MLScherbatov's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pawns of the Hallow - Mini]

this is fun, but i have a lot of notes.

you should not give us a character holding a sword and a shield that cant attack... i realize we pick up a weapon pretty quickly but it's unclear that we didnt already have one. This lacks an intro or tutorial as well and thus is very confusing at first.

there is little to no sound or visual effects for taking damage (it only seems to happen for certain enemies or obstacles but not for most of them) and thus i was down to 1 hp bar from just walking into the dracula dude trying to figure out if he would talk to me or if he was an enemy. maybe think about vibrating the screen and knocking us back 1 space when we take damage to avoid losing the game from just accidentally holding down WAS or D instead of the arrow keys to aim, cus that happened to me like twice before i started just avoiding the combat.

i had no idea whether that was water or lava or an entrance to a new room at the beginning because everything is basically the same color/texture. when introducing damaging terrain the first time you should probably put a signpost there that says "warning! toxic sludge!" or something, and then later add it in as an obstacle once we are familiar with it. a few levels afterwards you hit us with a different type of ground that also has the exact same damage effect, still without warning. you should think about showing the player which types of terrain damage us and which dont. it becomes abundantly clear which parts are safe after a few rounds of "you can only step on the tile that looks slightly different", but before that it could be introduced more smoothly, IMO.

if im not really doing anything besides opening doors and talking to people with the action key, i feel like it'd be a lot easier if we just activated that automatically when we walked up to those people/objects. i also found myself unable to speak to the guy who gives you the first weapon unless i was standing below him, so i assumed that the controls just werent working when i couldnt use the action or attack buttons.
the lever in the dark room doesnt work unless you're next to it, and it looks like it has a face on it, so i spent about a full minute trying to shoot it from below before realizing that it was just an issue with the action button again, but from a different angle.

once i had figured out the control scheme/gotten a weapon, the enemies were all too easy/ they moved back and forth a little bit but i found that i really didnt take any damage at all unless i walked directly into them. they also completely avoided spaces with gems on them, and seemed to even run away from the player most of the time, so given that the combat is so stilted and there doesnt seem to be any stat system or method of gaining xp, i opted to avoid all of them for most of the game.

you need a scheme where both hands can comfortably sit on the keyboard without having to shift positions, or personally i cant have much fun playing this. why not switch the arrow keys to shoot in the direction they point instead of just aiming, and change the action button to spacebar? it would immediately solve the issue of not being able to aim+ move at the same time. i would also have a lot more fun with this if i could hold down the movement keys instead of pressing them over and over v. rapidly.

the music stopped after about 5 mins. im not sure if it's set to loop at all, actually. if so it only looped 2-3 times tops.

i accidentally went backwards through a door and found that they took me to the beginning of each area, not actually to the place where that door was located in the previous area, so after a few attempts to go back to the latest area, i ended up nearly at the beginning of the game with every enemy respawned.... needless to say this was very frustrating. i kept trying and picked up some more gems and potions, which were helpful i guess (i still dont know what the gems do), but then when i hit the room with the 4 bear/cat things, the portal didnt open after i killed them and i was stuck. tbh i am not sure i have the patience to replay this again given that i basically just did the entire game up to this point twice and ran into a 2nd game breaking glitch...

i actually enjoyed this a lot, but this is where i've gotta call it quits. i hope you get some of these issues fixed up (although i know some of the things i brought up are a matter of personal preference). good work!

thekmanproductions responds:

OMG, this was very helpful to me! I am VERY new to RPG games, so this is what I needed! I have already updated most the errors you mentioned, but I just got this after I uploaded it.. so now have more to fix, which is good!! :D

"the music stopped after about 5 mins. im not sure if it's set to loop at all, actually. if so it only looped 2-3 times tops. " -- I had no idea and will look into it as soon as possible

"i accidentally went backwards through a door and found that they took me to the beginning of each area, not actually to the place where that door was located in the previous area, so after a few attempts to go back to the latest area, i ended up nearly at the beginning of the game with every enemy respawned.... needless to say this was very frustrating." -- I had no idea I did this and quite frankly, I have no idea why I did this! I will fix this immediately!

"there doesnt seem to be any stat system or method of gaining xp, i opted to avoid all of them for most of the game." -- Why the hell didn't I add this from the start!!! lol This will be implemented on the next update!

As for all the other bugs, I will be making sure to fix them. :D Thank you SOO much!! This is what I needed!!! :) +Respect (I will also credit you for the help) :D

[Endurance]

it seems really cool but during the character creation i pressed backspace to delete the name and it went back a page, so i had to reload the game. load time was a bit long, too. (playing on chrome idk if that makes a difference)
because i cant see anything about the characters when i first select them, and the names arent memorable to me yet, it was pretty frustrating getting the game started with the character i wanted. i understand this is in beta, but tbh my wifi isnt always as fast as it is tonight and most of the time i wouldnt have given it a 2nd (or 3rd) shot when it took me back like 4 pages lol... anyways. it's not the end of the world.
sometimes the shop menu wouldnt let me equip items and i had to switch to a different area to get it to respond.
i cant find any indication of where my skills or feats or whatever are. items say "medium armor mastery" or whatever other mastery and i dont know if i have it because there's no mention of it anywhere else that i can find
i literally didnt see any enemies whatsoever and then died all of a sudden and it was like ok u gained a level. i had looked at the log cus i heard a few noises and had opened various doors but seen nothing but a statue and more doors/hallways. this looks like it could be really fun and i like the feel of it but its not much fun when im just being attacked by invisible enemies until i die.
i hope u get it working better. good luck

VirtualHat2 responds:

Thanks for your feedback, I'm going to have a look into the issues you mentioned.

A lot of people have talked about the 'invisible monsters' as the monsters are only seen in the info window at the top of the game and not in the actual dungeon. I realize this is quite confusing, and I'm working on a fix for this, but it's quite a big change to make.

Appreciate you giving Endurance a go and leaving some very helpful feedback. I've made a note each point and will look into them.

-VirtualHat

edit: the backspace problem should be fixed now so long as the game has focus.

[WoofBro]

viper best rapper 5 starts for ur game

yurgenburgen responds:

ty breh

[Another World - The Super Good Vibes Paradox]

visually i like what you're doing, but it seems like it needs a lot of work. there were a lot of little plants and things that just made platforming irritating instead of challenging, and i assume the coins were supposed to do something (cus they didnt??)
the whole idea of the colorful backgrounds and dance music plus a basic run n gun platformer is cool, tho. maybe think about adding some more sparkles or random shiny achievements that make us feel special, too.
also i died at one point from an enemy and the game froze up instead of respawning me. if i only had a limited number of lives you should consider making that a little more clear because i see that you said "restart or dont die" or w/e but i definitely respawned multiple times before this happened.
also, i really think it's a good idea to allow for WASD and spacebar for shooting, cus most people do not have a keyboard where arrow keys and enter are comfortable settings.
this was fun, tho. i hope to see a more polished version soon

kohdy1 responds:

read desc shoot to collect

[Through (#gbjam 4 version)]

thank you for having calming color schemes and giving me the ability to progress from level to level with only the space bar. these are two things that i look for in games

also other things i look for are eggs but i am not sure if there are eggs in this game or not because i havent finished it yet

are there eggs?

goshki responds:

Sorry, no eggs in this version. :/

[Oni Yu Can Scare Them]

lolll.... this game is really gr8
im not sure if it was supposed to be a little bit funny but it definitely is a little bit funny
one thing i noticed is that you said 'press any key to continue' but actually you've got to press A or else nothing happens. not rly a big deal tho i figured it out pretty quick without breaking any keyboards in half or anything. also ladders seemed a bit unresponsive/difficult to mount, but otherwise the game seems pretty great. good work

Troisnyx responds:

Thanks! Oh yeah, noticed the bit with "Press any key" too. Thanks for pointing out what you did, too, I'm glad you gave it a go. Glad you like it otherwise!

[Vilmonic Lite]

is there some kind of commentary here about humans/ civilization destroying nature?
anyways, the sound is great, graphics are simple but clear, and the game seemed to have very few glitches. i tried making some fenced in areas with multiple types of mushrooms and elevations, some shallow water, etc, but my animatroids kept dying no matte what i did. i tried making bigger areas and ran into the same problem.
resources were fairly easy to accumulate, but i liked the crafting. i hope there will be more blocks and more recipes soon.
i found that whatever was left in the crafting window would carry over from one save to the other, so if i wanted to start a new world with all the best tools i could do so by keeping them from another world. this didnt really make a huge difference because the stuff was all easy to get anyways, but you might want to look into that.

this is really awesome, but it seems a bit hollow for now. maybe think about adding more dynamic soundscapes based on the flora and fauna nearby, and then the game would have a little bit more of a purpose.

another idea i had was to set an actual goal to work towards besides preservation and reproduction or maybe have new game modes where different goals can be chosen in a time restraint or with limited starting animatroids and fungolites. maybe there could be specific chemicals or materials you can extract from only certain species, and then the goal could be to create a medicine for a sick significant other, or something along those lines.

something has to be done about wall placement. if you dont have a hammer yet, it's easy to accidentally put a wall in the wrong place or to trap yourself on the wrong side of a barrier because you dont always choose which side you move to after placing it.

anyways, this is a really cool game. i hope it gets some more meat on it in the near future.

bludgeonsoft responds:

Thanks so much. The crafting inventory bug is a really good catch. And I do need to fix it so you can't trap yourself building walls! These are great ideas and are all very helpful. More game goals are definitely needed, and more craftable items are coming soon, but next is Toxic Waste (to increase mutation rates). - Markus

[It Needs Care]

it died so fast the first time!!! i cried a lot
and then he pooped on my face!!! wtf man!!!

i noticed that the game seemed to start playing by poker rules, but when i tried to build a straight (and successfully got 2,3,4,5,6, i lost. i think it was fun that i had to figure it out as i went along, but as a poker player i wish there was more than just matching pairs going on here. still fun, tho.

i cant figure out how to use the medicine and my pet keeps dying as soon as it gets sick. obviously i could continue from each death, but it was still a little irritating - when i tried to get it to move like the little feeder creatures, it didn't really respond, and i didn't feel like i ever had enough time to figure out what was going on despite having beaten the game now.

everything about this is perfect besides my difficulties with the medicine, tho. great job! i never got to have a tamagotchi as a kid so this was rly fun for me lol

Wolod responds:

Thanks a lot! I never had a tamagotchi too. That's why I decided to create my own!
To use medicine just click on it several times. I was working on this during the last week before deadline. So I hadn't much time to implement all the poker mechanics. The only two combinations I haven't implemented are: straight and straight flush.

[Luna's Little Venture 2 DEMO]

start button should be bigger - i spent like 30 seconds trying to figure out why the avatar didnt move with wasd or arrow keys before realizing the game hadnt started yet, and this was even more confusing when i had to click "start game" on two separate screens (they were pretty looking screens at least tho!!!)

woahhh these instructions are too much at once and too crowded!!! make a few blank tutorial levels and explain all these things as they come up instead of pushing it on us all at once. maybe instead of having the player click through 2 screens and then a path selection stage you could just have one title page and utilize this space to more gradually feed the player instructions.

bullets still flew forwards when i was facing backwards

the jump key was z in the path select and x in the stage? confusing but i figured it out almost instantly so no big deal its just weird

jumping only went directly upwards unless i pressed the directional keys simultaneously. this works for some games and in a lot of ways it makes sense, but given the rigidly square nature of your platforms it only serves to be a little frustrating instead of bringing about a sense of realism or real physics. i highly recommend you allow characters to move in midair if you allow double jumps/etc and changing directions in midair otherwise. it just doesnt make sense that i can turn around if im already moving horizontally, but am unable to do so when going straight up.

cool music, animation is simple but cute despite having literal and figurative rough edges

the speed in midair was like swimming through molasses - i realize we are supposed to be flying or w/e but it would feel better if the ascent and descent happened more abruptly

pretty decent concept, generally happy and fun, but it needs a lot of work. i'll look forward to the completed version and check out your earlier titles as well. good work.

PrincessNinjato responds:

thank you...Also I dont know how to make a double jump and its the software when it comes to jumping next to a solid object...If I can fix this I would and I still can't figure out why she faces backwards...Something to do with the way she is falling but I am still looking into this.

[Defend Yourself From Treyvon Martin]

1- this is a bit late dont you think
2- still p. offensive and i would liken it to nazi/racism memes which are just not funny, even if the intent is lighthearted
3- the guns dont change depending on what i pick, its still a pistol and it still shoots at the same rate
4- no replay button which forces me to refresh the page and that is a waste of time

music was pretty good i guess...

it feels like you deliberately didnt put much work into the game with the expectation that people would like it just because of the subject matter. I think you'd be better off making an image macro or a short movie than this one dimensional "how fast can i click" gameplay. I might have given the joke more of a chance if the game itself was fun, but i have to be honest and say that it just wasnt even amusing

ZabuJard responds:

i love u thx for the review friend