Sushin00's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[CAZE]

A slow and unexciting concept.
MOST of the game is waiting for the circle to rotate. Most of the rest of the game is looking to see where you will go. The rest of the game is tapping the buttons at the right time.
Basically, players already know how each level is going to end, so the puzzle part of the game is solved within seconds. The rest of it is just pressing the buttons at the right time, which isn't hard. It just takes patience, and patience isn't inherently fun. Anticipation is fun, but that's not what this game builds by making the player wait. The worst part is, if you mess up, you have to do all that waiting all over again even though you know how to beat it and that you CAN beat it. It's just not engaging.
I see you made the space button speed up the rotation, but I still think that's not enough to make the game interesting to me.

CjElliott responds:

Third person today to state the game is too slow and unexciting while still only be on the third tutorial level, (Damn that third level) sorry that you don't like my idea but please try the later levels where the game is faster and more challenging.

[Rob And Aliens]

Not bad, really. One glaring issue that I first noticed is that the camera doesn't follow the player properly. When the player is walking to the right, the camera lags behind and shows 75% of what's behind the player. It should be the other way around. Players want to see what's in front of them, not what's behind them.

wooood responds:

I agree, camera movement could be better

[Epic Hard Jump]

Again I see an amateur game labeled as "super hard you can't beat it!" as a cop-out for half decent game design.
Mechanically the game is incredibly simple, so the interest comes from the level itself, and platforming through it, but once the player makes a mistake they start all the way over at the beginning, and if a player has to replay areas they have already gone through, now they have nothing left to interest them. Yes, the achievement of beating the entire level without dying is rewarding, but for almost every player the reward is outweighed by having to play the entire level over.

ColChope responds:

Probably not your kind of games. I understand, me too I'm not a huge fan of games like that. But this one is mine, and some peoples like it, so I continue, and I'm happy to do it :D

[Game.Init()]

This is a pretty neat game.

I'd like to make the suggestion for god's sake that you shouldn't be using the mouse click to progress with the story. If a player want to play with the arrow keys, they have to move their hand repeatedly from the keys to the mouse. I just see this a lot and it's such a common mistake with a simple fix and it bothers me. This would only be acceptable if the mouse was necessary in your game for something other than a single button input that could be replaced by a key, and in that case you should probably just disable arrow key controls so that people can't frustrate themselves by not realizing WASD are the movement controls because they tried the arrow keys first.

Also, some micro feedback would be nice. It seems to be REALLY important that the player jump at the apex of their jump, but it's hard to see the apex of your jump inside of a circle because the player gets whited out. Some sort of sound or audio cue when the player has entered one of the circles, and when the player has reached the height of their jump would be really helpful to players, because also, when you're falling into a circle, sometimes you want to press the jump button as soon as you enter it, but there's no real cue for when that happens (aside from the obvious, which isn't quite as clear).

Otherwise, I think the jumping is a little touchy. On some levels, if you don't jump on the first light circle correctly, you wont get enough height down the line to reach the 4th or 5th circle, and it's annoying to slowly realize that as you're jumping before you lose. I figured that's the only thing that makes the game challenging though, besides avoiding the circular saws, so i don't think it's that bad. The problem with it lies in what I said above: It's hard to know when to jump because of a lack of feedback.

keybol responds:

thank you. I do have a new version with spacebar as hotkey. I will update this game asap

[Asteroid Field 2030]

I think this game could be a lot better if you made the controls better.
In the original asteroids, you can aim your ship 360 degrees without moving. In this game you can aim in 4 directions without moving, and 4 more directions when you are moving. This makes aiming incredibly difficult, and since enemies are chasing you, you barely have a way to defend yourself because you cant run away from them and shoot them at the same time. Most of the game for me was running away from the enemies and trying to take pot shots at them. The actual asteroids in the game seemed to give a lot of score but they were no threat whatsoever to the player so there's not really any use in destroying them, since score is completely arbitrary.
Additionally, the art has inconsistant pixel density and the player and enemies are really small. When you beat the game, the high score only displays 2 numbers even if it's a higher value than that. Having A and B as controls right on the screen and then not using those keys in the game is incredibly confusing. You aren't sacrificing any nostalgia by just making those keys say W and E. When you hold the fire button down, everything on and off the screen that gets hit makes noise, with the asteroids being the loudest, and at the same time, there's no visual feedback for when a bullet hits an asteroid.
That's most of the things that caught my eye when I played. While it has a lot of flaws the general idea isn't that bad. If you made some changes you would have something good to work with.

scofano responds:

Thanks for your comments, @sushin00. Some of them I am aware of but could not achieve within the deadline. The controls on the screen should be hidden on this version. They are there because I tested the game on my ipad a lot. The sound is really annoying, I will fix that asap.

[Human A.I.]

This game is really preventing me from enjoying it. The art is actually pretty nice and the controls are nice and the general concept is interesting and funny.
In the first game I played, I didn't read the controls (as a vast majority of your players wont) and started the first mission. I died a few times just due to trial and error because I didn't know what I couldn't touch (this included the S key...which seemed to basically just be a "lose the game" button). After I learned how to avoid enemies (which isn't hard because the collision boxes are huge for the enemies) I didn't really know what to do after walking across the city for a few minutes. After dying I was sent to the start of the level and quit.
I decided to give the game a second chance after looking at the controls menu. Please make the controls menu mandatory to read before the player plays the game. It's not going to annoy anyone and it becomes the players fault if they don't know the controls. After that, I started the game and seemed to be given a random mission, which was the same mission again. Having no mines, stealth is the only thing you can do to avoid enemies, but I got the same mission where you can't use stealth or you fail the game. That kind of pissed me off, so I quit. I suggest you remove this mission or put it later so players can use stealth in the game. And if you MUST prevent players from using stealth...don't let them accidentally press the S key and fail the whole mission.

BobieThe11th responds:

Ok thanks for the review man!

[Bunker Down 2030]

I think the general aspect of the game is rather well balanced and executed. The tutorial made the game easy to understand, but I found the day to day pace of the game a little lacking in excitement. All the reading to slow down the game, and towards the second half the game I was just clicking through things and allotting my workers to the spots that had low resources. The story that comes with the events ultimately has no impact on the game. If instead, for instance, you could get a notice that a group of bandits was coming, you could read that and decide to prepare for it. Instead, you get a notice that bandits have attacked and some of your ammo is gone.
Considering your background, I'm excited to see what you make in the future as an independent developer.

KoberGirl responds:

Great suggestions! I will keep them in mind for the future. Very helpful feedback.

[2030 Leagues]

I appreciate the simplicity of the game. The controls are easy to pick up and the game is very welcoming to play. Some of the goals were lost on me before I looked at the instructions menu (which I would urge you not to expect players to do) and I ended up quitting when I felt like there was no ultimate point to the game. The mechanics kind of remind me of cleaning up my bedroom. The only reward is unlocking deeper areas, which may be interesting to explore, but I don't think it's very rewarding since you are just cleaning up more meteorite to get lower. There didn't seem to be an obvious overarching goal or anything like that, which left the game falling short in my opinion.

For some minor details, I didn't have any idea how to grab behind rocks until after I read the instructions. I can assure you that a vast majority of players have this same problem and never figure it out. Also, the hook thing can be a little tedious to use because you have to wait for it to come back every time you shoot it. If a player misses a target, having to wait for it to come back every single time can be very burdening. I would suggest having the hook reset on each click at the player. It may not make sense but it gives the player more autonomy over their actions.

jadecascade responds:

Thank you for the feedback and constructive criticism Sushin00. We debated a lot on how to tell the players about the grappling hook having the ability to move through rocks while retracting.

I hope you'll try again in the future. I assure you there is a tough battle and a big meteor down at the bottom of our little ocean. (It's not as deep as you think!)

[Danger Time]

I'm going to bring some balance into these obvious sock-puppet reviews with my own opinions. (Note that every review before this one is from an account made within the last week)
The unskippable several minute introduction cutscene and wall-of-text tutorial levels make this game incredibly inaccessible and hard to enjoy. To add to that, if you don't read the tutorial fast enough, the "poor suicidal princess" jumps and forces you to redo the tutorial level multiple times. I'd like to also add that the princess offers no emotional value to the story, as every single level I played ended with me saving some copy and pasted woman falling from a building of her own volition.

By level 5, the game has offered me nothing interesting but some poorly designed levels that take less than a minute to complete. The mechanic of jumping and falling could have been better explored with more interesting level design, but the levels this game offers are incredibly lazily built. Even so, the mechanic of jumping repeatedly to jump higher is simply tedious, not fun.

HenerzH responds:

Let me clear one of your concerns up straight away, you can skip the intro with a simple slap of the space bar or start button. Which it does say at the beginning but perhaps you missed it as it is subtle.

You may have found it very easy to get to the end, this makes the game accessible even if the tutorials don't do so well to do that. But I bet you didn't find it easy to get 3 stars on every level, if you do you may realise the level design is far from unthoughtful and lazy....

You are entitled to your opinion. Although there's no need to be this harsh, and I'd say it borderline goes against the Newgrounds code of conduct.

That said, the game hasn't been in development very long, and it definitely needs work I agree, I can appreciate what you are saying about the long introduction and awkward tutorial, that definitely needs some work for sure. I just wanted to make sure first time players didn't miss the intro and was trying to set the scene in an amusing and yet dramatic way.
The save function was suppose to let you skip this completely in future play throughs, but that is not functioning correctly just yet.

I was never going for strong emotional value, so no surprises there. If anything it was just meant to be quite a funny way to get some good fun gameplay, nothing emotional intended.

As for the reviews, you are completely right in what you said, but I don't think my friends wanting to support me with my new game is a bad thing, so they set up accounts to do that, and they are still valuable, valid and truthful opinions.

If you didn't enjoy it, that's fine, I'd like to believe you perhaps missed the point of the mechanics, but not everyone can enjoy it. To say it has poorly designed levels is really quite harsh, but they were designed around the mechanics which, if you don't appreciate them will seem not so good I suppose.

I didn't want to use the standard platform mechanics so it can seem a bit weird at first.
To call it lazy, is just plain wrong.

The mechanic of jumping higher can appear annoying, but there is a trade off factor between charging your run and jump, so you can't simply keep pressing jump and do well in all the levels, it is quite thought out, I assure you, I spent time designing and testing the levels repeatedly to make sure they suited the new mechanics and offered a balanced challenge.

Another thing to note about the intro, is that for many people that was one of the selling factors of the game, but it should be more obvious how to skip if you want to.

As for the repeated woman, not only did I have a lack of time, but how many classic games have the same princess at the end of each level!? Super Mario, Super Meat Boy. I don't see how this point is negative in the slightest!

To wrap up.

Not every review before yours is from someone signing up in the last week, the one before yours is from the owner of this very website and he has given me 5 stars.........................

Please be a bit more constructive with your criticisms in the future!

[Planets 2030]

The concept is interesting but the execution is incredibly confusing. I suppose the point of the game is to destroy all the other planets, barring the sun, but I have no idea how to make good choices in this game. I can't see health of other planets, assuming there is any and that I have to lower it. I'm not entirely sure how much health my planet has. Found out that shooting some of the floating circles giving my bullets power ups, but on another occasion, shooting one sent me to the title screen, and sometimes they appear to do nothing but delete my bullet. I hope you can improve on this concept in the future.

Vyntershtoff responds:

Well... Your main aim is to destroy one particular planet. If you're playing PvE then it's a red one. Otherwise, it depends (Red one, if you are a host and blue one if you are a peer) . You have two health bars on top of the screen (yours and opponents). You're right. you can't see other planets health - my bad. When i designed this game I wanted to draw different pictures for different states for each planet, but I just didn't have much time before deadline. I don't know why power ups are acting so strange - I'll figure it out. Thanks for your review, cause now i know that I should think harder on clarification and tutorials)