NekoMika's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[2030 Water Hunt]

This game need a lot of work to be considered really decent. Hopefully you can earn enough to get the full version and correct the issues in this game.

The graphics are simple which is nice. This sadly seems to be the only real positive I can think of for the game. The rest seems to be a bit of a train wreck.

First, the ship itself. When it moves, I feel like music is playing, yet when I stop the ship, the sound halts. Would be nice if it sounded more like an engine (even a very silent ambient sound work here since rockets usually don't make much sound in space as far as I know). The firing is not too bad, thankful that I can spam the shooting without having to wait for it to recharge for a set period of time.

Second, the comet is a really big issue for me. It almost always hits and you have little to no time to move out of its way before it hits you. A warning would be nice but for the comets to always have pixel perfect aim at the ship seems a bit unfair. At least try to rewrite the programming a bit so the direction of the comets is random instead of targeting the ship.

Third, the pulsars seem to glow blow and take off a good chunk of your health it seems. I was just flying, it grabbed me and a comet hit and knocked me down from 100 HP to 10 HP then a comet hit me directly again. Not too bad though since the tug is not too strong.

Fourth, the black hole is what made me quit the game. It's near the start of that level and you are given little to no time to move (you need to go up and up and then right once at the top of the screen). Right as soon as the level starts, it sucks you in and instantly destroys you and takes a life away. If you plan to have something that strong in the level, give it less of an area. That ways if you do happen to get close to it, the death is more justified rather than having it occupy almost all of the screen with its powerful tug.

Lastly, if you can do it or get a friend who has Construct 2 to do it, add checkpoints. Getting destroyed my the black hole constantly was harsh enough and then to see you have to restart the game from the very start can really kill any motivation a player has to play the game. I can understand if this was a short 3-5 level game and not seeing much need for checkpoints but given how long this game is, having a few would be really helpful.

Overall, it's below standard for a game in Construct 2. I really hope you can fix all the issues I present to you in my review. Best of luck on future pieces, I hope you improve with time.

praharsh responds:

Thanks much for the details. I have made many changes towards a better user experience. Why don't you give it another shot ?

[Land of Enki]

This seems to be a pretty good game. Makes me think of older NES games too.

The graphics are good. Playing some levels over again I found that walls with cracks are where bombs can be used, Best if you use them up close unless you just want half the wall destroyed and a bomb wasted. The bosses were pretty nice with each one summoning a different kind of minion.

The audio was decent. It makes me feel like I am playing an older game. The sword and bomb sounds are very reminiscent of NES game sounds. The boss battle music was smooth and made it feel a bit tense. Would have been neat if for each hit a boss took, the music sped up a bit. Other than that, very nice audio overall.

As for game play. I think having the jump and climb command combined, it would ease some things but I imagine it would make jumping off ladders/vines and other ladder objects a bit difficult since they character would like just grab the ladder again. Could possibly switch the jump and climb buttons though, would make things a bit easier in my opinion.

The sword attack and bomb toss buttons are fine as they are. Nice to see the enemies take more hits as time goes on. Some of the potions can be a bit difficult to get since they are not all in chests but must be obtained by checking everything in the levels, smart idea I think. Encourages the player to spend a bit more time exploring to get more heart potions.

The medals work and are worth the amount of points they should be worth which is good.

Overall, decent game, only issues I really is the jump/climb buttons, and sometimes it seems you jump too high up when you only want to jump up a bit.

TheEnkian responds:

I think the only real control issues that people seem to have is the jump command. We'll definitely need to find some way around that though, still not sure how the up could be replaced on the vines. It would be strange going up vines with space and down them with the down arrow. I'm trying to think of a way to combine them without being confusing, we'll see how it goes :S

Something I've noticed is that if the game lags, it messes with the gravity causing Kon to jump higher, bombs to go further and so on. Not sure what causes it yet, but we're looking into it. Could that maybe be the issue with the jumping too high or was it just the regular jump height that was the problem?

Thanks for the review!

[Dark]

This was a pretty good game. The five stages of denial and acceptance eh? At least it made the game interesting. I kept playing thinking they had only killed their girlfriend but to see they also killed their child out of anger and possibly being drunk makes them into quite the monster.

The graphics are nice. Kind of makes me think of Blackout Basement from Donkey Kong Country in that the screen keeps fading to black meaning that sometimes you need to know where you are unless you want to restart all over again from the last checkpoint.

The game play was nice and I liked how it got more and more challenging with each stage of grief coming to pass. First those platforms that reset you and then the blob monsters (makes me think of white flans from Final Fantasy) being moving versions of the white lights. Kind of one of those rare exceptions where everything is NOT trying to kill you but simply resetting you to a previous checkpoint and forcing you to realize that you're still a monster whether you want to admit it or not (although the character eventually does).

Although I did encounter the occasional flaw with platforms whether it be from forcing yourself to fall faster or just getting onto the platform at a weird angle, you sometimes go into the platform itself. Thankfully the player can just jump up to fix the issue. Also funny that it took me a moment to realize the black cloaked creature was a checkpoint and not just part of the background itself.

The audio was very fitting seeing as the game is a dark piece. Nothing fits better than having a dark ambient song for the soundtrack of this game. Hearing the character/guy plop onto platforms or getting reset is nice since not hearing anything at all would make me think they are in a dream world (not to say they are not possibly in one in this game as it is...).

Hearing the baby crying on the final level was a bit of a "What's that noise?!" thing for a moment since the rest of the game had no accompanying sounds in regards to the guy telling his story with his conscious or something telling him he was a monster all that time. The credit music sounded a bit lighter than the regular song heard.

The medals were fun and easy to get which is nice for a game that can possibly be seen as a bit difficult. It seemed pretty easy for the most part though with the screen blacking out and then fading back in being the only thing that seemed to make it difficult.

Overall, this was a interesting story that got sad at the end when he finally admits what he did that makes him a monster and then simply accepting that he is a monster. Very well made game.

JackAstral responds:

Thanks for writing such a detailed review! Yup, the structure of the game is based around the 5 steps of grief- the main character slowly goes through each one, before finally reaching acceptance for what he had done.

I'm still working on fixing that bug with the platform- a new patch will be up soon. Thanks again!

[Cosmic Clicks]

This was pretty fun. There was a lot of clicking to do, but with each upgrade the Jet packs kept getting funnier and funnier. The graphics were nice and retro in style. I would not mind seeing a second part to this game, hopefully where I do not have to sit and click for long periods of time to beat the game. I would like to see those space pirates and rabbits, that would be pretty nice. Great game, fun medals, good times.

DarkTimmy responds:

HA! Thanks - I agree the dialog sorta hits a groove later in the game, glad you enjoyed it! A sequel s planned at the moment too! Thank you for the play and the comment! I appreciate your time! Best, -Tim

[Sonic Adventure X Ep.1]

The game seems to be alright but it still has its issues. For me, the explosion glitch still occurred for me after the truck got shot in the Sonic episode. If it had not been for that, I would have been able to rater higher as I could have finished his campaign. Seems you may want to rework the coding a bit for that part so he will get up rather than lay there half the time.

Marco's campaign seemed pretty easy and straight forward with you having to shoot some people here and there and both Mario Bros. making a cameo appearance. Luigi looking for Mario, and Mario seemingly dancing or signaling to his brother where he is in hopes of leaving the remains of the city. The sniping bit was a nice little breather from the small amount of running and gunning Marco does.

Ryu's campaign in all honestly was probably the shortest and sadly, the dullest part of the game. A Hopeless Boss Battle you cannot win but given the move list in hopes you can beat something that cannot be beaten to begin. Was still good I suppose in that it offers up some kind of hope Ryu might know how to fight them the second time around.

Sonic's campaign is probably the only part of the game to offer a challenge and it can feel a bit unfair at times given the second soldier looking back and forth took me a bit of time to figure out before I could move on. After that it seemed like smooth sailing until that explosion glitch I mentioned earlier. May want to rework the coding there a bit as I mentioned since it seems some people will most likely still encounter that glitch.

The secret Knuckles episode was a breather episode of sorts. It did not fill me on what was going on in the game whatsoever. If anything seemed to make the plot bigger with another plot hole opening up. Not too bad, having a breather episode/campaign in these games is good while showing another part of the story the main cast will not be seeing.

In regards to the episodes/campaigns... if I have it down correctly, Sonic and Marco's episodes crossover with each other. Ryu's campaign happens directly before the Sonic/Marco episode and the Knuckles episode is unknown, however, given how Knuckles acted during the Ryu campaign I'm going to guess that campaign occurs sometime after this episode begins.

The game play was alright. However, I think the episodes were too short for this kind of thing. There was also more dialogue than playing of the game. The only way to have the game play last longer than the dialogue is if one messes up a lot like I tended to during the Sonic campaign.

The audio was nice but I think it might have also been a big problem factoring into this episode. The audio should have been compressed. I can understand wanting high quality audio but it does not need to be the best quality for it to be good. Of that note, it seems the audio took up more MB than the game itself. While I think the audio was great and all, could always try the Newgrounds Audio Portal, huge variety of songs for you to choose from. Might end up finding songs you think could fit into future episodes even better than the ones used in this episode.

A minor annoyance, could have done the audio differently I think. Being a little more organized is all, aside from that, good credits I guess.

One final issue, the game does get slight bits of lag from time to time when going from game play to dialogue box cut scenes. Could try fixing that up in future episodes so it transitions smoothly rather than hanging there for a moment.

The medals were good. I liked seeing Big making a cameo along with the Mario Bros. I look forward to seeing more cameos, hopefully they yield medals as well.

Overall, medals are good, audio could be compressed, could also try finding audio from the Newgrounds Audio Portal to use in future episodes, plenty of songs that could fit in for what you want. The campaigns and secret campaign were good, aside from the slight glitch in the Sonic campaign, the rest was alright. I hope to see you improve on everything in future episodes, but for a first episode, this is not too bad. Hope you found my review helpful in how to improve yourself.

MetaMike responds:

Very Helpful, thank u sir

[Cardinal]

I really enjoyed this game. I found the simplicity of it to be quite fun. Then you occasionally see the screen flooded with "FASTER" encouraging the player to try escaping the box much faster over time. Great way to kill some time while trying to test how fast your reflexes are. Fun game, I enjoyed it. Great job!

HybridMind responds:

Thanks very much for leaving your thoughts! Glad you liked the "FASTER" message. :D

[Flappy Valentine]

This game was an admirable parody of the original. The concept is basically the same and everything but it lacks birds and the same simplistic background types. Well, technically it still has pipes outlines in the background so it is still somewhere like the original.

The background was simplistic and easy on the eyes. The pipes seem kind of ironic given that the foreground lacks pipes and instead has a more simplistic block look with a Pink Knight image plastered onto them as if someone had graffiti them onto the blocks scattered all around the screen.

The game play itself is the same as the original game this one is based on. The only difference being instead of being told to press space or anything to start playing, you automatically jump right into the game without any real warning aside from your Author's Comments saying this. Having it be a small heart with a slight aura around it is a nice little graphic.

The music sets the mood for this game. It kind of makes me ponder and think of this game being a possible metaphor for someone with a broken heart jumping over and ducking under obstacles in life and hoping that one day someone either puts them out of their sad misery or loves them for who they are one day. However it could also be about how someone just can't seem to muster up the courage to tell the person who broke their heart "screw you" or "I miss you" at all, instead sitting around and questioning what went wrong or where to go next in life.

The scoring system is nice and simple. The only thing that seems weird at the moment is that the "Crashes" scoreboard doesn't seem to register any kind of a score above 1 for whatever reason. Planning to fix that error in coding? The "Highes" and "Totales" scoreboards seem to work fine though.

Overall, this was a simplistic and mediocre game. I don't think I could see myself spending hours playing a game like this, but if people like these kind of games, then whatever I suppose. Nice work making yet another game CyberDevil!

Cyberdevil responds:

Well the original had pipes in the foreground, here they're just a scrolling image as a sort of homage to that game. Didn't get if you liked the pink knight graffiti or not? I was thinking of having some hearty texture, but that felt generic so I borrowed a piece of NG layout art instead, framed it in, a more subtle way of repping the site than including a tank logo. :)

Mmm, I was thinking that too, specially with how the heart is blue; the music fits the theme. It can be ambient or melancholy depending on how you look at it.

As for the scoreboards, they're all submitting scores fine, but there seems to be no difference between simple and incrememental with the NG API (the latter is supposed to add to the score, while the former just posts the single value/keeps the highest one). I hope I'll get an answer on this soon, and either find out that I'm missing some super-simple detail or that it's a problem with the API. Not much I can do about it for now. :/

lol, well most people are probably tired of this type of game, but I feel I had an original concept to contribute to the 'genre'. It can get pretty addicting too... thanks for the long; elaborate review SCTE3!

[Mario&Luigi Rpg WARIANCE]

This game has a lot of potential, a lot of it!

For one the story seems like it would be very nice to finish up. The story thus far being an artifact called the Trickhat that can cause a lot of chaos and problems for Merlee's kind. Kind of funny how I thought his grandson was Merlina for a moment (I think that's how her name is spelled, correct me if I'm wrong) until he joked around with his son and song stated that watching the stars was dull. The fact it can block out their ability to see the future is great enough concern to go on a quest for it too. That being said, looking forward to seeing if this game will be finished in the future.

The graphics are nice, however I noticed with some character sprites that there was an outline of gray around the characters. Most notably this applies to Mario and Luigi and becomes obvious when they jump around in their house or outside of battles. Another is the height of the game is around five pixels too long, may want to clip that a bit so there isn't excess at the top of the screen.

Another thing is that while the audio is nice, I feel you could do better than trying to use songs and sounds directly from the game series itself. You should give the Newgrounds Audio Portal a check, not only are there a lot of Super Mario series fan works there but many other songs to choose from that you may find fit the game even better than what you currently have. Noting this seeing as how the first battle using Wario and Waluigi, their song sounds rather grainy and low in quality. That seems to be the only song I notice that needs to be replaced so it doesn't lower the quality and enjoyment of the game.

However, using the voice clips of the various characters I found were alright. You could also check here on Newgrounds in the audio forum for voice actors if you decide you want every dialog box to be voiced by someone.

Which brings me to my next point. While I notice there are some intentional spelling differences, I noticed a few others that make the dialog a bit wonky at times. For instance, Mario ed Luigi instead of Mario and Luigi is a bit awkward to read along with a royal guard before battling Wario, Waluigi, and Popple saying He instead of Here. Could always ask a tester or two to help find spelling errors so the dialog is smoother.

Lastly, I notice the battles are a bit weird. For instance, there is no consequence for running from battles, while it may make some battles later take long to finish, it does not penalize the player in the slightest. Could at least make the player lose a few coins for running. Also if the player does decide to run from battle then the enemy they were meant to face simply disappears meaning you could make the game go a lot faster by simply running away from every battle you can possibly run from.

The battle mechanics were nice but it sucked that Mario and Luigi could not use their hammers to attack and could only defend with them. Maybe look into having a battle option in a later build of this game where the player is given the option of attacking with either the hammer or jumping mechanics. The only problem I had with Wario and Waluigi was throwing Waluigi's bombs was a bit difficult to master seeing as they seemed to want to stick to his hand even when I pressed the jump/throw button for him. The Popple Attack was also a bit difficult to master too.

Overall, this game has a lot of potential in regards to being a completed game; but, in order to do that a lot of things need to be tested over time either by yourself or with help from others (which you can do by uploading this as a project by pressing the "P" button at the top of the page or by uploading it as a dump item by clicking the arrow pointing down at a box) and possibly changing up the audio to make the game even better. Best of luck if you decide to complete this game!

Muja responds:

I love detailed review, so of course I loved reading this one!
To answer your questions:

It's been a few days since I thought about asking for help from the community for the first time. I mean, I noticed there's a forum completely dedicated to collaborations, and maybe I could find a few testers and/or artists that could help me with my new games.
Your suggestions simply strengthened this thought.

When you run from a battle, you win without the experience. That means that if you avoid all battles, you'll most surely lose against the boss of the level. Hence, running should be the player's last resort.

While I agree with all your other comments.

Well, thank you again! I'm happy the overall feeling you got from this game was good!

[A Simple Shooter]

The game is so-so, I feel it could have been improved if you had spent a little more time on it.

The controls are simple enough which is always good for games aiming towards simplicity. However, the only thing about the controls I didn't like was that you had to turn your ship in a direction to make it fire a bullet which can be kind of bothersome if you are aiming to destroy targets as quickly as possible. If it was possible to add a button that allows one to fire a bit more often that would be good.

That or possibly adding powerups to the game that speed up how quickly or how many rounds are fired when rotating the ship. Could make it to where some targets drop off a powerup after being defeated, possibly make it after every five or six targets a player has destroyed.

The music, while diversity is good, having too many songs is not a great idea. I would fix it to where the menu has one song and the main game itself rotates between three to four songs instead of over ten.

Overall, it's not bad, but it's not good. There is also a lot of room for improvement in my opinion. Have fun making future games!

Kwing responds:

I fixed the firing rate because originally there were no limits to it, and players could pepper the entire screen with bullets. As is, the firing speed is three bullets per second, assuming you fire perfectly when the cooldown expires.

The powerup thing is sounding more and more appealing, so if I get enough ideas I may actually get around to adding those in.

Originally I wanted to include all of the music in the Audio Portal, but my code wouldn't seem to work (it refused to detect the id3 info for the files, which I was using to check the validity of random song IDs). Ultimately I decided to just put in a bunch of music by David Orr. If I had neglected to list the music in the game, people might have actually thought that the song selection was truly random.

[The Interview Codex]

This was rather nice to look through. I even spotted the few interviews I had done there as well. Only thing I would suggest changing about the Codex is a few more medals. Aside from that, it's very much like walking through a little time capsule and reading the interviews in a new way (via this wonderful interactive flash).

Overall, wonderful!

deathink responds:

Thanks man. For the review, but also the interviews :)