MLScherbatov's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Nest]

Please dont take offense, because i mean this in the nicest way possible, but this needs a lot of work. especially given that there are many other games with a similar premise and similar animation, you should think about having something a little more fresh or appealing involved. it's not exactly a bad game, it just goes for the LCD and there are a thousand carbon copies of the same thing out there that seem to have better level design than this. If this is an early attempt, i get it and it's totally fine to go for this type of game to get the ropes and everything, but i'd urge you to continually try new things instead of imitating the work of others (especially when you choose to imitate a type of game that isnt really all that much fun in the first place).

[Tunnel Hawk]

good music and graphics, and i generally like games like this, but it's oversensitive and starts way too slow. i played 4-5 times and didnt make much progress at all before quitting. think about making the gaps a little bit bigger at first, then build up to smaller gaps and higher speed. it shouldn't be difficult to get to your 2nd diamond, but maybe by the 5th or the 10th it should start to get hard. it's very important to scale difficulty or people are going to lose interest.

[Bim]

this is really awesome. reminds me very strongly of N, which i was never able to beat but am now going to reinstall. the controls were pretty hard to get used to, but i cant think of any revisions i'd like to see having figured them out. maybe if you could add some tool tips in the first level or two given that you have so much open space it'd be easier to get the hang of. i see you've added some subtle arrows and stuff, but the movement is a little bit unconventional and im not sure every user is going to like having to figure it out as is. anyways, definitely gave you a favorite. keep it up :)

[Ice cream from space]

accessing the menu starts the current level over when you click exit and there is no clear resume button. this is especially frustrating because your acquired abilities are reset when you reload the levels unless you have saved, and you need to access the menu to equip your abilities. this on top of the fact that it took me about 3 minutes of keyboard smashing frustration to figure out how to even assign those abilities to their hotkeys made for a poor start to what seems to otherwise be an interesting and well made game. you should really, really think about adding a resume button, if not a tutorial, and also allowing the player to equip abilities by clicking them. Having the hand icons light up when the cursor scrolls over them is incredibly misleading and definitely doesnt help with the confusion which i see many other players have shared with me. having read earlier reviews, i assume that this is a result of the time limit/deadline issue, but it's really, really important to make sure that your game appeals to all players especially in it's early levels, and i assume that much of the reason you didnt get 5 stars for this title is that a lot of people couldn't even figure out how to play the game. there are so many artsy and/or unfinished games on this site that i wasnt sure whether it was even supposed to progress past the first level.
pushing the blocks around was tedious and offered little challenge other than one of menial labor. you should think about adding a run button for times when there arent hazardous obstacles, and perhaps reduce it's speed slightly when pushing blocks. I'd also urge you to make shorter mazes with more dead ends in them instead of these ones that seem to be all stretched out yet essentially no mistakes can be made in solving the puzzle. i like that you added a buffer between the blocks and the walls, but there needs to be some kind of a challenge in order for this to be interesting.
all that aside, this is a great game once you figure out how to use it, and its exactly the type of fresh content i like to see on this site. i look forward to seeing more from you in the future, and this is definitely going in my monthly top 8

[Drink Beer, Neglect Family]

this looks really cool but its entirely too frustrating without a jump button. i couldnt even get past the first family picture in 5 tries and that really doesnt push my buttons right. challenging is one thing, and you could even take the jump away as a beer effect, but as it is this is just ridiculous. all i can do is fall downwards and i can barely make it back up, and the second beer keeps spawning at inacessible locations. my first beer is never a problem but i frequently got the ladder debuff as my second beer, making it essentially impossible to accomplish anything at that point. i repeatedly dropped through platforms without pressing the down key as well. idk how anyone rated this highly, and im sure it's funny and everything but im assuming something is going wrong here (google chrome, win8)

esayitch responds:

There is a jump button.

It is Z.

I do take the jump button away as a beer effect. It says so on the top left corner.

All locations are accessible. It is designed that way.

You drop through platforms only when you have an effect called "You fall off of bridges".

Everything works as intended. That's why everyone rated it highly. You failed to read the flashing text when you got a beer.

[Max Fury [Death Racer]]

you should really have the player aim with the mouse, because you get shot down in 2 seconds every time you get in the lead. this would be perfect if i could only shoot behind and above me without having to tilt the car

[Down is Up]

cool game, good colors scheme, nice music (repetitive enough to help me zone out but also subtle enough not to become irritating). i like the minimal graphics as well.
one thing i didnt like (pretty much my only complaint) - you shouldnt reverse left and right when the gravity is flipped. it makes it unnecessarily difficult to control the actor. in limbo, a puzzle platformer ive been playing recently, when gravity reverses left and right stay the same and the only change to controls is that the down key becomes jump. IMO that's probably the best way to deal with this, and can basically work the same way when the player is sideways. essentially the directional keys should be anchored to the surface you are standing on, not the character.
given that i've played a lot of puzzle platformers that utilize the same gravity mechanic you rely on in this game, it's hard to be incredibly entertained here given the plethora of alternatives which are less finicky. then again, i guess this is what i come to newgrounds for lol...
good work. keep it up

[PixelNaut]

i like the colors and the art, and the font you chose is good but you really need to make it bigger for the tutorial. i can barely discern individual letters when the motion blur kicks in, and that's no good if there are things already shooting at me. this also came into play in the 2nd level, because without being able to comfortably read the text, i had no idea i was even fighting a boss battle until i'd jumped off the ledge twice assuming i was still going thru a platforming level. the boss was also incredibly difficult for the 2nd level of a game, and especially when the combat is so tedious i think you should at least make it a little bit easier to hit the thing. i dont really enjoy jumping back and forth on the same two blocks only to have the guns miss 90% of the time/ the buttons dont seem to have any set timer or condition that makes them pop back up, so sometimes i'd be waiting for a chance to shoot for 30 + seconds which just simply is not entertaining.

[Remove the dragon, wizard!]

the collision is a bit weird when it comes to objects that are above you, and i dont think the tip of the hat shouldnt be where that hitbox's limit is. it should be more like waist/knee level to create proper perspective, which i assume would be a relatively easy fix. this really got irritating when passing through very small doorways, because really you should be able to walk through any gap that's the size of your feet or their diameter in a circle or whatever, whereas the current setup treats everything as if the player were lying down on their side. i guess this must have more to do with how you transition into a platformer after a little while, and it makes sense once you're actually hopping around, but until then it's a bit strange.
other than that, my only complaint is that it's a bit short. good work