HerbieG's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Platform Picasso]

An interesting idea, but:
1. Change key for jumping to up arrow/w;
2. The controls seem to be sticky sometimes;
3. The guy falls too easily from the painted platforms.

GoodL responds:

Thank you so much for the feedback! You can now use W or the up arrow to jump.

[Firestarter]

Interesting! But the biggest problem of this game is that you cannot move around the map with the mouse cursor movement, so when you need to burn just a small part you may accidentally destroy entire district.
The game itself is too random. You may want to burn few buildings, but in the meantime they may get connected to another big complex of them, burning the city to 0 and you can do absolutely nothing about it.
Those parts may be even connected out of the screen. It happened to me lots of times and it makes the game simply unfair to the player.
Also a top-down view would be much better than isometric.

SilverwareGames responds:

Its kind of chaotic, yes, but that was the feel of the original game. We are considering making burning too much cost you a heart instead of game over. Also, top down is kind of a tricky POV to do games in, most stuff is a little isometric. Anyway, thanks for playing.

[Impossible Tic Tac Toe]

I beat the impossible after few tries, so... not so impossible ;-)
BTW, I noticed one bug: once when the opponent was the first to move 2 circles appeared instead of one.

StoneForged responds:

If you don't mind could you tell me how you beat it useful information (I may make a patch)

[Vac Jump 2 (Demo)]

Quite enjoyable, but... after several tries the game got a bit "tired" for me and started to lag, making it a bit easier for me to time the stomps at the cost of more difficult handling, but nevertheless it allowed me to get the score I got. However on the game's normal speed some of the medals may be simply impossible, so you should:
1. Optimize the game (or maybe my CPU is dying? Hmm...);
2. Make it a bit slower.
Otherwise people with slower computers will obviously benefit from this fact.
As for impossible medals: I doubt if the pacifist one is possible at the game's current speed considering the fact that you are placed in a very close distance to the upper border of the screen making it basically impossible to react and avoid an obstacle while boosting.
I also don't think that the Vac God is possible at the game's current speed.
I'll believe both are obtainable if you will do it :-)
Oh, if you merged the best things from the first Vac jump and the current one you would get a very good game.

radddbro responds:

I'm going to try to improve the performance asap. Both medals are definitely obtainable because I laughed like a psycho when I finally got them XD.

Thanks for your feedback HerbieG!

[Aim for the moon]

There is one weird thing about a bug related to the highest survival medal: during the game the medal pops up after you reach the score of 260 000 - and so says the in-game medal that pops up, while its description in the medals menu says that you need 280 000.

[Ambidextrous 3]

I started this game for the first time 3 years ago and finally completed it. It is the most challenging of your games from this series. I mostly liked the variety of challenges.
But as many people already mentioned its main problems are the controls and mechanics. This is why I had to approach this game... you even wouldn't be able to imagine how many times... The biggest problems:
1. If you are standing next to the wall with the finger pointed towards it and try to jump you will most likely hit/get stucked on some invisible obstacle or stick to the wall for no reason. The same is for the mid-air rotations you are performing close to the wall. When you got unlimited time it is not a big deal, but on those levels with a time limit... I especially hated level 9 because of that issue and almost raged again for another 3 years. Also the mid-air control could be improved.
2. It sometimes happens that you get stucked on some invisible hardness on the ground while trying to move left/right and there is no other way than jump out of that place.
3. You may also stick to the ledges when trying to jump out of them.
There is also one important problem with bonus 3 that left me confused for a longer moment.
What's the problem? You may actually accidentally destroy a spaceship BEFORE it will even enter the screen or on its border and when you do the game DOES NOT count it as destroyed. So you have to make the game a bit harder for yourself by letting all the ships fully enter the screen and count the shots needed to destroy a pack of spaceships. The good thing is that you need only one shot to destroy a triangular one. For everybody that would have problems with this stage: during wave 1 you need to destroy 19 enemies and after wave 2 you need to have a total of 47 enemies destroyed. If you are absolutely sure that none of them escaped the screen and you got less kills than required - then you probably killed some of them out of the screen and the stage will reset.

[Chickaboom]

The game itself is great, the graphics is awesome, it's one of the best-looking Unity games I have seen here. But as you will be able to notice people lost all the progress and it did not happen because of the Newgrounds maintenance, but because of your update. If you will want to make more updates make sure that it will not happen again.

I also encountered one bug in the game: if you are going really fast and then slam on the ground you may actually break the floor and continue flying at the "height" of -1000, -2000 etc. with an astronomical speed. Since there are no obstacles there and obviously no another floor there is nothing else to do than to reload the game, because otherwise it will never end.

[Basala: The Onion]

Very good game. What is only a bit of my concern is that the controls are a bit floaty and sometimes it happens that I am experiencing some frames loss making me loose control for enough time to die. Also there are some blind jumps where you don't exactly know where to go next or confusing situations, when if you want to check one side of the stage you are unable to reach the other one.

hosani69 responds:

Hi there, Thanks for your feedback. Believe me, I saw an 8 years old boy beating this game. This game meant to be simple and hard. I will add some guiding arrows if that will help.

[The Lost Temple 2]

After playing it for a while and exploring the game I think I can already write some comments on it. I agree with the people complaining about that jumping from the lower platform to the higher one. I usually enjoy these kind of jumps in platformer games, but not in this one. And to show the others why these jumps are badly designed, here is a screenshot from a level without that kind of a jump, but showing what's wrong with the character:

https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/3e11eb40441fee15ac9aa43b0fa9b716

As you can see there is even enough space to draw a quite wide white line between the character and the platform to the left. But you still cannot jump from this point because you will hit your head with some invisible obstacle. It most likely means that the hitbox of the character is inaccurate and it is much bigger than the actual look of the guy. And this can also affect the obviously also inaccurate hit detection. Unfortunately the author did not respond to my PM about it. While this can be manageable the next thing should make the author to not only consider but rework the game. Some of the trophies are simply not obtainable. Another screenshot:

https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/9d1410dadf4ba27ae5624c2d0114fac7

There is no way you can enter that corridor, because the character is too wide, too big. I already found 3-4 levels on which such a situation occurs. It also cannot be the exit, because - see the reason above - you would not be able to jump up from that corridor. This issue needs fixing.

Another thing: sometimes if you leave the level with the trophy, but without destroying the totem the game will mark that level as completed anyway, but not add it to the stats. On the other hand I finished several levels without getting the trophy but with destroying the totem and those weren't marked as finished. This leads to a confusing situation: if I would go for 100% completion I wouldn't know now which levels I would need to replay.

So there is some work to do with this game to make it really a masterpiece (there is a good potential for it) and to adjust several things to make the game really enjoyable, not bugged.

JeffreyDriver responds:

Thanks for your detailed review, it's really helpful. The point about the jumps to a platform directly above have been taken on board. Removing them all from this game would involve a huge amount of work, but I'll see what I can do.

As for the hitbox of the player, that's easily sorted and will be fixed in the next update.

The issue regarding the totems being destroyed, but not then registering is confusing me. It's the same bit of code, but it just checks the level name. Is it particular scenes that are affected, or is it (and I really hope not) random?

Which level is it in your seconds screenshot?

[CheckPointz]

I'm adding my review to all others demanding the fix of level 4 bug that unfortunately costs some stars since it ruins the game, that is unique and I personally like it. I tried numerous times on 2 browsers and the outcome is always the same: the exit disappears. If you can't make it stay on screen then re-design the level by making it permanent, but located behind a door or wall that would be opened by killing the red boss.