Sheizenhammer's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[xD Gravity Acrobat]

Essentially unplayable.

This has one of the most common flaws in flashes from people new to making them: It's difficult for all the wrong reasons.

The graphics look more like place-holders than finished products. I know you're not exactly skilled in Flash just yet, but would it have really been so much effort to actually try to draw a spaceship, instead of just putting a random pentagon over a gradient dot? The whole intro thing goes on about piloting a spaceship through space, and yet there's absolutely nothing space-related anywhere on the screen. Why not?

And the graphics are the least of this flash's problems. The gravity physics seem a little on the weak side, and there doesn't appear to be a maximum speed the "spaceship" can go, making it all too easy to lose control of it. A fact not helped by the way the ship spirals around a point outside of it when moving from side to side. Making it spin may have been a good idea for an animation effect, but since the pivot point isn't in the right place the ship travels in an unpredictable S-bend pattern instead of a straight line (and given the precise nature of a maze game, this is hardly welcome).

But the biggest problem this has, by a LONG way, are the hit areas. ALL of the hit areas are so completely inaccurate that you're basically flying blind, which in a maze game like this makes beating it entirely down to blind luck, not skill. Sometimes the 'spaceship' can go completely over the lines without anything happening; other times the game restarts when you're not even near them. With a game that has a gravity aspect, and a time limit, having to stop and work out where you -really- are at every corner completely kills both the fun and the point (especially when it turns out the wall's hit area is in the wrong place too).

I'm struggling to think of any good reason why you'd submit this in the state it's in. The only things that actually work properly are the scrolling effect and the music (which was actually pretty good: neither annoying or over-bearing like what you get in most flashes like this), as well as the buttons. And those are the only reason why this isn't getting a zero.

That said, I do like the fact that you haven't just gone for the same old mouse pointer maze game everyone else does, and I would actually like to see you try this again, but it needs some serious work before it should be submitted a second time, IMO. No-one's going to hate you for making a challenging game, but there's a big difference between 'challenging' and 'half-broken'.

JustGogi responds:

Thanks for an honest review. I will read this before I post another game.

[Flying Guy]

All that, just for a broken quiz button.

Protip: saying "it's hard" in the author comments doesn't grant you immunity from basic game-making principles. Namely, making the game possible to finish.

The graphics are about as basic as they get, but at least they seem functional... until you realise the 'hit area' for either the walls or the character (or both) is larger than what is shown on the screen. Honestly, 9 times out of 10 I wasn't even anywhere near the walls when the 'You Died' screen popped up.

And then there's the controls... or rather, the lack of them. It's plainly obvious "it's hard" simply because you either don't know how, or couldn't be bothered, to make any kind of 'stop' or 'hover' function. Navigating the gaps you have to go through with a character incapable of stopping is more a matter of blind luck than skill, especially considering how fast the guy goes to begin with.

However, I did complete it (after about 100 'you died' screens) up until the bit with the coloured areas. At which point, the biggest problem I have with this came up: After the screen with the broken buttons outlining which way to go (I don't believe for one minute those are broken deliberately, BTW), I come to a guy who informs me that I cannot pass until I complete his quiz. And no matter how many times I click on him, said quiz never comes up. He just repeats his spiel about how I'm not getting past. Indefinitely.

Now, either you've done a really good job of hiding this quiz, or (much more likely) it's broken, and you can't go any further than that screen.

The reason this is getting a score of just one? ALL of these problems would've been identified by simple play-testing of your own flash. There is no excuse for submitting something with this many basic errors in it, and especially not something uncompletable because of broken buttons. No-one's expecting you to come up with top-50 material on your first try, but at least make sure it works properly before submitting it.

That said, there is help available for you, if you want to try this again. Newgrounds has a forum dedicated to Flash techniques and troubleshooting, and honestly, I've seen worse first-tries than this. If you need help making the buttons this needs to be a half-decent game, there's lots of people in the Flash forum willing to help you with them. If I were you, I'd try again, but only after making sure everything is at least functional.

RubixCat responds:

I do agree that it needs some work on it, but I don't know how to fix the wall problem. I did it in adobe flash, im still new to it and I don't know how to fix every problem.
The only thing I can say is why its like that. When I create a symbol on flash it comes up with a box around it, that box is where the other wall will sense.

And its not broken because I can make the button visible by just removing the first frame, it is surpose to be like that

[Adventures of Thin Air]

Hopefully, this is unfinished.

There's not a single aspect to this game that doesn't feel like it was done simply because you couldn't be bothered to do it better. The graphics look like they were done in MSPaint, the gameplay is annoying, the music gets old really fast... and that's all there is to this.

It's not what IS here that makes it so bad, but what ISN'T here. OK, so the point was to make a platformer with an invisible player, thereby giving it some challenge, right? Well, sorry, but since the 'invisible' player is always in the dead center of the screen, all you have to do is put your mouse cursor in the center of said screen, and presto! No more effort involved in working out were you are.

Sadly, with the only semi-original part of this so easily circumvented, the lack of even basic features becomes extremely obvious: No health / lives / anything of the sort; no checkpoints mid-way through levels; no option to turn the music off; no powerups; the player can't walk up slopes or stick to moving floors; the direction / jump actions are sluggish by comparison to most other platformers; hell, even the quality adjustment buttons are missing! I remember flashes from 2001 that have those.

This needs a LOT of work to be anywhere near as good as the other platformers that have tried this (like 'Invisible Runner' to name but one), or even worth playing for any amount of time for that matter. I'm giving you a 3 for the fact that what little there is here is at least functional, but honestly, I think that's generous. Flashes of better quality have been appearing in the portal for almost 10 years now. Functionality alone does not a good flash make.

VioletVulpine responds:

SINCE WHEN CAN PAINT DO GRADIENTS?

[IQTester]

Ironically, it's intellectually flawed.

It would've been good if it didn't do the one thing an I.Q test absolutely must not do in order to be accurate: Confuse intelligence with general knowledge.

The interface was solid, if a little bland. However, when you're trying to think about the questions it's actually better to have as few distractions as possible, so not overloading it with pretty backgrounds was probably the better option here. The same can be said for the music: It's not too intrusive, and the option to turn it off is a good idea in this case.

The major problem here was the content of some of the questions, most notably 8 and 13.
Question 8 is not an I.Q question for 2 reasons: First, if you don't know what the English spelling of the country is in the first place (and there are at least 5 different spellings for it just using normal European letters), you aren't going to get this right through any means other than random chance. Either you know it or you don't. Secondly; with the millions of towns in existence on Earth, the chances of those letters being arranged into a town name by accident is quite high.
Either way; your ability to answer Q.8 has little to do with the internationally recognised definition of 'intelligence', which literally reads:

"The speed at which one adapts to unfamiliar situations."

Since it's impossible to "adapt" your thought patterns to answer a question that relies on background knowledge, it's not a valid I.Q problem.

To that effect, 9 and 10 have the same problem since they can't be worked out from the wording of the questions either: you either know the meanings of the words or you don't. As simple as they seem to you and me, it can't be assumed that everyone knows these things. What about all the people who aren't native English speakers and / or have skewed knowledge of the language?

Then there's 13. Again, the same problem. My education never focused on the meanings of any of those words, and I'm a native English speaker. Does that make me innately dumber than someone who's been given a slightly different education? I hope not. Intelligence was supposed to be independant of education anyway.

I'm sure you get the idea by now, so let's just say 15 was the same thing, for the same reasons stated already.

To conclude: A good first attempt as far as the interface and programming was concerned, but wherever you got these questions from is not a reliable source of IQ problems, making for an invalid test overall.

(P.S: 136. No, I'm not writing all this out of butthurt over a low score either. :P )

DemiseAnimation responds:

This was intended for people who speak english as their main language, sorry if you didnt understand some of the questions :s

[Cosmic Crush 2]

Second time lucky.

Just as good as the first one, only this time it works much better thanks to not getting stuck on things that just clump together and eat you alive.

However, there is one annoyance left in it: the moons can't tell the difference between stuff that's not a danger to you and things that are. It makes absorbing smaller objects irritatingly difficult when you've got a moon on just about every possible area of the planet / sun / galaxy / whatever. Half the time, even with just one or two moons, you have to be really careful about how you approach edible stuff, else all that happens is you end up losing a few moons and obliterating the object that could've benefitted you had you not been surrounded with moons.

The obvious solution to the above would be to program the moons to only hit stuff that would otherwise harm you, and ignore things smaller than the main rock.

There's also the issue of replay value; there isn't very much at all here. Although it is a lot of fun the first time round, there's not many reasons to want to do it again (unless you just really love absorbing stuff). Why you took out the survival mode from the last one, I've no idea (unless it was hopelessly bugged or something).

This file is less than 1/5 of the maximum upload limit to Newgrounds, so there's a lot of free space for you to experiment with new modes / objects / stages / etc. This is a good start, and all it would take to make this potential top 50 material is a healthy dose of creativity.

Keep at it! This is gonna go somewhere good, if given enough time and effort.

Bi-Polar-Bear responds:

i didnt take the survival mode out, i took the level mode out, its only a survival game now, you can submit your score at the end.

[Being a Helpful NG'er]

Extremely useful.

While this is a great way to encourage people to take part in NG more, there are a couple things it could do with:

Firstly, it could've done with mentioning the Google advanced trick when the search bar doesn't work. For those that don't know what I'm on about: go to Google, and hit the 'advanced search' option. At the bottom there's a 'search within site or domain' box. Type/paste "http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/" into that box (minus the " " symbols), and then enter your keywords into the top search box.
This is good for finding things that can't be found by the search bar, or things that are buried in hundreds of pages of results.

Also: you're right, it is a bit text heavy. Considering most of the text-walls are copied from their relevant places on NG, a simple summary would've sufficed here (and if people would want to know more, the links to the full explanations are right there).

All that said, it remains a very good flash. I wouldn't have found half of the stuff it pointed me to on my own.

RohantheBarbarian responds:

Thanks for the great review!

[Abusive Review Guide 2]

why isn't this in the FAQ page somewhere?

overall, this is brilliant. there are one or two things i should point out though:

apparently, review mods actually have three options open to them when they get something brought to their attention. two of these were mentioned in the flash (deleting the review/flash and dishing out positive w.p, or clearing the review/flash, with negative w.p going to those who flagged it). according to a couple of mods, there is the option to clear a flash of flags without giving those who flagged it negative whistle points. apparently, this option is used when they get something that falls into a 'grey area' (like that "this flash is gay" review you mentioned, for example), where something doesn't technically break the rules, but any mod who sees it can certainly see the reason behind why it was flagged.
however, flagging borderline stuff like that will at best get you nothing (and may stuff your whistle; every mod is different, so each would likely have a slightly different opinion on where the line should be drawn here). i just wanted to mention it for people who watch this and think: "oh shit, i flagged something that didn't break the rules, even though it looked like it did!" that doesn't necessarily mean they/you WILL get bad w.p for it.

secondly (on a much shorter note): Rage's thread has now been locked due to prolonged misuse. people were automatically flagging stuff linked to in that thread, without actually thinking about what they were doing.

RohantheBarbarian responds:

Those are fair points, however the point I was trying to make was that if you flag stuff on the borderline you are taking a huge risk, so it's not really worth it.

As for Rage's I'm aware that it has been locked but I no longer have the .fla for this or my other flashes so I can't change it. No reason that you can't continue to flag things anyway.

Thanks for the review.