pearljam23's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Police State]

Ok so the concept has potential, but the game is lacking. Also calling this a tower defense is a little misleading.

The objective of the game is a little confusing: "...instead of killing enemies, you monitor their movements. The goal is to stop 100 crimes."

So I'm trying to stop crimes, and once I stop 100 I win. That's all well and good, a clear objective, but what crimes am I stopping?

How are your representing a crime?
-Some of the people seem to be colored yellow, are they the criminals?
-Are they always yellow, or only after committing a crime?
-Do they commit multiple crimes?
-What crimes are being committed? all I see are dots moving around, are their murders taking place, theft, burglaries?
-Are criminals breaking into businesses?

I see the pedestrians moving, mostly on sidewalks (thats good) but they don't seem to react to the siren if they are in a crosswalk. Maybe getting them to move out of the crosswalk and roads if they are within a 1.5 block radius of the cruiser.

Try making a toggle button in a corner for muting/unmuting, this is or in a pause menu is really the best way to mute/unmute.

What do the cameras do? What is the point of having them? Do cameras deter criminals?

The in game economy seems a little out of whack, I was easily able to place a camera at every intersection, if they can see 1.5 blocks then I had the entire map covered without running out of money. Maybe try adding other forms of surveillance: wire taps, private security, surveillance units that would set up in a building to watch the street outside/building across the street. Each of these could have a cost. Try tying the players ability to prevent crime to their budget, if the player prevents crime they get more money, if the criminals get away, then they dont get money. Which actually seems a little backwards, maybe reverse that, the more criminals escaping, the more money in your budget. If your stopping all the crime, why would the city keep throwing money at you.

I would ditch the control of one cruiser and add multiple officers/cruisers that would each have a price tag (every cruiser costs $x per sec, every patrol officer costs $y per sec) you could control them by dragging boxes around them to select units and clicking an area on the map to direct their attention to said area.

Anyways those are just some of the ideas that came to mind during my play-through.
Good luck on your future projects!

Galahir950 responds:

1. Some of the people seem to be colored yellow, are they the criminals?
-The yellow people are criminals that have been detected. Criminals that have not been detected are green.
2. Are they always yellow, or only after committing a crime?
-They are yellow after they are detected.
3. Do they commit multiple crimes?
-You are supposed to detect the criminals before they commit a crime. Once they commit a crime, they vanish.
4. What crimes are being committed? all I see are dots moving around, are their murders taking place, theft, burglaries?
-Mostly pickpocketing and Robberies.

Most of the things that you wanted added, I wanted added. With my current license, I am limited to 100 events and this is exactly 100 events. If you are playing on harder difficulties, your funding is much slower, to the point that it is $100 every 6 seconds instead of every second. At higher difficulties, there is also a higher population density, which causes cameras to have a hard time maintaining a LOS on criminals.

Cameras detect criminals at half the rate of the police cruiser, but they are automated so you dont have to spend as much time driving around.

The formula for your funding is (100-Crimes stopped). At a higher difficulty, this can be very hard because you could only get $50 ever 6 seconds.

[Pixel Pete]

Stuck on level 5, some sort of glitch I think? Fyi using chrome. Everytime I use the Ultra Boost upgrade 'pete' gets stuck on the first object he touches =(

Was really enjoying the game until then.

Hopefully further development will fix this issue!

Doooomguy responds:

Yes, it seems to be an issue with some Chrome browsers - the restricted conditional script sometimes affects the innervation dynamics in the Ultra Boost code. Try on another browser, like Firefox!

[BCG Blackjack]

No insurance? Fine, you don't have to allow the players the option of insurance, but if the dealer ever has blackjack, you automatically loose. I just played a hand where the dealer had blackjack, and I was allowed to draw to a loss.

No Splits?

No Doubling down?

Not having these as part of the game makes me question how you programmed other basic aspects of the game such as how many decks you are playing with, and when they are shuffled. There should be either 6 or 8, so there should be a total of either 6 or 8 of every card before reshuffling.
Study up on blackjack a little more.

BlackCrossGames responds:

Thank you for the suggestions, I'll look into it.

[Two Powers 2]

I thoroughly enjoyed this game, lots of fun. The only thing I disliked was the fact that you had to click on the bumpers to scroll the screen, in your next installment I would suggest allowing people to scroll by using wasd or the arrow keys. I found all the other controls and menus to be intuitive and easily navigated. Bravo!

Thunder-Hawk responds:

I listen to your suggestion. Thanks for the rest!

[Destroy The Evil Squares]

Good

Five years ago, heck even 3 years ago, this would have been amazing. However, this isn't 2008.

I thought that your money earned/upgrade cost ratios were good, if not a little too good. I won the first time I played, and only was challenged when I accidentally figured out how to release more waves.

Are you color blind? It says (im paraphrasing) to place a turret on the green platform to begin. The platform was red. I will now profusely apologize if you are indeed color blind, or if I have somehow become color blind in the last 5 minutes.

Towers were nothing special, pretty much the same standard lineup for any TD game.

Badguys, well, the title pretty much sums it up... evil blocks. Im assuming that they are evil because they are attempting to make it though the gate... which is placed conveniently right next to their spawn point.... too bad they are to stupid to just pull a u turn and end it quick.

All in all there is nothing "wrong" with this game, and I found it enjoyable for the first 8 waves. Also its your second flash game.... so then I must say WOW!!! I cant make games for crap (just good at telling people how.... and that's debatable) so if this is truly your second game ever, then keep it up, and I will be sure to check for your future posts.

But that doesn't make this a better game.

It in no way what so ever stands out from the rest of the tower defense games.

Try making a unique tower. Maybe a back story, as to why these blocks are evil, and why I should care about them making it to the exit portal. Should I care because of something that's beyond that portal, like the city with my wife and unborn child that will be ravaged and killed if I let 20 blocks through?

SOUND!!!
The silence was deafening! you had animations for the "bullets" but no sounds! even a kepiew kepiew would suffice, and explosion or crumbling noise when a block is destroyed. Oh and while your at it a soundtrack too! (dont forget mute buttons!!! a pet peeve of mine)

A nice feature in many games that I did not notice was the ability to see what kind of enemy is in the next wave or two. It seemed like they were all the same, but i could have been wrong... also all your turrets are classified as "ground".... was there a plan for flying blocks? if so, and it was scrapped then remove the aforementioned classification, if not, then why was it there?

Ummm I feel like there was more, but I really wanna go watch some more Castle, so sorry if this seemed a little rushed, usually I try to catagorize everything so its not so disorganized.

Good game, good luck, I will be looking for further submissions!!!
pj

soulreaper134 responds:

lol thanks for the review . reason i sayed green is because my beta version was green but i didnt like it so i changed it but i forgot to change the description as for sound i tried but failed so bad at it you could call me charlie sheen lol. jk, but i am trying to fiqure out sound. as for realesing waves that was for people who wanted more action as for graphics im geting better and as for codeing i have already known a little c++ and lua stuff like that and story line i like the idea ps you said the monsters look the same each wave look at there eyes and mouths there diffrent colors. and last thanks for your review alsoim working on a stick figure rpg fighting game with aliens :o lol but im also working on simple stuff like pong and ping pong and adding originalality to it :p my first flash game was snake and old retro game but anyways expect cooler things from me its hard tho because all my projects are solo.... no testers no team just me thats wht its buggy and mistakes like the green background lol.. bye

[Lavatory Escape]

Fun, but....

My half a blue key is taking up the same inventory slot as my green half keys. Whenever I try to combine stuff, it just gets up over the other item, blocking it. If the items cannot be combined, when someone tries to do combine them have the dragged item snap back to its inventory slot or something like that, so this doesnt happen. This led to me not being able to complete the game, and not wishing to do it all over again just to see how it ends.

I liked having the notepad, very helpful.

Try expanding the view a little bit, I found it very disjointing. for example, when your in the stall, the side with the door is clearly only a few feet wide, where at the back by the toilet, there was no wall on the left, leading me to wonder what was over there.

Also the same sort of issues when I was out of the stall, when you zoom onto the radiator, you can see a door to the left, but you have to go back, and then hit the left key to see the door, but im not sure if its the same door, because im too close to it, and cannot see if theres a radiator down and to the left. also the radiator is in a corner, but this door has no corners visible around it, so.... very confusing.

Basically the same issue for almost every camera angle is that its too tight in, and does not give me an idea of how big the space I am in is, and therefore I cannot clearly tell if I have been everywhere in my environment. the angles and the perspective were done well, just zoom them out a little more.

I did like the pulsing/heartbeat esque sound track, it was repetitive, but helped with the creepy factor.

Also the movement buttons, this sorta ties in with the camera issues, I found I was always wanting to look in a direction, but was unable to. I guess a good example is when you turn around in the stall, the rear view is only looking at the toilet(downwards), maybe you could have the rear view looking at the wall, and you can see the top of the toilet, and the corner of the ceiling, and then you click down to view the toilet.

I think that sort of change, would make gameplay feel much smoother, and make for an overall more enjoyable experience.

I look forward to future submissions.

HDMK responds:

Thank you for taking the time and suggesting those improvements - I guess the main problem is that this game is based on an actual bathroom, so we had an image of the room in our head the entire time while programing it, which explains the lack of some angles and pictures, that were not neccessary for the gameplay but would have made it smoother.

The problem with the menu is that some tiems can be draged over one another, yet this is always reversable and shouldn't effect the gameplay.
Once two combinable items are over one another they should be combined with a click.

In our future games we will try to improve those issues, thank you for pointing them out.

[ProthoTest]

Look nice!

I like how it looks, and the interaction with the quiz.

I especially enjoyed the mazes, they were a nice break from all that math.

On most levels, the button is the actual text not the whole area that you outlined as the button. try fixing this, because it was quite frustrating.

Get rid of the "Where was the answer button on X level" it is frustrating and pointlessly forces the player to guess and redo all the levels prior, if they dont get it on the first 3 guesses..... thats not the point of a quiz game.

In the mazes, reduce the holding period when you respawn by about 1 second, I dont know why but it really frustrated me.

Spell check!!! The sentence structure was off/wrong words used. If it is because english is not you first language ask someone to proof read for you, I could understand what you were saying, but it just really detracted from how I felt about the game.

The last 5 questions were all messed up, I think it was supposed to be a recap with 1 question from each zone, but the question sometimes would not appear, just the answers, or there would be code and stuff like that.

I did like the achievments and stuff, the bonus tracks were much better than the regular, unfortunately they are not made available until completion of the game, and then the only thing left is the special maze zone, which takes just a few minutes. Next time incorporate the ability to select tracks from the beginning, or gradually allow more as the player unlocks medals and/or completes zones.

Good for a quiz game, but only average because of the reasons stated above.

Archxonus responds:

Thanks for the constructive response! I've changed the respawn time and some troubling buttons. I couldn't find any problems with spelling in the game though, and the last 5 questions were supposed to look like that.
The "Where was the answer button on X level" type of levels are actually memory questions, they are made to raise the awareness of the player of what's on his screen.

[The Ñ]

Lacking....

Options in terms of the music, at the very least a 'mute' button.

The very edge of the paddle, about 1 half the balls width on each side, does not return the ball, it just passes through. I could be crazy, but thats how it seems.

Once on the third level, when the ball dropped at the beginning it was up behind the blocks and started bouncing unnaturally fast, then just teleported below my paddle. It happened again next time I played in the fourth level.

Change up the level, instead of allways having a large block of tiles, that just gets deeper and deeper, try to be a little more imaginative. Maybe make different shapes for different levels.... on could be an "n" maybe?

TheSongSalad responds:

Thanks for the review and suggestions man.

[The Snake Game - Classic!]

Basic

Ok well you've much met the basic requirements for a game.

I would suggest taking off the ability to hit the button that would rotate you 180 degrees. Ex: I am moving up and have a train of at least 3, and I press the down button, and I die. Now I understand that yes I did just push a button that would send me over myself. This just adds a frustrating factor to the game, where in every other "Snake" incarnation I have played, the function to commit suicide in this way was not possible.

The animation is pretty basic, but it works for sure. I liked how you made the face change when you die. Maybe add in a little chewing thing when you eat a circle (apple?)

Sound! I endend up playing some music, because the silence got boring. Add a track or two or more that cycle.... maybe make a few buttons at the bottom that let you choose between a few tracks. (grab stuff from this site even if ya want!{if it says thats legal})

Now I know snake is not the most exiting game, so I was not expecting much. Just because the game is not supposed to be riveting, doesn't mean you dont have to try to better it.
Ex: Add a leveling scheme to it; every time you get 10(or whatever number you choose) apples the game resets and your snake moves a little faster.
Or maybe you just go faster ever 10 apples, but keep getting longer too.

This also gives you a way to make the game more exiting - change up the background and/or music when you reach one of those points I mentioned above.

Maybe add some obstacles - rotten food that shrinks you and/or subtracts from your score.

Change up the shape of the level, maybe every 10 food chunks.

Any of these things would make me want to stick around. I found that after about 2 minutes of playing I became bored. I was progressively getting a longer tail every time I played, but there was nothing that held me there, making me want to get that next apple.

A final note, instead of always seeing "you messed up" add a ranking system, based on your score maybe?

Hope that helps, good luck in the future.

iAndyShow responds:

thanks dude for all of your suggestions! glad you took the time! if you want you can add some things to it to! ill send you the .fla! if u want!