DiMono's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[CubeX Prototype]

Not bad

I found that (at the default difficulty, anyway) it basically turned in to a game of "how fast can I put the cursor on the box." I'm not sure that's what you're after here, but I also don't know what to suggest if it isn't. I get the feeling this is going somewhere interesting though, so keep at it!

[Super Rebounce]

Game plays smoothly

It's a neat little concept you have here. All I'd add is music, and some kind of incentive for keeping going; no reason to stop at 900, let us go for as long as we can control the ball.

[RPG combat system]

Needs more

If you want a submission to last here, you need to give us something to look at, and something to listen to. It's obvious that this is a step toward a larger project you're working on, but it's not really at a stage where it's ready for public consumption. At this point it's probably best to keep it to yourself, and bring something more polished to the Interweb when you have it.

However, the fact that you care enough about what you're doing to seek outside input is good. Keep at it!

[Amber]

Very soothing

I like the use of the major chord to put the player at ease while playing. There are two things I think should be changed in a future version though:

First, we need a way to consciously change the angle at which the ball is bouncing. Most of the time the ball just goes on its merry way regardless of where it hits the paddle, and at one point I somehow ended up with it going almost straight up and down, and suicided just so I could finish the level.

Second, sometimes the collision detection seems to go wonky, where the ball will hit a brick and then shoot off in an apparently random direction, rather than bouncing in a way that makes sense. I've coded Breakout on my calculator before, so I know it can be a pain, but working with this many pixels on screen should make it easier to use the current direction of the ball to figure out which way it should bounce.

Those points aside, the game was smooth, and I liked the sense of humour in the level descriptions. I made it to "how are you even doing this?" before losing my focus.

pdesign responds:

edit: collision detection should work better now.

You're right about the collision detection. It is a little bit dodgy.

I uploaded before it was perfect because I still considered the game playable and enjoyable, and newgrounds lets you go back and update if you make any changes.

I was originally going to wait until i'd got it absolutly right until I uploaded, but I'd have to think of a better technique for detecting which edge of the block was hit before I could do it, and I wasn't sure of how else I was going to do it, but I will have another look at my code and see if I can think of a better way.

I did look for some source code of other breakout games to see how they did it, but I coulden't find any good ones that wern't just using vertical-bouncing and really short blocks.

[Antidote : Pandemia]

Fun implementation of the concept

I found the Play button didn't work after I'd beaten the first level, I had to go to the menu and click Play from there to select the second level. Everything else seemed smooth, and the graphics are nice. Kudos.

FlashRushGames responds:

After every level you got new points to upgrade weapons and additional weapons.
If you have free points you can start the next level, firs you must upgrade weapons. So click on the Start button and did not work in your case.

[Destroy All Cars]

Why force us to scroll?

Why, when we've already seen the cars on a level dozens of times, do you start us all the way over there and make us pull the scrollbar back? After the first time you do a level, I'd much prefer for the scrollbar to start with you positioned at the ramp, so you can slide over if you feel like it. Wasting my time on every run is the reason I'm stopping this game before completion.

[The Siege Of Theldale]

Two achievements don't work

Nice game, similar feel to D-Day Defender. Only thing I see wrong with it is that there aren't any explosions, so you can't get the "Light My Fire" achievement, and I've killed dozens of people with boiling oil (including one wave where I killed 10 people at once with it) and didn't get that one either.

Also there's no good reason you shouldn't be able to keep playing forever once you get the hang of it. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Xeptic responds:

Cheers for the review, I'll look into those achievements right away!

[Art Escape]

Not bad

It suffers from a lack of sound or music of any type, and the view of the bookcase doesn't change when you collect the blue paint jar. Otherwise it's smooth and seems to work well enough.

And that brown paint jar is eluding me. It's all I'm missing in order to put paint on my last brush. Now it's going to bug me all day.

[Cave of Wonders]

Great fun game

You have my five. The only problem I have with it is that it doesn't tell you how long you took to finish, which means you have no idea how close or far you are from the 200 seconds medal. Add that in and I'd say you have a perfect game here.

[Cool Racing]

Good game, but...

...it seems you've put the gold medal times for tracks 2 and 3 for the offroad vehicle too high. As of the time of this writing I'm the top time holder for both of those times (as well as every other time... I'm allowed to brag), by 2 full seconds for track 3 and by .1 seconds for track 2, and there doesn't seem to be any way of going faster, since there's no terrain to abuse on map 2 and it doesn't let you go around the palm tree on track 3. I'm 2 seconds ahead on track 3 but I'm almost half a second behind the gold time.

It's also rather easy to get hung up on the dunes or in the trees. If you end up there, you just keep spinning your wheels without being able to free yourself, which is rather inconvenient. I'm also not wild about how wide the turning radius is, and since it's the same on every car, how wide THE turning radius is.

All that criticism aside, it's still fun enough that I made it my mission to gold star every level with every car, so that should speak more to how enjoyable the game is than my prior complaints. Call it constructive criticism?

fiddi responds:

Thanks for the pointers chris-marks.
It's really good to get a criticism like yours. I'll look into lowering the offroad gold achievement for tracks 2 and 3 right away.

The other points you note are valid and we'll look into them as soon as we can.

Have updated the mochi achievements for offroad tracks 2 and 3.

EDIT:
In game achievements changed to match mochi achievements.
Turning radius changed.