xalezar's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[POLY WARS]

Hmm ... I wasn't sure how to play it. I see you have the controls down in the description, that's fine, but many players tend to not read it. Might help to have some in-game inboarding. Maybe start the player in a safe zone so that they learn the mechanics one by one. Then introduce an enemy once the player familiarizes with the controls.

I found the WASD controls to be confusing. It seems you use the mouse to change your forward facing direction, where W is move forward, A/D strafe sideways, S to move backwards. I understand how it works now, but I don't think most players will get it at first. Maybe the mouse can just be for aiming, while WASD move the player.

I am digging the music. It is very appropriate for this kind of genre.

AbhiTechGames responds:

thank you so much for your feedback I will definitely update the game by keeping your points in mind

[Hanukkah Runner]

Cute game. :) Nice work with the parallax layers--the cycling sun and moon add a nice touch. I like the integration of the Hanukkah narrative.

I felt the controls could have used a bit more in-game onboarding. E.g. like when you first start, maybe on the screen it can say "Jump with X or UP" or "Slide with Z or DOWN" as an obstacle approaches. Maybe some kind of indication when you successfully avoid an obstacle to let the player know they are doing something right.

What will be your future plans for the game? :)

KJScott responds:

I had put controls scheme into the instructions but having it in the game would work well. I could put something in some it appears very very early in.

I have some tweaks to put in based on feedback, I think I have a couple of notes I need to fix in the audio, and was planning to update the sunset/rise if it works.

Long term, I will either do a sequel or eventually rework the original concept and tighten everything up a lot but that would definitely be for next year.

[[BTNverse] Universal Thief]

UPDATED on Jan 16, 2021: I finally sat down this weekend and played this game from beginning to end! Best weekend ever! Took a bit of time to figure out how to fight that final boss. At first I didn't realize that the highlighted border on the enemy's menu indicates their next move. After I found that out, the strategy became apparent. :)

This was very entertaining! I love your unique twist on the turn-based battle system. Absorbing enemy skills after each battle is something I've never seen before. You can essentially customize your character however you want. This is pretty impressive, especially since it was a game jam entry.

adriendittrick responds:

Thanks a lot for the nice review :)

[Final Fharmacy I]

This is a really fun game! It has elements of puzzle and short-term memory recall, minimal story, strategy, and resource management all wrapped into one. I'm only at level 3 or so but just wanted to write some quick feedback before I forget. :)

The onboarding was well done. I like how you use iconography to show what ailment the customer has. The symbols were easily recognizable and easy to memorize. It's the recipes I had trouble with memorizing, but they are simple enough to reasonably expect the player to memorize them.

I think I can easily envision this as a mobile game:

- in-app purchases for "bookmarks" (to quickly flip to a page in the recipe book)
- continue to utilize the story-telling newspaper to foreshadow the next day
- watch an ad in between levels for boosts, such as the ability to create a few potions ahead of time
- another boost could be special rare ingredients that act as "wildcards"
- finite inventory so that you can't waste anything

(You might have already implemented some of these for the later levels that I haven't reached yet.)

Thanks for sharing this marvelous game!

[Happy Happy Land]

Very cute game! I love the claymation. If i had one gripe, it would be some of the puzzles weren't very obvious and I could only figure out by trial and error. But the all of the reconciliation animations were so cute, I could easily look past that. Especially the one for the dog and fish haha.

I enjoyed the background music also.

Thanks for sharing your game!

P.S. it didn't load in Safari so I switch to Chrome and it worked.

[Medieval Cop 10 - Part 1]

I thought the store/premise was good, but the music was a bit distracting after a while. I felt the mechanical puzzles were okay for onboarding the player, but not so sure about some of the story sequence ones, as the answers weren't always logical. Sometimes it became a trial and error thing, so it was hard to progress very far into the game.

Anyway, thanks for sharing the game, I'm sure it was a lot of work to build.

Note: the game doesn't load in Safari, but I was able to play it on Chrome.

[Hexplore]

Wow, this is so cool. Kind of reminds me of the Neverhood. I've only played a few minutes of it, and have a feeling I'll be back later to try to see this game through to the end. What did you use to program this?