Navaak's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Game Experiment: Gamma]

This is a really exciting concept and I would be very interested in the results of your survey. However, care must be taken so as to not misinterpret the results.

For example, the aggressive-or-not word association is also dependent on a gamer's general entertainment profile, which includes movies, books and other concept-intake methods. Especially the example of "kiss-kill" made me think that the standard male of age 18-38 will probably write "kill" rather than "kiss", for many social causes other than gaming (e.g., gender stereotypes). I am certain you have ways to account for that, but I thought I should point it out :)

With respect to the game, although the FPS part is rather concrete for the purposes of your study, I am concerned whether it might be a little to "abstract" to actually cause the ammount of immersion you might need for a direct psychological impact. This is, of course, also dependent on the player, so I suppose you can control for that by using the questionaire in the beggining, but a few more questions might be in order. For example, I am not used in playing FPS games, so I probably got more "anxious" than a player of my age that mainly plays FPS games, so a question related to the game genre of choice might be in order (unless you can infer it from the rest of the results).

I was very happy to see this attempt and hope your research gives you some insights!

[Cuber]

Greetings and congratulations on your first game! Here are some comments:

1. Generally speaking, the game was enjoyable and had a nice atmosphere. It was quite short, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, since many people do not have a lot of time.

2. With respect to visual aspects of the game, the different assets did not quite fit with each other. For example, the main character and the torches gave the impression of being in 3D, while the walls and boxes seemed flat. A quick way to fix this would be to add normal maps to the walls and boxes, to give the impression of depth. Also, the torches were too detailed compared to the other things and seemed strange, consider replacing them with something less detailed.

3. The level design was good. Levels were easy, and I would expect a few more stages with a little harder levels. Of course, this is a matter of how much time you have :)

4. I really liked the cloud platforms, it was a good addition and I would like to see more of that.

5. A couple of other things that could be fixed are: (i) the music should not restart when the character dies, (ii) there should be a restart button (in at least one stage you can get stuck if the box gets too close to the wall).

Overall, it was a good first attempt. Keep improving!

[Ragnarok: Iridescent]

It was quite refreshing and satisfying. I can barely review this without spoiling it for everybody, so I will just say that the mechanics you used to tell the story (perhaps your story as well?) were very... effective.

ShadowWhoWalks responds:

not at all senor;
in Ragnarok: Iridescent Transcendence, players have the freedom and tools to make their own choices.

With six different classes and hundreds of perks and traits, each playthrough is a different experience; a combat-oriented swordsman may choose to get his hands dirty at the foe, but a stealthy and observant archer may be able lead enemies around before he commits to a decision, he may even diplomatically let the boss escort him out of the dungeon, depending on the attribute allocation to his INT and LUK.

Anything is possible in the realm of Ragnarok: Iridescent Transcendence.

[Greenie 2]

I can barely imagine a puzzle platformer making better use of its own mechanics. It is a wonderfully hardcore experience... usually when I rage quit, I rate 1 or 2 stars. At this case I rage quitted twice and gave you 5 stars both times, because the effort you put into the game and the cleverness of the puzzle-making process was always apparent to me. What a delightful bastard you are, sir.

Letmethink2 responds:

Haha. Thanks!

[juxtapose]

I find the current rating of this game (3.37) really unfair, when the average idle game in the front page achieves a score of 4 or more. This game was a very interesting journey and it was very balance in terms of difficulty, time spent, and narrative.Then again, all your games are given similar love and the result shows, so I will have to suppose that they simply aren't for everyone. Judging by the majority of the reviews, however, the people that DO play your games, enjoy them thouroughly.

So thank you for the journey, and keep up the good work!

Zillix responds:

Thanks for the kind words! I do a lot of experimental stuff that not everyone likes, so it's always great to hear from someone who enjoyed it :)

[The Price]

The game had some extrememly possitive elements. The use of a few simple rules (for example, a single enemy that always walks forward, turns in case of an obstacle, or falls) to create interesting (albeit few in number) puzzles was definately exceptional. I also enjoyed the storyline, which was not very original, but was very well presented. There were also a few details that were very well placed - I recall that at a certain level, I was able to either exit through the door quickly or stay, risking death, and read a sign, which I did.

For a game made in such a small time scale, I would not expect more. There were, however, a few things that could have done slightly different.
As mentioned by others, the movement of the character felt slightly unnatural and messy at times, often leading to premature death (and the frustration that comes with it).
I would have also enjoyed playing as the male character after selecting the second ending, which I suspect would have been simple to incorporate by merely changing the sprite (no need to change any other element).
Finally, even though the message you are trying to convey does come across, it might have served your purpose to avoid force-feeding it to the player. Of course, I realize that in a game made so fast this fine-tuning may simply be impossible.

Overall, a very statisfying result! Expecting more games from you in the future :)

[Another shoot em up?!]

It is a good attempt, but there are a few issues that you could fix.

1. The upgrade system seems flawed, because of two reasons. First, when you change the stage, the progress you one has made towards upgrading is not kept (for example, I needed 7 points to upgrade in the end of level 1, then in the beggining of level 2 this became 40 again. Second, when the apparent ammount of points is collected, no upgrade takes place, and the counter keeps going into negative values.

2. Difficulty is high from the beggining of the game, since the ship's bullets seem too weak to deal with the swarms of enemies and the player ends up dodging most of them (instead of destroying them). That is not necessarily bad, but it also increases exponentially with each stage. A fine-tuning of the parameters to mediate this difficulty might be in place.

3. Some minor improvements, though not crucial, could improve the game experience. These include: a preloader, a better start menu, and some strictly aesthetical issues (for example, the text indicating the points needed to upgrade does not fit well with the rest of the game's feel).

These said, the graphics and effects are beautiful and the game has a solid feel to it. If these issues are fixed, we might be looking at the next frontpage shoot'em up.

Jantaaa responds:

Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it. Im already working on another project, so this might be the only release of this game, more likely when I have some time I will make the game little bigger with menu, pause option and fix few issues you mentioned (upgrade system at least). Difficulty issue, yes the game is hard, but also short one, I decided that it is better to make it hard than too short and easy, it has only 3 levels.
This game was intended to be just for test and learning purposes (hell it doesnt even have a name :D). Anyway thank you very much, feedback like yours will make me better developer!

[Fish Finger Fumbling]

It was fun, but I am not quite sure I understood the scoring system. At the second stage, sometimes I lost points even though I found the correct pairs.

Also, moving the fish around makes this less of a memory game and more of a luck game, which may be what you were going for, but it certainly is frustrating.

froggywomp responds:

In Deep Ocean you loose points when you pick the same pair again (a second time). You pick the right pair once you get points, you pick it again, you loose points. The idea was to play memory backwards. When you play memory (concentration) it gets more and more easy because there are less cards. In Deep Ocean it's the other way round. But you are right, it's more about luck than strategy. My next game will be more fun :)