HerbieG's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Big Shot Boxing]

I promised myself - and the author - to write some remarks about this game. It seems to be sometimes luck-based, but I admit that there are combinations of punches that can make you win with KO even within the first round. I spent few hours on this and it is possible to develop a strategy. Ok, here go the thoughts:
1. Being able to move forward only by throwing punches is a very bad idea. I mean yes, during the fight the boxers are moving forward pretending punches, but many times it leads to an absurd, for example my opponent is stunned, right? Obviously I want to finish him off, but my boxer just fails to move forward to get in range of any punch. Instead just moves back and forth no matter which keys I press.
It would be much better if you applied a scheme like - moving forwards/backwards - arrow keys, all actions - z, x, c - punches, s - guard.
Your boxing simulator was much better in this matter.
2. Speaking about the guard - here is something I consider luck-based: my opponent breaks my guard much more often than I can break his.
3. Not enough punches and some not effective. Do you think that hits on the torso do not do any damage? That land on the belly for example? Where is the famous finishing punch on the liver? In your scheme it could be down-arrow, in the one I proposed - d or v, seem equally convenient.
4. One thing is extremely illogical: the cash rewards. I mean come on, you get the same cash for beating a punk in some gym or club as you get for fighting with Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder etc.? The bigger the fight - the bigger the prize. And if the manager is taking all the cash - I would sack him and beat him up. Or maybe I should beat him up first?
5. Another inconsistency - during the fight. I got full health, chin fully upgraded, had not been knocked down even once during the current fight, but the opponent can hit me with that flash punch so hard that I cannot get up, because tapping space is barely having any effect?
6. Yet another inconsistency: after any of the boxers survives being knocked down regains some health, but the other boxer's health remains the same. I mean both sides are taking some rest during those nearly 10 seconds, right?
7. A bug: between the rounds and even during the fight opponents health sometimes exceeds the full bar much to the left of it.
8. Did you apply the "3 knockdown rule"? I noticed that sometimes the opponent can be even knocked down 4-5 times and the referee is still not ending the fight.
9. A suggestion: for the situation when the player already knows that will lose the fight you could add a "throw towel" feature to prevent your fighter form receiving a massive KO.
I like the added feature that decreases your health/power as you are getting older. Even Klitschko could not be the champion forever.
Oh, I noticed the obvious Macho Man reference :-)

colburt187 responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback.

1. I wanted to keep the control scheme as simple as possible, I'm actually pretty happy with how it worked out, being able to jab, cross, left uppercut, right uppercut, block, move forward and move backwards with just 4 buttons. If you stun an opponent you just press any of the punch buttons to move forward, the only way you move backwards is by pressing block and you shouldn't be pressing that if you are trying to chase the guy down.

2. The way the guard works is identical for both the player and the AI. Maybe the AI is hitting the block with more power punches and you hit his block with jabs?

3. Body punching would be a good edition, but for now I'm sticking with the 4 button control scheme.

4. True the cash is illogical but I need to balance the upgrades, on certain occasions you get offered a bonus to take a risk and you get more money in title fights. Im not great at designing clever well balanced economies in games so I tried to make it work in the simplest way I could.

5. Getting starched by a punch when you have full health and full chin is rare and unfortunate but not illogical. Boxers get knocked out early in fights all the time, there is never a situation in boxing when you can say "if this guy gets hit with a clean punch he won't get knocked out"

6. Thats a good point, ill look into the settings for that situation.

7. Only in the quick fight mode i think? I haven't really spend much time fixing bugs in the quick fight game mode.

8. yes the 3 knockdown rule is in effect, If you knock a guy down 3 times in a round the ref will stop the fight. It has to be 3 times in the same round though.

9. you NEVER know you will lose a fight, you could win the fight with the last punch of the fight with 1 second left on the clock. NEVER GIVE UP!

[Medieval Village Escape]

I wish you could tell me where was that photo with an outstanding view taken!
Nice game, although with a flaw and an unanswered question.
A question: what are those gold coins for? If they were really golden then they should be worth more than enough for that guy to even sell you the boat.
A flaw: you wouldn't be able to buy that ale with even million liras, because they are now useless In Italy as a currency since this country is a member of the Euro zone.

selfdefiant responds:

I believe the view is in Italy of the village, unless you are referring to another scene. The coins are actually tiny gold coins, they don't have much value. The statue that you find is much more valuable. :) Yes, we are in a medieval village, they accept Lira .

[Fire]

That description: "Absent! Will be added as needed ..." is truly intriguing ;-)
As for the game: simple, but brilliant and addicting.
This is what I can call an elemental Tetris.
For those for whom it is not obvious:
Air wipes out Dirt;
Dirt soaks up with Water;
Water takes out the Fire;
Fire sucks up all the air - ok, Oxygen to be precise.
Only one explanation would be needed: why sometimes the red line is dropping and some of my bricks get removed even when no brick even reached it yet? For example the game gave me a "game over" at the moment when my Water brick was extinguishing a stack of Fire blocks.

BigPixelLab responds:

If you put a brick above the line, then you lose. The line falls to complicate the game. Bricks are removed so that you are not trapped. It will be necessary to add a destruction animation.

[Biker Rage]

Overall a good game, but with several flaws:
1. As I already wrote you pressing spacebar when you die does not work, nothing happens, so the only way to restart is to reload or collapse the game;
2. The bullets are just tiny, not distinctive enough and hard to spot sometimes, especially when you are throwing grenades. I hoped that the full screen would help, but the full screen mode is not working on Firefox.
3. Are the kills medals related to total amount or you have to fulfill their requirements in one level? If the first, then there should be some total stats included somewhere, if the latter - then it should be included in the medals' description.
4. The controls are sometimes getting stucked, I press the arrow key, but nothing happens. It also takes way too much time to change the line. Also if some of the power-ups are placed between the lines then you should be able to ride all over the place, not just press arrow-one up, one down. The game would be much better if you could just move around; stay between the lines, move forwards, backwards etc. Also sometimes the enemies that are just nearby change the line just when they are next to you, which is not avoidable.

Raeldor responds:

Great review, And I aprecciate all the coments about the bugs and unclear descriptions, I'll fix them one I have the time.

[Pixel Volley]

The controls are absolutely awful. Everything is just random. You got basically no control of whether your characters will jump to the left or to the right and how high will they jump. You could for example make it like this: 1st character is controlled with wasd keys, the 2nd with arrow keys and then the player would have full control of what he is doing.
Besides, you should make some medals re-checking feature. I just won the wood tournament, but the medal did not unlock. I also see that some people already won more than 10 games and they got no medals for this. Thus: create a re-send medals button or something like this.

FM-Studio responds:

Hi there, thank you for playing Pixel Volley. I think I need to explain some points: Tournament Medals trigger when you won the full tournament, that means win 3 medals and cup (basically you need to win all 4 different game modes).
Also, scoreboard points are not calculated as 1 point every match won but it's a combination of court/net/ball conditions (i.e. the more the match is hard the more point you get). That's probably why you see people with more than 10 points but still no 10 match medal unlocked .

[Knightin']

2 questions:
1. Why at some point I cannot buy any more keys while there are still some locked doors?
2. There is a medal related to the big red potions, but I could buy only one of them (then the rest of them disappeared from the shops) and it did not trigger it. What is wrong here?

Wolod responds:

1. You can buy only one key indeed. Rest of them are hidden throughout the dungeon.
2. You need to solve puzzles on the first two floors to obtain rest of the potions.

[Waves of Doom]

My overview of this game: ridiculously unbalanced. And here is why:
1. Too many too hard enemies at too early stage. As I can see even the author could not pass more than 5 waves;
2. You should at least enable the autofire or make it possible to just to hold the mouse button to shoot;
3. Why there is an "load game" option if the progress cannot be saved in any way?
4. You should try to expand the game by adding some perks possible to pick after leveling up.
My advice: change the balance of the game, check if you can obtain all the medals by yourself and then re-submit the game.

Rodycool responds:

I really appreciated your review!

I did 5 waves but i can do much more if i want to (i don't need cheats ;)) You just have to attack and do spells at the right moment.

When you hold your left mouse, you increase the energy ball's area damage and you do double damage when it's full!

This game actually has an auto-save between waves. This means you can exit game at any time and reenter the same wave later using the load game. Note that you will start at the beggining of that wave.

I will do some balance and other gameplay changes. In the meantime i want to see more people's scores and their feedback.

Thank you!

[Knotty story]

The graphics is surely awesome, but graphics is not all. Unfortunately, the game is buggy. And in some cases it does not give enough clues of what to do. Some remarks:
1. A bug: when you try to jump up the pipe at one point the cat fails to do another wall jump and just falls down with the part of the pipe;
2. Another bug: If you fall down at the beginning of the second string you may get stucked on the edge of the platform below with no possible move and all you can do is restart the level;
3. Yet another bug: If you fall down during the boss fight you may have problems to go back up. The clouds are going up, but you don't know where exactly are you and from where to jump on a cloud to get back on the roof;
4. A question: what is the rule on when does the crow drop a collectable feather?
5. A remark: the boss fight isn't so well designed. You got no idea when the crow drops its feathers on a platform and when not, it is dumb that you get thrown out of the roof every time you just accidentally touch the crow, another thing: while luring the crow sometimes it reacts immediately but sometimes it is just flying around no matter how many times you try to attract him.
A strong advice for the future: hire some testers among the players to check your game before release.

CrounchyBrothers responds:

Totally agree with you HerbieG, a videogame is a game at first... Good graphics are more like atmospheric bonus (but also important feedbacks).
With Knots Story we wants to tell a story at first, this demo just introduce you to the character and environment around. We use classic platformer gameplay mecanics.
But it has to be confortable so be sure we take your feedback remarks in great consideration! ;)
We will check out all the bad issues you are reporting.
For your second point we cannot afford to reproduce it maybe you can send us a screenshot in a private message ?
The rule for the crow collectible is: 1 stack of leaves covered with feather = feather 1
2 stack covered = feather 2 etc...
It isn't localised per stack consider it like lighting 5 spots.

We will try to put more feedbacks on the boss but we also want the player to be granted by finding out by himself... We'll find the right balance.

As it is a demo we also count on our first players to be testers.

Thanks again for your good comment.

[MazeBot]

Interesting game, but please add also an ability to move with the arrow keys. Not everybody like wasd, for me it is -1 star for not being able to choose the scheme.

dynamitewhale responds:

Hey HerbieG,
thank you for the feedback. We will definately consider it, would you keep the UI-Interactions on Q/E though?

[Puzzzled]

I admit that some of these puzzles were brilliant! Keep it up! Maybe make something even harder and without a walkthrough? Something like an expert level :-)

selfdefiant responds:

Thanks! Good idea. :)