sharpnova's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Touch The Bubbles 4]

no meaningful difficulty, progression, story, etc.

great music and art though.

[The Keeper Of 4 Elements]

too difficult.

it's not that i can't beat it. but the difficulty is too high. you set it to easy. and it's hard. then you unlock more upgrades and set it to medium. and it's hard. then you unlock more upgrades and set it to hard. and it's hard.

[Aurorae]

fix the handling

overhaul it actually

edit 8 years later:

handling was still so bad:

-you run too fast
-you jump when you land a jump if you still have jump key held (horrible)
-your ability to jump right off the edge of a ledge is very limited which is an input/physics problem lots of unpolished platformers have.
-you jump way too high

that said, the atmosphere was nice. nice music and music transitions. and nice neon art. i completed the game this time at least. but i still found the handling very annoying.

semaphor responds:

Update 2 done, tell me if you think this fixes the problem.

[Deeper Sleep]

even better than the prequel.

[Enhanced!]

handling is smooth. art music and sound and controls are all tight/excellent/etc.

just a couple problems. needs a full screen mode. playing in a little window is primitive
levels get repetitive looking. really wish it wasn't.. "X levels of this exact art" followed by "X levels of this exact art"

gets boring really fast

[The Telekinetic Incident]

should a flash game lag this bad (later levels) on my 3930k w/GTX titan/16 GB ram

I'm thinking nope.

[Nelly 2: ep.1]

meh. i'm in the train station. i got the key went back behind the gate. used the bouncy to get up and flip the switch to raise the plank. went down used the fruit to float up to the next one. used the fruit to make a plank and cross over. jumped to the next one. and i can't walk past that post.

this is DEFINITELY a bug. and it's a gamestopping bug.

if it's not a bug at this point then it's a game design flaw so severe as to break this entire thing. i enjoyed it a lot up til this point. but -5 for a gamestopper.

[Daymare Town 4]

beat it in about an hour. pure awesome just like all the other daymares and submachines.

[Gimp]

hmm... I'm torn between a legitimate review.. and responding to ZuiGe's comment below. I feel his comment was idiotic enough to warrant a response. Of course he will then be able to respond to mine and I won't be able to respond to his. But that's fine. I feel that from his losing position, the last word isn't much to ask.

First off: don't ever use your timeframe as an excuse. in general you just shouldn't make excuses about your work. when you do that you're basically saying "yes I am aware I screwed up or this sucks or I failed, etc. but here's why" No one cares about why. There were plenty of LD entries that were far and away better than this.

Secondly: no it is not appropriate to have that placeholder text there. to take emailforturnitin75's comment one step further, it would have been better to omit the text than to include it period. regardless of whether there was a story. not having a story is ok. theme is far more important than story and your game has a present theme, which works. it gets by without a story. but you saying "hey btw i am too lazy or stupid to think up a story so... *excuse*" is simply pathetic.

thirdly: you should be sorry he thought your game was a waste of time. it means you failed with respect to him. i don't think it was a waste of time but i do think it was bad and poorly designed. i liked the concept, but i hated that rotation was analog instead of done in discrete 90 degree intervals. that plus your crappy hitboxes made this unplayable.

finally: you ask a reviewer to make a game? that's your response to criticism? you don't have to be a game creator to review/play games. you have to be a game reviewer/player. i don't have to be a chef to know food tastes bad, an artist to know that kindergarden fingerpainting isn't artistic genius, or a musician to know when music sounds bad. i *am* a game designer and programmer but i wouldn't need to be either of those things to see the flaws in your game.

i look forward to either your defensiveness or silence.

ZuiGe responds:

I'm sorry for being rather crude and cornered in my response earlier. You're absolutely right. I shouldn't lash out at critics telling them to make their own games. That was totally uncalled for. I guess there's lots of emotion involved with reading critique on a project you've just finished; especially when you're trying to do something new just to find out the idea wasn't quite as good as expected. I understand that now.

I still do disagree about the fact that the story placeholder being there was a huge mistake. The reason for leaving it in was to have a remnant of the 48 hour creation process visible to the player. It doesn't take away from the gameplay and additionally points out how unnecessary stories really are in small games like this. I should've just pointed out the sarcasm clearer than that. Perhaps if the gameplay would've been as great as I had hoped for this the intent would've been more obvious.

Thank you for pointing out my lack of manner there. My apologies to the reviewer to whom I responded earlier in crude fashion.