Lesuperchef's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Survival of the Fetus]

The game itself is fine: original idea, fair gameplay, and most of all, really good art.

Which is the problem.

You rated your game "Everyone", but this is NOT safe for the whole family. I came here thinking there would be a minimum of censorship, but it seems like I'm playing a misrated Mature game. While I don't mind too much, this can become dangerous if a young/sensible person browses Newgrounds with Teen-Mature-Adult ratings disabled.

Thankfully, the game's thumbnail gives a good idea of its content. Still, if anyone reads this wondering what would the content warnings would be :
- Literally playing with a fetus
- Medication/"junk food"

I haven't seen more (no blood or sexual stuff or anything), but I have to say I didn't have the courage of playing more than two in-game days. I wasn't prepare to toy with a fetus :/

About the game now; I can't expand really far, but I haven't noticed anything particularly bad. The art is... fine, not too realistic but well made, the story makes sense (it seems the game will go each day until birth), the animations before each level explains the context pretty well. The controls seems to be a problem for some people, but I didn't go far enough to judge about that; my only complaint being that we sometimes don't have enough time to react.

Overall, I don't really like to give a rating based on such a small portion of the game, but I'll give 4 stars. I'll disregard the wrong age rating, hoping it will eventually be changed, at the very least to Teen. (please :/)

Best regards,
- Lesuperchef

[Rotate]

Pretty cool game! I can feel the inspiration from "Shift" ;)

I suggest you add more easier/tutorial levels at the beginning to explain us the mechanics of the game. I didn't know I had to move right after rotating (while falling) in the second level :P

For those struggling with a level, spot all the flat surfaces and try to reach them all, one of them will lead to the right path.
And for those who keep rotating in the wrong way, the gravity will go in the direction the letter is; E is on the right, you'll fall to the right, Q is on the left, you'll fall to the left. These little tricks helped me complete the game ;)

Criobite responds:

Thanks, glad you liked it! :D

[Arrozoid]

Pretty interesting game and concept :)

One good point is that it isn't as annoying as expected, thanks to the fairly large hitboxes and to the fact that there is no excessive "Game over" (the only thing that can make you fail is running out of time, and thankfully we have more than we need).

My only complain would go, obviously and as previously stated, that the end of the game isn't well handled. (I thought that the blue text would be a new game feature). But it's only a minor problem ;)

Keep up the good work!

[Redirect]

Really cool game!

The graphics are simple and clear, the sound effects are smooth and adapted to the theme, and the idea is amazingly original.

The board that shows us how the input will work is a surprisingly good idea, and it doesn't make it annoying like some other concepts would. It is overall pretty well balanced, and the level design allows me to think more about how the input works than how I should pass some annoying part I'd waste an hour to try over and over again.

Level 12 caught me by surprise with its one-time-out-of-three input on the spacebar; every level amazes me more than the preceding one. There are just enough levels to impress me, and even though I would've played more of it, I still think it's a good idea to leave me there rather than get me bored with 70-ish levels ;) Also, it keeps a door open for a potential sequel ;D

Great job overall, keep up the good work ^^

[Puzzle Jumper (LD 41)]

Interesting objective, very flawed result.

I like the main idea of adding a character to the Tetris game. Even though very basic, it adds a little plus to the game. But there were many major flaws that counter-balanced this...

Let's start with the bugs :
- There is no horizontal collision between blocks. As long as it is not grounded, you can spam left or right very quickly to make your current block pass through currently grounded blocks.
- Once grounded, the blocks don't always 'freeze' the correct tiles. It often blackens additional tiles that weren't covered by the block. For example, let's say you have a block shaped like ¬ (if you can't see the shape, it's an L flipped and rotated), it would freeze the entire surrounding box. I'm not sure if I'm clear here, but try playing the game, you should encounter the problem pretty easily.
- At some point the character refused to jump. Also, I didn't find how to make it move.
- The character later ended up stuck inside a block.
- There is no game over; once I reached the top, blocks kept appearing.

Some more suggestions :
- Add a music and sound effects. These can help liven up your game. (Be careful to not make them too loud/distracting, however)
- Try finding a graphic theme for the game. At the moment, all I can see it a texture for the background, a solid black color for the foreground, and a drawing for the character. Think about what theme you would like you game to be : Do you want it to be futuristic, technologic? Or would you rather have a peaceful, joyful, natural-themed game? A dark hell-themed one, maybe? There are plenty of themes you could use, just choosing one would already help making your game more interesting.

These two last points are optional and less important than the bugs listed above, but I think it would be useful to give more thoughts. Even if you won't ever touch this game ever again, at least you have something to help you if you make any other game.

Here are my thoughts. It feels like this started from a good idea, but it was rushed and untested, which let many severe flaws in the game. I understand having a short deadline can be stressful, but you might want to at least test your game before uploading it. That being said, nothing prevents you from improving your game outside the bounds of the contest :)

Best regards,
~ Lesuperchef

BlazeLeeDragon responds:

thank you for the feedback, yes this is a majorly rough draft for the lundum dare 41 challenge. Only been working on it on and off for the last two days. I did just upload the latest version that corrected the horizontal issue. I also added controls to the description. I'm trying to find out how to sync the fall rate of blocks with the player. once I fix this i'll make it so you can't move the blocks or rotate them unless he is on them. falling blocks should kill him and end the game, score should increase per second as well as if lines are completed. However I have not figured out the issue with the lines not resolving...so a lot to be done before playable :)

still appreciate you taking the time to look and try it out.

If i can get more done before the challenge is done i'll upload..

[Build Kingdom Template]

Looks interesting, but very flawed.

First of all, it goes way too slowly. Once the game loaded, there is nothing I can do except waiting and looking four numbers rising at an incredibly low rate (and looking at the buildings' stats). I literally waited here 10 minutes, and there's still nothing I can do. I suggest three things to fix this :
1- Make sure the player has something to do right away. It can be as simple as pressing a button to create the first building(s). Plus, it would be a good way to adding a tutorial to the game, which would make the player feel less lonely in this empty game. Even more, it would prevent the game from starting before the player is even ready.
2- This point is predictable : make the game more fast-paced. Instead of increasing resources every 10 seconds, do it each second. Instead or giving only 2 resources per round, give 10. Instead of asking for 500 resources before doing something, ask for 100. (Be careful not making it too easy, though).
3- Make it more varied and complete. Try adding more buildings, maybe optional buildings; try giving us more things to do, especially while waiting for our amounts of resources to rise.

I understand this is a template for other people to reuse and I actually kind of like the idea, but I don't think this is the right place to do it. As players, we are expecting something interesting for users. I wouldn't complain as much if the template was an actual complete game by itself, but this is just too empty and basic to be entertaining.

Don't throw this to garbage, though; there are a few aspects that caught my attention. The graphics, for example, are really well made and adapted for this king of game; I just wish I could see more of it. Maybe more buildings? One skin per building level?

And finally, three little details :
- Maybe consider naming your resources the same everywhere. Naming "planks" as "lumber" in different parts got me lost a few moments.
- A song in the background can help liven it up a bit. Try searching for one that fits the atmosphere you would like to depict, NG's Audio Portal is awesome for that ;)
- The tags... "Strategy"? "RPG"? I wouldn't recommend assigning wrong tags to your game, as this might attract you the frustration of people actually searching these types of games and realising they've been tricked.

Thanks for reading, hopefully I said a few things that can help you improve your game :)
Best regards,
~ Lesuperchef

[Color Labyrinth]

Only mildly entertaining... The original idea seemed good (even though I'm not a fan of avoiding with mouse), but most of the elements make this game uninteresting to play : very low amount of detail in art, ordinary level design (Level 4 takes waaaay too long to complete) and the difficulty isn't balanced. Also, the music doesn't fit the game type at all :(

I hope this review can help improving your future games :)

garylu1999 responds:

I cannot put detail in art since I have zero skills in drawing on computers. I am much better at drawing on paper.
I personally find level 4 way too easy. I thought it was pretty generous since I gave a decent amount of space for your mouse and it moves slowly enough.
The reason I chose this music is to fit with the idea that this game is colorful. I also do not want to make the player feel rushed to complete the level either.

[Electric Connection]

Nice game! The idea isn't the most original I've ever seen but it's well made; it looks great and it's overall fun to play :) Nice job ^^

[4 Colors PGS]

So...

First game : The first card I see is a +2, so I get 2 more cards, then the bots starts spamming +2's, skip-your-turn's, and +4's, so I end up with 50 cards while the bot only has 4 left, and I didn't even play yet...

Second game : I can finally take my revenge and do the same to the bot >:D And it ends up with the bot having 9 cards, and me, a score of 100'000...

You might want to add a difficulty option ;)

Other than this, graphics and music are really good! Can't say the idea is original though ;D
Anyways, keep up the good work! ^^

[Scoogle Alpha]

It looks like it started from a good idea, but was developed for five minutes before being thrown in NG without being tested...

Some suggestions to improve the game :
- Add a button to go back. Several screen, such as the "WIP" one for "ScooTube" and people's profiles are dead ends and I have to refresh the page.
- Art could be improved. Outside the search engine page (Which feels ok), many pages look like they've been made in MS Paint under 30 seconds :(
- There is no real game... All I do is search every page and refresh each time until I'm done... And mail isn't really helpful :(

So I suggest to make sure you have at least a core game before uploading it, because now there's no real interest in playing it :(

squidee5 responds:

Thanks for the feedback, but this was just a little thing I slapped together on Scratch. I tougbt I would put it onto newgrounds.