JorisRollfox's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dwarvania]

While there is some decent art in the game (especially the first cutscenes), it is quite inconsistent with coloring and shading. The cutscenes also end quite abruptly, making the contrast even more apparant. It also took me a while before I saw the K during the cutscenes (just add "next" to it to make it more visible). I did like how the cutscene where you get caught visualizes the health system.

I also had the same problem as Rex9999 with the first guard constantly bugging & catching you, which almost made me give up the game before I could even try. The game is filled with other bugs which, while they do not break the game, make it hard to stay immersed. For instance how moving into a wall teleports you & the camera back. I propose using something like: "if(collisionTrue(x + horizontalSpeed), y) while( ! collisionTrue(x, y)) x += sign(horizontalSpeed)"

[Winter Falling: Prototype One]

Not much information about your troops is available to the player, which makes it very hard to strategise both before and during the fight. That you can't relocate troops is also frustrating, as a gap you made for a future troop may proof too small. I just ended up putting everyone in a corner and won that way.

Also, I really like the artstyle, though the colorful & shaded bird does feel out of place with the overall sleeker artstyle.

[Escape Pong!]

While the gameplay was not much fun, it helped me engage in a cheeky yet interesting narrative and was short and varied enough to make up for a lack of depth.

[WrongKynd]

I really love the atmosphere created by the art, but the game itself is no fun. The screen constantly flashes red from attacks, it is easy to get stuck on buildings and I have no idea whether I am able to do anything against enemies such as the dogs (hard to tell because of the screen flashing).

Keep up making games, there are not many people as good as you in creating an atmosphere. All you need to do now is stay experimenting to learn how to make it fun as well.

[everything else]

I spend 5 minutes trying to figure out why the game wouldn't work until I read that I had to press X again, which is not that obvious when the entire screen is black. Why don't you just load in the first sentence immediately?

The game is really satisfying as it forces you to act quickly while cool music is playing on the background, and the little story-levels in between (like the dark temple) keep it fresh. Though in most stages shotgun-enemies seem impossible to beat without luck.

I would love to play this with a controller, as I had to stop because my hand was getting cramped from the constant action and it is easy to get stuck on walls.

[The Wizard of elemental magic]

The graphics look great, especially the gem pickup-effect. Though the death-animation looks out of place because your body becomes see-through and the blood has anti-aliasing, even though almost no other art in the game has these traits.

The gameplay is a refreshing take on the platformer genre, I especially like the wind spell. However, the puzzles are too easy to get satisfaction out of solving them, you quickly see what needs to be done and you just need to perform it. It is easy to die though because you're hurrying through it (especially the hitboxes could be a bit more forgiving), and the action itself is not very varied or satisfying because you're just jumping over enemies. While the sound effects are okay, I recommend giving them a random pitch-shift to add variety.

I do admire though how quickly you seem to be able to make decent games.

[Helicopter Shooter]

There is no content nor replay value. There is hardly any feedback to the player or satisfying effects, nor is there any reason not to move up & down and spam missiles. Each object has its own artstyle that looks good on its own but combined forms a disconnected mess. I also thought the orange controller logo in the start screen was for using a controller but it leads to another website.

I hope you can use the feedback to make better games, but to be honest given how often you release mediocre games I wonder whether you will even read this.

EDIT: I would really like my last statement to be proven wrong, because I hope you care about the games you release and the people that play them and strive to become better at it.

EDIT 2: Thanks for proving me wrong :)

games7510 responds:

Thank you for your response and as i see, you are my biggest fan. I will do better job next time and i hope you will continue playing my games. Cheers!

[Gravity Control]

The game is okay, the core gameplay doesn't do anything new and has mediocre art. The great sound effects are the main source of satisfaction, though I do reccomend giving them a random pitch-shift for variety. While the puzzles are unique, they are quite easy to solve. Most of the difficulty came from blocks not acting as intended, for instance sliding up when I pressed right. I understand that this happens due to an absence of friction, and while this is accurate behavior for space it isn't fun. I also liked the little timers on the lasers.

[Air Flip Drive (WIP)]

The game has a lot of potential, it already feels and looks good to play. Though it should give more feedback to the player, as currently many mechanics are hidden in the "how-to" section. It should also make the game more satisfying, especially once it has sound effects. I also agree with Troisnyx regarding not using the bunny hops and drift mechanics.

I also noticed that it was quite easy to play indefinitely untill you fall off once, which happens quite easily due to how quickly you unintentionally start flying. I would instead increase the difficulty as your score gets higher.

Finally, it felt very offputting that rings could disappear.

[The Last AntLion]

I lI love the art, story & music, together they really makes you feel like an important part of a weird world.

Regarding gameplay, there was not much reason to move instead of waiting in a corner, which is a shame because once I forced myself to keep moving the game became a lot more fun (especially since the weird jump allows for some interesting timing, given that you have a slightly higher movement speed in the air and you jump less high when shooting arrows). Same for the roar, it is so powerful that using it is boring. Just because some enemies are immune to it does not make it interesting, since there is only one enemy type per wave until the last one you can easily abuse it. Speaking of the last wave, it has so many enemy types that its chaos forms a huge difficulty spike. Whereas the other waves do not provide enough variation per wave to keep the game interesting enough to replay it, especially in the earlier waves where enemies can only run & punch even though you are faster and ranged.

The bosses also have more health than is fun, and the knights only dying from bombs is very confusing even though it fits the cruel queen. Controls were awkward, so it is a shame that I only read that there were alternative controls in the author comments after playing.

I'll be looking forward to your next game though, because while I may be ranting the charms of this game stand out.

velketor responds:

Thank you for playing GreetingsGames! I truly appreciate your constructive feedback and I too agree with many of the critiques you pointed out. I struggled a lot with trying to prevent the player from simply standing in the corner. It doesn't work on all waves and it certainly doesn't work against the Pharaoh Ant, The Dinosaur Ant, or the Queen Ant. I thought about putting a trap there or even having the statues attack you if you stood still near them for too long, but I felt like I was getting carried away and left it out of this version of the game.

As for Roar, it's definitely not balanced the way I had hoped. It's powerful, but it doesn't work against all of the ants. I was trying to make it both useful and not useful at the same time, with the intention to avoid players simply standing still and roaring their way through the game. I wanted it to be a very selective ability, but I may have restricted it too much.

The game was designed so that each wave is teaching you how to defeat a specific type of ant, with all of the 'learning' you did culminating into 1 final boss with where all of the ants, along with the Queen, fight you all at the same time. The difficulty could have been scaled better, but it's the best I could do at this stage in my ability to design well balanced games. It's a lot harder than I imagined and the comments have either been that it's perfect or that people hate it.

I've had the most comments about the Army Ants only being defeated with bombs being 'dumb', along with a slew of other negative comments, but that's to be expected in this industry. Gamers are the toughest of crowds and again I should have designed an alternate way to slay the Army Ants, even if it was just multiple hits with a regular arrow.

The controls were the best I could do as well. I tried to offer as many alternatives as possible, but in the end I should have just added a way for the user to define their own controls and I would have avoided all of the comments related to that issue.

In the sequel I will address all of these issues and make a much better game, thanks to constructive feedback from players like yourself. I'm glad you liked it, regardless of the negative aspects that were frustrating and boring. I spent 7 months making the game and it's nice to hear honest reflection. Thank you.