varstudios's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hover Bot Arena]

Very well done

Seeing as creating arena shooters is what I seem to do more than anything else, I thought I would give you a detailed review of what I thought about your game.

The Good:

The game felt very well made, responsive and action packed which is everything an arena shooter should be, the firing felt powerful, and killing the enemy bots was pretty pleasing.

Using bitmapData for the rubble (I assume that’s what you used because you would get some serious slowdown otherwise) is always cool, and it was great to see just how much damage you were doing.

Some nice powerups to help keep the variety up so it didn't get boring too quickly.

The Bad:

Although nothing was really 'bad', there were a few things I didn't like too much, or thought could be improved.

The whole momentum/physics thing felt a little too loose, it was nicely done, but I didnt like the way it made the bots feel light and caused me to be flying all over the screen when I didn't want to be. I think if you just made it a bit more solid feeling it would add a lot to the gameplay.

The first enemies seemed to be more difficult than the second ones. Ok, so I'm guilty of this in Neon 2, so I can't judge you for it, but just seemed the second enemies were a bit redundant.

I didn't like the way the objectives were just 'kill x number of bots' etc. I only got to the 3rd objective (see below) so if there was more variety you can ignore this, but I think objectives such has "protect a worker bot while it repairs 'insert something here'" or "Destroy the 5 reactors" would have made the game far more interesting. It just felt like the objectives were a bit meaningless as it is.

I couldn’t complete objective 3. The mission objective was (I think) Kill the red boss, and I did, but nothing happened, I just had to keep playing, and after killing about 320 bots I quit.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on it. Like I say, its a very well done arena shmup and I like it a lot, would have got a 10 if it wasn’t for the issues above. Hope I will see another one from you in the future. I've been told I should make a Neon 3, so you might be seeing another one from me too!

[Drakojan Skies Aco (Full)]

Pretty nice shooter

I'm a big shmup fan (and developer), but have never found these games very interesting. I thought I would check it out anyway due to the front page saying it was possibly the best web shooter ever and I must admit it was quite a bit better than I had thought it would be. I was impressed with the variety in the backgrounds of the game as this isn't something I would expect to see so much in a flash shmup (however on the downside, your game is huge in file size probably partly due to that), I also liked the ship designs etc. My only major criticism concerning the design/graphics was that the explosions really need some improvement. They are a big part of what makes a shmup, and yours didn't really fit the style. I suggest getting a particle effects program which allows you to make nice looking effects including explosions. You can get basic ones for almost nothing.

The gameplay was pretty solid with good variety, so not really got any complaints other than next time, make a vertical shooter ;) (everybody knows they are much better :p) seriously though there is a big lack of good shmups here on newgrounds (I know of one outstanding shmup that’s about to be released, but unfortunately i doubt it will be here on NG) so this is a welcome addition to the collection.

So if you do decide to make another shmup, just keep doing what your doing, but use nice effects, make it vertical and try to cut the file size down, then I will be completely happy ;)

[Virtual Guitar Tool]

Pretty nice

Good job with this, must have taken ages to get all the sounds in. Overall it did what it was supposed to, but there were a few issues I had with it. Firstly the frets were pretty hard to click making it difficult to play something quickly or smoothly, I would have at least made the click area for each fret bigger.

Secondly, not so much a problem as a possible addition, but I would have loved to have seen some sort of recording and play back feature in there. That would have made it actually worth spending time with. Could have just been a simple recorder that records exactly what you play, or you could have made it really advanced and let the user actually compose music with rests and different note lengths and chords etc.

Good job anyway, sounded good enough and was presented fairly well. Just needed bigger click areas for that extra interactivity.

['Neonoids]

Pretty good..

Was a good game.. but then seeing as most of it was copied from my game Neon then it would be wouldn’t it ;).

I’m not going to hold a grudge over this, infact I’m quite honoured that someone should take that much inspiration from one of my games, but really, the similarities were kind of obvious (i actually laughed when i saw the shielded ones that deflect bullets just like in neon).

But anyway, the game was good as i said. Graphics were clean and well made, some nice effects used and the game play was good. Didn’t get a chance to play it too much though because i have to go out. Will play more later to see what the rest it like. Overall, good attempt.

P.s Neon 2 will be here in around a weeks time :) [/shameless promotion]

Disarray-yarrasiD responds:

I actually never got far enough in neon to see those.

lol

I thought I was doing something orriginal.

but, as they say immitation is the sincerist form of flatery, and the game started as a code test for OOP and eventually developed tinto the nock off that it is.

sorry about this but I think my version is more exciting lol.

thanks for not being angry.

[Ichi]

From one shooter creator to another.

Hey, I'm the creator of Neon and I just wanted to comment on how annoyed I am that you copied my game!

Only joking :) I’ve had people telling me i copied games I’ve never heard of too, I’ve also had people telling me that I ruined their life and that I should jump off a cliff and never make a flash game again, but that’s besides the point.

Anyway, I might as well give a proper review of the game while I'm here.

It was interesting to play another game similar to mine because you have used concepts which I tried out in neon and also some which are currently in Neon 2, so its good to see how they worked out. The deformable grid for example is one thing i played around with for Neon 2, but i was using a much finer grid which flash couldn’t handle, so i dropped it and now i just have a static grid.

The game was pretty fun, there was a nice selection of guns and powerups and the difficulty increase was good, definitely a game which you can play for a little while without getting bored.

The graphics i felt could be improved a bit. The lines that make up the grid were waaay too thick as was the outline of the ship, and some of the enemies looked a bit plain. I'm not going to judge the game on this though because as you know, the graphics in Neon are very simple too, its just those thick lines which i didn't like so much.

The sound was good, I didn’t get annoyed by them which often happens in games like this (happened a bit in Neon) so that was good.

Overall a pretty good game, and one that i enjoyed playing. The particle effects were nice too, i liked them, but maybe they effected the speed of the game a bit too much as there was a bit of lag at times (I’m guessing the grid has a big part to play in that too). If you ever make a sequel I would just suggest spending a couple of hours tidying up the graphics and making it run faster, other than that a superb job. Nice work.

Ali

P.s liked the name too :)

[Desktops of the Future!]

Amazing, The physics of this must be astounding

Amazing, The physics of this must be astounding