andai's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gloom: The Pyromancer]

Pretty cool concept! Especially impressed by the 3D, I haven't seen that before. It really feels like it needs more work though, to do justice to the concept.

- It says find firewood. I found firewood. I can't do anything with it though? Edit: I found something that looks like firewood but is actually the bonfire. My bad. Apparently I spent so long looking for the first piece of wood that the bonfire went out, which caused it to look like a pile of sticks. So I was trying to interact with the pile of sticks, thinking it was firewood, wondering why I can't pick it up XD

That's probably a derp on my part but I thought it was worth mentioning. (User testing is valuable, especially when the users are boneheads!)

- It seems to be an open world but isn't. I spent like 5 minutes walking into the darkness, before I realized the ground moves even though you're stuck against an invisible wall. lmao

- One hit kill? :(

- One hit kills might make sense, if enemies didn't sneak up on you, and if the controls weren't so clunky.

- The controls: the cursor getting stuck on screen edge and not letting you turn around, while a floaty zombie is about to murder you... does not make for fun gameplay! (Also, asking a player to install AHK scripts to play your Flash game... I mean at that point you may as well make the whole thing a download.)

- EDIT: Apparently there's a way to lock the cursor (and still get mouse delta) in HTML5 (requestPointerLock). To use it with Flash (Ruffle) you'd have to make a HTML5 wrapper and use the external code API. I noticed that's how Skeleton Day did its controller support. Maybe the Ruffle team can integrate this into Ruffle?

- End screen stats are broken: When I die it says "Time Alive: 0" ? Also "Firewood Gathered: 0" but I got several. Also "Kill Count: 0" and "Enemies Seen: 0" but that's also not right.

- I got ate by a tree? wat XD

- Some enemies fly away from me (while staring at me?) and are invulnerable to my attacks

- The 3D effect is pretty cool, though the way the ground moves is a bit strange. I guess Flash doesn't have perspective transform? The collision is also a bit odd, like I'm a few meters from a tree but I'm bouncing against it.

Hope this helps, and I hope you keep working on it. I'd love to play an updated version.

Kwing responds:

Thanks for the lengthy review!

So to start, the 3D engine I made for this lags if too many objects are rendered on-screen at once. One of my workarounds was to have the world be fairly small and barren, but to incentivize the player to stay in one area. This is actually the reason the premise of the game is collecting firewood and bringing it back to a central point, as it keeps the player from wandering too far and realizing how small the world actually is.

Having everything (except the Dark Wizard) die in one hit was an intentional decision to maintain tension, especially since none of the enemies use ranged attacks. I like that the player never has to look at a HUD to see how much health they have left, and they can't get complacent just because they have a lot of health. Even though the game isn't especially scary I felt this design maintained a level of suspense that fit the tone.

The cursor getting stuck is something I've done just about everything I can for, but unfortunately Flash doesn't have any features for locking the mouse in place or even detecting movement (it can only detect position.) The first game uses shift lock and keyboard controls, this one added in a dead zone as well as buttons to instantly turn 90 and 180 degrees, as well as providing an AHK script. You may notice that other 3D Flash games (like ports of Quake and even Doom Triple Pack) have the exact same issue. requestPointerLock is an interesting idea, I'll see what the folks on Ruffle Discord have to say about it.

The end stats briefly display numbers for each category (time alive, kill count) but then tick down as the final score ticks up. I did this to make it look cool but I'll admit it is kind of annoying if you want to look at each number individually, and if you look away you might not even see that there was a number there to begin with.

Once you encounter an enemy, it's added to the Omnibus where you can see tips on how to defeat them. I did this intentionally (encounter enemy first, see explanation later) because I wanted fear of the unknown to be a big part of the game's atmosphere. As you discovered, this includes the Mimic which takes the shape of a tree, and the Stalker which is invulnerable to damage until it tries to attack you.

Regarding the ground movement, I believe perspective transform is only available for AS3 and this game was made in AS2. The animation is baked, though, so I probably could have exported a perspective transform animation as a different filetype and re-imported it into an AS2 project.

[Deeply Lost]

I appreciate the unique direction of this game.

My feedback:

- Love the art style, and the custom loading screen.

- Player movement speed is very slow

- The art style is very cute, but it makes it hard to "read" the level (symbol language).
Especially there is not much difference between foreground and background, things you can interact with or not.
This is both with values (light/dark) and colors.

I think it would be possible to keep this style and at the same time make it a bit easier to understand what is going on.

- There are lots of "decorations" on screen, covering the level, which is distracting. (Again, interferes with the "readability" a bit too much in my opinion.)

Maybe they can become semi-transparent when the player passes under them?

- The player's hitbox is unclear. (Seems to be just the pants?)
That wouldn't be a problem if the game didn't depend on precise manipulation of the hitbox...

(I saw in another comment you said you didn't want to make the player smaller. Maybe you could give him a circular shadow that's the same size as the hitbox?)

- Re: "precise manipulation of hitbox" For example in level 8, a snail (?) has a short path, and you must pass it with quick reflexes and precision. I died probably 20 times to that snail.

Typically that kind of gameplay doesn't really fit in a puzzle game. Though in this case it's made worse by hitboxes being invisible and significantly different from the sprites.

- I noticed a significant spike in difficulty with levels 8 and 9. Maybe there should be some easier levels with enemies first?

Overall pretty cool concept. I think it needs a bit more "user testing", a bit iteration and polish. It could be really good!

---

P.S. You said in another comment that you found Flash 8 limiting. I made my game in Flash 8 too, I am curious what you found limiting about it! (I am interested in making more ergonomic 2D game engines.)

Alejandro-X-Azul responds:

Thanks for your review
So, the decorations covering the levels is partly intentional to make it more challenging, for example, in some further levels like 16 17 18,, I hide some objects like Keys or stars under the decorations, stars hidden in bushes and so.
And for the hit box, it is an issue, it is easier to manage it with the blue guy because he is smaller, maybe for the hit box I could make an option in the game for that but I will have to revise that if it works with the enemies too… we will see.
Also, I’m glad you mentioned it,the game is not entirely a puzzle game, like it has puzzle features like the keys and the levers and portals and things to figure out, but it also has other features like reflexes or timing, is a combination. Just like in movies, a movie can have multiple categories adventure, action, romance. It’s all in one.
I think I messed up both in the hit boxes and the difficulty in the levels, because I did not measure the difficulty very well.

Ps yes I find flash 8 limiting because it doesn’t have the tools to make a really good game like that one you could play in a console or an Xbox, it has problems with memory

[LOLympics 100m Flash]

Harder than QWOP!
The 3D effect on the tracks is a nice touch.

AthleticDesign responds:

Thanks, the 3D is super simple, but suits the style.

[Lampyrinth]

I am impressed by the graphics and the number of levels. Never seen that kind of dynamic lighting in Flash!

However, I think the level design could be improved significantly. As Kwing pointed out, the levels are tedious. I kept hoping for new mechanics (or interesting interactions between the mechanics), but it just felt like the same mechanics in increasingly convoluted configurations. I would have preferred a smaller number of levels, if they were more interesting or varied.

The lighting mechanic is really cool, but in the context of a puzzle game it seems to do more harm than good. I think the darkness mechanic would be more suitable in a game with enemies, because then it would create constant fear and tension. In a game like this, with no danger, it just creates confusion and frustration.

I experience severe FPS drops in some parts of the game. I'm assuming that's due to the lighting.
(When I run it in Ruffle, the lamp doesn't work, and there are no FPS drops.)

On that note, I also tried increasing the FPS to 60, which made the game much more pleasant. Menu transitions are much smoother, and character speed is increased.
(There's still lag related to lighting though... perhaps a different algorithm would help?)

It's a shame you lost the source files.
I'd love to play an updated version.

It seems FFDEC can decompile it successfully -- both the scripts and the art. Only the fla (project structure) needs to be rebuilt. All the "raw materials" are there!

p.s. the menu in between levels being "playable" is a nice touch

Veinom responds:

Thank you for the long and detailed review. I might try FFDEC at some point, but fixing or adding all these extra things would be next to impossible for me.

[Lip-Sync Microphone]

Cool, I didn't know you can use the microphone in Flash. But I'm confused what you are trying to do with it? The microphone doesn't seem to affect the lip sync animation. And I'm sort of confused what the whole point is. Was there a bigger idea here?

Interesting you used Flash MX. I tried using MX (I like how it looks) but I couldn't figure out how to edit the scripts. (There was no text box.) So I tried MX 2004, which let me edit scripts, but kept crashing when I changed colors XD. So in the end I used Flash 8 for my game.

nukinukinukiki responds:

Oh thanks, I watched video who to make Microphone in Flash MX, but instead movement of this box who as Microphone, I will don’t adding code of movement.
Link to This video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MQRi2MbyddM?si=vmOg3ALqKyVtWtGG

[Ricardo Goes To War!]

This one is a lot of fun. Difficulty and difficulty curve are well balanced. The gameplay is engaging and smooth. The art style takes me way back... well done.

(I think you might have also made the biggest SWF file in all of history XD)

TheAsterDood02 responds:

yeah lol, i'm a messy guy when it comes to organization of assets and all that in Flash. srry ^p^;
Glad u liked it! Made with my buddy Dan with sweat and good faith, love and good labor like a Flash game from the 2000s would be made back then. c:

[Boyfriend's Valentine Gift!]

It's the thought that counts!
cute/10

BoiledMilkz responds:

Yeah, I guess so!

[Ruffy the Shelline - Prototype version]

Cute! Has potential!
I would recommend taking a look at GMTK's Platformer Toolkit [ edit: not about Game Maker, it's just the guy's name ], which is an interactive tutorial for how tweaking different aspects of a platformer character's mechanics affects the game feel.

I would also recommend increasing the frame rate to 60.
(If you want hand-animated sections to run at a lower rate you can double or triple the keyframes, but for anything with user interaction it's best to have it running at the full 60.)

I hope you keep working on it!

MebroukTheCat responds:

Okay, but I don't think I can use Game Maker for some reasons...
What about Stencyl?

[Skeleton Day]

This is great. Needs to be longer!

I've never seen a game where you can seamlessly go in and out of the bedsheets. Now *that's* attention to detail.

TeamTamago responds:

It's an old RPG maker trick I remember from back in the day

[Blocky's Funny Doings Interactive]

The ice cube animation is amusing, but it was very difficult to get it to play. Seems to be an issue with the hitboxes (or maybe the Ruffle compatibility?)

I had to click near the bottom of the screen. Fortunately it's easy to see which one is selected because they increase in brightness when they are "hovered".

SuperGibaLogan responds:

i figured out the problem, its because of the masking