deletedTAMyStudios's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dr. Spacezoo]

Not up my alley. I am not necessarily a huge fan of highly pixelated (to the point where there's not a ton of clarity in what I'm doing) with overly shiny particle effects, for one. It feels like a game, graphics environment that was "churned out" rather than crafted.

Although, some of the art is definitely appreciated, such as the solar system / level selector. I find the presence of the sunlight on the pixelated planets VERY pleasing.

The levels themselves have great concepts. The blend of textures in the first level, for example, to create this sort of gradient palette. I thought that was very impressive.

But beyond that, the game takes too long to draw me in, perhaps. The story text is long-winded, largely unnecessary in my opinion, especially the repetitive "find x animal and rescue others!" before every level from the Dr. I get it already :)

The levels beyond the first couple are not very memorable, and the game sound loop is not particularly pleasant. There's a certain amount of aesthetics I feel are missing in the level design, and the tiles themselves feel clunky and difficult to recognize at times.

Some maps feel too large, and the slow introductions to new concepts and weapons is almost irritating. I feel as though the concepts are not particularly difficult or new to any genre and that levels could be condensed or made more unique. I almost feel like everything is an "auxiliary" component. I can't quite pin down a core "feeling" while playing.

I honestly became bored before finishing the solar system. It felt like work. I was "waiting" for the game to begin and quit. Sorry for the early exit. Maybe I'm missing out.

I had an autosuggest to power up at some point, then no more after that and no indication that I'd leveled. I have a couple instances where I had leveled (0 xp remaining) and did not have the option to level up. That seemed strange.

There doesn't seem to be a huge apparent benefit to powering up stats. I don't find the bullet patterns and level designs mixing very well for level ups to assist me much. The game lacks a certain feel of polished strategy. Aka missing the "puzzle" element. It has what I feel is a decent action pace, though.

Even within areas I like, there are certain design choices I don't understand. The level selector has this strange multi-colored bubble icon around planets. Maybe that adds a little personality to the game. To me, it's distracting and breaks the core aesthetic of level selection.

The overall design makes me feel as though I need to put on glasses even though I'm right in front of my laptop. I had trouble distinguishing between friends and foes, environment and live entities, barriers and walls.

Overall, I think it's a very interesting project, but for me, and this is just my opinion, not ready primetime. I'd prefer fewer, more interesting levels than many and what I consider lower quality game play.

smashriot responds:

Thanks for the in depth write-up! Dr. Spacezoo is still in alpha (v0.4.4 as of this message) and under heavy development, so I seriously appreciate the constructive criticism.

I agree that the start of the game is a bit slow/story heavy (the story may be disabled under settings), but need to implement a bit more tech before the first two tutorial levels may be folded into one. Starting with level 3, each level's difficulty steadily climbs towards the first mission's boss on level 10.

The game is designed so that each level is a quick/brutal 1-2 minute play loop, with the first few mission 1 levels being on the shorter end of that scale. Do you remember which level did you quit on?

The look and feel of the game's art is very much crafted with a particular aesthetic in mind, but I do agree the mission/level selection icons are not quite in their final form yet.

Power-ups are key once the difficulty ramps up towards the end of mission 1 (defense and weapon damage/firing rate are helpful!) and you should be presented with an upgrade screen after each level as long as you have a power-up point to allocate.

Thanks again for playing and for the helpful feedback!

[GRAVITY]

Loved it! Love the ending song. Love the puzzles. Not your average "gravity"-based game. This was harder, although also shorter! I had a lot of fun with this. It's so *tight*.

Great job!

[Frozen Islands]

Addictive mechanic. I won't call it shallow, but it does feel repetitive after a while! Thankfully, I enjoyed it the entire time. The progression curve was steady, largely consistent, satisfying. It was fun to try and figure out what formations were ideal for my party.

[Super Idle Imagination]

I personally feel like idle games are awesome. Many very popular games have had idle elements to them. Sure, idling hasn't appeared as a core component of many games until recently, but why not explore idling as a medium rather than criticizing it?

[Epic Boss Fighter 2]

Hey, the gameplay on this is solid. I can't for the life of me understand how so much effort was spent on making the gameplay, balancing, etc. great but you're still left with a fairly crummy ending? You could at least have unlocked all of the items for me or soemthing once I finished insane mode.

Was it a fun experience? Yeah...

But you know how something feels after you've invested time into it only to get "Thanks for playing!" A waste of time :(

[After The Credits]

Contra - Zoolander Edition

[Shark Lifting 2]

I love this game, but it really makes me wonder how much effort people are putting into Newgrounds submissions. I hate to say it, Tom and friends, but I (and many others, judging by viewcounts) visit this site far less frequently than we used to...

[Break the Limits!]

Aww, I think this was cute. 48 hours? Good job :)

[Alex]

My least favorite part about ALS is when I lost the ability to double jump. I am so heartbroken by this disease. I hope that never happens to me in real life.

Jokes aside (hopefully not offensive to anyone!) - I think this is a great game. It's cute. I like the art style. Consistent. Good controls. Fast, easy to play. Extra love and care put in some of the animations and artistic effects. Great job on that, and not just being either good game play with square blocks or nice animations with cheap game play.

Other than some screen tearing, which I don't know if anything can be done about that, I saw no real issues with it!

[Ninja Yubi]

Hey, this may seem like a dumb request... But on a laptop/touchpad, clicking just isn't fun. Any chance I could hit space or something to start an attack and my mouse just be tracked?

Tbh, I only made it a couple levels in, and I don't see why (so far) that the mouse just can't be constantly tracked for movements, since you get that with the PC. Maybe that affects scoring, though.

Evil-Dog responds:

well some attacks are actual clicks, not just swipes