One-Dollar's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Space Invaders Flash]

Good remake, but not as hard

A good recreation though the invaders need to speed up a bit more when there are fewer of them. They're still really easy to hit when there's only one left, whereas in the classic game the final invader always moved really fast. As it is the game is rather easy and I gave up by getting bored, not by being killed. Also the exit button doesn't seem to do anything.

I'm not accusing you of stealing the flash, but with something this common the idea's bound to run through several people's heads and might get you some whistle blowers. My suggestion is to change the title screen to make it more obvious that it's your submission.

Gage001 responds:

i will tell you that i saw a flash game of invaders and made my own version.
So if that answers your question...

[Da Button!]

Simple, but well executed

As you said it was a simple concept, but it was well carried out. Could have benefited from a higher frame rate, but still a good submission.

[Virtual Human Snow Fight]

For a quick gimmick it looks really good

"But the concept of it, using real humans instead of vector art, is revolutionary when it comes to interactive games" - hmm... not really. Its been done quite a lot before (though not so much in Flash games, if that's what you mean).

Anyway, the level to which you've got people to merge into the background is great. People grabbing onto desks and walls, hiding behind things... it looks really good. Yeah, the game could use a bit more polish in some places - the snowballs could use some shading or something, and the hit detection is a bit off - but a lot of effort has been put in to this and it really shows.

[Star defence]

Hard to the point of impossible

The presentation was OK but the game started off very hard and just got harder. I'll have to take your word that there was 5 lives, I was getting rushed by so many ships on level 2 that I just couldn't get past it. Level 1 should generally be considered to be a training level in order to teach the player the skills they need for the rest of the game, then you slowly ramp up the difficulty from that point. Speaking of training, some instructions would have helped.

There wasn't enough variety in the gameplay, just moving the mouse and clicking. At the very least you could do with different shot types, ships or being able to move your ship.

Also the level endings weren't very well defined - level 1 suddenly ended while there were still ships on the screen. If you're going to end levels when the player has reached a certain time, it's a good idea to put some sort of timer on the screen. At one point during level 2 all the ships suddenly disapeared then launched from the edge of the screen again, almost as if I'd got to level 3 but without the level 3 sign.

It wasn't a bad effort, but you needed to take it much further in both concept and testing.

[Wiggi Walk!]

Good in one way, scary in another

Nice game, though I don't think many of the target audience should be browsing Newgrounds

Small bug:
When moving left from the starting skin during 'create a wiggi' the colour changes from pink to blue, but if you click the right arrow it moves from blue to green

[DCorp's Cursor Tut V.2]

Not awful, but still not perfect

Ok, first off a bug I found, the Amusement Ride and Ante Up music descriptions appear when you scroll the mouse over the area they are located in instead of just the buttons

In terms of style, it tends to be a bit heavy and insulting. You're aiding people, so calling them 'noobs' and swearing a lot might not help that much.

The second page could be a bit clearer (by "a * sort of thing" I assume you mean the centre-point of the movieclip), in which case you could point out that this is the 'clicking point' of the mouse or whatever.

Overall its as lot better than some tutorials I've seen, but you don't cover a lot of ground. If the text for your tutorial can fit into essentially two pages, why not stretch it out with step-by-step screenshots and things?

The best thing about tutorial is the look. It's very easy to read and looks nice too. It seems reasonably friendly and accessible, which is what you want from a tutorial.

One other thing I'll mention is the music issue. Its a problem whenever people submit tutorials with music - the ballance between variety, length and loading times is a hard one. In this case I'd say a four page tutorial is not worth 6 MB and the loading time that comes with it. I'd just pick one song.

I hope this isn't all too negative, I'm just trying to give you a fair amount of feedback and as many pointers for areas to improve in as possible.

DCorp responds:

I'm am glad you like it! Remember to sumbit it to the flash tutorial collection!

[Another day at the office]

Good, but instruction needed

I wasn't too sure at first if there was a point to the game or not. Then after messing around for a while I completed it. It was pretty well made, nice graphics and game mechanics, though obviously a bit short. I think it needed more of a story-line, or at least should have given the player a rough overall objective, otherwise people might just mess around for a while and quit without realising it has a goal

[Sound Control Tutorial]

Very useful and indepth

I didn't see your original, but I thought this was great. Really in depth and helpful, covering more or less all I can think of that you can do with sounds. I hope any further tutorials you do are this well explained. In terms of graphics I reckon they aren't absoloutly essential, but screenshots are very useful and nice looks help to make the whole thing seem more friendly. Nobody would read a tutorial that was all black text on a white background.

Lockdude responds:

Thanks, well my last one wasnt just black text on a white background but it was sorta along those lines and it had no pictures, so it's all better now I reckon, and keep an eye out for more tutorials. Thanks for the great review.

[The Ultimate AS Tutorial]

Not bad, but a bit awkward

It's pretty good, I guess, and coveres quite a wide range of topics. My main problem is with the presentation - its all text. You need some diagrams/pictures/animations and probably also some examples (like you did with the car game). The other main problem is the copy-and-pasteable actionscript - I think almost all of the text boxes you put it in are far too small to see the complete line of code, which makes it hard if people are trying to understand your explanations. Everything is also black and red, which gets a bit boring after a while (though better than having lots of styles). Perhaps make it a bit more bright and colourful - in its current state the flash looks a little daunting and offputting. Controls for turning the music on and off (plus tutorial)? The final thing is the menu buttons. Its not obvious which are buttons and which are text, so its a little hard to tell what you can click.

So basically the content's more or less fine, but the presentation needs a bit of work

micsa responds:

Thanks for the tips.

[Photoshop Tutorialab beta]

Change the text colour

You shouldn't submit test stuff like this to the portal. Still, here's my advice - change the text colour. You can't read black on the background you've chosen, so make it white or something

Zeppekk responds:

Really? i thought it was prettey damn easy to read, easier than greay, because grey/white/red is the backround colour.