FlyingColours's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ninja Messenger]

It's a great game. You're a great artist, and not a bad programmer either. It seems to me that you were testing out the capabilities of Adobe Flash, and ended up with a game of considerable scale.

Gameplay-wise, I love your concept. It takes a bit from several genres in existence, and I totally love your game idea. Level design was great, and the animations were awesome, too. The game is bug-free as far as I've played.

The main problem with this game (and with your RPG, which I've played yesterday) is that it is unpolished. When I say unpolished, I mean that the devil's in the details. For example, none of your buttons have hover or click states. The typeface of the dynamic text boxes does not match the general atmosphere of the game. (I'd suggest you do away with their borders and background colours too.) Then there's the positioning of the achievement boxes (which was a little sloppy, let's face it), the white edge in the Game Over screen, and bitmap artefacts in the 'Opps!' (should be spelt 'Oops' BTW) screen... These are trivialities, but they really determine how pro your game looks. The game also lacks juice. Watch this NG-recommended video for more about juice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg&feature=kp

I'll be honest and tell you that the game is not likely to receive a good rating because of the reasons above. Don't be discouraged by that! You're clearly a promising emerging dev and I hope that by polishing your games further (perhaps you can polish this game and your RPG, and reupload both), your games will reach their maximum potential.

I know all this because I've gone through the same stage as you (I've made a game similar to yours, but it's not posted on NG and I've lost the file anyway). Good luck on your game dev journey! ^^

kaizen101 responds:

Thank you! I will keep those in mind, I will do my best to become better at this, and to give more time to polished it... (though time is not in my side)

[Lovely Patterns]

Nice little gadget! My only complaint is that when I click several (or the same) hearts in rapid succession, I will only hear one SFX. Perhaps you could tuck the sounds in different layers. It would also be awesome to see different arrangements of hearts. Anyway, nice work!

Cyberdevil responds:

Thanks. I actually thought I had removed the sound effects in the final version, will get rid of those now, good to know. They don't work properly because the hearts are all the same button, and it seems only one sound plays at a time even if you click many. I suppose it could be solved with actionscript or by making all the hearts different objects though, maybe, Didn't have enough time for more features, but that would be good, maybe next year! :)

Oh btw, figured out that event instead of start for the sound fixes the issue, haha, so simple! And I've been looking around for ways to use the same instance names on multiple MCs, arrays, button layers, etcetc. The problem should be fixed now :)

[Disembodiment]

Wow, that was difficult! I like the concept a lot - that's very important for a jam where the theme is 'core mechanic'. I like the puzzles, even though they aren't very difficult. However, I think the action parts are too difficult at times. I suggest saving the scenes that the player has completed and allowing the players to skip those scenes afterwards. You can introduce a medal for playing the game from beginning to end without dying instead. :)

I think the graphics are good - both the sprites and the background are well drawn. However, they don't seem to mix very well. It seems that the sprites are separate from the background.

The Game Jam button doesn't seem to work, so I can't see your core mechanics diagram (even though I know your core mechanic is 'calibrate'). Please fix that soon as it's rather important for the Game Jam.

PS I think I'll put the mute button in every frame like you next time I make a game. :P

egg82 responds:

Whoops! How did I manage to screw up a link button? I'll fix it as soon as I get back home (will be the only update until the final judging :P - after that, i'll go back and re-write the engine)

I like that "scene save" idea. Why didn't I think of that? O.o

We had two different artists - one for backgrounds and one for animations.

And thanks, I try to program for every play style out there :P

[Array Generator]

Good

It's rather disappointing that one can only use strings. Please allow Numbers, Booleans, MovieClips, TextFields, and other Arrays too! I agree that it doesn't save a lot of time with strings, but if if includes Arrays, that would save a little time. Furthermore, you could make for loops if 'vertical' is selected and the items are numbers. However, you put a lot of work into this, so it deserves a high score!

SethFx23 responds:

Thank you:) Yeah I didn't expect this to become the "new" way to make arrays but it is pretty cool. I may expand on this in the future :)

[The Quest For Something]

I can't believe it!

I expected this to be good, as promised. Yet you have exceeded your promise; this is much better than the tomato platformer. There are some issues with the hitTests, but they don't affect the overall enjoyment. You're a great artist and animator. Maybe you could try movies too!

oObangzOo responds:

I actually remember you... man that's great. Yeah, the hitTests are better but still not ideal, I honestly don't know how to make it so you cannot go through the block from underneath, If I knew that I would be a happy man.
I appreciate you playing my games and rating them as you are, it makes this worth while.

[Silowet]

Excellent and challenging game!

I like history, and this game combines fun with history, which is a really interesting mix. The silhouettes meant Googling was impossible if you don't know the person in the first place. I find this really clever!

I think this game should be less focused on the history of the last two centuries. Most of the people in the game are from the 19th and 20th centuries. Also, Mao is the last name while Zedong is the first. In many cultures the last name comes before the first name.

Kenney responds:

Oh fudge, sorry about the Mao Zedong mix-up then. I'm actually thinking of doing themed versions of this game. Like a music version, movie, writers. That leaves room for a larger stretch of time.

[Save Pirate Bunny]

A perfect game!

This game is really creative. It combines great artwork, a breathtaking story, puzzles not too easy and not too difficult, as well as a test of one's reflexes (in the river and when fighting the evil rabbit. The animation is great although a little slow at times.

My only suggestion is that maybe the shields could be dynamically created every time with attachMovie or createEmptyMovieClip, so the cursor will not turn into a hand when it is pointing at nothingness. Alternatively, you could simply set the hand cursor boolean property to false (I recall there being one, although I forgot its name).

By the way, thanks for making such a great game!

Zonferno responds:

Thanks man, I really appreciate your review!

[Herbert Perrywinkle]

Nice game

This is a really nice game! I like the way it is not too difficult.

I found a bug: Sometimes, if the ball gets out of the boundaries of the game, it is impossible to return to the place where you started. For example, in the very large level, if you fall through the middle of the left boundary, you cannot bring it back and must refresh.

The hidden tunnel was a nice touch, but I think it would be best if you made the ball smaller and jump higher; it was odd that the stalagmites could only hurt the ball if it penetrated through the ball's centre.

This is overall a very good game and I hope you make more of these in the future!

oObangzOo responds:

I appreciate your comment, to be honest, I have not found out how to set the hit detection so that the ball would die on contact instead of in the centre, but this next project I'm working on will leave you vomiting profusely from greatness.

That bug will be addressed and fixed in the near future fear the not!

[UFO Tree Cutters: DOTC]

Excellent game, but with a major problem.

Firstly, I really enjoyed this game and it reminds me of Boombot. Secondly, I don't agree with most of the criticism below. (No offence to the other reviewers.) The graphics don't have to be da Vinci, nor does the plot have to be Dickens - this is a game, not a movie or book. The difficulty is, on the whole, good - one thing I dislike about Boombot (and the later levels of Civiballs) is how you need to figure out how to do it, then practise lots of times to get it right.

However, there is a fatal mistake in the game: how stars are determined. I think this should be more flexible. The percentages required should vary for every level like in Bloons, as the present percentage makes some levels a little too hard and other a little too easy. Without this flaw, and if the level with a large piece of ice is a little easier, and the UFO doesn't slide so much, the game would be perfect! :)

Gimmick responds:

Thanks! I'll take that into consideration for the next release.