00:00
00:00
OuterPace

18 Game Reviews w/ Response

All 162 Reviews

I'll begin from the *very* beginning.

The idea for this game is highly overused, and you seem to only have a vague "this is a child's dream and this is scary" idea which is not executed very well by the colorful cartoon kitty cats, strangely out of place pencil-drawn ghosts holding blocks, and tribal-tattooed elephants.

You are thrown into a strange low-polygon environment of wooden beams suspended in a cubical nondescript room. Is the dream that he is small? I would appreciate some introduction.

At first, I didn't know the flashlight in his hand had any purpose. Anyway, if this is a dream, why does he have one? At least have him find one, not that the idea of a flashlight in a horror game is original or anything.

The mouse location controls the direction he looks in. He needs to look in the direction he is moving, not where the mouse is. The mouse isn't actually there in the game world, he is simply pointing his flashlight at it when he uses it. In addition, if you are walking, the camera lags behind so you can't see what's ahead of you, but that's not all - the center of the screen (not where the boy is placed in relation to it) is how the model determines what direction to face, meaning if I am moving to the right, and my mouse is in between the boy and the center of the game screen - meaning behind him - he will still look to the right, and I will be unable to shine the flashlight behind me. I have to consciously move the mouse farther behind him in order to use it in this fashion, which I shouldn't have to do. It breaks any immersion that would've been there if this was anything more than a simple time-waster platformer.

Double-jump is a little ridiculous, and there isn't even any graphic to show you've done it. He just... pops up in the middle of the air. He falls too fast for it to feel fluid and like an actual double jump You can also jump and still double jump after falling off a platform, even if you haven't jumped.

There is no use avoiding enemies at all. It takes eleven seconds of continuously being in contact with a cat enemy and three with the elephant (a stationary enemy) to have ANY ill effect, and if "waking up" is the game over screen, why would I not kill myself on the first enemy to escape the nightmare? Of course, if that is the point of the story - "stuck in a nightmare." You never told me.

The flashlight, activated by left click, therefore has no use - because why scare away an enemy who can't really hurt you? It doesn't even do anything to any enemy except the cat. He also doesn't even look where it's pointing, he just stands there while a light shines out of his cock. At least, upon closer inspection, it actually comes from the front of the flashlight.

The powerups are useless - why do I want to go faster? The batteries have no use because the flashlight, like I just said, has no real point - but what's more, if they DID actually have a use, why would you put multiple ones between spaces with no enemies?

The signs don't work, except the one explaining the power up, and let's face it - it's not scary or even fun in a gaming sense to walk, jump and read signs with messages that sound like they're trying and failing to be cryptic, written by "the guy who writes the signs." At least just leave him unnamed, for chrissakes, do you know how many platforming games have a "guy that writes the signs"?

There is one path to the exit, and the keys are located on the path. That's a little counter-intuitive, you'd imagine if you didn't reach a locked door first you wouldn't need to have a key item. I understand having a key be necessary for a locked door, but if you have to teach me that locked doors need keys, you only need to teach me that in ONE level.

The second level cannot be completed, or else the "activated with 1 key" message is the last part of the coding of the game, which I would understand, being a beta.

In conclusion, this should be called a "proof of concept." Not beta, not alpha, barely more than a simple and unfinished in many ways clone of better platformers.

I realize this is a work in progress, and I know it can be improved. That's why I said all that was wrong with it. That said, newgrounds isn't meant to be your beta-testing playground for free reviews and tips, it's for fun finished games, or a least if it's a beta make it fun to play the beta. This is walk right, jump jump jump, walk left, jump jump jump.

marckzero responds:

Thank you For the feedback , we will try to improve for future builds.

Simply: Very fun and awesome, great potential. Very few flaws for a WIP game. Your "fair bit more planned" includes most of what I thought could be added while playing.

Expanded_
Controls: Smooth and play like Star Wars Battlefront 2 would if it was a flying snake, meaning *perfectly*. The mouse control needs a sensitivity slider and smoother movement. The boost doubles the speed, however, and while for most of the game this works fine, I got the the point where every piece of fruit in the distance was filled with sprawling matrices of my body, and the boost simply got to be too much to be used. I think "+1000m/s" would be better than "double m/s."

Graphics: Already, the graphics are great for a game of this style; just like minecraft and its stylized pixel environment, the ballsnake is a throwback to how snake games have always been; however, in a 3D environment, I believe one long tube (a la eastern dragons) would look better (not sure if that's a planned feature), and a way to determine top of the body from the bottom would make the disorientation easier to handle.
In that same vein, instead of a blue cube as the environment, I would suggest maybe having grass for the ground, trees for the sides and a sunny sky for the ceiling, making the ability to look for the shadow of the fruit to determine its location easier and less of a scavenger hunt.
That said, the radar, once you get used to it, is flawlessly incorporated and easy to read and makes finding the goals easier.
As for the fruit, I think some more realistic looking (at least, as realistic and floating fruit collectibles get), dangly, slightly randomized fruit models would be great. The kiwi for example is often just a big brown ball while facing away from me even while it's cut in half, and seeing the fleshy hairy skin would let me know what kind it is.

Extras: I can't wait to see how a menu would turn out if this turns into an awesome flying snake fruit collection game. Would love to see a dragon skin or something, complete with arms on the first segment and procedurally farther back legs dangling on one of the anterior segments, and a tapering tail, or customizability - a bird head, rattle tail, demon wings, crab claws beast would be fun to fly around. With enough options, I could see you making some money after you have a nice satisfactory bunch for free.

Very very good idea, and already a good time waster! Could see putting as much time to this as "goin up" or "toss the turtle" with enough extra features and unlockables!

JimGiant responds:

I really like some of your customisation ideas. A graphic overhaul is planned once I've got all the features I want in the game. Tubular snakes would be awesome but it would require rewriting about a third of the code, maybe once everything else is done.

Mouse sensitivity slider will be in the next update but I haven't started on smoothing yet.

Gems stop you from moving, WAY too much sliding around, retry doesn't work, stock shit music, stretched, irrelevant background, shitty object. Delete this now, please.

REDF00Q responds:

check the second demo of this game!
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/624477

Tough love! NO OFFENSE MEANT BY THIS...
Your control explanation is completely wrong, the game is WAAAY too easy, and it's generally choppy and unpleasing to look at. Here's a list to help you.
- Buttons, not plain text, please.
-Smaller targets. I could swipe the screen constantly and only die if I hit dynamite, which I can see fairly easily.
- FIX DESCRIPTION. Says "left click for slow motion" when it's actually "left click to CUT."
- Sorry, but Newgrounds isn't really for beta games. Finish it first! Put it on a blog or your flash dump to have something out there.
- This game already exists in a much better form, FRUIT NINJA. You didn't even change the name, come on, dude.

HOWEVER.
Your "future updates" section gives me a hint that this could end up being a much more customization-oriented game, as opposed to fruit ninja.
"Customizable hands and weapons" sounds awesome.
"More soundtracks" means you could actually center some of your points around having awesome music no one's ever heard of - Mindthings for a zen feel, maybe? Look up his song "elle" on youtube! That's my suggestion.
"Customizable slash effects" seems to take the "unlockable slash effect" to a new level, and me likey.
"Updated graphics" is a must-have. Do this first.
Now, I've given you half a star, but know that this could be much better with some work. I'll be very happy if I see it come to fruition!

cubera responds:

I never mentioned "left click for slow motion". Did you read the instructions page?

The purpose was to make it similar to fruit ninja. Since I have seen a bunch of clones to the popular title. There's even a top 10 list to fruit ninja clones. But thanks for the response man, this was definitely a detailed response and of course I take no offense to constructive criticism because it points out the flaws to the game which need improvement. It was originally a rushed project since the game was built in 2-3 days, but I will definitely take your advice to make it better.

Also I'm not sure what you meant by "click to cut". When you do a slicing gesture, it cuts the bottle. The bottles are cut based on the length of cut aligned to the vertical angle of the cut portioned to the bottle. I did allow people to kind tap on the screen when dynamite appears since there can be overlap between dynamite and bottles.

I didn't know how to upgrade for maybe five minutes. I just kept going on and on. Hold S=win. However, a better death animation would be nice (I finally found it... :D), and upgrades are much too expensive for the length of time it takes to get them. Raise the coin amount per kill by a few, or lower the prices. I like the first one more. The melee is way too fast on your own character, I didn't shoot once until there were ten men on the screen, not counting the "wonder what shooting's like" shot on the first ammo pickup. Music is very repetitive. Add a playlist with multiple songs some time in the future. Lastly, the name: Accelerated. This is the third madness game with a form of "Accelerate" on it, try something new.

The good parts! The shooting damage is really good, not too fast, not very slow... Seems about the same as melee. There are definitely worse madness games.

Anyway, personal comment: Thank god you can speak English well, like some people on NG. Not to say that non-english speakers are bad, I love Combat Tournament. But it's nice. :3

FetusMilkshakes responds:

Thanks for giving us some advice man, we don't care if a comment is negative or positive or whatever. We just need to know what we can do to fix this up since we got it out, and you're helping us get closer to a fun and enjoyable game. :D

Fine idea for a game. However, there are a few bits you may have forgotten.
Firstly, the /SOLE/ reason I lost the first ten times was because the head/mouth things kept popping up RIGHT on top of me, or in front of me. I also saw them spawn on top of the spike ball, too.
Secondly, the movement is fairly slow. Good for a small room, but sometimes it gets a bit... Just, I should say it should be a tiny bit faster.
Lastly, the eyes. They seem useless to me, except for score, and score hasn't been a big deal for me ever since the NES came out. "Atari was for score; but not any more." Remove them, or put them on the walls. I kept thinking they were dangerous.

samulis responds:

The eyes DO shoot little "bullets" at you... plus they're pretty creepy.

We'll look at some of the spawn stuff and discuss if it needs to be adjusted.

EDIT: There should already be a code in place preventing spawns right on top of you.

Wow, amazing! I never thought such an old and dusty idea could take such a huge leap toward being awesome. And not dusty. Had a lot more fun than any tower defense game I've ever seen!

soapcreative responds:

thanks!

Experienced no problems the guy down there said. Loved it, thanks for posting.

LilDwarf responds:

Awesome, thanks!

...

No loading screen, -1.
All in german with no explanation, -1.
Bad sound quality, -1.

I think you speak german, so here's a translation.

Kein ladebildschirm, -1.
Alle in deutsch und keine Erklärung, -1.
Schlechte tonqualität, -1.

xtreetoonx responds:

soundbords dont need loading screens.
there's not a single word in german, germans shit
its the best quality possible through flash with Mumble decoded quality, yes shit mic but that's it.

no i do not, you thought completely wrong

i dont even
you pretty much have no idea what you're talking about :7

I know secret too.

I the secret if the Tab button!

0497335119 responds:

LOOOL xD

I only make a certain type of music. If it's ever changed, then I'm not in a good mood.

Ryan @OuterPace

Age 31, Male

Therapist

Strayer University

Alabama

Joined on 4/30/10

Level:
3
Exp Points:
52 / 100
Exp Rank:
> 100,000
Vote Power:
2.85 votes
Rank:
Civilian
Global Rank:
> 100,000
Blams:
2
Saves:
0
B/P Bonus:
0%
Whistle:
Normal
Medals:
1,467