Score: 6

"Some suggestions..."

submission: SPACE ACE

date: September 12, 2004

The game doesn't look or play too bad, really, even though the concept/style is way too bland and derivative, but there are a few things you could do to make it look more interesting.

First of all, the ships should be animated. a single solid image moving slowly on the screen looks just like that, and not like a ship that's attacking you. There should have been some minor ship animation.

Also, the A.I. should have been more active than sitting still, or moving back and forth in a tight pattern and shooting a spray of bullets periodically. The ships should react, the ships should speed up/slow down, they should try to line up their shots to where the player is/will be. As it is, they seemed very dull and very lifeless.

Another benefit would be if all you had to do to keep shooting was to hold down the shoot button. I don't particularly enjoy tapping the space bar many times and repeatedly; it adds extra wear and tear on one particular key and I know with a few lines of code it could be made so you shoot continuously. It's not a skill to tap a key quickly, especially in these games. The skill is in avoiding, and your control scheme just distracts from the game.

Otherwise the game was well made. I liked the classic feel of the sounds, and none of them were especially annoying (as classic sounds can be). Having multiple modes was cool as well, even though both were classic gameplay that's been done hundreds of times before (and better). Overall, it's fun for a couple minutes, but it's not really worth playing twice.

Score: 6

"Not very fun."

submission: The Deadline - Part 1

date: September 11, 2004

It's kinda cool, but not very fun. One reason for this is it takes way too long to reload weapons. It takes longer to reload than in most survival horror games where you can move around to avoid the zombies while you reload. This is especially troublesome once you get the shotgun and have to reload after every shot.

Also, the lighting system is pretty poor. I understand why it moves differently from your crosshair, but it confuses the brain, and it means that in order to aim at the zombie that's coming at you, you can't see what you're shooting at. And you only have the flashlight when you have the pistol, so with the rest of the weapons you can't see much of anything.

When the zombies start attacking you, there seems to be no way to kill them either. Because of the damn reload one got to me and then I couldn't do anything but watch him bite me again and again until my health dropped to zero.

I'm not a big fan of this incredibly linear style of gameplay either (fmv of moving to the next spot, then stay in one place and shoot), but that's just personal preference.

It's not a bad attempt, but because of the above issues, I didn't have any fun playing the game.

Score: 3

"Do some more research."

submission: Becoming A Game Animator

date: September 10, 2004

I find it funny that you used the terms game designers, animators, and developers interchangeably. They are all very different jobs.

Designers have to do a ton of reading and have a general knowledge of just about everything, and when designing, they have to write (in a document) down every aspect of the game so people down the line don't have to make the decisions. They rarely touch any program outside of a word processor unless they're decent at art and draw some storyboards/concept art. They NEVER code if they're in a decent sized company (although it doesn't hurt if they've coded games before, in fact, it's practically a requirement). Once they've done the design for the game they usually have to answer any design questions that arise that were overlooked in the design process, or start designing the next game. An excellent book to read up on what you need to be a GOOD game designer is "Chris Crawford on Game Design".

Animators are the ones who work with Maya, Photoshop, and 3D Studio Max.

Level Designers work with level editors/middleware to build levels.

Developers do the dirty work. Usually the main structure already designed or determined, and they just have to build all the classes/logic/etc and put it all together. Nevertheless, you're right about this being a stressful job, and do to poor management, most industry games usually do go into 70+ hour overtime 6 months before release.

Other sites to read with information on how the industry works are Indie Gamer, Game Matters, and IGDA (all .coms). A good book with detail on the process is "Game Architecture and Design."

As for the animation itself, you really needed faster transitions. Doubling the frame rate would probably solve that for you.

Score: 10

"Very cool."

submission: Tier

date: August 31, 2004

You did a really good job with this movie. The style was great, and it was fun watching the robots get assembled.

Score: 7

"Kinda cool."

submission: Pacman Killer

date: August 25, 2004

Kinda interesting concept.

I wasn't too interested at first until I noticed the instructions started wanted me to hit certain colors of Pac-men, then it got more interesting (speaking of which, don't bury that information in that text. I musta overlooked it for three or four levels). Trying to hit only specific colors made it more challenging and more fun.

Did you realize you can change the size of the flash submission when submitting and editing? I know you can at least get 800x600, as my Proximity game is that large, and your game doesn't look much bigger than that. It's the two fields under the field you enter the SWF file into.

Score: 10

"Thank you."

submission: Alive

date: August 25, 2004

I'll be thinking about this one for awhile.

Score: 6

"Well, it started off pretty good...."

submission: Across The Universe

date: August 24, 2004

* I couldn't decide whether the movie had a message or not, and when I finally decided it didn't, at the end you threw in that stupid slit wrist scene, which doesn't make any sense considering he started drunk in a couch.

* There was too many filler shots here. You could have made his travels much more interesting, but you spent too long in each place, and several of the shots look unneeded, unexciting, and bland. On the plus side, there were several awesome looking shots, you just had to sit and wait through a bunch of crappy ones.

* Excellent song, most of the art was good. Looks like you took a video of yourself doing the actions and then traced over it sloppily for most of the character animation though.

You really shouldn't have used the tub scene as an ending. It's way too cliche and out of place. I was kinda liking the movie, although in a detached, somewhat bored way, until I saw that scene, which ruined the movie for me.

Score: 8

"Good, but Smash TV is still better."

submission: Doomed

date: August 24, 2004

This is a faithful reincarnation of Smash TV minus the theme, the variety and number of enemies, and with randomness, mild puzzles, and ammo management. Unfornately you took out some key elements which made Smash TV so damn cool, and added some elements which weren't really necessary (although random maps is never a bad thing).

Otherwise, everything was extremely well done. You hit the Newgrounds demographic perfectly in design, and it's well programmed. It just really hurts the game that there's no real variety in the enemies (The look different, but they simply chase and shoot you. Wow.) and that the theme is so lifeless.

Score: 6

"Interesting idea..."

submission: Analog Pussy - Future

date: August 23, 2004

Interesting message, but the interactive flash suddenly stopped becoming interactive after a couple minutes without any warning whatsoever. The music kept looping, but everything else just stayed still. Maybe that was supposed to be an added message, but I just got confused.

So, this is what Analog Pussy had in mind when they asked for a game to help promote their music, huh? Damn, I would have screwed that up. I assumed they were wanting something that could spread virally through all the flash game portals, but this doesn't really qualify as a game, so I don't really see this doing that.

Score: 6

"Fairly simple game."

submission: Ammunition Mission Lvl 1

date: August 23, 2004

Except you've got to ditch the whole "rotate and move" concept in favor of direct movement, Zelda style. It's too hard to move the guy to dodge those bullets. Other than that, it was decent.