Renegade-Hamster's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Guradamajack!]

Hahaha! That was great! I was laughing the whole time, and there were some good challenges.

Hints for those who might be stuck: Try clicking for individual shots, instead of holding down the mouse button. It's faster.

[Talk]

It was boring. There was no message, at least not one clearly given. And if a message is not clearly given, it is not a message at all. It's just noise. Speaking of noise, was it necessary to have the incessant beeping?

The choices the player can make in the game don't make sense, don't appear to be responding to anything, and didn't appear to affect anything.

This is pretentious twiddle of the worst kind, because the stupid will be fooled into thinking this is some sort of smart comment on society.

[Muu: Just Another Day]

Issues with difficulty/graphics, but a good effort

The music is lovely, but there's issues with the difficulty and the graphics.

If you're going to do silhouette graphics, you've got to make it really interesting to look at. Give us more shapes of things to enjoy while we're looking at the game. Otherwise it gets pretty bland, and when you're playing a game like this where you'll be replaying parts over and over until you get it right, there should at least be some really yummy graphics to look at. Examples of where this is done right in your game is with the grass on the cliffs, and the spikey enemies. Those are some interesting shapes!
I'd also suggest something other than white on black. It looks nice for a while, but it hurts the eyes.

Admittedly, I didn't try easy mode, so the following is all based on my experience playing the default mode. This was frustratingly hard in several places, and the problem always had to do with judging how to jump on and off inclined platforms.
The worst was one part after the spaceship crash area, where you had to jump across 3 or 4 flat platforms, land on a platform with a sharp incline downwards then gradual incline downwords, somehow propel yourself with enough momentum to the next flat platform, then back up and jump up to the next area where the checkpoint was. This was ridiculously hard. I tried this over and over, dying at least 50 times before I finally did it. I don't know how I didn't give up and just ragequit.
To keep the difficulty at a level where it's both fun and challenging, I'd suggest easier jumps but less checkpoints. Right now you've got lots of checkpoints to compensate for the impossible jumps, but these combine to create a really repetitive playing experience.

Having said all this, please take this as constructive criticism! I'm not just some jerk who likes badmouthing people's hard work while hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. I'm a jerk who wants to be helpful.

This is a great effort, especially for a first game by someone not familiar at all with programming. Once again, top notch music choices.

Miktar responds:

Thank you for the review! I agree that the buggy physics can be a pain, my inexperience with Stencyl really didn't help. I know where the problem is (Muu sometimes 'bounces' down a hard slope, so it doesn't detect the jump if you're currently mid-bounce since you're technically not on the ground), but I'd disagree with the 'easier jumps less checkpoints' thing. Easier jumps are in Easy Mode, and make the 8 minute game take 3 minutes to finish. Since I knew I wasn't going to make anything of any significant length, I opted for smaller 'critical' sections, like the 'you didn't eat your wheaties' jumps right after finding Heart and his crashed ship.

On average I do 20 deaths, my best was 8 so far, so even though the slopes can be tricky, you can actually master them to a satisfying degree.

For my next game though, I'm going to avoid slopes entirely until I get much better at Stencyl.

The fact that you made it through, without ragequitting, I think is a very positive review. ^..^

[Dr. Bones' Adventure]

Had good parts, but was ultimately frustrating

I did like the idea of the game, combining platforming with puzzle solving. And the puzzles were interesting.

The length of time between screens was almost unbearable, especially during the lava rising section. Several times I died, just because the lava kept rising while the next screen was loading. I'd appear on the next screen, only to die straight away from the lava that was already there.

On the part where the bone creature chases the player, I fell down a lava pit, got stuck down there somehow without dying, and was unable to get back out.

The music seemed to have two different loops playing over the top of each other, and it was quite hard to listen to. I'm not sure if that was a bug, but it sounded like two pieces of music were playing at once.

I liked the game, but the bugs made it too frustrating to finish.

[Pixelhate]

Easy and fun, but has a bit of a freeze bug.

Fun shooter. It seems like there are few consequences for dying, and getting more lives is relatively easy, which may bug some people, but I was just glad tp continue playing and keep my current weapon upgrade.

I liked the build-up approach to the shooting upgrades, and it was fun when I was eventually able to fire one large beam. The overheat mechanic is good to make sure the player isn't spamming the fire button, otherwise it would take this easy shooter and make it a boring shooter.

Game froze somewhere around level 10 perhaps. I think it was just as I was losing my last life. Hope that helps.

[Cave Dudes]

Fun and challenging

It was pretty frustrating to have a really hard level ten in The Rockies right after a fairly simple set of levels, but I'm glad the challenge was there. Perhaps the earlier levels could be more challenging?

The graphics are fairly simple, and not unpleasant, but I feel it could do with a little refining, especially the little characters.

I felt having a penalty for using the rock-throw aiming line was a little unfair, since the aiming is not exactly where you click the cursor. I failed numerous times guessing how far and high the rock would go.

Only other quibble is that the restart button (R) is right next to the action button (E). Accidentally restarted a puzzle that I was almost finished with, and it was pretty frustrating.

Liked this game, and the shortcomings are not a huge issue, although I highly recommend these be improved for any future games of this kind.

[Attack of Heavenly Bats]

I like this game

It's not very challenging and doesn't take a long time to finish, but it is very fun. My only complaint is that the "You win!" graphic gets in the way of me destroying the rest of the world :D

[Psychosomnium]

Over quickly, without much "mind-bending"

This seemed like a ultra-simple platformer. I was finished pretty quickly, which is a shame because it looked interesting. I feel the puzzles are far too easy and small in number. It felt like I had completed only the first two levels of a much bigger game, and then it was over.

[I wanna be the flash game]

Fun and challenging, but flawed

"I have noticed allot of people complaining about the control scheme, off hit tests, double jump reaction, music choice and bad platforms. Which just proves to us that our intention has succeeded."

Or maybe these people had good points...

I like the toughness of the challenge, the little puzzles, and several of the "unfair" deaths are hilarious, but there really is a problem with the double jump reaction. Sometimes the game lags a little, and the double jump doesn't work. This is not a feature of difficulty, it's an unpredictable glitch. It should be fixed, if possible.

Having the jump key as "w" and the replay key as "r" really tires and strains the left hand, as it forces the player to use their middle finger to press jump, as the forefinger is constantly held over the replay button ready for the constant stuff-ups. It should just replay automatically each time you die, and you should be able to move the character with one hand .e.g. have the jump key as "up arrow".

These minor annoyances become major with the amount of replay involved in a game like this, which is unfortunate. Otherwise, I really like this game.