Salamandre's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Drink Beer, Neglect Family]

Great ! Very funny nice Donkey Kong-like pixel art. And nice idea, I love it.

Just one thing: It would be great to have a icon in the top left corner that displays the current effect of alcohol. I am not a native english speaker and I had to stop playing at every beer to read the text line. You should put both the text line and the icon I think.

esayitch responds:

That's a pretty good idea. I had a thought to also add a pop-up that announced the effect as well, but this was a relatively short project that I gave too much time to begin with, so I opted out of "polish" improvements like that.

[PixelNaut]

Nice classic platform ! The first bosses could have been less repetitive by changing guns position. And you definitely need a congratulations screen.

[Fathom]

Great game !
Few more levels would be great but 72 hours is not a lot I guess.
The only thing is that you sometimes have no time to activate the bullet time before the bullet hit the ground. I would have appreciate a way to anticipate the firing. Some kind of red light on the gun that would flash 1/2s before firing.
And a way to understand that shields are destructible (they could shrink of flash when hit). At first I thought that shielded guns were not to be destroyed, but avoided.

[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.