HerbieG's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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?

[Defend US! 2]

This game has a terrible memory management. After surviving to the wave 40 in survival mode (I could not play further because of the lag) the plugin container of my Firefox is storing data for a total of nearly 4,5 GB. Also the game even made the browser stop responding several times.

[Wacky Wizard Escape: Village]

Good, but too easy this time!
By the way, the score board is not working.

selfdefiant responds:

Fixed leader board, thanks!

[Flying Chops]

@Optimos is 100% right. After being assigned to the 10 saws mission during an hour of playing I haven't been able to get that shooting power up even once. It's like the game wants to tell the player "screw you".
1. Most of the times when you hit the rainbow balloon you get nothing;
2. Even if the 3 slots do match-you get everything but the power up you need;
3. And even if miraculously you would get that power up you got absolutely no guarantee that you would get any saws to destroy before the bonus time expires. It happened to me many times before I unlocked that mission.
So as it was already mentioned by one of the other reviewers this is an almost pure luck achievement. Creating it as such is a pure stupidity and I very rarely describe it like this.
I got no idea what was its purpose, to force the players to visit the game more times than they should? For more revenue? In fact all of the other achievements - if the game was not forcing the player to get them in sequence - could have been obtained during a single playthrough, so that may have been the point.
As for the achievements - their placement in the sequence and their points value is also a bit of absurd. The one for hitting 5 violet balloons should be one of the very first ones since it is extremely easy, while for example hitting 10 red ones requires more effort - and luck. No idea what the author was thinking when planning it like this. Also collecting 500 acorns and saving 6 piglets would be easy.
As it was also already mentioned, the upgrades give you basically nothing except the ones giving you more hearts. The game itself tends to be laggy, especially in the caves for some reason, so any speed upgrades are pointless. In fact, why would you want to move forward faster? What advantage does it give you? Completely none.

And last but not least - the author himself failed to obtain that 10 saws medal.
Nuff said.

[Fish Outta Water]

I don't know who tested this game, but I just can't imagine how is it possible that the final result is a game with such unresponsive controls and idiotic RNG that in addition to these controls are creating patterns that are impassable? Haven't you noticed that if there isn't enough space between the obstacle that requires crouching and the one that requires jumping/kicking no matter how early you will press the key that aquarium-bot will always fail to react in time? When it finally decides to get up it is simply too late and the key is not responding and if you try to crouch earlier you will crash on the previous obstacle. That fault is unforgivable. Besides, for the game like this the movement to the left/right is just useless.

[Folds -- Origami Game]

It's a very unique game, I don't remember if I have seen anything like this on Newgrounds. There are only 2 things that make it a bit unrealistic:
1. An example of the short shorts level and others with the same logic: in reality you would need one more move to do this since you would have to fold both ends of the paper separately, not at the same time;
2. Most of the levels are impossible since you cannot fold a sheet of paper 7 times or more unless you got a hydraulic press for example - or you will use an extremely big sheet of paper, like the Mythbusters did ;-) I just tried to do it with a typical A4 sheet and when trying to fold it for the 7th time it is becoming really difficult.

[Hell of a Golfer]

Already in this form this is just brilliant! Awesome idea for a game! Now listen up, this is mandatory for you: when you will submit the full version you are letting me know about it!
It's a fantastic mix of a golf game with interesting mechanics, a platformer and a bit of a puzzle game. Only that dragging mechanism could be improved, because sometimes it fails to work properly if the ball is on a higher platform, not on the ground. For example once I could not get any aim upwards.
Cool old style graphics, I also liked the idea that you have to give the coin, probably an obolus, to the death to take you to the next level-course.
I really hope you will finish the game and submit its full version! Oh, and it would be good-if the game is saving progress already-if the full version could recognize the previously saved game, so the players who finished the beta version could continue directly from course 5.

DRWgames responds:

Very appreciated, @HerbieG! I'll take another look at the drag mechanics, I think I know what you mean there. You rule!