Salamandre's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Savannah]

The gameplay is very simple. This is not a bad thing as a game is very short. I got board before obtaining every awards.
I guess this simple gameplay is on purpose. The main point of your game is the subject : Tutsi slaughter in Rwanda. Unfortunately you only talk about it in the intro screen through four text lines where you recall specific informations and the link to the wikipedia page.
Then, the game itself doesn't bring any emotion or information about this tragic event. The graphics are merely schematic and the scream when you kill someone are ridiculous. As a result you feel like playing any other shoot'em up.
Finally this game entertained me 2 minutes and didn't teach me anything.

[White Stone]

Very fun ! a little short

cobcris responds:

nice :D yea i know it's short, but i decided to release short games in order to polish my dev skills before i make the big one

[Adaptivity - Alpha]

Great game ! I love it !
two points :
- the small intro on levels that are bigger than the screen should be skippable
- some hints (question marks in squares) are too obvious and in the way. It hurt my pride to get help I don't need nor ask ;)

prasannakkcse responds:

Hi! Thank you for your feedback!
I have reduced the wait time of the intro for now. But made a note about skipping.

[Hangman:Gallows]

Not bad but many things to be fixed or arranged.
- One bug when you lose : if you keep hitting keys you start an other game, which forces you to return to menu, start a new game, and return to menu once more.
- Have some pity for losers, display the answer on the "gamer over" screen.
- There is a huge difference of difficulty between small words and long words. Small words are harder because there are less good letters obviously. I lost on "above" without finking any letter. Maybe you could think of a system to raise the difficulty with long words. One idea : allowed vowels for small words(4 or 5 letters).
- Please make is so the found words counter does not reset when you quit the page. Will anyone ever reach 400 words in a row ?

Those are, in my opinion, the improvements required to make your game pleasant. You nearly reached this goal !

[Handsome2x Werewolf]

Cool game ! Funny, cute, good game play ...
The only thing I didn't like is there is not end. And it's quite long to reach max upgrade so you finally get a little board.

[Antumbra]

Graphic and audio art is really good, I can't deny that.
But it is not enough to make a good game. It is only a succession of illusion of choices. At first for example, the only option is to run away, else you die. Then the only option is to find how to lock the door. I lost patience before finishing the game, but as far as I've been, any choice I've made had an impact on the game. And hovering all the screen with the mouse on every panel to look for a golden eye is not funny.
I understand, by your description and other people's comments, that there is a message beneath your game. I didn't reach it. Many elements of the game were obvious allegory, but allegory of what ? You should make it more obvious so we try to understand it.
As an example, I'd talk about the guy you have to kill bare hands. You can't choose to spare him, nor to talk to him. As a result I don't feel concerned about his death as I haven't been given a choice. And there is a second character on the image. Does it have something to do with the story ? Then why don't I find a hotspot on him or near him ?
Actually I have no will to keep trying because I don't have a clue about if I am progressing or not. No map ? no goal plot ?

I understand that one of the goals of your game is to confuse the player. So you don't "offer" the answers too easily. But if you don't even inform the player if he's doing right or wrong, he won't stick to insisting on your game.

Vilehead responds:

Thank you for your detailed and long review Salamandre. Shame you rated the game so low :(
But I will take this on board for my next project.

[The Onion Knight]

Good game. Cute art, nice music. the difficulty is well balanced, last levels are challenging but you don't give up for boring (Few more levels would be ok). I love those menus you navigate in the same way than in a level.
the bad points are :
- No animations, even the fade when using a ladder is bad.
- a detail that got on my nerves: at the end of a level, you have a panel with "menu" "next level" and "restart level" and you have to use your mouse. But you don't use the mouse while playing, so it "broke the spell" each time(I'm not sure how to express it in English). I had to think back about IRL material things such as "where is my mouse". Why didn't you keep your great idea of level selection ? A tiny level whit three doors access menus of next level ...
- when you finish last level, you go back to level 1 if you click "next level". This is illogical AND unpleasant. No congratulations screen ?

Anyways I spent a good time playing this game.

alexandersshen responds:

Thanks for the comments! You bring up a really good point, actually. The fact is that you CAN use only the keyboard to maneuver through all of the game. All the buttons that have underlined letters mean you can press that letter to use the button (example: N for Next Level).

The fact that you didn't know that means I didn't teach it and that's failure on my part. Since this is made in an engine, I'll make sure the next game takes care of explaining this.

As far as no animations and the last level going back to the first, I was strapped for time. I wanted this released in time for Game of Thrones Season 5. The engine is certainly capable of handling animated pieces and cut scenes. :)

[Adventure Lloyd]

globally a good game, but many things to work on.
graphics:
-there are two skins for levels, the green ones and the red ones. Red ones are ok but for green ones it is sometimes hard to make the difference between background landscape and physical objects. You should make the non-physical objects less bright. On one level it was merely hard to find all nuts.
-Dogs are dreadful, but I guess you already knew.
-the indication of number of acorns in the top left corner is not readable on light blue sky. You should put a background board or use a different font for this indication.

Gameplay:
-moving platforms have two problems : First you do not move with then when you step on it. Next it is hard to prevent the end of run of the platform. You could display the path with some kind of rail, or you could make the platform slow down then accelerate when changing direction.
-jumping on mushrooms is a little hazardous. You sometimes make big bounds, sometimes small ones.
-cycles are long. You sometimes have to wait quite a while for a platform to come back or for a dog to go away. It's boring.
-on levels where there are platforms near to top border, you bump into the top border.This shouldn't be.
-Some levels are too difficult. You should let people reach the next level with one or two acorn missing and put a medal system to reward players who get every acorn.
-what's the point of flame throwers ? they just vanished each time I came near them. Are they enemies ?

Control:
-As you often have to start again a level, you should put a shortcut for that (I suggest R key)
-When you finish a level or when you die, it would be nice to put the jump key as shortcut for "next level" or "try again". As you don't need the mouse to play, it is a pain to use it in menus.

[Family Rush]

I really enjoyed this game ! I love those games with minimum control.
Few things :
- there is a peak of difficulty just before reaching the grandad, with a lot of flying enemies (or was my strategy wrong ? I should have boosted Mom's health maybe)
- Small bosses before each family member release would be cool
- The congratulation screen is way too poor in comparison to the intro and the game. Two of three comic strip picture with punchlines of all members of the family would be nice.

dennatolich responds:

Thank you for feedback!

[Confusion! Avoid Meteorit]

Entertaining for one or tow runs. I like it. It would gain a lot to have a score board.