Salamandre's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Packets, Please!]

hi, I enjoyed this game, very well done, especially the atmosphere (sound and graphics). And the political message is efficiently delivered to the player (which is the first goal of the game right?).

But there is a big issue in the gameplay in my opinion. There is no "do nothing" button between "boost" and "throttle". And all users fit in either exceptionally good users or exceptionally bad users. As an example to make me clear, if a user exceeds his usage limit, he will not be using a promoted service. For the same reason, when the policy only has two lines (boost new customers and throttle exceeding customers), you will know if the customer exceeds just watching the inscription date.

As a result, you, as a player, are always reminded that you are dealing with procedural generated customers. This is not realistic. The "theater illusion" is broken.

I would have liked the different stats of the customer to be independent. A new user (boost) could have used a forbidden service (disconnect). You may answer that it would be hard to choose the action, but you can just order them, according to the memo. If the line "boost new users" is first and "disconnect forbidden services" is second, then the right action is to boost. This would permit to make a much larger difficulty progression.
Still good game ;)

[nyan cat GO!]

A Nyan cat without music ? I fail to see the point.

[KUNG FU KOMBAT]

The hitbox of the disk saw is unfair !!! Good game however !!
And you can get the victory after you died, this is weird

[Constellation]

Love it !

With a political message : You type People, people appear, then you type Gun, someone vanishes.

[Valhalla Bound]

Really loved it. For the graphics, for the gameplay, for the story...

But I put 4 stars because there is a big problem in my opinion : The goal, the positive actions and negative actions are not easy to determine:
- I had to play the demo to understand that the ships were to destroy and not to protect. As you are a viking and the ships are drakars sailing off from your coast, the intuition is not to shoot them.
- Then the ghosts, moving and disappearing after a time, seemed to me like bonus target.
Those two points would be solved by a 5sec animation showing your character shooting a boat, the soul reaching Valhalla and a short text like"Stay in peace, brother". Or a more obviously positive and negative sound when you do the right or wrong thing.
- Then the condition of loosing lives (letting go a boat). This is not obvious enough either. First because this occurs without any visual effect, then because the player is focused on the center or left part of the screen and boats disappear at the very right of the screen, at last because there is no sound relative to the loss of a ship. You only have 3 lives, loosing a ship is the worst thing ever, it should make a big bad noise ! Another thing that confused me with the lives is the little head you put next to the number of lives left. I understand that it is a very common thing in videogames to do so, but your character doesn't actually die when you loose a ship. Drawing a little ship instead of the head could be more explicit ?
- The rune : you have to shoot especially the rune and not the angel right ? But it makes exactly the same sound.
- The rain mechanic is still a unclear to me. You have to shoot several times each boat ? there is no clear visual or sound effect that tels you when you're finished with a boat.

But yet it is a great game, I'll install it on my smartphone at once

Avizial responds:

Wow, you make a lot of good points! You are a very meticulous reviewer!

- For the tutorial, we added a little box with a "?" on the upper right-hand corner to give a quick synopsis of the automated demo/tutorial. It doesn't explain everything, but we think it explains enough. We'd like to let people figure out and learn about the game "retro-style" ;P But we can add more to the tutorial, perhaps a tip page going a little more in-depth?

- For the loss of a life, this is a very good point. Perhaps we can make it more obvious that a Viking soul has not been saved and make the results more apparent. We will play around and look into this one.

- We can make separate sound-effect for the rune and angels. This one is simple :)

- The rain mechanic has a chance to douse the fire you lit on the boats. It won't always put out the fire but there is a high chance. However, if you hit the boats with a charged shot, it will always release the spirits. Even if the boat's fire goes out.

Thanks for the mobile support! Every little bit helps :)

And thanks for playing our game. Your feedback will come in handy for our next update! Hope to hear from you in future games.

[Slavery Triangular Trade]

Hi !
Nice game ! I understunde it is from a gamejam so it was made rapidely. But to improve it I would say it lacks of sounds. Some sounds to indicate events (riots, dying slave, etc...) would help.
I have not been able to finish the game. Maybe my strategy was bad, or this game is too long.

On the historical purpose of the game, it is very interesting to show this periode of history from a global point of view, to show the big picture.
However I think it is a little "gentelly racist". This shows natives affricans as pure victims of history and not as actors of it. Actually, in triangular trade, traders company would not send soldiers to Affrica. They would send gold borrowed to a european bank, and would buy black slaves to a dominant african tribe. This was their main argument to not take the blame. They said " African tribes do enslave each other in tribe wars, we just took part of this pre-existing trade". This information is right, but it has no value to excuse slavery.

[Yo Escape the Forest]

I spent soooo much time to get that the star on the flag was light blue and not dark blue.Except that the story is nice cute and absurd (I love it). But a super cheap cinematic of the canoe at the end or some picture to congratulate the player would be cool.

[Jump to survive]

The scrolling slower than the character made me made.

[Kill Billfoot]

Very nice and enjoyable to play !
Just few things :
- when you die you should restart with all your heart. Else it immediately turns into a non-damage hardcore mode.
-at the boss, if you are hit by a rock, you can't jump or escape until then end of invulnerability time, which means that if you are hit, you're dead already.
Great game anyways, the controls are responsive, you could put some harder levels

HenrikSahlin responds:

Ok I will make sure you spawn with 2 hearts instead of 1. And I'm going to make sure that you're hit further so that you can escape the rocks. Thanks for the feedback!

[Bazooka Trooper]

Fun, but the game play is too poor for so many levels. I got board long before the end. An it is not challenging.