Ioplop's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Project Rocket]

In addition to 3p0ch comments, wich I 100% agree on, I would add a little options menu to mix SFX and Music volumes, or mute them.

Since there is no "Win screen" after you complete all the levels, instead going back to level 1, I would add a level counter so that you can at least see how many levels you have completed.

You could also make the levels a lot more intresting if you change the general palette from time to time. Say, green floor and glass spikes, or magma (bright, emmitting orange with some particles) floor and meteorites, I don't know, something to break the monotony.

to-mahto responds:

As of right now, another build is coming out in 10-15 minutes with the music situation fixed, but the other things will be implemented in a later build so be on the lookout for it.

[The Golden Ball Final]

Hey, I'm here to do my part and help you with a review, so here are my first impressions. Bear in mind that I'm playing on my computer, using google chrome.
I'll be kind of harsh, but please know that everything I'm saying here is so you can improve and make better games. My only intention here is to help you improve.

Screen: This is obviously kind of an issue in pc. The screen resolution is clearly designed for smartphones. I'll let this one go in terms of score, but I know this could be fixed relatively easily. Here is an example to check what kind of device is the player using: https://answers.unity.com/questions/1698508/detect-mobile-client-in-webgl.html
You can play around with resolutions from there.
You could also easily add a fullscreen button to help the game fit better in the screen.

Camera: The camera needs a lot of work. It's rigid and "snappy". I see that you added an anti-clip sort of function so that it doesn't go through obstacles, but it moves so abruptly that I just get confused. The camera should naturally and elastically follow the player (the ball, in this case), so that it feels soft and we can easily follow it's movement. Right now, it's the opposite of that.

Tutorial: There is no real need for a tutorial button. You could have easily put those two levels on the "Story" button. If the problem is stars, you could just increase by 6 every skin requirement.

GUI: It's broken, at least in the main menu, it really is. Just look at this: https://imgur.com/a/WyTgf0r
I honestly don't even know if there is any other button. The rest of the gui seems to be working good, although it's generally ugly. It's pretty easy to make decent gui sprites for unity, you should try!

WAIT, I GOT IT: So the gui blue thing is a slider! It really doesn't look like that. The fact that it took me so long to notice kind of shows that the interface is not intuitive enough.

Options: There are none. I can't mix the sound effects and the music to my likings. I can't even mute the sound.

Gameplay:
- The rocks seem harmless but cause an instant loose. Put some spikes in those rocks to communicate a sense of danger. Maybe make them something else. Right now they don't make a lot of sense. I would also like to see an animation where my ball falls off when it hits an obstacle, or goes "poof!" or something. Something other than just an instant game over screen.

- You support full keyboard controls, but not on the menu. You can move the ball with the arrow keys and jump with space. This is quite confortable, but it gets really anoying because you have to use the mouse to restart the level every time you loose. Maybe let the player restart the level with the R key, or allow us to use spacebar or enter to restart once we loose.

- There is no real point for having a sideways inclination in the track. Since it won't make you fall because the movement axis of the ball seems to be limited to forward only, there is no real danger or challenge in those parts.

- The tunnels are kinda broken. You can climb them, you can skip rocks, you can do all sort of random things. Here is me breaking level 3 as much as I can: https://imgur.com/a/qOoNK6l

All in all: Could be fun, but so far I'm not really enjoying the game. It has the basics going, but really needs some polish.

DaviantG responds:

Thanks for the detailed review, I really appreciate it!

The camera was a design choice I made so that the ball is always in the same place. In the game you actually control the camera instead of the ball. I thought it played better like this, but I have heard similar things to what you said from some of my friends. I will take it into account for the next game, since this one was designed around the camera moving this way, especially the spirals

The stars were not the problem for the tutorial, I just thought it would be better to have them separated.

You are right on the GUI, it is ugly and the sliders are really not great, they were are a last-minute addition because my friends did not realize that you could scroll on mobile. I put a deadline on myself to finish the game because I tend to not finish things and did not have the time to learn how to create a great UI, I have also always been terrible at art haha.

The options menu is definitely something that I should add.

The instant game over screen was also a design choice, I like being able to reset the game instantly, It could definitely work better with death animations though.

I think that the fact that the tunnels are broken is fun, I even put coins that you could only get by doing things like you did in the video, but finally decided against it because it was confusing to players.

[Stride Prototype]

The graphics and animations look really nice.
I would love to see a finished version of something like this. I really like the atmosphere.
Now, I think the details are what separates a decent game from a really good game. Here are some things I think you should fix/improve, excluding obvious things that are not here for, again, obvious reasons, such as more enemy types, items, abilities or an inventory.

-As stated before, the elevator needs some rework, as it tends to glitch a lot.

-The attack movement seems to create some sort of collider that allows the character to climb walls or ramps by attacking. This needs fixing as it both breaks the inmersion and could potentially allow the player to do some exploits on more complex scenarios. For some odd reason, this only happens on what I believe is the last wall to the bottom left.

-The enemy corpses seem to have a small collider even after dying. I can see the use of this, as it allows them to "fall on the floor" on certain random circumtances, but they should not collide with the player, as you can drag the corpse around in a way that looks pretty bad, specially when you are both pushing the head AND the body, which should be separated.

-There seems to be no falling animation. Or at least not a clear one. Probably fix.. I'm not sure? It seems like it uses the same animation as dodging, but this doesn't really look good when falling straight down.

-The floor is on top of the character. Or rather, it is drawn on top. This shouldn't be noticeable on normal conditions, but as soon as you go up or down a ramp, you can see that the player looks as if in between the background wall and the floor. It just looks very bad.

-You can move the enemy bodies with the arrow keys, enhancing their movement speed or preventing them from moving... You can even drag their corpses after you kill them! wtf? >.<

-When starting, you can move to the left, and even attack or dodge, making the kinght glitch a lot as it tries to move right at the same time. You should probably disable the controls when this kind of animation plays.

-If you manage to make the elevator go down without you, the chain from which it hangs eventually runs short and dissapears. This happened to me on the last elevator.

-If you, then, jump down, appart from not taking fall damage (which is not necesarily bad), the camera takes a lot of time to catch up. When you are about to get out of the screen, the camera should catch up by increasing it's speed a lot more, so this doesn't happen.

-It is possible to cause a glitch that will disable the ability to dodge... somehow. It may have something to do with the elevators... I'm not sure, but it has happened to me 3 times already.

Overall, nice atmosphere (which looks like some sort of pixel dark souls maybe?), nice art.
The game still has a lot of glitches that need to be worked on, but if there weren't, I would rate this at least a 4, depending on how much content there is.
Honestly, I've tried to make 2d pixel art side scroller games, specifically in unity, and I know it takes a lot of experimentation and determination to make things looks crisp. In my opinion, this game has already a lot of potentential. I really want to see you finish the project.

I hope this review is as helpful as possible.
Have a good day, and keep the good work!

ErikSwahn responds:

It makes me happy to hear that you spend some time in the demo. Every flaw you mentioned is going to be fixed, especially that you can move the enemies with the arrow keys. Totally missed that behavior. I already have plans for expanding the game. But first I need to polish ^^

[Where Is My Key?]

First of all, I don't speak english at all but I'll write as clear as I can.
I really liked the game. I like the graphics style, the music and the idea itself.
So, this are the things I think you could improve:
1- Offline ver. option does nothing.
2- When you see the credits, there is nothing about the music.
3- There is an error that make the game crash when you are hitted by a crystal and you are, at the same time, touching a wall or something. I couldn't reproduce the error intentionally, but it happened me like 7 times while playing the game.
4- It would be nice to see more levels :)
I would like to see more challenging levels, as every level but the tower is relatively easy.
But I insist, I liked the game a lot, and it would be nice to see more games like that.

NemesisQK responds:

Thanks. I heard about that bug but it seems that is deeply hidden in the code and it's really hard to find it. It would take all the code to rewritte. Next chapter of Zeddicuss jurney will be written from the beggining and yeah, it will be more challenging and entertaining ;)

About that offline version, for me it is working. Maybe click two times or something?