shinobody's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Brighton City]

Honestly, this is not a well-designed game. There is no logic to the puzzles - in a good adventure game, you have clear objectives, and know exactly where to go to solve them. But here, you are just expected to do completely random stuff, and sometimes even use trial and error (the ramen 'puzzle'? Come ON)!
This is NOT good adventure game design. I don't play adventure games to click on random objects until I get bored, I play them to follow a well designed narrative while challenging my brain.

However, I should note that writing is alright. I recommend trying to have less puzzles in future games, or try to make them logical, make sure that player always knows what to do and what is their next objective, and each action is logical - no trial and error!

Example: (SPOILERS) Good puzzle example: you have to take the statement of a homeless guy. By reading map descriptions, you learn that you should go to Brighton Wastes because homeless live there. There, you click a teddy bear that seems out of place. Hobo shows up, you talk, and he says he will only help you if you give him irish whisky. If you were already in Downtown, you probably noticed a doorway with a neon green clover, so it's logical to assume it's an Irish bar (you can also get that from map descriptions). Once you obtain a membership coin, you can go there, and talk to a barman. You exchange item for whiskey, and you can now talk to the hobo.
That's a good puzzle because it follows a chain of logic. It still isn't perfect - coin requires you to simply go into every location, and barman doesn't tell you what he wants. But still, it would be an alright puzzle. Except, in the middle of it, you need to perform a VERY stupid and bad puzzle:

After talking to the barman, you have to go back, click on a LIT CIGARETTE, which will randomly give you a pack of cigarettes. Give these to a ramen shop owner, who will give you ramen. Then with NO INDICATION you need to go to Brighton Heights, click a door that has NEVER answered before, and exchange ramen for.. yen coins? Then you need to go to Little Tokyo, put the coins into vending machine that somehow accepts yen despite being in an American city, and get a citrus drink. Then you need to take that drink into a SECOND completely random door in Brighton Heights, that will give you the item that you need to give to the barman. What the FUCK? That is UNEXCUSABLE bad game design. There's no way to understand that aside from trial and error.

Overall, I would recommend that creator should play and analyze detective games like Fedora Spade, Blackwell series and Shivah to understand how to design puzzles well and logically.

FULL SPOILER-FREE WALKTHROUGH: Because I noticed some people got stuck because puzzles are this obtuse, I compiled one myself.
https://pastebin.com/2RPZEUX1

[Silent Hill: The Haunted House]

This is utter crap. The green/red light puzzle is purely trial and error, you just need to fiddle with it until you get it right by accident, that's not fun in the slightest. You get a letter that can't actually be opened and read, what the hell is that? It's not scary, it's not interesting, and graphics are just screenshots from game Penumbra, you didn't even remove the aiming reticle.
Terribly low effort.

[The spy who shot me™ - Demo]

Honestly, this isn't very good.

Yeah, it's good by Newgrounds standards (which aren't very high), but if you want to put it on Steam as a commercial game, you gotta try harder.
I will start that I like the retro low-poly graphical style. However, that is pretty much the only thing to commend here.

Music is... alright. I didn't really notice it, but it's not OFFENSIVE. Similarly, while voice acting is bad, it fits the style and atmosphere of the game.

Humour isn't good, and for a matter of fact - it's almost nonexistent. If you want to see how to make a funny spy movie parody as a game, I recommend playing NOLF games, or Jazzpunk - they did the same concept ten thousand times better. Hell, even Austin Powers stuff was funnier than this. None of the jokes (if we can call them that?) stick the landing, there is very little comedic timing. One actual joke - the parachute not opening - I actually missed because I pressed left-click several times trying to see what happens, and dialogue has overriden itself, ruining the joke.

Speaking of which, writing seems... unfinished. "We're still repairing your last escapade"? What happened to that poor escapade? :P

Gunplay feels very bad. The whole thing with bullets being physical projectile that come out of right side of the screen is ridiculous - it feels extremely bad, why not make it more like modern shooter? While there is some auto-aim, it's often glitchy, and e.g. it made it impossible to hit dudes on the beach level if they were too far away. I understand that you want to imitate N64 Goldeneye, but that game was releasing in mid-90s on a console with one analog stick, there is NO REASON to try to imitate its controls now. We're playing this on a PC, there's no need for auto-aim. Everyone knows how to aim at any point at a screen, pretty much everyone in the audience played an FPS once.
I mean, you could also make the game more complex! If enemies didn't die in one hit, maybe it'd be worth to add headshots, or something like that! There's a ton of ways to make shooting fun, and not a chore!

Guns feels extremely weak - they have no punch, they are inaccurate, sounds and visual effects are lame. Similarly, enemy death sounds are pathetic. As a result, mowing down enemies isn't even fun. Maybe look up some articles or videos on 'game feel' to spice it up a bit.
I've seen two weapons - the SMG and pistol - and SMG is only SLIGHTLY better than the pistol, considering that pistol shoots as fast as you can press mouse. Why not take a page from Doom's book and add a cool shotgun, or something like that?
Here's some people smarter than me talking about what I mean:
https://youtu.be/216_5nu4aVQ
https://youtu.be/x9e4fUqKmjY
https://youtu.be/pmSAG51BybY

In addition, enemies aren't very challenging. There is NO REASON for melee enemies to die in one hit - it makes it almost impossible to die from them, especially since your default pistol has unlimited ammo and no need for reloading. For an experienced FPS player, combat will be pathetically easy - I recommend adding different difficulty levels, with current difficulty being "easy".
The only time I died from this game is from running out of time. Speaking of...

Level design were alright, if mediocre most of the time... except for when it's not clear which door was unlocked by the "7 ring" (speaking of which, what is the point of it outside of taking me out of the game? Couldn't you have just made a switch like in Doom?). At one point at a beach I just ran out of time because I had no idea where I was supposed to go next (door behind me was closed). I could've retried, except... game isn't fun. It's pretty boring, and I have no desire to keep playing it. If this was on Steam, this would be the point where I'd refund the game, and boot up Doom or Duke3D again.

Pacing is all over the place, too. The first thing you want to do is for player to do something interesting and exciting, NOT walk around in a lame base with no clear sense of objectives, what to do next, and possibility of accidentally exiting to main menu. Speaking of which - why is there no objectives? You're clearly riffing on N64 Goldeneye, but it and Perfect Dark DID have unique objectives in every level, and weren't just corridors filled with enemies.

In addition to that, level designs lack anything interesting or memorable about them. There's no gimmick, no setpieces, no interesting mechanics - nothing interesting or original. It's just pointless corridors filled with enemies. Nothing to remember the levels I played by.
Why should I play this game over any OTHER fps on the market? Because if you can't answer that question, maybe you should seriously rework how your game works.

Riding on nostalgia alone won't take you far.

BlueStarGeneral responds:

"you want to put it on Steam as a commercial game, you gotta try harder."

(93% rated of 828 reviews)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/311870/Super_Trench_Attack/

(92% rated of 155 reviews)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/521920/Deaths_Hangover/

This title is still in development, still you made some good points! I'll take them under consideration,

Thanks for your feedback,

PSD

[MegaManX: THE GAME: lvl 2]

I guess "X" in the name stands for the fact that you hold X to win...

[MEGAMAN: BETA]

Why doesn't the game restart you in the level you died in? And why do you fall if less than HALF of the player sprite is over the edge? Together, these make the game pretty much unplayable.

[Megaman vs. Iceman (game)]

It seems the only proper way to beat this game is to stand at the right edge of the screen, no attacks will reach you there.
Normally I'd assume that's an accident, but considering that it's the ONLY way to avoid the giant snowball attack, I guess this is actually the intended strat. Damn.

[Running VoltGun]

Almost perfect.

Everyone who follows your work for any amount of time will notice you have been working on 'figuring out' adapting run'n'gun formula for modern design for a long while now. Jet Gunner, Sole Gunner, Alien Splatter, Steam Heart - each of them an interesting experiment, but each of them was missing something.
I think ironically, due to having to abide by theme of Ludum Dare contest, you have actually figured it out.
The thing that was missing, the thing that everyone loved about Contra and Gunstar Heroes - speed and flow.

I think this is your best game so far. And I'm dead honest here. It's amazing. Definitely your best work so far. Oh, it's flawed, definitely, for sure.
Game on my computer runs with a terrible slowdown and while it's pretty old, it runs other indie games without a problem - including Freedom Planet which is a *standalone Windows* genesis-like. Controls are a bit wonky. Some weapons like Fire are almos useless and relatively hard to avoid. Explosions and flicker combined with slowdown sometimes make it impossible to understand what's going on, and you can damage a boss when they're offscreen and in a "Warning!" (maybe this was issue with Missile weapon I was using?)

But the thing is, those things can be fixed. Underlying design, of a Sonic-like speedrunning game where your timer is your health meaning that mistakes are perfectly forgivable without making game easy, the satisfying dash mechanic that cancels enemy bullets, the interesting and wacky enemy design that remind me of Noitu Love or WayForward games, the controls that don't need more than 3 main buttons, mixing - it's all great.

I'm giving 4.5/10 because it's the last grade below perfect, but consider it more of a 10 but needs polish/10; It's definitely the single most satisfying game you have made so far, and I liked your old games a lot.

[AscDungeon]

I mean, I don't dislike it, but - if you can move smoothly, doesn't that kind of defeat the point of ANSI graphics thing? It reminds me of how Frog Fractions 2 had a textmode platforming section without breaking the digital/binary movement thing - which this does't.
I mean, as of now it's not that it's a bad platformer - but without binary movement it feels just like regular platformer that for some reason uses ANSI graphics.

antonmarcelo responds:

Hi !

Yhe smoothly movemnt is proposital, but I thanks your comments. My intention is make a tribute for old games and old BBS systems. The history of his game begins when my wife shows to me old modem sounds and BBS screens. A lot of nostalgia come back and my idea is make it.

Thanks again for your impressions and comments, it´s good see people playing the game and giving feedbacks.

Regards

[Valhalla Bound]

I love it! It captures feel of an old NES arcade port really well - it really feels like something that would be actually playable on the old console with Zapper. At the same time, retro stylization doesn't sacrifice anything, and it is a great and addictive experience.

On one hand, I thought that maybe the fact that you're not suposed to shoot the ghosts (even though it makes sense in hindsight) could be clearer from the gameplay - perhaps some sort of audio feedback or screen flashing telling you when you lose a life - but then again, having to discover the rules of the game by yourself with trial and error really brings out the spirit of old arcade games.

Avizial responds:

Glad to hear you loved it! :)

We had a lot of back-and-forth in regards to certain aspects of design. Whether to sacrifice some of the retro aesthetic to appeal to a more modern crowd or take a risk staying faithful to older styles of play.

We are retro at heart and it is nice to see someone appreciate older styles of gameplay and figuring out the rules.

But we are here if any players need some tips or tricks.

Thanks for playing our game! We hope to hear from you in future titles!

[Samurai Adventure]

I kind of like it?
I'm kind of not sure why it's called an RPG though, it's not like you actually get to choose much about your character during the game - it's much closer to an action-adventure game like Zelda. Mind you, as a Zelda-like, it doesn't look particularly bad. It's a bit on the simple side, but sometimes simple is all you need.
Only gripe I'd have is that navigation in the world is a bit hard since all areas are vast and use the same tileset, so they start blending together after a while, but I guess it adds to the challenge, and fits with the retro style, since older exploration-driven games like Zelda or Metroid didn't have built-in maps - though perhaps having smaller, more memorable rooms that use different colors or different tilesets or have unique names could help - something like Jet Set Willy or VVVVVV used to do.

SirenGames responds:

Thanks! I'll clarify in the description for future players, but this game was made in 24 hours by me and me alone (except for the music tracks). I was restricted to using 3 colors, yellow, red and white with a black background.

Also it's an RPG because you level up and increase stats as you play, which brings it out of a Zelda-like and into the realm of RPG I thought.

If I had more time I would definitely have added new tilesets and content, but 24 hours isn't a lot of time to make a game from scratch, so this is all I could cram in.