PhotonStorm's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Blooming]

I played if after you published Update 3, so you may have fixed a few things that earlier reviews picked-up on, like the coin spitting jugs. Even so, this was a beautiful little game! I love the concept. The artwork and animations are great and the controls are tight and fluid. That said, I really couldn't get very far! At first I honestly thought you had to take off a petal and drop it into the jug in order to get the speed boost. I had no idea you got the boost JUST by using a petal!! Once I worked that out, it became a lot easier. Until I met the jug spitting coins, that is :) Damn man, that was insane. Even so, thank you for making this :) It's a brilliant showcase of a platformer made in Phaser. With some difficulty tweaks it'd be solid in its own right, too.

HealliesGames responds:

I would like to go back in time to fix this damned difficulty.

It was an immense pleasure to participate in this jam, and thanks above all to you for this magnificent framework.

I have to admit that setting all things up was a somewhat mechanical step. But I was surprised how an editorless framework can make the job of making a video game so light.
I have tried many libraries, such as cocos2dx, but I don't think it achieves the simplicity of Phaser.
Also thanks to the well detailed API.

Congratulations indeed for the community support.
It would be an honor for me if you consider the game worthy for a Phaser showcase.

[Hoisted]

Great idea! Like playing a sort of inversed golf. I honestly had no idea there was a par per level until around map6 :) and frankly, I doubt I could have made the par on any of the levels anyway! Mostly it was as much as I could do to just click and click to get the knight to the flag as he seemed to like sliding quite a lot. I enjoyed it a lot though. I think you could have added some kind of power meter, so it was obvious from the mouse pointer proximity to the knight how much force you were about to exert, especially when you were really close to the flag and needed only a little nudge to get on there.

rmkubik responds:

Thanks for playing!

I was having a little trouble with the Arcade physics friction so had to roll my own. My friction is definitely a bit too slidey right now.

I like the power bar idea. Some visual indicator for strength of your shot before you see it would lead to fewer frustrating moments.

[Daxolissian System: Saboteur]

Concept-wise, I liked this. A sort of asteroids with extreme zoom levels was a nice take. Honestly, it was only really playable when zoomed really far out, otherwise those bloody mortars just nuked you instantly! It felt good flying past a mortar at close range to pick-up a star thing and have it shoot at you and miss. Going in too slow was just insta-death, though. I didn't get past the mortars level I'm afraid. I had just one star left to collect and I got nuked on my way to it and didn't want to redo them all again. So I never even got to use my laser :) I think it would have felt more fair if the mortars actually fired a projectile at you which you could see coming and then have time to avoid, rather than the one-shot kill it is currently.

3p0ch responds:

This is good feedback to hear. As a dev who tests out my game a lot as I'm making it (and gets a lot of practice in the process) and especially a skill game where I also know why I'm designing the levels the way I am and know what I want to force the player to do in order to win, I think I fell into the trap of not realizing that most players aren't going to spend hours playing to get practice and/or read my mind on what the "right" way to play should be. I'll plan to tone it down a bit in future games.

[Arcade Shooter Mix]

This was great! You should add to the description that you use WASD to move. I really liked the concept of having to balance shooting the baddies vs. buying better weapons and paying to unlock the walls between zones. The mines were great fun :) (although when I ran out of them, the bullets I was then shooting looked like mines!) - the only issue I had was needing to move to avoid baddies and try to buy something at the same time - required quite a bit of finger kung-fu to pull off without dying.

ArkahnX responds:

Thank you for the feedback!
To be honest, without knowing precisely when the cutoff for this jam was outside of "By February 16th" I was aiming to finish it before midnight eastern to be safe.

Some things certainly didn't make it into the final release, as you said such as unique graphics for all weapons, some physics bugs (getting pushed outside the map)

The control setup also does not favor laptops at all, very much a mouse and keyboard experience!

Overall, my team of two was happy to release what we did when we did, given the restrictions (Did you know, this was our first time using Phaser, typescript and working on something as a team?)

[Under Wife]

Honestly, after avoiding having 100 radios thrown at me, I think they should have made up :)

kiba095 responds:

TY on the rate sir, ill improve the game bit by bit. Phaser3 is good for beginners like me. :D

[Dog Bark!]

Cute concept! I liked barking at the various things, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to howl at the moon!

MoHDI responds:

:) You gotta sit to get that howl in. Thanks for checking it out. I've been enjoying Phaser a lot and look forward to fixing this game so the UI and puzzles are a bit more of an enjoyable experience.

[Biker Hero]

Lovely fun! Controls were fluid and responsive, shooting the bouncing baddies was great fun and the sound effects just topped it all off :)

BobbertOC responds:

Thank you, means a lot man! :)

[Horizon 6]

Ohh, this was pretty sweet! Graphically, it's great. I like the flying and zooming around. The landscape looks great and it feels satisfying blasting the baddies. Collecting the cat / lemming was a nice touch, too. Finding that green exit square could be a bit of a nightmare, though. Feels like it would benefit from a way finder or mini-map, especially when fuel is running low or you're out of ammo. The controls took a bit of getting used to. They felt ok, but I think the extremes of their settings should have been more confined (i.e. you don't have to move to the top or bottom of the game to reach those limits). Nice to see something different :)

PatrickOReilly responds:

It's funny that nowadays this is something different, of course back when, there was more than enough of this trope🙃 this is the first acknowledgement of the homage to the lemming👍

Phaser is uniquely suited to making this type of game, and I am greatly enthused by v3. That's some great work, especially the scenes architecture, and my hat is off to you. You really understand game dev in all its aspects. I'm hoping to evolve this effort into a more advanced flying game, super small footprint, but real 3d math models instead of the highly fudged prototype this is. Still weighing putting the standard thumb overlays for movement control.

[Hey! I just need some bread]

That was proper fun! At first I was thinking 'what laser beams?' but after a few minutes, oh boy! Loved the speed at which it got harder and the other birds coming in and causing havoc. The only thing that bothered me was that the other birds seemed to have laser-proof feathers. I tried SO many times to peck one to stun it right into a laser blast, but they always got away unharmed. Either I just didn't do it right, or you can't do it at all? If so, it'd be a great addition :)

nightape responds:

The original idea was the others bird can get burned to ashes but i got no time to do it XD

[Feed & Evolve]

Nice idea and I felt like I really had to protect that egg until it hatched! Once the Birzard was out and I let it start eating things it seemed to take ages to evolve - and it was hard to tell when an animal was attacking you compared to just being eaten. With a little more balancing I would have played for longer, for sure.

nicolashdm responds:

I didn't have much time to balance the game, but for sure I will improve it. Thanks for your review =-D
The idea of the game is pay attention to the enemy's life, so the Birzard can kill it with one hit and don't take any damage.