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Troisnyx

25 Game Reviews w/ Response

All 78 Reviews

Thoughts on playing this:

1) Movement is very unwieldy. It's fluid enough, but I've no real system where up really means up, left really means left, and so on. It's a twisty wheel thing where I've got next to no idea where I' m going to next and I'm leaving it all to chance.

2) What's that thing with the plus sign meant to be? An enemy? Or perhaps an upgrade to collect? Whatever it is, I pass straight through it.

3) The background gets hard on my eyes after a while. It might be worth replacing it with some terrain and walls, or a pleasing patch of ground.

4) That turret is nicely drawn; I hope to see more art along that line because I only have very little to go by.

5) The music is incredibly repetitive to the point of being headache-inducing.

At the current stage I would have classed this as *pre-alpha.* A beta would imply that the game is at least halfway done, there are enemies to shoot and there are bugs that need ironing out. The basic mechanics aren't even complete.

It would have been worth putting this in your Projects and perhaps PMing a few people you can trust to test the game for you, making the game visible to them. As it stands, I, and many others, feel the game is far from ready for public release.

MessagedGames responds:

This is my very first game I have ever created so I would not really expect much to be done for now,I am currently working on the background to be in front of the current rainbow background, muting the music will be an option soon, the moving mechanics are a work in progress.

Also, plus sign? What plus sign, please tell me how you got this issue, though you are most likely talking about the aiming icon.
Not too sure if the 1 star was very necessary though.

I am trying my very best at game developing.

I have made sure to change as much of the things you have told me to change and I hope it works better for you.

It seems to be working fine.

A lot of what could make this game better, and more immersive, boils down to the aesthetics at the end of the day -- which I'm sure you're well aware of. The writing is quite good as it is. Though I'd like to pitch some suggestions for the next one, if you do another:

1) I'm not sure how well Twine takes to drawn backgrounds, avatars and music. But if you manage to find a way ahead with that, that would add to its immersiveness.

Which reminds me; Hyptosis also sometimes does text-based adventures, but I'm not sure what he uses, and if he's ever used Twine before. But considering he's done fantasy art for, and written, games similar to this, maybe ask him for pointers?

2) I know this is going to take multiple rolls based on the random die and the choices you make, but I was beginning to wonder if outside of all these, you could have a joke ending? As it stands, there are three options per query / question / impasse that you arrive at, which is alright to start with, but I could very well imagine that in a future game, you would have certain questions that have two simple Y / N answers (or two options just like that), and some that would have a myriad of options (perhaps up to six?), including the most stupid ones.

Fallout Shelter, believe it or not, has some really funny option choices in quests and that's partly where I'm coming from; the other part is from playing some text-based adventures here on NG. But at this moment in time, I felt that the options were a bit too straightforward: Best ending / Normal ending / Bad ending. For example, we have not yet got the gem that is the Dog Ending of Silent Hill 2, which, given the possibilities in a fantasy game, could very well happen. XD

I don't know how many endings you were planning in here, but hopefully this could pave the way for some really nice sequels to come.

CaptainJackTHAC0 responds:

Awesome, thank you very much for the advice! I will definitely look into backgrounds and music for future games and talk to Hyptosis about his games.

I agree I will definitely need to include a few more endings in future games. As for joke endings, did you unlock the secret room by proving your worth? The endings triggered in their aren't necessarily joke endings, but really just a collection of hilarious ways to kill the villain using odd-ball items.

Thanks again for playing and sharing your thoughts!!

Considering this is an RNG, I was wondering why there were no items to speed up and slow down the counters. Anyway.

The art was alright, and the gameplay got me sucked in during the first few levels. I think the trouble with this is that you'd be more likely to grind in the upper levels before going down. Tedium at its worst. I love the odd weapons in this game. A spork? Maybe a balloon animal? It'd be nice to include these in the field journal as well, to give us players a sense of accomplishment. And then have a New Game Plus feature so that if we're gunning for the 100%, we could have a few more tries on the gachapon machine.

The music is quite nice. Calming, in a lot of places. You wouldn't expect that of a dungeon, but it works.

The gameplay itself, on the other hand, raises questions like

1) How is it that the RNG moves four spaces once, and five spaces another when I time it to the precise second? This should NOT be happening. Unless you scrambled it instead of letting the selector move from top left to bottom right, this shouldn't be happening.

2) The skip function in making room layouts should be just as random as the making of the room itself. EVERY SINGLE TIME I skipped, the boss wasn't happy with his placement. There shouldn't be impossible scenarios like this every time the Skip button is pressed.

Alright game, I suppose.

PestoForce responds:

There are buffs to slow down the chooser, keep playing! Also, every weapon is in the field journal, look in the "special" section tab on the left.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and FINALLY got past the Doric / Ionic / Corinthian columns. Loved the humour as well, and just how smoothly the game played. I've supported this game on Greenlight -- all the very best!

squidly responds:

If you're ever stuck on greek art history again, just look em' up :P

A few things:

For a game created in that amount of time, I think I've seen better transitions and graphics than this. This is plain. I like that the card art was drawn, but you don't credit anyone.

In fact, you didn't credit the artist, and you didn't credit the musician, which was @Phyrnna. That track was from Bullet Heaven. Low blow, eh? That counts as stealing.

There's a bit of a delay when it comes to getting wrong pairs etc.

Want a real challenge? Come up with a game in 72 hours. People have done it and won prizes for it. You can do a lot better than this.

GSquadron responds:

On the credits section you can see who did the cards and they are fully credited inside the game.
The song is CC0 and I do not have to credit the artist. Here you can read more about it http://open.commonly.cc/
The delay can be upgraded in the shop. Second one.
People have done games in 72 hours but did use better engines than what I did. (Yet there is a difference in quality)
This is way beyond my skills considering I have made only two game engines so far.

Also remember, the 72 hours challenges are just prototypes and they had artists on their back. I had to do the gui all by myself and backgrounds.

Do you really believe that after 5 years of experience, I go and waste my reputation to steal others work? It would not be worth it and nobody would steal anything especially people who have been programming for years.

Anyway thanks for your comment! :)

I probably differ from the vast majority of people reviewing this. That's fine. I personally found the game a bit too nonsensical for my taste. I guess it was true that a lot of conclusions weren't supposed to make sense and everything was ex machina, but some of them flat out didn't make sense -- Sonic's spring kills you, but the Super Jump DOESN'T? for example. This makes the game a pure die-and-retry, a kind of game that I have zero respect for. Even if it's fairly easy to retry and get the medals, that concept makes it unnecessarily drawn out. Honestly, this is to Flash gaming as Dragon's Lair is to arcade and console gaming -- even if this one is a bit easier. I cannot mince my words.

The music was well done, and the stick animation was fun, I guess. And I suppose there were many parodies of depictions of Alcatraz in popular media, so this has been, at the same time, something original AND something unoriginal. It's not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, it's just a thing.

The highest point of this thing is the voice acting. It was pretty well done. The Russian voices were not tacky in the slightest.

Maybe I'm a stickler for really well done scenario and parodies aren't necessarily my thing, I don't know. But I didn't have as much fun with this as others did. And maximum security prisons with Russian-accented personnel make me think of areas in the world where prisons without escape are a reality, rather than a parody -- and I cannot help but feel a greater sense of pathos than most people would. >_< It also brings back awful thoughts about losing my own freedoms, which can't be regained through video game means.

3/5.

PuffballsUnited responds:

This probably isn't your kind of game then. You're supposed to enjoy seeing the fails, not get disappointed because you picked the wrong choice. It's not meant to be taken too seriously either. Cartoon physics and such.

I wasn't really trying to draw any parallels to Alcatraz but I could see how they could be interpreted.

I'm glad you liked the voices and music!

If parodies aren't really your thing either then I'm not surprised you didn't like it that much.

Thanks for the honest review though!

Alright, here are my thoughts. I played this game yesterday but didn't really get to review it because of how late it was.

The graphics look basic. I guess we can't fault them because they do try to look like what they're resembling e.g. windmills, gravestones, Frankenstein monsters, but... I think I'd appreciate it if they were given a bit more depth. The monsters look boxy, but I know what you were trying to do with them.

The music... I can see what you're trying to do with it, but I find it's the wrong instrumentation for it. This sort of game warrants the music from the Mario Wii and U Ghost Houses in the way of feel. That bass sounds... I don't know, eeeeeh. A short, detached organ would have done the trick, and would have given us the spooks.

What's worse is that in battle, there's no fitting battle music -- there's absolutely nothing! It feels... empty. Even an ambient sound would've done the trick... I mean, what would you hear when you went into a graveyard? You wouldn't hear complete silence like this -- the wind would be rustling in the trees every now and then. There may be crickets. If not, you could just hear the breeze if and when it blows.

The gameplay is nice. It's a simple, turn-based RPG almost. The mechanics are simple, and there's nothing wrong with simplicity. We would have appreciated different animations for normal / strong attacks, etc.

Overall, the game is in full working order, but could do with a lot more atmosphere to it.

3/5.

t4upl responds:

I tried to create proper combat music, I thought about rock tune but music generators made all music so terribly happy so I gave up.

I never thought about organs - that would work really well for map screen. I have mixed feelings about the wind sound, that would require using sfx libraries and that is forbidden during compo.

Game was supposed to have more life in it (on map: lightning in the sky, moving windmills) . Given the timelapse I concentrated on combat mechanics and just prayed that it will work.

The game mechanics are simple, I guess... I have no complaints about the core mechanic. The background really looks nice. I like the urban feel you're using with this.

I cannot help but bemoan the lack of music or ambience apart from the background. It's so quiet; I would have hoped even for the faintest traffic noise, but not even that was present. It's too austere. What the game also doesn't tell us is that even touching a box by its side makes you automatically lose, despite not being out of bounds. It's a bit of a nasty shock.

The other thing is that I get that you're handling a box monster. At least *make* it look remotely evil... Or maybe, give it some character. Make it a pretty, pretty box that's actually evil inside. Surely it's not that far-fetched? You've got *some* artistic skill, at least from what I see with the BG. It looks so good; I really, really wish you could make your imagination run wild with this.

2/5.

adiokristoffer responds:

thanks for your feedback :D i tried making it look like a monster but im bad at art that i decided to make it simple XD thanks for the good comment about the bg im glad you liked it XD

The game looks awfully simplistsic; some better transitions and a better menu screen would have been appreciated. The square colour changes quite quickly, so it would be nice to see some upgrades (e.g. cursor speed).

The music is fine. However, I've also noticed you can't mute the sound, which makes it a bit awkward when you've got something playing in the background. Recommend listening to the music, but don't enforce it.

3/5.

Cyxo responds:

Well, I made this game with Construct 2 Free a while ago, and I already have the 50 max events, so that I can't add sound muting or thing like that. Maybe if I have time to, I'll fully recode it in HTML5 - JS, but I'm currently really busy.

Thanx anyway for your useful comment ;)

There's something about this game that makes me all sad, reminiscent and misty-eyed. Not too long ago my fiancé and I were talking about how video game characters don't age, and he then proceeded to say, "Peach looks hot for a 50-year-old" -- but what if, just what if, the time came for them to become frail and wheelchair-bound...

Now, I have at least played Level 1 in this game and am aiming to play this game proper, without a lagging PC. But the amount of lag is not a basis for scoring here. My thoughts are on these:

First, graphics. It looks very Super Mario World-like, with some obvious differences so as to not fall foul of intellectual property law (for instance, the UI, the way coins and power-ups appear). That's perfectly understandable. The first world select and first level, at least, look very blue -- something that strikes me as reminiscent.

Gameplay is alright, I suppose -- the controls respond fine. My only qualm with it is that when jumping, Ario looks awfully unnatural. It's too unfittingly comical -- and my perception is that he's got to have superhuman strength at his age to jump that high in a wheelchair... and is the original protagonist (from whom this is based) superhumanly strong? I doubt it...

Music... well, that's the one place where I have to gash points a lot.

The Level 1 music is a 3-second loop, with lots of high synths. It is ANNOYING and it GRATES THE EARS. >_< It strikes me as too dour for the original franchise, but too overly cheerful for this particular game. I haven't come across the other level themes yet, but this first one doesn't give me much promise.

Overall good work, but the game still has its kinks.

3.5/5.

ArioOld responds:

We are glad that you liked the main idea and we understand all the negative points that you mentioned. We had been worked for two months on this game, the graphic is other and the songs are others too. Unfortunately we had problems with the copyright and we had to do the project all over again in just one day in order to participate in the contest, as it was the last day to post it.
Those bugs do not exist in the official version. If you liked this I'm sure that you are going to enjoy the original version.

To play the original version enter in our official web site, the link is at the description
http://www.facebook.com/superarioold

About the "Super Jump": you're right, we are going to improve the idea.

Soundsmith, artist, and writer. Known for self-backing choir. Especially love drumming.
If you'd like to work with me, send enquiries via DM or my email at mail@troisnyx.co.uk
EN/FR OK

Annette Walker @Troisnyx

Age 32, she/they

Music Director

Lancashire, UK

Joined on 6/26/11

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