MLScherbatov's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Astral Crashers]

you have some issues with the scrolling - if my cursor leaves the window, the game should just behave as if it were still just on the edge of the screen and continue to scroll. as it is, it just stops moving when i leave the window, so i have to walk a tight rope or i cant really control the game. it frequently outright scrolls in the wrong direction, too. this is a big issue because in an RTS its important to be able to smoothly view everything that's going on. i cant really do that with this setup, because it can take me up to 5 seconds just to move the camera a few inches.

the first level with oil extractors gives me a bunch of e-bots, but i cant mine with them until the oil extractor is finished. it's good to have objectives and to teach us how to play the game gradually, but if the enemy is building their base during this time, we've lost the opportunity to mine extra resources. im sure you are familiar with the concept that the first few minutes of the game are the most important, as everything grows somewhat exponentially from there. this isnt game breaking but it didnt make a lot of sense, especially when i can only build with one e-bot, and i had another half dozen standing there doing nothing while i waited for the oil extractor to finish.

i paused the game for a few minutes to make some food and the music had stopped playing when i got back. it still plays in the menu but there is nothing but SFX when i unpause. i'd much prefer it was the other way around lol

given the camera issues and some problems with unresponsiveness/ the screen moving while im trying to select units, its pretty much impossible to actually follow your tip of moving dying units to the back. also, there are no formations and everything seems to have the same movement speed, so the units are going to arrange themselves however they want. right now it seems that the only way to play this game is make a big group of units and tell them to attack move to the enemy base, because trying to implement any real strategy is ineffective and backwards due to the difficulty of controlling the units.

i feel like the attack move should prioritize enemy units. if i told you to blow up an enemy base, you wouldnt just shoot the buildings that dont have any weapons first, you'd shoot the ones that were shooting you. a lot of the time my units seemed to just be standing there letting themselves get killed and not retaliating.

after harvesting, e-bots only go back all the way to my initial pivot, even if i have built a new pivot right next to the new group of crystals. its also completely pointless to create more than one base because it takes an extremely long time to build and the resources never run out, so theres no reason to seek more crystals because i always spawn directly next to a bunch of them.

basically this game is just a carbon copy of starcraft with a ton of glitches, only one race, and extremely slow/ basic gameplay. it's fun, but i have starcraft. honestly you've made a pretty solid game, but after playing 4 levels, i really dont have any reason to keep playing this. starcraft 1 is simply superior in every way, unfortunately, and its really easy to find for free nowadays. i dont mean to be overly critical, but if you're going to make a game inspired by another game, you have to add more to it or use some unique graphics or dialogue, not leave out a bunch of aspects of the original and pretty much copy all of the art and game mechanics

moligames responds:

Thank you, write so many recommendations about the game.
This game is one of my attempts.
Due to limitations of personal energy, there are much to be improved.
I will improve the game mechanics in the new game!

[Earth Taken 3]

why cant jump just be w or up? i keep screwing up because like every other game uses up for jump
there are 4 different control sets and yet all of them use random other keys for it??? its right there???? its so much easier than pressing s or L or any of these other options

the rest of the game is solid AF and i like this series a lot, but i cant really let the jump thing go tbh

SeethingSwarm responds:

I totally understand you're issue with the jump button.
UP or W are both the obvious choices for jump and I use it in most of my other games.

The thing is that in this game you use the directional keys for both moving AND aiming. You can aim and shoot in 8 different directions and it would be annoying to jump every time you simply wanted to shoot upwards or diagonally. I didn't want to make this game with mouse aiming and shooting, because there are so many out there. I personally wanted a game where you use the keyboard alone to control the character, so I made it myself. I wanted to make a game with mechanics reminiscent to old-school games like Contra, Earth Worm Jim, Alien Hominid etc. I understand that a lot of people don't like this setup and all I can say is that it was a personal choice.

I'm really glad you enjoyed the game despite the control setup being annoying and frustrating. Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely keep it in mind, and thanks for giving the game a nice score :)

[10 Seconds]

what are the controls??? there is no explanation and all that happens is the triangle moves to the right of the screen and it says ive lost

ParkerBurns responds:

Use the mouse, click/hold. Sorry about that.

[Fish Story]

this is cool but it is most definitely miscategorized. this is a skill/avoid/collect game. this is not an rpg lol. the game itself is pretty good tho. good sound and visuals, lots of different fish - it didnt really make sense that the seahorses hurt us, though. they looked pretty friendly. it was also unclear which plants were obstacles. this is an ok game but it got boring very fast and it really needs some kind of a change of pace to keep the player interested. you also lack a pause button which is no good given how long it takes to clear the levels.

BLHull responds:

it does take a while to clear the levels- a minute or two, but in lieu of a pause there is a continue feature, so you can always pick up at the last chapter where you left off. i was trying to make kind of a relaxing sea journey because i love everything about the ocean, but i agree it came out a little slower paced than i intended.

As far as the plants only the ones that move are dangerous- if you sea a loose plant floating around avoid it !

[From Sprout to Splendor]

this is really hard at first but once you get to the first growth there is 0 challenge. i feel like it should be the opposite of that. i seriously dont have to even click anything once i get a few upgrades. it's calming and happy tho, and the graphics/music are nicely done. i also had the issue where the game was unresponsive to input, but it worked after i refreshed the page.
you should really think about adding at least a menu/title page so that we arent thrown into it and unable to pause.
i feel that this was more of a glorified animation than a game especially since there really is no viable strategy besides getting ants and then thorns but once you have those two you basically cant die. it was enjoyable and i understand it was a ludum dare but i would love to see an update or sequel with a little more meat on it's bones

Xevozfighter responds:

Thank you for the input. We will probably add a title screen, pause menu, and balance updates after the Ludum Dare judging is over. We only had about and hour left after we got everything implemented to play test it and tweak some of the numbers.

[Gridrunner Ghoul ZX81]

this is a little bit much. i think it probably seems a lot easier to play given that you've designed it, but it's still really difficult to get the hang of. the perspecive changes too drasitcally when i hit left or right and when i see a turn i want to take but it's a few steps away, it's nearly impossible to tell whether ive entered the right hall or not. honestly i think this would be fine if you added even the tiniest bit of animation, but as of now it's just confusing and without being able to discern where ive gone/ take the same path back due to the poor graphics, i find it to be p. much just a shot in the dark whether i'd win or not. how am i supposed to respond to an ominous presence or a sense of dread when i feel like i dont even have any control over which direction i move in the first place? i played through it a few times, found the crossbow but died so much that it wasnt enjoyable even in the slightest.

the x/e/o thing is kinda iffy. it's just adding to the issue of the game having like 0 user friendliness.

overall i feel like this could be a good game if it were just more smooth and playable

RainbowCemetery responds:

the walls are really just there to keep you from systematically going thru each block in a straight line and aren't meant to be used for navigation. this originally had no graphical representation of walls and only coordinates, and i thought it'd be a little nicer for it to look like you're going somewhere :o but i can see it just made it more confusing. appreciate the feedback

[Ghostrunner]

there were pillars that didnt even have a gap in them and thus i have 0 motivation to go for a high score because of the expectation that my attempt will be cut off short arbitrarily

you definitely shouldnt b making more flappy bird games there are enough of them already

background is cool but judging from the fact that the rest of the art is ms paint scribbles (albeit not too shabby for their tier of ms paint scribbles), i cant really credit you for that

music is meh. kinda corny

LASERBEAST responds:

You can click totem blocks to destroy them :) i had about 2 dozen songs to pick from but i let my kid choose the one he liked best. there are 3 songs in this game you just have to survive a long time to hear them all!

[Swords and Souls]

this is my 2nd day playing this. i thought i'd wait for the review given that it seemed like such a long haul. training is simultaneously tedious and addictive lol... i feel like it's challenging and enjoyable but i also dread entering the training room. it seems like the bank is probably the best investment given that it keeps accumulating currency while you're afk/ logged out. I think you should mention that the game doesnt have to be running for this, cus i actually left it going all day yesterday and was pleasantly surprised that it kept working after i shut down, but would have liked to know i didnt need to leave the tab open.
i still have 4 kids left to find, but i have all the abilities unlocked so i figured this would be a good time to start writing my notes.
music was cute, a lot of these sounds reminded me of FF or kingdom hearts. graphics werent anything especially flashy or outstanding, but i liked the balance of detail and simplicity as well as the rich color schemes.
the item upgrades seemed like i'd be waiting forever to get them and then when i bought them, i'd absolutely destroy the enemies for the next battle, but not be able to defeat another. maybe consider allowing us to choose between more special abilities (increased stun chance, dont force us to pick poison and shield because they dont go well with full offense builds) or a variety of items. i like that the ranged weapons attacked automatically, but they werent anywhere as good of an investment as armor or melee (dodge + melee was the best combo IMO) because they only proc a certain percentage of the time.

overall i think that this game is really well rounded but would benefit greatly from allowing us a litttle bit more choice. sure, early game you can pick what you want to upgrade, but by halfway through i'm forced to upgrade other stats until i am even all around because it's the only thing i can afford and im getting a little sick of the training mini games.

the combat was great. it seemed simple but there were quite a few nuances in timing and cooldowns that really could give the player an edge. again i didnt like poison strike or magic shield because they didnt work with my build, and i found that the only time the poison was useful was when it was shot with the poison projectile because it didnt take up a turn. it'd deal the equivalent of 1.5-2 strikes over time, but it wasnt worthwhile if it took up an entire turn where i could possibly stun with my shield bash or regular attack. I used heal only when the enemy was stunned, because every time i tried to heal otherwise it ended up just being a stalemate turn. that's a good way of nerfing/balancing heals, but basically my point is that i'd really like to have upgraded the skills i picked initially past level 5, but instead i was forced to become a sort of all-class hodgepodge and i really didnt find many of the abilities useful. the feats were generally all beneficial, but i have yet to resurrect and am at max level of that skill. im still only like 2/3 of the way through the game or
something so maybe it'll happen eventually, but it seems like all the other feats have paid off.

ive realized that this issue is compounded by the fact that only certain classes would be focusing/picking stun abilities in the first place, so essentially this makes all the defense/heal/etc stuff useless unless you go tanky/melee, meaning the only truly viable class is melee/tank, and all of the non offensive abilities are relatively useless because of the amount of damage you take when using them (1 pot = 30% of my hp, 1 hit from enemy = 50% of my hp) ofc i can upgrade pots and sheild, but they have a strong tendency not to reduce or heal enough damage overall. i honestly am not winning any battles whatsoever without stunning a lot, and i've taken to only using the shield bash, lightning when affordable, and regular attack, because nothing else gives a good disable.

i noticed that when i double striked and killed the enemy on the 1st hit, i almost always got a stun or critical strike on the next enemy. was this intentional? cus ive been abusing it lol

the mushroom shouldnt ever drop lucky clovers, IMO. if anything it could drop 2 or 3 clovers from 1, but just dropping another clover out doesnt rly make sense. it was good that you sometimes didnt get anything because one major suggestion i could add is to bring a gambling center into the game, and the mushroom sort of accomplishes this albeit giving the same output every time pretty much. I'd like to be able to have an alternative to going back and forth between mini games and combat, and it would be nice to be able to take a risk for some possible benefits.

it wasnt clear to me what the home's purpose was initially, so im not sure if that was explained in the tutorial and i missed it, or if the sign on the bottom left was the only legend. regardless, it wasn't so clear to me at first, and i didnt invest in the house until later although house + bank might be the best long term way to go.

anyways, this is a great game. ive seen a ton of games out there getting 4s that arent even 1/4 the game this is, and i'm really enjoying it.

sry for any ostensible typos, and ill be sure to message with more notes soon. feel free to take anything i've said with a grain of salt. great job!

SoulGame responds:

Huge thanks for that's incredible review, that's useful. I took notes ;)