Lesuperchef's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Yin and Yang]

Really cool and fun game! :)

[GBOY DEMO (DISCONTINUED)]

I gave 2 stars, but it's not because the idea is bad, it's because there's close to nothing to judge here. It would be interesting to see a bit more before giving a relevant review.

The textures are good, I like the idea of making the art style similar to the Game Boy. The animations look natural, both for the player and the enemies. Talking about the player character, it controls quite well. The enemies' hitboxes are a bit too large; I recommend you allow the player to get very close to the enemies, even if the player can touch them a bit, just to make the whole thing more fun to play and avoid the classic the-enemy-was-a-whole-meter-away-but-it-still-touched-me-because-the-hitbox-is-square-and-it-has-corners-but-the-enemy-is-round-and-doesn't-cover-the-whole-hitbox.

Apart from that... There's no menu, no music, no pause, no retry button, no more than a 30-second gameplay, nothing below the ground to kill me if I fall off (you stated that in the description, I suppose you'll fix it if/when you'll make a full version), no level ending and therefore no more than a single level, no game intro showing your name...

I gave 2 stars because I'd recommend this game to the average NG user as much as I'd recommend any game around 2 stars, not because it's bad, but because there's nearly nothing to enjoy fo more than a few seconds, minutes at most.

Come back with a complete game (or a more advanced demo) with the same level of quality, and it would probably be worth 4 stars. Add some original or unique ideas in there, and you can easily reach 5 stars.

Good luck, I hope you'll end up making that full version! I want to see how it would turn out :)

MrOnsku responds:

When i published the demo i thought to myself that yeah, it lacks too much stuff to be a demo.
But thank you for your review though! :) (And i'll work on the hitboxes a bit more x))

[Space Survival]

Pretty nice! I like the music choice and the visual artwork. The spaceships look like spaceships, the bullets are visible and clear, the hitboxes aren't too big... It's been quite fun to play, goob job! :)

Next steps would be to create a scenario, endless games are fun but they can get boring once a certain level of skill has been reached (I see you put various ship patterns and bosses, that's a good idea).

hassaanmunir responds:

Hi Lesuperchef,

Thank you for such an amazing comment. I appreciate it. You're right that endless games get boring after some time. As it is my first game, I wanted to make a small game and an endless game could be a good choice because all that I had to do is make things automated (but still it took me quite a long time 😞). And the best thing is I got reviews and suggestions from amazing people (like you) from different platforms.

I'll try to make more fun and engaging game next time
Thanks

[A Cozy Storm]

The exploration was quickly over, but the ambience is nice :)

[Space Fighter]

705.

Cool timekiller, controls are a bit strange though. (How am I supposed to avoid enemy fire?)

Sound effects seem to have a hard time playing correctly, a signle sound type cannot play more than once at once.

Pretty cool game nevertheless :)

[Suicide Cliff]

I've reviewed your last game "No Help No Hope"... Sadly, I'm afraid my review now is going to be a near-exact copy of the same points than last time. I see nearly no improvement from last time.

The music is still nice, the visual are still cool, and the story still doesn't engage me enough to make it an enjoyable game.

I tried finding the courage to read the entire story, but roughly two thirds in, I lost patience and started fast-forwarding until reaching anything that involves player interaction (that's more complex than clicking anywhere on the screen, that is). The absence of any minigame was quite disappointing. I ended up playing... close to nothing. Only a single choice at the very end - said choice doesn't even lead to a different background picture, merely different dialogue text for 5 to 10 messages and that's it.

It seems like your studio is focused exclusively on VN's and is going to produce as many VN's as possible in the shortest amount of time. Please... If you respect yourselves, if you respect your audience, us, please for the love of God, don't do that. Please don't spam the game portal with re-texturing of the exact same concept over and over and over again. Please, explore some other genres, bring some fresh air! You have nice artists in your team, put their talent to good use! But please, don't give us a mere edit of the game we previously played. If you want visibility, originality will pay out much more than flooding the game portal with as many games as possible.

REVIEW OF THE STORY
----------------------------------

You seem to urge your reviewers that your games are visual novels and that it's normal that the only interest of the game is the story; well, let's review the story then!

Suicide is always a sensitive topis to talk about, and making a good, "feelable" (as in, we can identify to the protagonist(s)) story on that topic without being controversial is rather difficult. In this case, the story is quite cliché and easily foreseeable. Since the story is very short, we don't have enough time to identify as the protagonist, so instead of making a "feelable" story, you chose to make a story with a morality. And that's okay! However, the morality isn't original and bring nearly no new thought on the topic.

That's quite a weak story; that has a significant impact in a game genre where the story is super important, and that's even more important if you choose to discard any other game element.

I see you are getting many complaints that your games are empty of gameplay, and you argue back that this is a point of a visual novel. While I could argue that most (good) visual novels always incorporate something to get the player involved in the story (often in the form story branching - preferably complex enough to not be foreseeable - or in the form of minigames, sometimes both), even if I choose to respect your decision and accept that the entirety of the game is only a linear story, the story itself isn't interesting enough to keep the player hooked to the game long enough.

The story, only interesting point in the game, isn't itself enough to sustain enough interest from the player.

MY SUGGESTIONS
---------------------------

If possible, switch game genre, at least temporarily. Visual novels aren't exactly working now; this would be fine if it was your first attempt at the genre, but this is your 6th attempt, with little to no improvement whatsoever over time. Why not make a point-and-click instead? I can easily see a good point-and-click game coming from your studio with your current skills. The genre switch could help bringing some originality in the gameflow.

If you really need to keep doing VNs, switch plans for the stories. Instead of remaking a new dull story every time, try making sequels. I kinda liked your idea for "No Help No Hope", but I found it quite short and rather basic; why not making a sequel? It would justify using the same game engine and at style, and if would show more of a story that's currently underexploited. You can even make a single, big VN, and release it chapter by chapter; it would let you keep doing frequent small releases without making it look like a flood of remasters of the same game, and it would allow you to create stories that are a bit more complex and interesting to get into.

I wish to see some new, fresh, original content coming from you. If you attempt something new, I can offer my help (programming, testing, proof-reading, anything). If not, then I wish the best of luck and most of all, the best of inspiration.

GameDanTeam responds:

Thank you for gives us another detailed review!

First of all we'll explain why our games are similar. As we explained in our previous reply for No Help No Hope these Visual Novels we are publishing now are old works and were a learning process for our team. We have two Visual Novels more or less with the same scheme that will be also published here, after that we'll only work in more polished Visual Novels with digital art and we'll complete some games in development, all of them casual games with retro aesthetics.

Our team is focused on Visual Novels, Kinetic Novels and Casual Retro Games for now, in future we'll also work on more genres like platformers and action games.

All of our projects are funded by noisechip, the founder of the team. He struggles to be able to fund the projects paying the rest of the developers, having a common work and salary this is a hard task.

We just wanted to explain some details about the Team that can "explain" the reason behind our short games with not much graphics that also worked as a learning process to let us work in more complex games.

About this game we assume that the script was not good enough from your point of view, we are happy that you explained the reasons about and it help us a lot.

We do not think right now into make a game divided by chapters but it is a really good idea.

Thank you so much for your time explaining what do you think about our work, we really appreciate it.

Thanks.

[Kickochet (demo)]

Amazing!

I really, really love the idea and the execution! The visual art is super cool, the audio sounds natural, and most of all, it's sooo fun to play :D

Very forgiving gameplay (multiple gameplay elements that prevent you from losing your blade), visual cues to help aiming, natural movements... Add this to a quite original idea, and we have my latest favorite game :D

I didn't give 5 stars because of some minor problems (sometimes I get a screen that's completely blank - well, purple - apart from a "continue" arrow button, I suppose there must be instructions or story elements there, but they don't show up), plus the menu felt a bit weird at first. But the most important, the in-game experience, was amazing!

I'm glad I discovered this game :D It's 100% worth pursuing this project and if you need any help of pretty much anyting, I'd be more than glad to help :D

bozfloat responds:

Thanks for the hype! There's an issue right now where video won't play on Firefox, and yeah the menu is placeholder, but happy you enjoy the gameplay!

[Scary man 2]

I didn't last long. I'm usually not too much into this kind of game, but I honestly found the scene after I failed quite funny - was that from experience? ;)

KevinTheWolfy responds:

Thanks! And maybe ;P

[Rooftop Postgirl]

Quite interesting project :) A bit simple but seems like a good idea.

Here are a few things that I feel could be improved :
- Mention earlier that you can fast-forward dialogues with Z, the beginning was a bit slow and I was afraid it'd be like that the whole game.
- The movements should be more fluid.
I understand you wanted to make it realistic, but in the case of a platformer, maneuverability is super important and it is preferable to sacrifice realism to the profit of enjoyability. For example, when the character lands after a jump, don't make it completely stop; keep the horizontal velocity constant. Also, for maximum responsiveness, acceleration and deceleration are rarely a good idea (it isn't that bad here since their impact is minimal, but not having them at all would feel better). Finally, the birds are quite hard to avoid; I recommend you add a ducking option on the down arrow to make them a bit easier to avoid.
- Checkpoints? Considering the length of the level and its difficulty, I'd be glad not to restart the whole level over each time I trip and fall off ;)
- Music/Sound ambience? Apart from the audio cues, the game is completely silent. It feels a bit empty, a background music would be welcome :)

A few good things I noted :
+ Decoration detail/quantity is good. Not too much, not too little. I can't really judge the style itself since I'm not a big fan of the MS Paint style, but I didn't have any problem seeing where I'm going. I could spot the platforms and the targets pretty easily, and it didn't feel too empty. Good job on that!
+ Audio cues. I wrote earlier that the aduio felt quite empty, but it's really about what's missing; what's already there, the audio cues for the helicoper and for the birds are appropriate, non-invasive, and easily recognisable and distinguishable. Nice!
+ The humor with the stars at the beginning. It made me smile :)

Tell me if you intend to update the game, I'd definetly like to come back and replay :) If not, then good luck for your future projects!

PoteComPao responds:

Thank you for the review. I plan to update this game sometime.

[Oily]

Quite short, but really nice, especially for a week jam :)

Both the visual art and the music are perfect for the chosen style :) Maybe the oil character bounces a bit too much on movement but it's not a big issue.

The difficulty starts at a correct level but increases a bit to quickly imo; some more easy levels would let me some time to get the grasp on all the flexibility of that game style (not sure if I made sense there?). I do note that there are very few levels - 5 I think? - which I can understand given the time constraint; if you intend to later revisit this game, I recommend you add more levels to give a smoother progression curve :)

Overall quite cool, I'd love to see more of it :)

Good luck with your future projects!