Makakaov's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Winter Falling: Prototype One]

I really like the concept and I believe you put a lot of effort into visuals, but unfortunately that left some other places quite raw. I felt like the introduction into whole game mechanics was lacking. I wasn't sure what this game is about until I played about two rounds. Till now I'm not sure how trenches exactly work and how forests affect fighting.

I found it kind of frustrating that you can't really control the units - sometimes due to fight some unit went stray and didn't want to go back to the battlefield and I didn't have movement points to bring it back. It was useless.
Also, dividing placement of units into phases is tedious. Suppose I want to place a formation but I placed a swordsman in such a way I can't fit a hero into a gap. Now I have to go back, reposition the swordsman, then click "continue" few times and go back to placing hero. It's a no-no.

To be honest I had no idea how was I supposed to hold that respawning horde for two minutes - burning the stakes would suffice only for like one round, and I didn't even know there's healing power up avalible. Since the first battle I was focused on getting to the enemy leader. Cavalry charges were too short, so I decided to attack instead and moved whole army as close to enemy as possible and placed half-circle trench line in front of it. Burned the stakes as soon as enemies came close to it, and after they burned I ordered cavalry charge towards the leader.
It actually worked - the respawn counter stopped and enemy general was lured to my cavalry. When he was done with it I was finishing off the mob, so taking down the lone general with handful of remaining units was child's play. They never even got close to the city, I was having the upper hand the whole time. I got tippy top of commanders, but I'm not sure this is the playthrough you have envisioned when designing the game.

To summarize I think I like the design, but it seems unbalanced. It's really punishing if you buy the dramatic defence narration, but really easy if you decide to dominate the battlefield for yourself. I'm looking forward for seeing more polished version.

[Hero Held MW]

I'm not a big fan of bullet hell games, but this one in particular is really good! The gameplay is fine, but I really like the design of the UI and game. I probably didn't quit after the first level more because of the design than the gameplay itself.
Also the levels are challenging just enough - they introduce new stuff and aren't too long, so it's not frustrating to repeat them over and over again even if you encounter a chokepoint.

[Respawn]

It's mediocre game, but it's a good amateur project. I don't like the forced high jump, and maps are kinda wonky in a way that you never know if you shouldn't wait a little before jumping onto the next platform, because there may be enemy approaching - you're just never sure. Fighting system isn't really satisfactory, but it's much better than just killing the enemies with one strike.
I think you should keep on making games and hone your skills.

Yodamies responds:

I'm working with the camera to make it so that you can see better around you.
Thanks for the response :)

[Colour Text Challenge]

Mathematical chance of getting the "wrong" option is much higher than the other one, so you can easily hoard high score by spamming the "wrong" button without even paying attention to the rest of the game. I scored 145 after just clicking the "wrong" button for 58 seconds. This is not a good game design.

[Scammer Simulator]

Whoa, that's racist.

[Katchi]

It's fine. And it has a great purpose- that's a big plus. Honestly, I didn't even bother with pronounciation and hardly remembered the words, but I did just one mistake. Essentially, I beat this game by remembering the shapes of signs - especially the first sign of the word. Now, 5 minutes after I beat the game, I wouldn't be able to replicate those if I was asked to draw them, and I even wasn't when playing the game.
I can't really say I learned anything I could use in any way - maybe just the way sentences are constructed in Korean language. I think it would be interesting, if you made the game way longer and bigger, so the average player can spend enough ammount of time playing it to actually memorize certain words. That would be a success in practice.

The audio and gameplay are decent.

[Johnny Rocketfingers 2 (Polish)]

Not everything is translated, some lines are translated bad (makes little sense in polish, or there's grammar mistakes). It's good to see it was translated by an actual human being, instead of google translate. Apart from that, it's the same game. It's a classic, yes, but I do not appreciate this repost. Stop milking the franchise, just expand it.

[Jaythans quest]

It looks like you've put some actual effort into it. It should be appreciated. The game has some kind of story, it has some kind of gameplay, few stages - it's fine, it's a good approach at making games. However, it all could be done better. especially the game mechanics.
I bet lots of people will find fights tedious, because enemies have a lot of health, and to kill them you just have to smash three buttons, so beating the fights is just a lot of button smashing. It just feels like the fights need something added to them, and the story could be longer.

I think you should keep on making games. You have what it takes to actually prepare the assets and finish a game, even if it's quite amateurly done. It's a good start, I believe if you go through some volume of work, you will make great games eventually. Try experimenting with the features. Try to add something interesting to each game.

Jaythan221 responds:

Thanks, this game is one of my old games that i made. So i uploaded it here and didnt expect anyone to criticize this. So, thanks. I'm probably gonna make a new one...I was a bit crazy with the character designs but thats just how i drew them.

[Mind Reader.EXE]

It's a bad algorithm. It couldn't guess 67 couple of times. There was actually a moment where the game would take turns asking is it's 66 of 68 and never propose 67. And this applies to many other numbers. Sometimes it just doesn't work correctly. And it's a shame, because that's the only feature of the game. There's nothing else to rate. It's cool that you try, but the outcome is not cool.

DominusLucas responds:

Yeah, the algorithm isn't nearly as good as i expected... at least the navigation works as i had intended it to, I'll revisit it sometime later an try to improve the algorithm, i have to think of a way of it not repeating guesses and making more predictable yet not so predictable guesses.

I updated it, care to give it another try? Your feedback was very important.

[Cube Growth 2]

I don't think there's anything to review at this point. Such game can be assembled in an hour, there's nothing fancy about it. No sfx, no skybox or at least some fancy background, and models are just standard cubes and planes. There's literally nothing about this game that would want me to play it longer than 3 minutes, after which the player character is big enough to engulf every other block.

I understand that this is "Alpha Phase prototype" and I do understand need to get some feedback to get motivated, but I think that even for a prototype of a game in it's alpha phase (wtf), it's not much, especially, since it's a second upload. If you plan to show us unfinished "alpha prototype", you should add some mechanics that will make it fun to play, make it engaging somehow. Games are supposed to entertain, not waste time.