Makakaov's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Grey Prince Chase]

I liked it. I beat first 3 levels without using arrow keys (except crouch), so first I would it really frustrating, that it took really big precission to jump over spikes in 4th level, and had hard time jumping over 2nd rat in 2nd level. But then I tried the keys and it all went smoothly. Graphics are nice, music is nice - I think whatever you wanted to implement - you implemented nicely. It's a bit short though, and nothing I would come back to with nostalgia over time.

[Space Flight]

This isn't really a good game. The vertical scrool shooter games are quite old and used up by now, but even if we ignore that, this game has some major flaws.
When you press play, you jump right into the gameplay without any explanation. I died few times before I checked the description and learned how to shoot. It's not a good practice.
The other issue is gameplay speed - the speed is okay, it's quite optimal, but personally I would like it more if the game started with slow pace and was getting faster with the time passing.
Then there's almost to no obstacle variety. There's always two rocks and an octopus between them. I guess there's 3 positions octopus can be in, and it's not suprising and challenging after like 20 seconds of gameplay, since you're prepared for one of the 3 positions. What makes vertical shooters fun is actually some kind of chaotic pattern, that doesn't let player know what he's going to face in a second. This game could really use some more obstacles.
The shooting is actually bugged, the laser goes off whenever we keep button pressed. You can just keep space pressed and you don't have to worry about shooting at the right time. The shooting detection should be set to key press, not key down.
And lastly, I understand, that you might've just wanted to submit a simple flash game without any extra fancy stuff. But if the game has to be this boring then you could at least add some score counter to keep players playing for more than 10 seconds.

[Rex: Origins]

This is the kind of shit Newgrounds needs. It's creative, playable (to a certain extent, steering doesn't seem flexible enough) and made by a stable community member. Good job.

Kwing responds:

... Steering?

[Shop Empire Fable]

Wait a minute, are you trying to sell me the same game you did couple of times, AGAIN? It's nothing new, or creative anymore. It's just shop empire with other skins. You're overusing the game you have posted here already 2 years ago.

LittleGiantWorld responds:

Hi Makakaov, Thank you for playing our games. We didn't sell the game, it's a free game so you didn't need to buy the game to play it. There are improvement and some changing in the game. Feel free to play the game if you like it.

[SKATE (demo)]

Damn, this is suprisingly fun. At first I thought it's actually glitched, but after getting the hang of acceleration of the character I learned to like it. This probably will be a good game when it comes out in it's full form, but I think you can delevop this gameplay mechanism to be even more playable.

I like the audio, graphics aren't bad. It's a shame it's only a demo, I usually rate demos grade or few lower, and that's how I'm going to rate this, but you can count on my honest strong vote, if you will finish the game and keep it good.

[Yellow Question Mark]

I guess you're just trying to check if this kind of concept has any potential. In fact it does look like some kind of next step in those pointless games where you do certain work in order to obtain meaningless gratification. Unfortunately it's still just a pointless time waster that doesn't test player's skill or knowledge, nor it shows him anything interesting, so I wouldn't call it a good game, if I'd even call it a game, because in my book it's not a game. It's an interactive time waster. Click almost 30000 times to uncover the most expensive question mark and thus - 'win' the game? Where is the winning part in this? Is this supposed to be satisfactory? I know for a fact that If I wasted my time honestly clicking 30k times I would feel like shit for falling into a trap that took my curiosity hostage and made me waste all this time. I would most certainly not feel like a winner, I would actually feel bad about myself. And everyone who respects his time should.

There's nothing wrong in experimental games, to be clear, but this is not the way to make them.

[Pixel Escape]

It's not a good game. It's very simple, too easy and gets bored quickly. However, I think you should keep on trying making flash games. This has some music, quite acceptable graphics, etc. - only thing I actually found definitely bad here was gameplay, so I guess if you keep on making flash games you might devleop something good and enjoyable. It just has to be something more than continous jumping over easy obstacles

DoubleDenial responds:

I dunno, do people just find dinosaurs more appealing than ninjas?

[Prison Life 2]

I finished your game. First of all, I wouldn't say it looks good. It's not really advanced either. It's a simple, linear adventure point&click game. Those could be good, but this one has some mistakes. I must say I needed a walkthrough to beat your game. From your voice I can tell that you're quite young, so I'd like to give you a few tips, because I think you have potential, but you should learn a bit:

First of all, work on the graphics. These don't have to be excellent, some 8bit themed titles are great to play, but you have to find a style that will look good, and be readable. As a random player I have to be able to easily tell what I see on the screen. And I wasn't sure when I played your game. This also means, you should work on locations. Without the walkthrough, I seriously wouldn't be able to tell if I can look under the bed, or I should click the drainpipe. Sure as hell I wouldn't think of clicking part of the desk, to look behind it. Your scenes have to be more intuitive for player. Try sharing your game with your friends or relatives to test it before publishing. This should give you a hint on what parts of your game are too unreadable.

Lastly, work on your code. Somehow I believe that you might have just taken bunch of scripts from the web, instead of taking a minute to actually get to know what they are. If you aspire to write games, I recommend that you learn C# for reals. Also, there's a bug in your game. At the end. By clicking the gate I can exit despite the fact, that I entered the wrong code.

I hope to see more from you, I would love to see progress in your next game. Cheers.

TheCGMaster responds:

Well, if you go to my channel i do code for real and i have many tutorials teaching people how to code c# , i have been coding for 7 years actually (: and thank you for all of the advice! i did get other people to test it but there is bugs that some times are not found, i will work on all of the graphics for the next prison life and i will add arrows kindof like riddle school. Also the bug at the end will be uploaded and fixed in about 15 min!

[UniteSwap]

I don't like the fact that the player has to learn the mechanics straight from the gameplay. First four levels present each different way of solving the puzzles so it's pretty much experimenting. Then it's easy till you notice that in some levels some moves that are pretty logical by what you were taught so far are forbidden. I actually had to beat few levels few times to establish how selective the move possibilities are, because straight-forward solving next puzzles doesn't teach you how it actually works.

Unless you wanted to make player's personal frustration and helplessness part of the gameplay I don't think this game was thought through. There's too much autism (own, inner unexplained vision that others have to guess at best), and not much anything else. Logical games are to be logical - that is they're supposed to be solved with use of logic. I can make logical decisions only if I'm given at least some data. In fact current science can't generate a truly random number on computers without any initial data to work on (but you're a programmer so you probably know that already) - you can't possibly expect from the player to solve a logic game without knowledge of the game's rules. If You want to know how regular player feels when playing your game you can try playing my "Rekram Neportneo", have fun.

Despite all of that, I can't refuse that this game has nice, simplistic looks, and actually works. Lack of medals is little unsatisfying.

[Contradiction]

The game is quite nice. Gameplay is good, the music is great. I understand, that this is not supposed to be the contra clone, but the thing that was really bugging me was this health system. The contra was so legendary partially because of this one hit you're dead rule. It was just bugging me, it was a change to the model of the game i was familiar with for years.

Also, why doesn't Konami code do anything? >;[

Pipeweed responds:

Haha. :) I had it first as one hit = dead... but got many complaints that it was just too brutally hard. Maybe ill include CONTRA mode.. with one hit deaths :)