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).
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
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.
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.
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? ;)
Thanks! And maybe ;P
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!
Thank you for the review. I plan to update this game sometime.
Art : Super nice
Music : Amazing!
Story : Interesting, a bit hard to hop in but really mesmerizing once attached
Ambience : Great sucess, thanks to the above
Gameplay : ...uhh... eh...?
I won't review the art, music and ambience, they are mastered beyond my knowledge in these domains. I don't see anything worth change. I can't even find the words to describe what make them as good as I found them :)
The story was a bit hard to get into because the characters weren't introduced (for ex. the main character - who is he? where does he come from? what's the current context?). Also, the justification for the title of the game comes too quickly; usually that's something that feels better toward the end of the game. If given too early, it feels a bit like getting rid of a story element.
Also, a tiny plothole (potential spoilers?) : why wouldn't the rescue crew accept the main character and their crystal before it turns black? They can let the crystal finish "aging" inside the rescue ship rather than in a deteriorating ship, it's much safer and it saves a lot of time (one or two days?).
Frankly, neither are a big deal. The story is still really cool and worth [reading? scrolling? clicking through?]
--------------------------------------
Now, for the real problem...
The gameplay... I understand it's a visual novel, but most visual novels involve more player activity than clicking for progress.
Usually, there are frequent decision making, in the forms, as you said to another reviewer, of dialogue choices or minigames. That helps the player to identify as the main character, which is, to me, an ultra-important element of visual novels. I need to believe that the character's choice are actually my choices, and giving me a list of options to progress can help creating such an illusion. The single choice I had in this game felt quite... fake. I can take any of those in any order, it'll do no difference and I'll end up picking them all anyways.
The minigame at the very end was quite interesting. Not too long, not too hard; still, I'd have two complaints :
1) It felt like a rushed way to split the ending. It's a bit cliché to do an obvious good ending vs. bad ending, especially when the difference between both require absolutely nothing from prior to the minigame. It feels like everything I did in the game before the minigame had no impact whatsoever on what the ending would be, and the result of the minigame was too obvious to feel like a real choice.
2) No retry button. I failed the minigame three times before succeeding, and each time I had to start the entire game over and over again. (Also, I had to refresh to start again; letting the game start over bugged the mouse, which I couldn't move after the game was completed once.)
The gameplay (or lack thereof) is the biggest problem here. Don't waste the entire idea, it's a really nice one, I'd just recommend something that's more interpelling and requires more than simply clicking.
I feel like the NG emote from the score I give is representative of how I feel about this game; I feel it's a quite interesting game, not exactly something that's complete as it is now, but definetly something worth building upon.
Good luck with your future projects!
Thank you for your detailed review.
We are happy that you liked the game. About the gameplay we'll work hard to improve in our next games. We are a young Indie Game Team, our first releases were a learning process for all of us. We are right now in the process of polish the details of old games and publish them on the net.
We are developing right now a game with stunning digital art graphics, we improved the gameplay but taking a look at your review we know that we need to improve more on it.
For the next script and game design we'll develop we'll take this review seriously in mind.
Your comments let us understand what we really need to polish in our work.
About your complaints we'll work to add a retry button to skip the need of play again the game to reach the good ending and about the bug we'll fix it soon in a new update of the game.
Thank you for take your time into write a such detailed review. We encourage you to try out our other games uploaded here on newgrounds.
Thank you so much.
I really like the story and the end - the very, very end, of course :)
Only one small problem : when I fully finished the game, it redirected me to a third-party website. I don't like it as often I write extensive comments as I play the game, if I did that now I would've lost my entire comment. Plus, it feels a bit spammy to have a random redirect to a website I don't know (GameJolt, I suppose it's another website you use since it showed a page about your game). But I like the idea of the game that closes itself, so if you could change it so instead it flat-out removes the canvas as a whole, it would be great :D (and, I suppose, a small greyed-out message to not leave the user too confused)
Good job overall :D
Oh right, I forgot that I used to include that in all my games when I used to only be on gamejolt.
Maybe I should recompile this one but with a link to my newgrounds profile instead X)
Looks like a cool idea (the sliding thing is a classic but it's always fun to me), but there are several issues with how the idea was developed.
- Many times, the level is a copy of the precedent one but with an extra part at the end. Minor issue, but it makes it feel a tad bit repetitive since I have to re-perform the same thing I just solved.
- Alongside the thematic bugs, there are several bugs that don't seem like they're part of the game. Many other reviewers already reported a few, mine was quite strange; I could move the character around, but it wouldn't interact with anything but walls. Spikes and teleporters were effectless, rendering me stuck in the level. I indeed had to stop playing there. Not sure what can cause this, a race condition maybe? (Relevant info : I have pressed escape once since I saw it was the key for the pause/menu, which didn't appear, so I went back to playing and realised the bug.)
- Sometimes upon dying (not sure if it's random or if there's a rule), I have to restart the entire stage. Never, ever do! Forcing the player to re-do what they already did is extremely boring and the best way to lose their attention! I'm not sure if it's a feature or an unintended bug, but in any case it is important to fix that. At least (if it's a feature), you would need to implement a life count system so it's clear to the player.
- The effects are cool but waaaaay to invasive. The small effects (like the fish-eye and intermittent "glitch curve" passing through the screen) were quite nice, but some really look like they were abused. For example, sometimes, when sliding, there is a clear visual & audio glitch effect playing. It looks cool, problem is it plays way too frequently. Considering how imposing it is, I'd recommend you don't use it more than once per level on average. You can, for example, play it when a level is finished or just started. (At the same time I don't recommend playing it too sparingly or randomly; it might feel a bit jumpscare-ish.)
Not sure if the jam had a harsh time limit, but if it did, it definetly played bad for that game. It looks like a nice idea, but it feels quite rushed and untested. I'd recommend to spend more time testing, polishing and asking people to test your games to have some user feedback - don't undervalue the user feedback!
Best of lucks for your next projects!
I don’t usually respond to comments but I do read them all.
I understand all the unintentional bugs and glitches that people are experiencing along with the invasive glitch effect.
I am working on a project right now and I am still contemplating on remaking this game with improved levels, better user feedback, a button to enable and disable glitch effects, an actual pause button, a level select screen, Wasd for movement along with the arrow keys, lower frequency of the glitch effect, giving a better use for the effect, fixing all the soft lock glitches, adding a restart button, and making you restart from the start of the level and not for the start of the stage.
I do admit the poor level design and over excessive glitch effect but it was my 5th or so game jams and I felt quite pressured by the 3 day time limit.
So what I would like to know is if I fixed the game would it be worth it or is it better off if I just continue my next game instead. (If I do start fixing the game the current project I’m working on will be paused and not quit)
Thanks for the feedback!! :DD
Alright, so I stumbled upon a tiny-tiny problem...
Level 17 :
- Enemies can spawn 5 units in the span of a single second. I can spawn at most 3 per roughly 10 second.
- A single regular enemy unit can beat two of my units before dying.
- Those suicide bomber units can wipe out my whole fleet at once. They do waaaaaaaaaay too much damage and have no limit as to how many units they affect.
- In addition to the above, I can only move my units in pair of three, which means I can't send a single unit to die on the suicide bombers, but rather *three* units at a time. Considering I have to hold the entire thing with three units until I have enough mana to generate a new group (which will most likely be exploded at spawn), I don't think I can't afford to lose my entire fleet while the game decides it's a good time (when I have no units left) to spawn 5-6 more enemy units and end the game.
I'm not sure if this results in poor decisions in upgrades, but since there is no way to neither :
1) Revert upgrades and recover gems; nor
2) Go back to previous levels in case of defeats to get more gems and help improve; nor
3) Reset the game in a neat way (the button to restart from 0 is literally called "Quit" - kind of means I shouldn't press it until I abandon playing the game at all);
I expect it shouldn't be possible for me to get to a point where I'm stuck and I can't win with the upgrade set I have. It shouldn't be expected from the player to know which upgrade combination will be optimal and which will result it guaranteed loss. If such combinations exist, you should make sure the player can't achieve them : for example, if one shouldn't upgrade a unit to the max before unlocking a few others, lock the higher upgrade levels until very far in the game; if one shouldn't buy one unit (say, the second last unit available) before buying all those that precedes it, then you should lock units until the player purchased all other units that precedes them.
I'd like to give a boost to what @vamprewill said : it really needs something so I can improve when I lose ten times in a row and it's obvious that I can't pass the level I'm at.
Other than this (very, very) surprising boost in difficulty, I have nothing else to complain about. I've never been a fan of bloody/gore/medical themes so I won't review them, I'll leave that to someone who's more used to the genre. The whole thing looks quite professional and complete, apart from some very minor details that could get improvements (make the play button stand out more so it looks less the same as the menu button, the spawning bounds seem pointless and are invisible until you do a mistake, etc.). The overall idea looked quite interesting and well developed, but really, really not balanced starting from level 15+, which pretty much wipes all the fun.
Really deserves a fix, hopefully it's not too painful to update, because I could have a lot of fun with that game if it wasn't for me being stuck.
=== TL;DR ===
If you played until level 14-15, expect a HUGE bump in difficulty in the few upcoming levels. I even recommend not playing them at all (at least until we get an update or some advices) unless you're rageproof, as they risk to just ruin your experience from the game.
Wow, thank you for that big review! A lot of useful information for me. Currently, I make the Steam version from scratch and I will consider all that you said!
Yeah, the game isn't balanced from level 11, also I want to add some new mechanics. Initially, I wanted to upload only 10 levels here
Hey there!
Age 24, Male
Joined on 6/17/16
Space Survival 
Suicide Cliff 
Scary man 2 
Rooftop Postgirl 
No Help No Hope ![[BTNverse] Curse of the eastern god](https://picon.ngfiles.com/749000/flash_749953_small.png?f1600904533){kind=small}
[BTNverse] Curse of the eastern god 
Sticky Sam 
Listeria Wars 
