Equinox-Twilight's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Adventure Story]

Platformers

You understand the curtain fire (bullet hell) mechanic really well, I'll give you that, but you're missing a lot that actually drives the platformer genre. This game is very well built, the atmosphere is nice, but the mechanics are way off. Enemy timings and behaviors are awful for both regular enemies and bosses. While it may seem like the enemies have a touch of randomness to them, this is not the case. The problem is that you telegraph what the enemies are going to do very poorly or not at all. This is pivotal to appropriate reaction time on the part of the player, otherwise they spend more time cautiously approaching enemies than actually playing the game - unless, of course, you've memorized every enemy's pattern in the game (This is what game developers do if they test they're own game and what testers do if you don't rotate your testing groups).

The platforming is overplayed. I honestly started to ask myself when I'd reach contiguous ground. I became more irate still when I found that the running trend was going to be a monster that took more than one hit on a platform large enough only for it and nothing else. Magic didn't terribly help this either, since it made sense to shoot the enemy with a fireball and have them walk off of the platform. The problem with that is that you run out of magic quickly and then in turn have no support skills.

My honest recommendation to you is to play the classics again, man. Mario, Sonic, and Mega Man. Since your gameplay style most closely resembles Mega Man Zero, I recommend playing Mega Man Zero 3 on the Gameboy Advance. Focus hard on what really makes these games work and work well.

matt-likes-swords responds:

I don't completely disagree.

[Nanobeast]

Not exactly hard, but some spots are sloppy...

Which makes the gameplay troublesome rather than difficult.

I enjoy the simple gameplay, I really do, but the levels themselves have poor structure. What I can tell, is that your enemy waves are completely randomized for their spawn points, which is not the way even retro shooters worked. Enemies should be generated on timelines. The enemies' patterns themselves are simple and memorable, which is fine. Regarding the upgrade loss, the mechanic itself is fine, but if your upgrade levels are too low, it becomes near impossible to play the game beyond Chapter 3, and this is what past reviews are likely gunning at in whining about the death downgrades.

While this is by no means a bullet hell game, it would do you well to play Touhou and learn why the game plays as well as it does. I will point out though that red bullets on a red background is huge no-no for visual cues. It makes it bad for shooter players to track all of the bullets on the screen, and heavily impacts reaction time. Second, enemy bullets should be visible over the player's. I should not be dying by something that I literally cannot see.

My last quip comes from the final level. You have traps laid throughout the terrain that leave it to dumb luck to avoid and work through. Now, this too is alright if there was some way for a seasoned player to escape the traps before it was too late. Additionally, continuing and having to replay an entire stage makes a lot of sense to me with the exception of your final level where you need to battle the final boss multiple times. You really should allow players to continue where they left off as opposed to forcing a replay of the whole level - especially when one hit from anything will end your game if you start the chapter with 1 life.

After getting to part two of the level repeatedly, but dying due to walls or walls, rocks, and enemy barrages, and then being forced to replay the whole level killed the entertainment for me. Now, I doubt you're going to alter any of these things in your game, but I do hope this sheds some light on the minor negativity you're getting in your reviews and why your game is a very good but not great.

I look forward to your next endeavor.

RatherRandomReality responds:

It does suck that you were so close but you couldn't beat it. Thanks for the in-depth review, it has some valid points.

[2006| The Rambo Bros. 2]

Nice sequel

I have to admit, after the first game, it loses some of its funny factor, but the humor is still there. Stay vigilant and try your best to hammer out the kinks in your code, I know what a pain in the can debugging can be, but keep at it! I managed to gather up all the medals pretty quickly, including the Super Star Medal.

What would spruce this game up would be if you had some active scenerios. What I mean by this is that the player is allowed to move forward in a stage, and we get the choice to choose the path we take. This would also open up the possibility of an 'entire map covered' medal. The ability to use different weapons through a weapon change button would be nice, too.

A nifty weapon for the player to be able to use is the tried and true fire flower, instead of having it as a special weapon (although, I do like how you implemented the flower ;P).

You don't necessarily have to do this if you wish not to, since real life life can't, but you can vary the way the guns work, instead of just their gun specs.

Think about adding in weapons that offer splash damage and other possible bonus effects, like mission three for example. The stealth and zoom abilities were a nice way to make the weapons actually vary.

Lastly, where's my prize for gathering up all eight medals? ;)

Good luck with the third installment, and I hope my advice will be of some help to. Peace!

Holy-Howard responds:

Congrats for getting all medals and thanks for the long review.

I´d really love to do a sidescrolling shooter but I don´t know how to script it... yet. Sooner or later I´ll have the time to look for tutorials but right now I have to take a creative break concerning Rambo Bros. so the next one can be a hit - instead of an lousy add-on.

However, I like the map idea and I already thought of an "change-weapon-button" for this part but it just seemed to be a bit pointless...

[Bullet Bill]

Hmph

There's more you SHOULD have done to this before submitting it. Your level design and layout is absolutely horrible with the speed at which the character moves. The way it's set up makes the game play in a sort of 'die and memorize' kind of way. This proves very tedious and annoying. Secondly, you either need to add a half-way respawn point, or you need to cut the maps down in size, because having to start all the way back at the beginning at the middle of one of these maps is absolutely horrible. I strongly advise that you look into basic level and game design theory, it will do you some good.

Psycosis91 responds:

To be honest I don't care for people saying the level design sucks, as I know it does. I made the levels true but it took me 20-30 minuts to past each one to make sure it's passable. Now I can complete them my first try so I'm not gonna let someone talk me into making it easier when they give up.