Bezman's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bouncy Bob]

Fun game. Consider more levels and better tutorial

I like this game. Quirky mechanics that seem original. Maybe a few tweaks and more levels (in the form of a sequel?) could help it realise its potential.

I loved the starting graphics, with the big shapes and lack of black, but got slightly disappointed when I saw the eyes with their thin black outlines. Couldn't you have used a dark green or greeny brown?

The first level really had me stumped the first time I played. I just imagined it was a normal platformer, so rolled left, tried to jump up, saw it was too high, rolled right, rolled left... it may sound dumb, but it wasn't until I refreshed to check I hadn't missed anything, rolled left, jumped then happened to bounce up because of my momentum that I 'twigged' what the game was about.

Maybe a second signpost giving us a hint would have been kind. I can imagine a few folk getting confused and heading to another game - had I not recognised your name or been impressed by the quality productions, I'd have guessed it was broken. before reading the reviews and presumably realising otherwise.

After that, it all seemed pretty easy and sufficiently explained. Up until the end of level 8, it seemed like plain sailing and I never felt in any danger - as long as I paid attention.

Level 9 was actually tricky, killing me 3 times. Even after finishing it, it felt a bit flukey. I worked out how I was meant to do it on the 2nd time I played through the game though.

level 12 was my 2nd favourite. I died once, but it seemed like a puzzle - once I stepped back and thought about how to approach it, it was soon obvious and felt rewarding.

In level 13, the tall column on the left with the alcove gave me a bit of trouble - took me a while to realise I had to low-jump there. The low-jump I had to do at the top was obvious, but I kept messing it up and it was really unforgiving - any mistake resulted in a crappy bounce to death on spikes. In the end this killed me.

I started a 2nd game, got to the same point 'scouted ahead' by jumping forwards and taking one damage. Didn't manage the low-bounce. it wasn't until my 3rd game that I finally beat it - on my 1st go!

To be honest though, I didn't feel any fiero for some reason. I just felt mildly annoyed at myself that I hadn't done it before.

Level 14 was tricky but I managed to complete it 2nd time. (1st time, I messed up with the splash jump)

Level 15 was, suitably, hard. I liked the way that it didn't have one really tough part like level 13 - instead, it had 3 sections where I felt in danger of being hit. I liked the way I had to react quickly at a couple of points.

I still hadn't worked out how to make the final jump without taking one hit, but I felt super-satisfied when I beat it - 2 lives left.

It was a fun game. Enjoyed it thoroughly in the end.

Having to restart was pretty annoying but the levels were short enough that it wasn't too aggravating. I'd have liked an option to continue but lose your points, though. Or maybe continue but go into an 'unscored' mode.

The scores could be better explained for those who care. Maybe a text display showing 'bonus' that goes down, to reflect the bonus we'd get if we completed the level that frame. And maybe show the scores the cherries give us when they disappear. And maybe explain why we sometimes get extra lives. Is it after X cherries? And the gold ones are worth multiple reds? It's currently a bit obscure and making it more transparent might encourage more score-attackers.

I'm still annoyed that the 'splash bounce' doesn't keep bob going up at the same height - if he can somehow gain velocity from bouncing upwards, I feel he should be able to have no loss of height when bouncing in one spot.

Also, I found a bug at one point - the hit-boxes seemed to be 'pushed left', so I'd penetrate a wall by maybe 50px, then bounce. After death, it sorted itself out.

As I said above, it was a fun game despite my crit. - though level 13 annoyed me a bit - with good progression, great graphics and a jolly tune. Definitely deserving of a sequel now that you've done this.

ProfessorFlash responds:

Wow, nice long review!

It's great to hear how you played the levels, and where you had troubles. I love watching from behind how my friends play the game. As being the game creator and having a lot of testing and overall playing of the game on my belt I take some things granted. So it's really nice to see or hear how other people deal with the levels and the game.

I can tell you how to make the last level without any hits. When you are in front of the second spikes, you go backwards a little and do the low bounce of the small wall and then you splash bounce right away when you hit the ground in front of the spikes. Keep holding down and you splash bounce again until you reach the outer wall, then quickly change to Super bounce (hold Up instead of Down) and Bob bounces perfectly right in front of the portal. Voila! :)

I discovered that 'combo' quite late in the development of the game. I hadn't planned it to be completed like that. Because you could go the conservative way and don't do the second splash bounce and just do a super bounce at the last drop. But it's always a bit risky to get through it without getting hit so the combo-way is better since it's safe every time :).

Yeah the showing of the score from the cherries is a good idea. Another thing I took for granted as the game creator :). It was so obvious for me that the red cherry is 400 and gold cherry is 5000.

The splash bounce turned out like that because of gameplay purposes :).

I'm brainstorming for ideas for the sequel (with myself :)). I've had some great ideas on how it will be but I haven't started the development yet because of being a bit busy with other things. I can tell a bit that the sequel will have completely new engine and 'new way of bouncing'. The old bounces are gone, and it will have a different playing mechanic. But it will still be a level based platformer. No promises though on how long it will take me to make it. But I'm excited to get it started and see how it turns out.

Thanks for your great review :).

[Piggy123s NG guide]

there's no reason for people to read this instead

If the AS to make a button into a link didn't work for you, you should have asked in the BBS for help. Everyone else can work it out, so if you persevered you could have too.

You need to sort out your capitalisation and punctuation - it's currently really hard to read.

Don't use 'u' and other txtspk, use commas, full stops and new lines and capitalise proper nouns and the first word of each sentence. Seriously - these little things go a long way in setting a good impression!

Some of the info, like the 'warnings' and 'voting' section seemed so self-evident as to be redundant.

The info in the staff bit was mostly copied and pasted and going straight to the source is always a better option.

To be honest, I don't really see the need for another 'NG Guide', but this didn't do itself any favours with the issues it had.

I liked the sentiment and the music was generally cool. The buttons worked.

But in the end, there's no reason for people to read this instead of the official FAQ/primer.

piggy123 responds:

the link work now i just do not update it right now.

[Spaceship Escape]

Worse than 'helicopter'. Needs tuning.

First I hit a blue sphere, thinking I had to collect it. 2nd game, I died within seconds, as the physics are different to what I expected. 3rd game, I died at 46k. It had gotten repetitive and ceased to be interesting well beyond that - to be honest, I was just carrying on to see what would happen.

In this game, we rise/fall a lot slower than in most other games of its ilk. Its disconcerting but does distance itself slightly from others and the direction of the arrow works well to show the current velocity.

It kinda means we need to plan our moves a bit further in advance.

The music was a tad repetitive (got repetitive before the song ended) but suited the atmosphere well.

Graphics were decent - 'vector' look suits it. Though maybe keep blue circles off of the yellow blocks.

My main gripe is definitely the difficulty curve - or the lack of one. You need to make the cave thinner, add more circles or do something else to keep upping the challenge and add an algorithm of course, to ensure it's always possible to fly through (although maybe not HUMANLY possible at the upper limit...)

In the end, it's not only unoriginal, but also far worse than the elegant simplicity of the original 'helicopter' game.

colintso responds:

Thinking you had to collect it? Please read the instructions...

I'll try to add levels to the game.

[The ghost train]

I love the photo-montage style.

I love the photo-collage style.

The vector work looks kinda odd against the photos, but it still has an interesting feel.

I specially liked the opening screen (with the menu) and the shot at the end of the intro, when the TV shrinks away.

I was disappointed to realised that it really was more like a 'presentation' and not-at-all like a point-and-click game.

The text was kinda annoying to scroll. If you could add a real scroll bar and increase the size of the up/down buttons' hit-boxes, that'd help.

At the bottom of dracula's history, there seem to be some missing words.

Leatherface's text was kinda hard to read against the light bg. Add more contrast - maybe darkening the bg rather than lightening it...

The music is atmospheric (though they don't seem to be credited) and the visuals fun. The end was kinda funny.

I just felt that the whole idea of a presentation of horror-character-info, interspersed with minigames wasn't a great idea. Those looking for a game will be disappointed and those eager to read about the characters may be irritated by the game or presentational issues (white text on light bg & scrolling).

In the end, though I wanted to enjoy it, I just felt it didn't work.

xzomxbie responds:

As u like in the end. i just love what i did. ts very very good i think:) or lets say that am sure about what am saying
but anyway thnx for ur review.

[Abusive Review Guide 2]

the main 'meat' is solid

I'm still dubious about your claim that 'negative whistle points are worth more than positive ones'. Where did you get this info?

Other than that, this was generally a great tutorial - logically presented info and I liked the way you closed with a quiz. And the post-question parts of the quiz made sure the answer was understood - good stuff!

After muting the music, I couldn't seem to turn it on again though.

Also, the typography/visual design is pretty boring and not really in the theme of NG. Lose the Times New Roman, put in something like 'Hit the Road' and 'Featured Item'. Make the bg closer to the NG colours, then lighten it up. Don't use blue or red text - just black.

Those are my niggles, but the main 'meat' is solid.\

I love the fact that you linked to the google page - that's something I might not have found out otherwise.

RohantheBarbarian responds:

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. You lose more points from a cleared flag than you gain from a deleted one.

The music has a 3-4 second delay before it starts, are you sure it wouldn't restart?

I will improve the visuals in the future.

Thanks for a great review!

[Abusive Review Guide]

Brilliant tutorial

I kinda remember someone of authority saying that one correct flagging more than outweighs one incorrect flagging. Where did you hear the opposite?

The rest of the info seems spot-on though.

The solid advice benefited from the examples.

Music was swinging and graphics functional.

Good links too!

The only complaints I could make are a few graphical nit-picks. Like personally, I find sans-serif more readable on a screen. Maybe actually showing the ASCII finger would've been cool. And you could've maybe had some more decorative buttons or bg.

Not that that stuff matters too much - as a tutorial for newbies, this still rocks.

Looked at objectively, this probably deserves 7/10 at least. But I don't rate things based on how good they are - rather, how much pleasure I derived (or think I'll derive) from them.

RohantheBarbarian responds:

Glad that you found it helpful. I know it sucks graphically, but as you said the info was the main focus.

[Awesome Sprite Tutorial]

I was pleasantly surprised

I was surprised and impressed at this tutorial - it seems well written; easy to follow and the web address was great.

I appreciated the lack of music - I feel more folk should do the same rather than wasting megabytes on an entire song. Lets us listen to our own music or learn in silence, if that's more conducive for our own learning.

It seemed easy to follow along - I knew most of the features already, but even had I not, I'd have been able to follow along no problem.

I'd disagree with a few of the choices you make - I'd personally either use the transform tool (q) whilst holding down shift to keep the proportions, or type in a number into the transform box. Similarly, I disagree that limiting the onion skin to one previous frame made it any easier and I'd use F6 for making new frames. Though folk don't need to know the shortcuts immediately, it'd be worth mentioning them!

The main point, though, is that your system worked.

I'd suggest you tell folk how to tween the movieclips to move Mario across the screen or just have a ore motivational end frame, maybe telling folk that they can now use those techniques to carry on and make a movie...

Though the tutorial seems good, it lacks gravity when it's your only submission - if you had a sprite movie that you linked to, or maybe a short 10s example movie to inspire us and show that you know what you're talking about.

Regardless, this is one of the better submissions I've seen. Good work.

Swizardv2 responds:

Thanks. Well the having no flash is a long story :p. 2 things manly. I don't have the concentration to work on things for a really long time, but I actually did a minute of animation, but had a harddrive crash. Hmm I'm thinking of remaking this tutorial with some things you mentioned and other people mentioned. Also if I add a sound, it will be a loop no bigger then 300kb or something. I could go into more dept indeed with movie tweens and backgrounds looping, but that's hard to explain. I know this tutorial doesn't prove I can animate, but I know I can :P Besides the main fact I made this tutorial, is wen I was looking at collabs to join, and collabs I joined (didn't want co-auth), these basics were done wrong. And wen these things go wrong, these basic things, then nothing good will come out of it. Sorry for ranting xD, thanks for the review.

[Delayed Radar]

Flawed execution

Time:240. I died a few times on the first timed level and once on level 8.

The game had a simple premise - easy to pick up. The eponymous concept didn't really add much to the game though - specially as it isn't really a 'delay' - just something that follows the mouse. The former would show where our mouse was a small time ago and force us to think ahead. With this, the radar changes direction as soon as we do and it just doesn't force us to change the way we play at all.

At first I found the 'obstacles' a bit annoying - feeling it was almost luck that governed when I'd find a ball I hadn't seen yet. Later on, I found one, just as it disappeared and working out where it'd go was an interesting challenge. However, the balls don't seem to move all the way to the edges before bouncing - making it feel random and unintelligible.

Lastly, in level 8 - a level that should have been difficult - I was easily able to complete it on my 2nd go thanks to the orbs starting in the same place.

The graphics were OK with the crosshair and greenish 'radar' clearly showing what they are.

The central concept is an interesting one, but you need to take more care in the execution. Really focus on what you think should be the most fun element and then work on that.

Treerung responds:

Well your opinion is very respectable and I know alot of people who played this game probably came away a little disappointed but, for me, this was a big learning experience considering I was experimenting the uses of masks(which, from what I can see, are rarely used in games).
Anyways thanks for the review!

[Hedgehog Launch]

beautiful story; fun game.

Beautiful game.

Though none of the mechanical ingredients are unique, the combination is and it makes for a tasty dish.

Adding user-control to the 'fling stuff' genre's visceral thrill really makes for a more complete game - one we can lose ourselves in, rather than setting aside after a minute.

The upgrades work wonderfully on so many levels. They make the game play differently at the start compared to later on, when bouncing from one platform to another nearly-adjecent blue is a viable strategy. The fixed prices introduce an interesting choice - buy now and get the benefit immediately (with hopefully more money garnered) or buy later, saving cash overall. Lastly, the sense of progress sets up the ending wonderfully - I expected it long before it arrived, but it was no less a pleasure for it.

Wonderful game. Your usual high standards of graphics (for the life of me I can't work out how you have such a large bg! Flash messes up my images when smaller than the ones you have) and tight mechanics. Sound choices are superb.

One criticism is that after falling to earth, with no up-rockets, the best strategy is to use any remaining fuel to extend the time. This makes for a slightly boring 10-30s and I think this slightly mars the game. Maybe you should have disallowed the use of side-rockets within a few pixels of ground level?

Wonderful game, great ending.

jmtb02 responds:

Haha, thanks Bez. Your use of metaphor and vocab are a shining beacon in the rab-dab-dabble of Newgrounds reviews. Thanks for the review, I appreciate it :).

This was one giant bitmap about 4000h x 1000w. I made sure it looped perfectly by fading in the left and right side of the bitmap image with itself then exporting as a PNG file (png-24 is the fastest but heaviest format for Flash for some reason). As long as not too much is going on while the camera is moving and the _root is moved via code and not v-cam things seem to work out for the better! I also move the hedgehog faster than I move the background so the hedgehog actually travels about 12-15k pixels upward in the time that the background moves about 4,000 pixels. Parallax saves the day.

-J

[Easiest Game in the World]

Heh

Not as easy as:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/deleo ngames/candy

However, a wee bit funnier. I liked the guy pointing to the win box and the end messages were decent.

Having better graphics might have helped it a wee bit though - take more time over your lines and get them to look less sloppy.

Made me smile.

MajoraX responds:

That's debatable....

Mine is certainly easier to win at multiple times, though.