Gizmo199's Reviews, critiques, and thoughts

Please note that the reviews below are just my opinion on each project. Please do not take it as an insult or that I didn't enjoy your game. I think it is very important as developers for us to give and receive critical feedback through the eyes of others. I think it is one of the best tools for growth and learning. Disclaimer aside, here are my reviews! :D

The following reviews are in the order that I played/reviewed them in.

Cleaning the dungeon - Momurd

Very neat! I thoroughly enjoyed the puzzles! Took me a second to wrap my head around how exactly the mechanic worked, and it was still a bit confusing for instance when going into a "corridor" or a single tile spot and trying to wrap my brain around what direction he would go as he exited. An improvement I might suggest would be to make the character turn the direction he is about to move before he goes to the next block. That way when I click I can visually see that "oh he is turning this way". Just a thought. :D Only one note:

• Make it more clear what direction the player will be moving once the player has "clicked".

Overall great work! Was really fun and the levels seemed fairly balanced!

DrillShip - Loulounie

I like the story and the concept! Almost like a controllable pinball. My biggest issue is though that it was WAAAY too fast and uncontrollable. Couldn't get past day 2 and almost beat it by just not playing and letting the ship bounce around on its own. My suggestion would be:

• Get rid of the friction when turning the ship. you want this mechanic to be more controllable.
• Make the "thruster" (space bar) a bit slower. I don't mind that it jets (instead of slowly building up speed) but it is way too fast. 
• Make the ship bounce off of the asteroids slower. The bumper is okay to be a bit faster as it is understood by the player that it will send you flying, but the planets also send you flying, and the asteroids don't really do much to dampen the speed of the ship
• Make the ship only "spin out of control" when hitting the bumper maybe. It seems that I can't even get my ship to move any direction I intend because when the velocity is high no matter what it hits the ship spins out of control.

Hopefully, this helps! I like the little "boing" sound it makes when the player hits things too. The narrative is cute. The gameplay is just too out of control and gets very frustrating very quickly.

Into the grinder - jcsirron

Unfortunately, my computer can't play this. :( Keep getting a .dll error. Tried to fix it but it still won't run. :( Was looking forward to playing! Might be because I am running WIN7? not sure.

Very nice little puzzle game! The graphics and audio were great! I am always a fan of doing the tutorial by actually playing the game!  Good work! A few thoughts:

• Was a bit too easy. I messed up a good number of times but still had plenty of energy to run around. I think the energy levels could be tightened up a bit so that players must find the most optimal route.
• I think it would be a nice addition to have a prompt or a description somewhere telling the player what each frame or suit can do. I ended up wasting a couple of steps because I didn't realize only the "tube" frame could go over water. Might be a nice little addition.
• I think some story could do it justice! :)

Overall great job! Would love to see it expanded! :D

Move them - crunchlaw

That was fun! Wish there were more! A couple of notes ( outside of some obvious issues ):

• I think slowing some of the friction down would be more optimal. The player just seems to slide too much. If you expanded this with more difficult levels it could become an issue with sliding off platforms to your death
• There are glitches I am sure you are aware of, but just in case: Jumping below or into the frog from the side will make the player stop mid-air. Audio continues to play. 
• I figured out that to complete the puzzle with the mouse and the lever and the frog and the lever, all you have to do is simply grab the mouse/frog, hover them over the lever, and put them back where they were. Idk if this was intentional but might make for better puzzles if you make it so that you have to choreograph the timing/movement of the mouse/frog.
• Could have used some quirky music in the background. :)

Overall great work! Was pretty fun! I wish there was more! 

OMG! JUMP! A mouse! 8 - Game Devs Quest

Was incredibly frustrating to not be able to see the ledges I needed to get to below me. Overall though not terrible! A couple of thoughts:

• The friction on the horizontal movement is WAAAYYY to loose. I kept sliding off of edges and at that point is when I started to get frustrated. 
• The bounce pads make you jump too high, and on certain parts, it feels more like luck than skill that I was able to land on a platform while free-falling towards an unknown abyss. This is a common thing to avoid in platformers. The "leap of faith" will always make players feel like the game is working against them. 

Overall though good work! The animations were nice! The sound effects and music worked. Other than the friction moving horizontally the platforming mechanics were good! Could use something in the background (could help give a sense of where you are in the room). Keep working at it! :D

EDIT: Had to give up at this point:

    

RampantAI - Papa Chaos

Couldn't play, unfortunately. Not sure if my system can run it. I tend to have issues running UE4 games sometimes. Sorry! :(

Recycle My Life - Midnight Roach Media

Haha. VERY short. Honestly, I was kind of surprised how many I got wrong. Thought the cardboard milk jug was for sure recyclable! haha. I really enjoyed the intro! Very cinematic! The text box and character were nice. I could really relate with the dev on this! haha.The story had somewhere to go! Would have loved to see more. :D A couple of thoughts:

• Definitely expand! Was too short. Could be a cool "I-spy" or "where's waldo" type of game where you have a list of things you need to sort within a scene.
• Obviously consistency in the graphics. I think if you went the "real photos" way but photoshopped each element as its own item I could fit well.

Overall not much to comment on. Good work. :)

Recycle Man - Mantismannan

Haha. I loved the little banana people. Overall I didn't play much as 1) I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing, and 2) every time I tried to punch something I would just die. A couple of thoughts:

• Give a clear objective to the player. Are they supposed to just kill everything? are they supposed to save something? Should I be directing the banana man's attacks towards the trashcan man? Let players know how to play your game besides just how to attack and move.
• The collisions boxes were weird and I kept getting stuck trying to go on bridges. Might need to make the collisions more subtle or known to the player. I died from a projectile trying to run away and got stuck trying to get on the bridge.

Overall not a lot going on to base too much off of. Overall I did like the almost "Atari" vibe it had. Loved banana man! Keep working at it! :D

Sling to sort - UrtleTurtle

Can't play, on windows. :( Sorry!

'Sno Baddies - Kumusta

Well, not much here. Snowboarding and dodging animals and trees? didn't find any other controls. Two notes:

• Make sure the collision box is known to players. I felt like I wasn't even close to some trees and I would die. A
• No restart button (that I could find) or exit button (had to use alt-f4)

just not much here. Seems low effort. Sorry. :(

Space Junk - hdefranco

Great work! It's small but well done. A little slow for my taste but nonetheless I can tell you put some effort into it! I loved the concept of when you destroy the ships you get to collect them and become them when you die. Very cool little mechanic! A couple of thoughts;

• I would ramp up the speed a bit. I think it moves a little slow and leaves me more or less waiting for the next thing to come.
• Give the squid boss some more variety in attacks. I found that the little tiny "bullet" looking ships that shoot at you gave up a bit more of a challenge than the boss did. 
• Squish it together! everything just seems so spaced out between one another on top of the slow pace it moves. 
• Needs some sound/music...

Overall the movement was solid and reactive. It has a nice atari aesthetic! I liked that there was some variety in enemies. Would have loved to be able to kill the shooting spike ball and become it eventually. 

Submarine Slice - BlurEd

This was really fun! Had a blast playing it! Almost like a memory puzzle type game! A couple of thoughts:

• I would add in at the bottom, some outlines of what the parts look like. Seems that it changes between different objects ever round and I had no clue what exactly I was looking for
• Make it so that once you are out of energy, instead of making the rectangle 'stop' growing (as it feels like a glitch) you could have the rectangle stop in white and continue in red around the area you have energy left for. 

Overall Awesome work! Was fun and well polished. Very coherent! :D

Sort the waste - niutp

I dig the concept! Great work! The biggest issue is way too many controls to keep up with. May have worked a lot better to use a mouse instead and just have some right/left arrows by each bin line. Kept getting confused. haha. Main note:

• Simplify the controls if possible. Too many controls to keep up with will just make a player feel frustrated.

Fun little concept thought! Hope you expand on it! :D

Back to nature - zestylimez

Very fun! I thought it was pretty fun to slide around, however, it made it a bit difficult to flee the enemy as well as lining up the shot. Overall though this is a nice little entry! Pretty easy learning curve too! Good work! :D

Desert Collector - HumanBones

Very nice! Small but well put together! The art is nice and the audio provided by the jam works great with this little project! A couple of notes:

• The jump is much too fast, leaving the player needing to be scarily close to the cacti. Would be better to implement a slower jump and have it stop jumping once you release. This would give the player more control and if they mess up it's on them and not the jump mechanic.
• Wish there were more! I think you could have a lot of different obstacles with a desert scene.

Overall good work! Very well put together little project. :D

Nature's Call - SpencasaurusRex

Waiting to see if I can get a downloadable version as the browser version runs too slow... :( 

Thank you for the downloadable version! This was very polished! Very smooth! Short but solid! I loved solid physics when you land on an enemy's head, as well as the jump. Very balanced I think. All except the horizontal movement, although take note that this might just be my preference. A couple of things:

• I like when players must use their momentum to achieve longer jumps but I don't think the player speed was fast enough as a whole IMO. I think speeding up the player just a little and shortening the time it takes to reach max speed would tighten the player movement up and make it feel less like the game is working against you when you slide off the edge of a platform to your death. tl;dr I would make the player gain speed a bit quicker as well as make the player overall a bit faster. Feels 'sluggish' a bit.
• Obviously MORE! I had a lot of fun with it! The design was great but it would have been nice to play a couple more levels! :p

Overall, this was fun! Very well presented and polished. Short but sweet. :) It shows that you have a firm grasp of what you're doing! Keep it up! :)

Dicey Dungeon Escape - Neleab

Nice! A fun little roguelike! There was just enough strategy to balance out the luck aspect of it! Not a ton to it but very solidly put together! Great work! Not too many suggestions aside from maybe some animation / aesthetic stuff. :D

Cycle bot - Make the game

Very neat! Great concept! The level design was good. The puzzles were well done! The art was great! I only wish that the text had not been displayed over everything so boldly. Would have been nice to have a little textbox or something but I am nitpicking really. Great work. Needs audio for sure! :D

Critical Decision - Shepherd Games

Interesting. The music was loud. The story is...interesting. I was certain she was going to go crazy and kill him & the ex-girlfriend. The way she comes to conclusions about "his desires" seems like the ramblings of either 1) a psychotic break down or 2) An anxious mess. The first scenario seems to fit the narrative more as someone with really low self-esteem and really high anxiety wouldn't try to hook them up I don't think. I think the psycho would go find the ex and make them be together. Overall the narrative is a bit too forward. Is it trying to make you feel bad? Idk. Either way, it wasn't bad. A little cringe though. sorry. A few notes:

• The art and music were great! I wish there had been more decision making throughout though. I think you could have gotten away with the story if you let the reader/player choose the way to feel about the memory
• Was too short, and the text was a bit slow. Would have been nice to have a "fast forward" button so that I wouldn't have to wait for the text to print out.

TP Mouse - Kakalambo

Not bad! :D The concept is nice. There is some juice to it! Love the particle effects. You can really only play it for like 2-3 minutes though. A few notes:

• It takes way too long to teleport once there are lots of enemies. It's frustrating to teleport to a spot only to have an enemy immediately spawn near that spot with no time to quickly teleport away.
• On spawning, I think once the arrow is clicked, at least during the duration of the teleport sound you should make enemies move away from the spot you are about to teleport to as well as not let them spawn near it once you teleport to that spot for at least a second or two.

Overall, not much to go on, but good work! :D

Waste of Space - Escaron

Not bad! A nice little asteroids game. Ran a bit slow on my browser. Also, I wish it was an option to go full screen instead of automatically going full screen.  The music was nice. The biggest note is that the ship moves a little too fast. Good work! :D

Snake Puzzle - njbradley

This is a really fun concept! I think this would be an awesome mobile game with some better graphics! Great work! Although the last level was much easier than the second to last level. I really enjoyed this! I wish there was more to it! Great work! :DD

Recyle // Made in 1 hour for OMGJAM7 - Patrickrmc

Neat! Not bad for 1 hour! Would be nice if it sped up a little as you went. I think it could benefit also instead of number keys to switch you could press up/down and cycle through each type. That way you only have 2 keys to think about instead of 3 types with 3 keys. Simple, not much to comment on honestly. Good work. :)

Walk Cycle - Oliverwhiddles

Not much here but aesthetically this oozes charm! I would love to see a full-fledged game in this style. It has such an "indie" vibe to it, from the music to the art. I love the way the apples drop. Looks fantastic! I think with some good post-processing, and a more cohesive art direction between each element this would be amazing! Almost like a pop-out book, which would be killer!