ChronoNomad's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Hunt]

This is a really interesting Point 'n Click game you've made here, but there are some serious issues with the text. The story sections aren't properly proportioned and get lost off the right side, and for some reason all the text cuts off before the last letter. Even the PLAY button cuts off before the Y. I would highly suggest ironing those problems out.

Besides that, it's a very nicely made game. The graphics are nice to look at, and it doesn't seem to have any glitches during gameplay besides that textual anomaly. I really enjoyed all the sound effect work that went into this, as well. I would have liked to see a bit more to the game itself, but there is something to be said for something that can be played to conclusion in a handful of minutes. The inclusion of medals is much appreciated, and they all popped right up when they were supposed to.

Overall, I can see my way to giving this a solid 4/5 stars. I would probably offer up another half star if there weren't so many glaring technical issues regarding the text, which is a pretty big part of the game.

[Frogocado]

Didn't get to experience too much of the game due to game-breaking glitches. The worst of the lot is how incredibly easy it is to simply Dash right off screen. This happened several times as I played, and when I had finally managed to get through the first batch of levels and travel through time, the very first level I encountered ended abruptly when I Dashed off the left-hand side of the screen, never to reappear again.

I might give it another go later, but for this kind of tetchy gameplay I can't really see offering up a better score. I suggest more play testing in the future in order to work out issues like this before release, though I also understand that there may not have been adequate beta tests in order to get this out there in time for Pixel Day.

Interestingly enough, the real standout performance goes to the background music. I quite enjoyed the tracks and found them to be a bit reminiscent of classic Squaresoft titles like Seiken Densetsu and Chrono Trigger. Then again, when the music steals the show away from the game itself, that's a whole other problem in itself.

eyedust responds:

Fixed a couple of those game-breaking glitches, but thank you for the feedback!

[Pigs L Pixel]

A bit of a rage game (just like you said) due to the insta-death loss conditions, but having solid twitch reflexes definitely helps. The levels go by really quickly and they're not all that long, so it's not as rage-y and frustrating as it could be.

You've got a decent Pixel Day entry here, and I generally enjoy you're odd sense of aesthetics, both graphically and musically. Although, to be completely honest, the music is crazy repetitive, so it does begin to grate after a bit. The ridiculously small size is something of a negative, and I'm fortunate enough to have a pretty good-sized screen. I can't really imagine playing this on a much smaller screen since it would be a total squint fest.

Not particularly glitchy, which is good since it's such a short little pixelated romp, though the mouse-over text for "ring:double jump" and "yellow key" are transposed. Might want to fix that!

[Top Secret Mission]

Not a bad little entry to the Sneaky series, though I found a few errors in the game. 1. The crowbar is referred to as a briefcase, and 2. the "Get In!" medal is broken.

Some interesting puzzles here, and I was momentarily stumped when I tried to combine the door lock and color puzzles together to find the solution when it was actually much simpler. A bunch of backtracking, as per usual, but since it's a smaller game world that's not a big deal. The background images are just as pretty as ever, which is part of the draw for me.

Fix those little glitches and you should be good. Will I have to play again to earn the medal once its fixed? I'll check back later. Keep up the good work!

[Halloween Town Survival 3]

As others before me have said, the puzzles in this one were all pretty easy. For anyone trying to dig up the sand in the grave with the shovel, that's not what works this time around. You'll find another way when you need it.

There are a few glitches that I thought I should mention, the first of which being a game-breaker. After collecting one plank, I placed it in the bridge, but when I returned with the other two the first one was gone. Since there was no way to fix this, including reloading the game in the hopes that it would reappear, the only option was to start over from scratch. Secondly, when buying the food I didn't click on it straightaway and closed the dialogue box first, which caused the food to disappear. I got it to reappear and was able to eat it after clicking on the girl again. Lastly, the conversation text doesn't match the sale price for the empty bottle. While the initial display accurately says 25 gold, when you actually buy it or try to without having enough money on-hand, the price quoted is 15.

These programming issues affected my overall score more than anything, but it's still a solid addition to the series. Fix those up and you'll be good. Looking forward to the next installment.

[Cute Ninja]

Oh, where do I begin? There's a solid idea somewhere in here, but it was very poorly implemented. The ninja character is kind of cute, and he's got some very basic animations for running, jumping, and spinning to attack. That bit's not bad at all.

The constantly-running-in-one-direction-until-you-hit-a-wall mechanic has been done before, and among all the games I've encountered that are played this way, this one is quite likely at the bottom of the list. What's a little different here is that, when you do hit a wall, you stop. Well, if you're running along at ground level, anyway. In and of itself, this could be very well done if approached properly, but there are a couple of things that hamper it severely throughout the game...

1. Level Design. This starts out being almost okay at the beginning, as you practice timing your jumps, flips, wall jumping techniques, and so on. But there aren't any elements in the very first level that can kill you (more on this shortly). The problem is that the level design gets worse. Spaces become smaller, tighter, and ridiculously frustrating when trying to go in the right direction, or - worse yet - having to wait while you are forced to backtrack an untold number of times just do even *try* going in the proper direction. There's a whole heck of a lot riding on that one button, and it isn't even as responsive as it should be much of the time.

2. Loss Conditions. Well, there isn't really much in the way of variety when it comes to enemies, but that just means that more effort should have been put into them. The humanoids with the wrenches aren't a problem, but the gun-toting ones are complete rubbish. There's no animation to show when they're going to fire, they don't need to reload, and they can fire bullets at ridiculous speeds. Not only that, but they wait until you're right about on line with their aim, making it extremely easy to get killed in such a twitchy little action game. You then decided to mix the worst overall level with a crap ton of these and...POOF! You've got a recipe for the most disastrous part of the entire escapade. Oh wait, I almost forgot to mention the two boss battles! *sigh* Neither one is what I would call particularly well made, but the first one is a bloody cakewalk when compared to the fellow who spits fireballs in all directions. Either he kills you (cheaply), or you kill him (just as cheaply). Not a pleasant ending, I'm afraid.

I desperately need to wrap this up, so I'll give you one final piece of critical feedback before I go. It's a little thing that smart game designers like to call Stage Select. Once you've played through the game, wouldn't it be nice to be able to go back and find those idols you missed on your first run? Oh my goodness, YES! But no, it's simply not an option. If you want to do that, you have to start from the very beginning and play through every single level all over again.

Seriously, if you do nothing else, add a stage select feature that at least lets players who have completed the game go back and try to snag those other medals. Better still, let a player restart any level they have already played through once. And show how many idols the player still needs to collect in each level. You've obviously played games before, so you should already know that something a game like this requires at a very base level is some kind of collection mechanic.

So yeah, in a nutshell, this isn't horrible or completely unplayable, but neither is it very good. You can definitely do better.

[Gleam]

I don't really see much in the way of interaction between you and the reviewers here, but I'm going to take a stab at getting through. First off, not bad for a 12-hour project. That said, there is one extremely simple improvement that could make this exponentially better:

Increased recruitment variables.

Seriously, you could even split the existing Recruit button four ways, then simply add a x1, x10, x100, and x1000 multiplier to each section. It would require slightly more accurate mouse clicks from the player, but hey--that's not a bad feature for an idle/clicker game. And it would ultimately make the game 1000x playable in the process. Quite literally.

So, if you've been looking at your reviews, stop reading at them and do something about it. Another few minutes to tweak your game will not only not kill you, but it will make for a better game. Win~Win

If you're aspiring to be a game designer, it's your responsibility to listen to your audience. I know quite a few of successful people in the business, and - like me - this would bother them on a truly fundamental level. And hey, as an added incentive for you to put in a bit more effort, I will even add you to my Faves if you do. The potential is already there, so the rest is up to you.

genevrarose responds:

I added the buttons for more recruits. I feel bad for letting you down and making you think this is what I make on a regular basis. I implore you to check out my GOOD games such as:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/648430
and a game I'm currently making:
garrettreeves.com/concussion

[Sun Rise]

I've been playing your games since the Dead Detention series caught my attention, and while I probably wouldn't be able to honestly give any of them full marks, they are all solid experiences in their own right. The sheer frequency with which you release your games is quite praiseworthy in my opinion, and the fact that they come with the ability to earn medal points is also a plus. I also really like your idea of finding the hidden Golden Astronaut token since it tends to be a bit of added challenge, but at the same time you're generous enough to offer up hints in case since some are tricky and easily missed.

Moving on to Sun Rise in particular, while it is good and does remind me a bit of the Harvest Moon series in theory, it is also a bit clunky when it comes to the actual gameplay mechanics. There's a ton of meandering about to be done and it becomes rather tedious. Besides controller functionality there are a few other ways to possibly cut down on the intense level of key presses, such as automatic walking in a given direction if you hold the button for a couple seconds and stopping by tapping one of the arrow keys again.

Another issue I had was something another reviewer brought up, and that was the fact that my crops, which would have been fully developed on the first day of the new month, were simply dead and gone. I had spent all my money on potato seeds and ended up being broke. An actual in-game calendar at home would be a nice addition so that players can know just how long the planting season lasts, not to mention growth descriptions for the crops that tell you how many days they actually take from planting to reaping, provided one diligently waters them once a day. Little tweaks like this could make for an improved experience, but the dynamic of losing an entire crop on the first day of the month makes no actual sense beyond acting as a win/loss condition. At the time there was no way to acquire more money, and the thought of restarting from scratch was thoroughly undesirable. Big props for adding a money lending mechanic since my initial playthrough. Definitely a step in the right direction and the fact that you are actively patching issues gives you a score boost from 3 to 3.5 from me.

All in all, I managed to blow through all the events but one (Year End) in a single month quite easily, so I already felt pretty accomplished and had no real reason to continue after losing all my crops and cash, but even with the improvements you've been making I don't feel motivated to play through another 11 months just to earn one medal worth a measly 5 points. It might actually be a good idea to adjust the points earned for medals. Since the first event is a gimme, 5 points is just fine, but some of the others should have higher point values to make things more interesting. Heck, anyone playing all the way through to earn the Year End medal deserves at least 50 or 100 points for their tenacity.

You're doing good stuff here, mate. Keep it up and don't let anything get you down. You already have a solid fan base which includes myself. While the overall level of the graphics in your games could be improved across the board, it's not what I consider a deal breaker. The playability is ultimately much more important, and you typically do that quite well. That said, I do think you would garner even more attention if graphical elements and animation were improved. Best of luck to you going forward!

[Caved In 2]

While the premise is interesting, the execution is marred by poor gameplay. The graphics, music, and sound effects are all quite nice and really set the right kind of ambiance. Unfortunately, the simple ideas of rescuing damsels, mining for ore and gems, and finding treasure are all made infinitely more complex and far less pleasant by frustratingly unpredictable and seemingly unstoppable enemy AI.

For one thing, without strategically placing candles or finding the extremely short-lived mining helmets (weakest batteries ever), you can't even see what's lurking in the darkness. This might not be so bad with a larger or unlimited number of candles at your disposal, but to really improve things there should be at least a little light to see by in order to avoid the all-too-frequent cheap death.

The best strategy would seemingly be to create blockades so that enemy creatures cannot reach you, but this is virtually impossible in most instances since you can't even see them, so you die. You just can't create multiple blocks where you need them quickly or efficiently enough, openings in the walls can be difficult to differentiate from the floor since so much is brown, and if the enemy is already occupying the space where you need to place a block, well...it doesn't end well.

The enemies have no predictable AI that allows for strategy, and instead simply home in on where you are and stay right on top of you until you're turned into a pile of pixelated bones. The spiders are probably the most annoying in this regard, and they definitely resulted in the highest number of cheap deaths across my total plays.

Ultimately, I'm going right down the middle with a score of 2.5 out of 5 because, while it has a lot of potential to be a fun and interesting game, it also needs a lot of refinement before it can shine. Nothing damages the enjoyment of a game more than inherently flawed gameplay. The's really nothing fundamentally wrong with the mechanics, but the relentlessly unavoidable enemy AI and apparent fact that you cannot fight back in any way is regrettably quite damaging. Conversely, I found the music and sound effects to be the most impressive selling points. The sprites and animations are also good.

[The Guardian]

Not a bad idea overall, but as a game this was rather poorly executed. More directly to the point, the controls were just plain bad. Movement as a pixel person was hampered by the need to make an overabundance of very annoying boomerang jumps, leaping backward and then rebounding to climb many objects. Similarly frustrating was the overly-dramatic and pathetically slow walking mechanic for the giant. Improvements in these two areas could have really helped the flow of what is ultimately a ponderously slow-paced game. On the plus side, it's almost blessedly short.

The story isn't bad per se, but it is terribly cliché, and the whole thing felt like it had been weirdly inspired by Shadow of the Colossus--including some of the landscape elements. It's a classic story idea, but the dialogue was trite, riddled with grammatical errors, and generally kind of dull and lifeless. Case in point: it's been done, and done better. Nevertheless, I appreciate the idea for what it is, and once again the execution is what ends up leaving so much to be desired.

The music was...actually pretty good. In fact, the music was kind of the best part. It was well integrated, and seemed to go along pretty well with whatever was happening at the moment. There were no sound effects, and that seemed to work pretty well, simply allowing the music to come and go without interruption.

In conclusion, although I really wanted to like this more, I just couldn't bring myself to honestly rate it higher than three stars. It is a good attempt at an artistic story/game, and an average score of around three stars is certainly by no means a bad thing for a submission like this. It was interesting enough to see through to its conclusion. Once. The desire to earn that second medal is overshadowed by my complete lack of interest in playing through this entire game again, and that's because there won't be anything new to see or do. Much improvement would be necessary in order to make this a good game, but that doesn't mean that the experience was an entirely negative one.