egg82's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[TheInvisibleMaze]

0/10 not actually a maze.

This fits into category 1: Baby's first game.
This is terrible and shouldn't be on NG, but don't get discouraged and continue game development.

orion1220 responds:

If you get far enough it is a maze.Thanks for showing up

[FitItSide]

I love mobile puzzle games. They're some of my favorite games.
This is a good mobile puzzle game. It ticks all the right boxes to be a good mobile puzzle game.

The mobile market is too saturated with good mobile puzzle games. This is too safe. It does nothing different or special, discounting the (only) semi-unique mechanic.

-1 point to Gryffindor.

[Tutorial Level Selection.]

Looking at this Flash in the list I thought to myself, "this is going to be another Flash IDE AS2 tutorial, isn't it?"
lo and behold, the first frame in and I was not disappointed.

Please, guys, don't make tutorials like these. The Flash IDE is an animation IDE made for animators. Not programmers. Animators.
It's the whole "right tool for the right job" thing, and you seem to have missed the boat on some great free software like FlashDevelop. Please learn AS3 and how to code correctly using Object-Oriented-Programming (inheritance) - you will find that your projects become much better and much more organized over time.

ZhaoAS2 responds:

See you next time.

[FTK: Find The King]

Apologies for the short, shallow review but I did want to mention a couple things and I just didn't find myself interested enough to keep playing.

First, your movement is broken. I remember a review that said this earlier, but I wanted to tell you exactly why it's broken and how to fix it. The review said you snap back into place after pressing the key for a short period of time, and you responded saying it's a design choice because some colleagues of yours found out they sometimes moved accidentally. The problem isn't that they moved accidentally, then problem is when they moved accidentally it was more of a pain to get back to where they were before. That indicates the movement is simply too slow, which is an easy fix.

When you see a problem or when someone tells you there's a problem, don't fix that directly because usually that means there's a deeper underlying cause and your fix won't do anything except waste your time.

Next, I don't believe this has any replay value. You play it once, find the king, and then you close out and never come back to it again. I would suggest randomizing the king's position or the map some to give it replay value. Then add a high-score table so the player is aware there's replay value and can challenge their friends.

Finally, the graphic style is interesting but lacks color or definition. I understand the art style you were going for, and i'm being a bit nitpicky now, but for me it would have been nice if the graphics had something else with them.

A thought-out game meets an okay mechanic and is implemented "meh"-ly - all-in-all not bad but not something i'd spend a lot of my time on.

7moore7 responds:

Updated the game. I fixed the movement issues. And the game has always randomly generated where the King spawns in every one of the FOUR (4) worlds. The graphic style is exactly what I was going for, and I am quite sure that most people will not be a fan of what they see - but this isn't a game meant to make every single person happy or designed to bring in millions of dollars in revenue. It is simple. Very simple. The gameplay, the graphics, and the music (which some players are still not hearing, and for the life of me I can't figure out why). And this is a game that practically begs for a scoreboard or similar system, but in sticking with my Where's Waldo theme, there are no scoreboards when you look for Waldo. Thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts down in words. Especially thank you for having something more intelligent and constructive than, "This game sux" or "Great game."

[Invasion Force]

Short review, sorry.

The graphics were great for a Flash game, though the music needs work.
The concept is nice, a good twist on an old genera. Gathering resources yourself is a plus.
The issues pointed out in the description are present, as well as there only seeming to be one level and one tower placement available. Also the blockade structures aren't placeable again after they're torn down.
I was having some fun up until I realized I had run out of resources and was eventually going to slowly die.

That said, it's obviously incomplete and shouldn't have passed judgement. Feedback is great, but incomplete games shouldering in with the complete ones are not.

WashAshore responds:

Thank you egg82 for your honest review. I hope to add updates soon to make Invasion Force feel more playable and complete.

[Amy's First Platform Test]

Please don't put "my first game"s on NG or really anywhere on the internet for everyone to see.

First, don't use the Flash IDE to code. It's an animation IDE, not a code IDE.
Framrate's locked at 24 FPS (which is bad in and of itself) - but it makes the controls that much more floaty and hard to control.
Hitboxes are way off, use pixel-perfect collision detection rather than bounding boxes.
Most people use WASD, which a lot of Flash programmers fail to understand for some reason. Allow rebindable keys to solve all of the issues present with keyboard layouts and the like.
Don't use password systems, they're awful.
The graphics aren't great. At all. There's also no animation whatsoever, though that's helped by the fast that we seem to controlling a ball (there's a pattern to most of these Flash game I play, isn't there?)
Music and sound are great, then I don't have to listen to emptiness.
More visual/audio feedback is always good when you collect rewards. Something that makes you feel good instead of just... Nothing.
Space key is commonly used as a jump key, not an interact key. Tutorials or even intuitive controls would help.
The end is... Well, yeah.

AmyJoy2213 responds:

Thanks for your feedback. Your tips were very helpful. I just wanted to post my first attempt so my sister could play it. Sorry! I will take your constructive criticism and use it in the future. Hopefully one day I'll create an interesting and fun game for everyone to play. Thanks again! :)

[Tutorial Rpg text.]

This is bad in a lot of ways.

First, you shouldn't use an animation IDE to code in. It's like using a knife to open a bottle instead of a bottle opener. You can do it, but why would you?
Second, yay for copyrighted and badly compressed music.
Third, the English isn't great. It's understandable, but that doesn't make it any less bad.
This is a tutorial on AS2, which should have died a long time ago; and has officially been dead for almost a year at the time of this posting.
Which brings me to my last point: This is a text tutorial made in Flash and posted on a website designed for creative works.

E for effort, I try not to give 0 ratings.

[At the end.]

Most of my issues with this game are bugs or things that weren't able to be fixed because of the time limit of the jam. I'll skip those as much as possible and focus on the actual mechanics of the game.

This is what seems to be a standard platformer, but with a few gimmicks to it to keep it interesting. Now, I say "gimmick" and you think: "oh, yay" - but that's what most games are these days; a standard something-or-other with a few (or a lot of) gimmicks thrown in to keep it interesting. Don't judge a game based on how many gimmicks it throws in, because that's 99% of games. It depends on how WELL each of them are executed.

So, here's what we've got:
An isometric view. Yes, this is a platformer. So, how in the world does an isometric view fit in a patformer? Well, this introduces another gimmick: invisible things.
Let's start at the base; the platforming. You would think you simply use wasd or the arrow keys to run and jump to different platforms, but instead this game is mouse-driven. You hold the left mouse button to move around, and later fly for a short amount of time. The question is: is this implemented well? The short answer is no. The problem is the mouse needs to be in a specific position in order to do certain things, and moving from platform to platform (especially along the y-axis) is made much more difficult by this. Is there a good way to do something like this? Maybe, but it'd be very difficult. So, I wouldn't say "oh, this is so easy to do and you're an idiot for not getting it right" because it's not. E for effort, really.
The platforming itself is also off, which contributes to the feel of clunkyness with the game. Moving along a single platform is fine, but when you're required to jump or move from one platform to another in any way, it proves difficult to do. Moving down is near-impossible unless you play tetris and are familiar with tricks like moving left or right just before the piece sets in. Moving up is impossible without the help of wings, which last a very short amount of time, and which may get shorter as the levels progress. This makes it difficult to move up. this leaves moving across, which again proves difficult when things are in your way.
Yes, there are invisible things. This is a pretty widely-used gimmick in platformers, you shouldn't be terribly surprised. How do you see invisible things, you may ask? Well, in some platformers, you don't. In this one, you can. Kinda. They are revealed with the help of a torch and the isometric view, which is revealed after pressing a button to hide your inventory. The big problem I have with this is that the only reason the isometric view is there is to solve some arbitrary problem the developer decided to create because why not? It works. Not well, but it's functional. The problem is, after the euphoric feeling of "oh, this is cool" this gives the game an even clunkier feel, especially combined with the time limit (which doubles as your health) - time limits don't work with clunky mechanics. It just incites frustration.
So, already somewhat-frustrated by the mechanics, I get another gimmick. The level-down system. This is a really cool mechanic, but it relies heavily on the rest of the game being good. Which it's not. The problem is, i'm being punished for completing the game. This is cool if I make big mistakes or perhaps if the rest of the game were compelling or really, really good, but as-is it just makes me want to... Not complete the game.
ie. close the window.

all-in-all, a few good ideas and idea combinations coming from this game for the jam (which is what the jam's all about, after all) - but not a good game in general. That's the problem with a lot of jams. The games that come out usually aren't very good because people experiment with a bunch of ideas. That's not the problem, here. the problem is the good ideas weren't executed well.

FlyingColours responds:

Thanks for the detailed review! It's greatly appreciated especially as I now know all the problems with the game. I'll be responding in my post-mortem news post. :P

[DoodleBall: Space Chaser]

Looks like a "my first game" type thing. This doesn't completely fail, but you obviously need more practice. Platformers are a nightmare to develop, the Flixel framework will help with that.

Pros:
It looks like an interesting concept. At least, I think... ?

Cons:
Incomplete, buggy, and the engine needs work. Again, this looks and feels like a "my first game" thing. I assume this was made in AS2 with the Flash IDE, judging by the way animations are handled and the way the movement engine works with platforms. Use better tools, you're about a century out-of-date.
Don't hide behind "it's incomplete" - if you submit something, you acknowledge you game is complete enough to be subject to any and all criticism that comes your way.

[MARIO 2012]

Pros:
the "wall-jumping" mechanic was interesting

Cons:
The engine was terrible. The DisplayObjects never switched at the right times, I kept losing health for apparently no reason, and Mario should not have a health bar. Unless you're 100% certain your idea is going to be a hit, don't mess with old games' mechanics. Even then, I suggest not doing so. Coins "bounced" the player a little, but goombas did not. The only real use for those things was the fact that you could kick them and bounce on them.
The score also does not reset, so you can get a massive high-score just by playing the first part of the level

Overall:
try to come up with your own idea, don't just slap some old game sprites on a tired engine and call it good. You've obviously proved you can at least come up with something interesting, so put that to use in another game.