Galaxian Reviews - Submit Your Games and See my Reviews

One more thing, did you beat the Boss Bug? I haven’t beaten it yet, but seeing that you’re at the top of the leaderboard, did you manage to beat it? I want to know if I should nerf or buff it.

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I wanna say the most damage I’ve dealt to the boss is 20 damage. So, no, I did not manage to defeat the Boss Bug. Most of the time it was just me running away from a horde of bugs while killing anything that dares move in front of me.

It got so bad that at one point it lagged, which kind of made it easier to dodge asteroids but also made it harder to kill the bugs.

Anyways, I think you should leave the Boss Bug alone for now. It is pretty balanced as far as I’m concerned; a buff might make the endgame way too stressful, and a nerf might make the Boss Bug less challenging. I think it should feel rewarding for players to be able to defeat the Boss Bug, and with the current challenge it presents, I think it would indeed feel satisfying to defeat it as it currently is.

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Ok thanks :grin:

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if they have a boss that’s op and they buff everything else, they have to buff the enemies, the weapons, and redo a ton of code. it’s much easier to nerf it if it’s too strong.

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Hey @MetaNinja, I’m requesting reviews for my game so I can improve it in the coming updates, would you be willing to review Shattering Steel? If you would like to do so, go as hard on me as you want/can, I’m trying to collect every thought, nitpick, or suggestion I can :+1:

Also, forewarning that I’m redoing all the art for the game rn so it may look a little incongruent (Also most of the decorations for the lobby is missing rn too lol)

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Yes, I’ll take a look at Shattering Steel when I have the time. Thanks for submitting the game!

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“Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” - Bruce Lee

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Shattering Steel - By @Recryptech


GENERAL

Review of Gameplay - Shattering Steel is a survival arena game where you defeat an infinite wave of enemies trying to destroy you. Whenever you defeat an enemy, you get money from them (or at least, this game’s version of money, which look like batteries). You can use that money to buy new weapons and upgrades for yourself.
If you want to get more money faster, you can activate certain challenges, such as having only one health or have more resilient enemies.

Pros:

  • Simple gameplay
  • Amazingly well-polished
  • Very challenging
  • Super fun!
  • Amazing effects, soundtrack, and visuals

Cons:

Cannot really come up with any cons for this game…


SCORING

ART

The game’s art and animations are soooooo good! The game looks really amazing, whether you are in the lobby or in the actual arena. I know the lobby is empty right now, but what is there still looks good. I also like the wavy effects created by the heat of the molten steel at the bottom of the arena.

All in all, this is a really good-looking game!

Score: 5 / 5

SOUND

SFXs are used very well, and the occur whenever an action/event plays out. They also fit in well with what is going on.

Mhx_Aîr did a wonderful job with the music, too! It kind of reminds me of the majority of the games you would find on Cool Math Games…

Score: 5 / 5

STORY

This game does not have a story present…

Score: Exempted

ENTERTAINMENT

This game is very fun!! I ended up playing for an hour, and I bought every weapon, footwear, and upgrade possible. Even with everything unlocked (unless there is more to come), I still had loads of fun destroying enemies in the arena. I cannot recall what the most amount of waves I survived (mostly because the game doesn’t display it), but I remember surviving nearly 20 minutes on one occasion.

Anyways, there is a lot of replay value to this game, and I enjoyed every second playing it.

Score: 5 / 5

ORIGINALITY

I have not seen any game similar to this before. Survival games in an arena setting is not new at all, but this game presents its own unique ideas with the theme of robots, the various weapons, the various boots, the upgrades, and challenges. This is a really unique game!

Score: 5 / 5

DIFFICULTY

This game’s difficulty changes from time to time. At first, I found it difficult to survive past the first 5 waves (somehow). But as I played more and got access to new weapons, boots, and upgrades, the game began to get slightly easier. Of course, it was still challenging, even if I didn’t have any of the challenges enabled. I recall one wave where I was desperately trying to evade the cars and soldiers without bumping my head on the helicopters.

Regardless, I believe the difficulty is fairly balanced, and with the addition of challenges to make the game harder by player preference, this category also earns a perfect score.

Score: 5 / 5


SUGGESTIONS

There are a few things I would recommend for this game:

  • Tracking the most amount of waves survived
  • I noticed a monitor in the lobby and what appears to be an anvil. Perhaps there is a leaderboard and more upgrades to come?
  • More gamemodes

So far, that is all I can think of.


CONCLUSION

FINAL SCORE: 5 / 5

BadgeS

This game is outstanding, Recryptech!

I can see why this won the Flowjam Winter 2022, and I congratulate you for that achievement! It is very well deserved. I loved playing every second of this game.

You did an outstanding job with this game! :trophy: :+1:


Congratulations, and thank you for your submission!

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The second game to get a perfect score here! I hope to make the third.

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What game got the 2nd?

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Idk how you will be able to review this but if you don’t want to you don’t have to

honestly i feel like the only reason this is featured is because grazer was surprised it was possible (and so was I)

Note: use the unlimited version in the desc to review since it is playable more than once

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The first game to get a perfect score was August Silence by HuckleBerry. Shattering Steel was the second game to get a perfect score.

It’s alright, I’ll do my best to review it when I get the chance to.

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Thank you @MetaNinja for the very good review, I appreciate it a lot!

Suggestions Response

I used to have this in the bottom left corner, but I thought it looked out of place. I’ll probably re-add this in some way or another

Good guesses, you’re on the right track!

This is a good idea, and I have one or two concrete ones in mind :+1:

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Flordle - By @Galactian


GENERAL

Review of Gameplay - This is basically just Wordle, so I probably don’t need to explain it much. But, if you somehow didn’t hear of Wordle, then Flordle is basically a puzzle game where you need to figure out what the 5-letter word is through guessing and colored hints. Gray means they do not appear on the word, yellow means right-letter-wrong-place, and green means right-letter-right-place.

Pros:

  • Wow… it works (kinda)!

Cons:

  • Sometimes, letters can be colored incorrectly, which can lead to worse guesses and/or confusion.
  • The game announces “you suck” if you fail. That’s a little toxic for a Game Over message if you ask me, especially with a game that makes an error every once in a while (see the previous con or the DIFFICULTY section for more).

SCORING

ART

Well, this game lacks a lot in good art design… but some puzzle games similar to this don’t typically need good art to be good, right? I don’t know, just take this free 4.

Score: 4 / 5

SOUND

Okay, so there is an extreme lack of sound in this game. I only heard sound play when I submitted a word to guess. That’s all.

I wish there was a greater variety of sounds, or at least some background music.

Score: 1 / 5

STORY

This game has no story present.

Score: Exempted

ENTERTAINMENT

So I know that there are people out there that like to play Wordle a lot. I’m not one of those people, I only tend to play it once or twice before moving on to something else.

So, with that being said, I lost interest fairly quickly playing this game, especially since it is the same gamemode every time, and the words that can generate… are a little fishy.

Score: 2 / 5

ORIGINALITY

As the title may suggest… this is just Wordle. I’ll at least give you some bonus points for getting this thing to actually work (most of the time).

Score: 2 / 5

DIFFICULTY

So I played both Wordle and Flordle at the same time, specifically for this review. Which one did I find easier? Wordle, by a longshot.

All the Problems

So, Wordle generates a known word that a majority of the population would know, allowing people to make guesses. Flordle, though, generates words that are not widely known or nonexistant.

Unlimited Flordle: IKANS
:white_large_square: :white_large_square: :yellow_square: :white_large_square: :yellow_square:

:yellow_square: :white_large_square: :white_large_square: :yellow_square: :white_large_square:

:yellow_square: :green_square: :yellow_square: :white_large_square: :white_large_square:

:white_large_square: :white_large_square: :green_square: :white_large_square: :green_square:

:green_square: :green_square: :green_square: :green_square: :green_square:

I searched up IKANS out of curiosity. The only thing I found that was close to “IKANS” was iKan, which is some kind of app for car dealerships in Kansas. I also had another word, which was “KACHO”, and when I searched it up, it took me to this website. I have not watched Hunter X Hunter, nor read the manga, so I have no idea what is, who is, or how is Kacho until this very moment.

My guess is that every game, it randomly mashes together letters in the hopes of creating a word that people can guess. However, this can result in the generation of words that, again, not many people know of, or ones that don’t exist at all. Either that, or you’re expecting me use car insurance from Kansas or watch Hunter X Hunter.

I mentioned and explained this in the cons, but to reiterate, I also noticed that letters can be highlighted incorrectly, which can lead to poor guesses and confusion. One time I made a guess using two of the same letter, which was O. One O was highlighted yellow while the other was green. In Wordle, this implies that the correct word would have two O’s. But in Flordle, that doesn’t seem to be the case, as the correct word ended up having only one O. If that was the case in Wordle, then only one O would have been highlighted, while the other would be grayed out.
In another instance, the letter A was grayed out when I tried guessing a word involving it, and yet the correct word involved the letter A.
And I looked at the discussion for this game to see if anyone else was noticing the incorrect, or if this is an isolated situation. And sure enough, I’m not alone: JR 01 cited two separate incidents, and I think CodeAlpaca provided a possible solution to it. So, why is it still happening? I would suggest doing what Wordle does and showing each word’s color left to right instead of everything instantly. I think that might be part of the problem.

Unrelated, But Something Else I Didn't Like

To add more insult to injury, the game proceeds to say “you suck rice water” when you lose. Now, on its own, this sounds like a random sentence to say, and I wouldn’t have any problem with it. But considering the fact that the “you suck” part is the title of the alert, it makes the message appear as “you suck rice water”. It places major emphasis on the “you suck” part, which comes across as very toxic. It essentially feels like the game is mocking you for failing. Well, sorry game, I don’t know enough about botany to know what a “sepal” is.
I am aware that there are games out there that mock the player in the Game Over screen. But that mockery is usually intended to get a laugh out of the player, or expose the cruelty of the game’s antagonist so that victory feels all the more sweeter. Plus, the mockery could be dismissed as being directed to the character instead of the player themselves. In this game, though, it fails to do any of this. “You suck” isn’t a statement everyone is going to laugh at, and there are no antagonists to feel a grudge against. Plus, there are no characters in this game, so the only other person that “you” could be referring to is the player themselves.

So yeah… I think the Game Over message comes across as toxic for those sensing the emphasis on the “you suck”.

Score: 1 / 5


CONCLUSION

FINAL SCORE: 2 / 5

BadgeC

This is an “okay” for me, Galactian.

Wow, a score of exactly 2! You narrowly avoided a D rank…
Anyways, congratulations on successfully creating Wordle on Flowlab, and another congratulations for getting it featured. I feel that you’re on the right track, but more needs to be done. Add a little more sound, perhaps more gamemodes, and please fix the incorrect coloring.


Better luck next time, and thank you for your submission.

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Summary

yeah i never changed that from testing, i just kept it as a joke, never expected it to be so popular so i never changed it

yes i understand know about the crazy words issue, it just picks a word from all of the 5 letter words that exist (12k+ in the text list) so they can be kinda crazy
but i never changed it for many reasons mostly because i was lazy and didn’t want to put together a long list on it

kinda feel like this could’ve been exempted

the only time this happens is when you type before the text lists load in completely? or are you talking about how it doesn’t recognize double yellows and green+yellows? this is intentional to make it more difficult

if you look in the desc of flordle daily it says that it’s just wordle but harder (i tried to do something with it since it was just a remake of something so i could practice lists and logic with text)

i can see how you had difficulty rating it but thanks for trying

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Response

Well, the only category in these reviews that have or can be exempted is STORY, because not all games have or need a story. Though, I am aware that there are “silent” games out there, ones with no sound or music at all, so I can sort of see where you are coming from.
However, personally, I don’t like it when a game is silent, because it feels unnaturally eerie. The only exception I have considered is if it’s a horror game, because spooking/disturbing the player is kind of the whole point. Plus, I hate silence in general for the same reason; it feels a little unnerving.

Kind of. Here is some of the miscoloration I’ve seen while reviewing the game:

  • When two of the same letter are guessed in one entry, both of them are colored yellow. However, in the correct word, that letter only appears once. (for example, I guess “BEEPS” even though the correct word is “PLATE”) In Wordle, only one of the letters should have been highlighted (so it would have been “BEEPS”).
  • When two of the same letter are guess, one is colored green while the other is yellow. However, in the correct word, that letter only appears once. (for example, I guess “BEEPS” even though the correct word is “PETAL”) Again, in Wordle, only one of the letters should have been highlighted (so it would have been “BEEPS”).
  • When a letter that was grayed out in a previous guess becomes yellow/green when placed in a new guess. (for example, the first guess is “AUDIO”, but the second guess is “PETAL”)

As you’ve acknowledged, these issues typically arise in the first guess, but even then it should not be happening.

Yeah, I honestly did. I found myself wondering what scores the ENTERTAINMENT and DIFFICULTY categories deserved, and in the end I gave them the scores that currently appear.

You’re welcome, and again, thank you for submitting the game!

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Hello, I just released the open beta now. May you please review it?

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Sure thing, I’ll review it whenever I can.

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