Kadronk's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Daxolissian System: Mech Squad]

Interesting ideas ! I like the idea of having pawns you can control via orders, or via direct control. They serve as extra lives too, it's versatile !
The story is interesting too. For me it was what made me want to progress further into the game.
However it's a bit hard to control, physically. I kept pressing on the wrong buttons to select a specific bot. I think selecting bots via scroll wheel would nice, unless you plan to add more weapons per bot.
For the map, i like the aesthetic, but i recommend adding more landmarks to the scene. Even with the minimap, it's hard to determine where you want to go.
And finally, a bit of a nitpick, but it would be a nice if enemies made a sound and flash when they're getting impacted bu a bullet. Satisfying feedbacks, ya know.

More serious problems :
Snipers are busted. Sometimes they wouldn't shoot until they were facing me, and sometimes they would just instantly snipe as soon as they could, TF2 spinbot style.
And my aim was slowly paning to the left, so I constantly had to readjust my aim.

3p0ch responds:

Thanks for the review! The thing about panning to the left is due to an update in Firefox that happened after this game was published -- for some reason now in Firefox if your browser zoom is exactly 100% and the mouse is captured it'll do that, but if you adjust the browser's zoom up or down even one notch or if you use a different browser then that should fix it. In my games since then, I've added code to let the player know if that starts happening and how to fix it.

The bots that roam around until they see you should only see you if you're within 45 degrees of forward and will shoot if you're within that cone of vision. But they do turn around if you start shooting them and occasionally turn around on their own.

And enemies flashing red when they get hit is one of the things I changed in Daxolissian System: Quad. It has gamepad support too -- I'm not sure if the gamepad layout I used in Quad was optimal since selecting and commanding squad-mates is complex no matter how you slice it, but since it uses a Gamepad Mapper tool you can just lie when you're doing the mapping if you don't like the layout.

[Dodge the Turrets]

The first section of the third level was hard for me, because i kept pressing space too late, or suddenly lost air momentum, or the next platform was just a tiny bit too far. That may be just me, but i just couldn't pass that section in a seamless way.
Turrets being able to shoot through walls is an interesting and unusual mechanic. The beginning of level 2 does it right, where I can clearly notice the turrets behind the walls i have to walljump, but on the other levels i was surprised to see i was being shot at through the ground or the big arrow walls. You could try to change the level design to make the deadlier sentries more noticeable (maybe with glass walls ? you decide), or give a wall-hack style highlight to turrets that are currently targeting the player.
Also, turret platforms being completely non-solid after level 1 is just deceiving, make them much smaller so the player doesn't have the incentive to jump on them.

Aakison118 responds:

thanks for the feedback! I did try to position the turret platforms so that the player couldn't reach them, but it looks like I might have missed some. The hack sign above the turrets seems like an interesting idea, I'll see if I can pull it off.

thanks for playing!

[Shard Cavern]

Good job on your first game ! It's quite polished, visual-wise, with a good use of gfx. Try adding a blink animation to the yeti('s head), something as simple as that would make him more lively. Optionally, a dash and death animation would be nice too.
Game design-wise it's alright too, it's a simple infinite... "avoider" ? haha. I just feel like the dash is a bit useless against big shards. Maybe give it more distance, or some i-frames ?
Also I've played 4 runs and still have no idea on how to avoid the big shards wave after the warning, but maybe that's just me.
On a last note, since the game happens in a cavern, you could try adding echo to the shard shattering sounds.

TsucchiDev responds:

Thanks a lot, this means a lot to me! Totally agree with your suggestions to make it more lively, I'll definitely incorporate that into my future games. I've never thought of using an echo for the shard shattering sounds either! Cheers!

[THE COLOUR GAME]

Give more contrast between red and brown, and pink and purple.

Aprime responds:

Thanks Kadronk, try now