses dodged, would be a lot of fun. It would add slight replayability.

Fun small game!

guynullval responds:

Thanks for all the feedback :D The game was made for ludum dare 50, during a 2 day rush. So there's definitely a lot of things missing, that I'd like to add. Originally there was supposed to be a static highscore, that would just go "You didn't make it to the highscore".

For a fuller game I'd definitely add a highscore counter. There was a bunch of other mechanics, like more boss interactions, getting coffee or the screen gets blurry. But I just didn't have time :/ I might make a more full build, after the LD50.

Also the bug with the letter sequence is something I'd have to look into, it should just be the letter furthest from the spawn :/

[My First KAMIKAZE]

This is a game I feel has promise. Great fun with two different games in one - kind of. Very clever and I think you did a good job with the general design of this game!

I have some feedback though. First, I think you should just get rid of the lives stuff. I get that you want to make this a highscore-based game but I feel like lives is a dated design philosophy that only worked back in the arcade-machine days when you wanted to pump coins out of players. For this game, I think you could get away with just taking away score by dying and give the player their final score at the end instead of on death. It would work fine, more people would also more likely finish the game with a design like that. Personally when I die in a game like this that uses lives, I just stop playing. Because let's face it, it's a small game on the internet - people quit fast, and you want people to play your entire creation!

Then there's smaller gripes. Like, I think it's a mistake to have the player have to hit the up button on impact with the springs - rather than just allowing the player to hold Up while landing on it. You could make the argument that it adds fun difficulty, but I actually think it does the opposite. With simpler game mechanics, you can gradually make the game harder with level design. The more accessible you make the controls, the more creative and crazy you can go with the level design towards the end. Accessible mechanics doesn't have to mean boring!

Cool work on this though, I really appreciated this game. I hope you keep on posting on here.

Oh and - add NG API highscores next time! It really helps boost the engagement on here I've heard!

CubePunks responds:

Thanks for the compliment

I've seen the "lives are outdated" talking point around and i agree in some contexts but not others. I feel if lives would result in a meaningless slap on the wrist, they shouldn't be there. But if the threat of a Game Over is more than just "restart without checkpoint," that's when lives should be gone. Sonic Generations, the perfect example of lives being useless. Mario Odyssey, the penalty being shifted to the loss of coins (your means of getting unlocks) on top of sending you back to a checkpoint (undoing your imidate progress), I think that's a better solution for larger-scale console experiences. This game, My First Kamakazi, is a platformer challenge gauntlet, a level-based boss rush (level rush?) which i feel pushes it closer to an arcade experience. The threat of a game over actually means something here, "you didn't get though the ninja warrior course", so I feel it works.

I strongly disagree about changing the spring jumps. As is there are 3 jump heights in total, but with what you recommended it'll decrease the number to 2. There are puzzles (like level 17) where using all bounce heights is required to pass. It's also the same bounce system found in classic Mario titles, which universally are seen as the cream of the crop of the 2D platformer genre.

Glad you appreciated the game, I have 2 previous titles and i don't plan on stopping uploading to NG.

I'll need to look into the tools for NG's leaderboards. I personally use Silent Wolf because it's the best option specifically for the Godot engine and it allows scores to be shared across platforms (desktop downloads, itch, NG, etc). If there's an easy way for me to hook in and add an NG-specific board, I'll consider iy.

[Soul Search]

I like this game. While it's really simple, it has good level design. You teach the player really methodically and I think you did a great job there. I gotta say tho - those spides shooting bullets was kind of a mistake, design wise. I wouldn't keep those bullets random because it lowers the chances of the player learning the patterns. You're doing such a good job teaching the player in this game that I feel like that randomness hurts the level design.

I have a large gripe with this game - and that is that the window doesn't focus the mouse to the application. I dunno if this is due to my browser (edge) or what. But when I press Down, the webpage scrolls downwards. I have to keep scrolling back up haha! I later read the description that you have to use the WASD.. but by then I had already played with the arrows for a long time. Either disable the inputs, or tell the player clearly in the game - never take for granted that the player will read the description. I never do!

The sound effects are REALLY loud compared to the music. It's so loud in fact, that I had to lower my audio considerably.

For a first game - I think you did an amazing job. I can see in your level design that you care about teaching the player and that's honestly really important. More important than the coding part, actually. It's a really simple game, but it's doing some stuff right. And, some other things less right. But I think that will come with practice for sure.

Keep up the great work, I hope to see you post more games on NG and grow as a dev!

ioblume responds:

Thank you so much for the feedback, this is really useful information and advice. I think you are right about the spiders, I will have a play around with bullet patterns, control information & the volume mixing. Thank you again, I really appreciate the in depth review!

[Don't Think, Memorize]

I don't get it.. If this game is supposed to help me learn language, why am I introduced to words I have no idea what they are?

I'm supposed to type in the answer to a word that I don't understand - I have no idea of knowing the answer. Am I supposed to google the translation to the word? That feels like cheating to me - but I see no other solution to the problem. Unless I'm actually learning the language already outside of this game.

While I appreciate the idea of the game - I don't find it suitable for NG. It would be more NG-appropriate if I had a way of learning the words before memorizing them/translating them.

Precipitation24 responds:

OK, I made a wordbook for prep.

[Winux Trailer]

I have no idea what this is supposed to be

KiaGoAnimator responds:

This is a trailer for Winux OS, a game made with Adobe Flash (ActionScript 3.0.) Ruffle will not support it, so I tried Newgrounds Player but that has Adobe Flash's death. Winux's Trailer was a few frames long and REALLY EASY to convert to HTML5, so I published the trailer. Winux WILL be desktop only for Mac and Windows, but not for others.
Winux OS is a operating system that has Linux and Windows combined (makes Winux.)
Now, why was Winux OS going to be made in Flash? That's because I don't know how to do it in HTML5 and JS, CSS even, so I will use Adobe Flash, and I can only create projectors for Windows and Mac.

[Bug Man Remaster 1.0]

Sorry man there's no real lose-condition to this game. I wouldn't really call this a game.
It's either that or not complete. Add an incentive to get the bugs. Like a timer that ticks down faster and faster, and the more bugs you pick up the more time you gain - but the timer always get faster so that you eventually die. I think something as simple as that would make this game, a game.

Try uploading again with some change like this and I promise it'll do better!

31hashtag responds:

Thanks for the review!

[Bubble Pairs: Matching Game]

Ok memory game! Very basic but I can tell this is a practice game project you made. It's great that you start with simple projects!

I think you could add some flare to this by giving the player a little score bonus for clearing puzzles faster/fewer moves. That would give the player an incentive on getting better at the game.

This is a small thing - but please consider using shapes rather than colors. Even though this game is some colors that are different in contrast - it's still going to be hard for color-blind people. And color-blindness is more common than you might think.

I'd also suggest just putting up the full game on NG and not do a promo like this. I guess it's a free game on GooglePlay anyway?

Siviovi responds:

Hello,
Thanks a lot for the advice and I will keep it in mind in the future.
Yes, it's a free game, mostly designed for children under 13, so I made it as simple as possible.
Honestly, I really didn't think about people with disabilities (I apologize) and thank you for the idea of changing shapes.
This is only the first version and in the future, there will be more versions and changes.
All the best !