Doneveno's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Paranormal Shark Activity]

It's fine

Could use some more obstacles/platforms, or whatever. After five minutes of the same thing I just stopped trying. Overall a decent game, though.

There was one issue with the controls that kept screwing me. When you jump, you scroll with the camera, but you don't when you're on the ground. This makes precision jumps nearly impossible because the fundamentals of game control suddenly switch when you're in the air.

ThinXIII responds:

Well... the ground is moving so if you're on the ground you move with the ground and when you just you just stay where you are, it gets some people confusing, but it happens the same way as super mario. Anyway thanks for the review, much appriciated. :)

[Jim the Worm]

DUDE TAKE IT EASY

A pretty high-quality april fool's joke. Wasn't expecting it.

For those of you interested in what's AFTER the bird, search youtube for Jim The Worm Secrets. I'm uploading a video as we speak. I don't know why, but I feel compelled to see what happens if you prevent the unpreventable in games. It's not too interesting, but hey.

Kembry responds:

HAHA, video about what happens after that, it could be interesting.
Great idea,
Becouse no one sad that he is dead, it just looked like he died.
But we don`t know.

Hahaha, I saw video Iw as laughting , yes it is funny to catch bugs in the game.
Thank you for video :D

[Flood Fill]

One thing I'd recommend

Let us know how few colors we could use before finishing the level. It's not like doing the four-color solution and then finding out that you didn't get a gold star is any more challenging, just a waste of time. Aside from that, very unique.

A level editor might be nice. Especially since all you'd have to do is give us the ability to draw white lines and then prove we can finish the level.

onefifth responds:

Agreed, displaying the minimum needed colours is something I should have done. I thought of it, along with the idea of a clear button, but didn't end up adding them because it made the UI look ugly Xd.
A level editor was also thought of, but not possible based on the way I coded it, and I wasn't prepared to restart the project at that point.
The feedback is appreciated!

[William and Sly]

No idiots allowed

Ignore all the people saying "zomg the snake goes up down up up down down up whatever". Even if there IS a preset pattern, there's really no reason to memorize it. If the snake goes along the bottom with his mouth closed, he'll go along the top with his mouth open next time. Same goes with top closed, bottom open.

I only had two real issues with it. One of the worst things a game can have are permanently missable aspects unless they're INCREDIBLY easy to find or completely unnecessary. I don't really want to spend another hour playing this game again so I can get another 1000 points for a medal. Not this one, anyway.

Don't get me wrong it's not a bad game. I just have no reason to play it again unless I really want medals. All the enemies are in the same place, mushrooms, switches, etc. A sequel that includes more things to do and more ways to do it could easily be one of the best games on NG. As it stands, though, really the only thing it's got going for it is the great art and great programming. The gameplay needs work.

Kajenx responds:

Yeah I changed the boss this morning so it's easier now. Before it would line up to attack the player, so it seemed more random. :/

[RhythmWorld]

Great idea, horrid execution

While the theory behind the game is sound, it has several flaws that will prevent it from reaching any heights beyond "notable flash game".

First and foremost, the mechanism for adding a new song. Simply pressing buttons while the song plays is a terrible idea for the following reasons:

1) People have input lag.
2) People never, ever, ever have PERFECT rhythm. Maybe close, but close doesn't cut it in a timing game.
3) If you mess up once you have to do everything all over again.
4) There's absolutely no way to edit a song once you've made notes, or continue from a point, or otherwise do anything aside from "note" the entire song start to finish.

So adding new songs is pretty much bad. But how about playing songs? Well, we've all seen the DDR ripoff format, the second format is apparently from Elite Beat Agents, and I haven't seen the third one. The DDR one doesn't work because of the poor song adding mechanic I alluded to above. I played some songs that were alright, but every last one had issues that prevented it from being enjoyable (including timing and choppiness of the game). The Elite Beat Agents one just does not work, at all. It's 100% impossible on a laptop and very difficult on a desktop. Until a touchscreen laptop comes out, that's not going to work.

Suggestions?

First, simply copy DDR's format of making your own steps for a song. You select the BPM and just put notes on a grid. Since songs are just a pattern with sounds, the ability to precisely place (and copy/paste or edit) the notes is just a given.

Get rid of the Elite Beat Agents thing and replace it with something else.

Fix the time-honored "the game jumps every five seconds" tradition of Flash rhythm games.

Add an ability to set the quality above Atrocious.

Add saving a song's custom notes locally (into a cookie or something) so you can spend as much time as you want on them.

And no, it's not my computer. At all.

Coolio-Niato responds:

The ez-input design of the game was created so ANYONE could sync songs, not just people who have time on their hands to understand how to chart a song and all that jazz. Frets should not lag at all, and the EBA game was made for users with tablets to enjoy (didnt think of that one did u).

-Coolio

[Microbe Kombat]

Really, really obnoxious

This game would have been fantastic save for one thing: your microbe takes about half an hour to open his stupid mouth, and then another half an hour to close it. If your enemy just keeps turning, he's completely invulnerable unless you can predict which way he's going to turn (which you can't). So basically you have to hope your enemy will just go straight in one direction long enough for you to eat him.

HeroInteractive responds:

That does make the game a bit challenging, I agree. But you wouldn't want to play an easy game would you? Haha! We'll keep your ideas in mind for the future, though, thanks.

[Stigg's Veggie-Matic]

Contest Winner - At least it should be

The voice acting was great; I thought it was professional at first, perhaps taken from an outside source. The animation was very smooth and crisp.

The only problems I had were level 6+ ramped up WAY too quickly, and, of course, the gameplay was very repetitive. But then, I'm not 5-12.

All in all, you did a great job, even though the message was a little hackneyed and...um...other negative adjective.

WarpZone responds:

Oh, I can assure you, the voice definitely IS professional voice acting. It was done by Erica Mendez and ShockDingo from the Voice Acting Alliance forums. You should definitely google the VAA if you need voice acting for any Flash projects. Please be polite, and take the time to learn their system of doing things, and I'm sure someone there will be able to provide you with results like these.

Repetitive gameplay stages 6+, I can understand. The difficulty ramping up too quickly, is kind of a surprise to me. The only real difference between 7 and 9 is the speed at which enemies run. Stage 6 always seems like such a bear, but actually there's 15 enemies on-screen at once that take 3 hits each, so it's not much different from Stage 4, which featured 4 enemies at once that took 3 hits each. It's just the large groups that make it seem a lot more challenging than it actually is.

As for the message, in the contest rules it said that games would be judged more favorably if they had a message. So as you mgiht immagine, I and everyone else who entered the contest, put a cheesy message in. I just did my best to have fun with it, and I think that helped a lot. :)

[...2]

Here's an actually USEFUL review!

Here's why people are voting low:

-Some of the notes are the same color as the floor tiles, making them impossible to dodge

-The dance moves, while a good idea, were VERY unresponsive (each time I wanted to do Titan Whatever, I had to roll dsa about 10 times) and about 90% of the time I tried to do the vcx move, I ended up doing cx and ruining my combo

-Like somebody else said, diagonal moving would be nice

-After fixing the dance moves, add more. Make them more complex or have special effects

-There should be something beyond dodging notes and doing dance moves. The beacons were a decent idea, but it was much more rewarding to just do dance moves in the back column instead of braving the stream of notes for a beacon

Besides those things, I liked the game's novel approach. I tried and failed to beat level 1 about three times.

NeoMarine responds:

The dance moves fail when you don't have enough energy to perform them. If you tried to do the vcx move but only had enough energy for the cx move it would perform the cx move.

Other than that, thanks for the detailed review!

[Ratmaze 2]

Excellent

Did a really good job of capturing the feeling of being a rat blasting his way through a maze in search of cheese. The speed was perfect, and the music accentuated the atmosphere (the default music was better in terms of frenzy...ness). The second maze was a VAST improvement over the original. Overall a good game, but you still haven't fixed the time up bug when you get to the maximum speed zone.

pixeljamgames responds:

I think i fixed the bug... ill upload it tomorrow, but it takes a few days for it to take effect on NG sometimes. Version 1.2 should be the fix.

[Ball Game Beta One]

Very good for a beta

Fix up the graphics and the sound (maybe add some non-intrusive music) and you've really got something going here. I played it for 10 levels as-is.

Suggestions:

-Expand the playing field by about 2x, then add several more red/black balls to make it more frantic and congested

-Make different types of mothership, like fast ones or ones that won't crash unless you build up enough momentum

-I really liked the way you could manipulate the red balls into a slingshot effect - maybe make powerups that can only be gotten by breaking a shell using the red balls

Puzzlemaker responds:

I like your powerup idea; using red balls to break the shells to get to the powerup... Hmm