HuckleBerry’s Reviews

Sorry, that was implemented very recently cause of testing, but I just changed it. Should be nice and silent :slight_smile:

Hold up, I’m just gonna make a reply chain in one topic cause I keep realizing I have more to say lol. I’m gonna post one more comment but with a bunch of drop downs like some of you did earlier

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Final Reply lol

Yeah, just never got around to that lol. It was going to be doors that open up into a hallway where you can see the glow of the arena in the background, but I ran out of time and started using the current one as a newer placeholder thing. I like the way you did it in that picture, I may try something similar to that.

Good point

Yep, it’s mostly up to @Mhx_Air. We’re working together still, and hopefully he has some more bangers in the pipeline, but life happens.

Yep, yep. Like I said, already fixed, sorry for the annoyance

Hollow Knight, especially the colloseum of fools played a big inspiration in this game, so these compairisons are apt!

Hmm, that’s an idea. I’ll test out some stuff and see what feels cool

Hopefully that will change after I get my main goals out of the way. Trust me, money will be needed again soon :slight_smile: (And probably forever, at least somewhat)

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it, and I really appreciate the review. Your points are good to hear, and the critism is great!

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Her you go

Btw fixed shotgun issue and controller isn’t compatible in the main menu (gotta make a new background rn)

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Hey, may you please review my game’s open beta?

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taile gamougg 3: Journey Through The Land of Blocks
(re-review) by @John_Shrekinson

  • Art: 5.5/10
    much more of the game’s art is original compared to last September, with the exception of gamougg himself and the bat enemies (gamougg being modified from the alien sprite, but it’s different enough to really not matter). It appears to me that the mortal kombat and creeper anime girl sprites are gone (correct me if I’m wrong) and the art style is a lot more consistant. I especially like the sprites in the nether. I also liked the MGRR refrences in the art. great game, need to play it more.
also,


???

  • Sound: 4/10
    still pretty similar, and not terrible. I think there’s a few more sounds than before. the music is still fun like before.

  • Gameplay 5/10
    definitely improved :smiley: , I like the 360 aiming and easier to understand controls.
    the levels are much less frustrating and more fun to play through, and

  • JUICE 6/10
    some stuff with kill effects and controls made the game feel a lot better, but looking back on it, the old game feel score should have been a bit lower. pretend this is a 4/10. gonna officially keep it as a 6 though so that your score is still an improvement.

  • Story 4.5/10
    story seems a bit better, or maybe I’m just paying better attention?

Final score: 5/10

lots of minor but good improvements!

this is probably the last review until the end of flowjam btw

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It's Gamouggin' time

image

It’s about a drug lord but I did fit it into the game better

You still remember the old game? Impressive!

yeah this is gone

No the anime creeper girl is still there because the game is set in a VR knockoff version of Minecraft made by a drug lord and his followers

Poggers

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I’d love to do reviews of flowjam entries! send me a message or post a request here if you’d like a review.

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(please) It’s Gamouggin’ time!

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guess I’m gamougging twice in a row cuz I still gotta do gamougg 4

lemme get on that

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You can skip Gamougg 4 for now, I wanna finish the final boss first (last thing before full release).

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btw, I want to mention I’m getting rid of number ratings. I have a really hard time keeping them consistant with previous reviews and I feel like they’re a bit pointless. I’ll be focused a lot more on what I’m writing rather than what number to give something.

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Taile Gamougg: Explorider by @John_Shrekinson

Art:
Similar to all the other gamougg games, It doesn’t impress very much. Everything is way too complicated and it’s all mixed together with the simple sprites.
an easy way to make your game look better is to add a “top” to the highest blocks. it looks like you’ve already done this, but in the way of having a separate block, which is way more time consuming. make that top block into an animation for the bottom block and add in this:


also, please make that block into the solid darker colour as seen in the background of that screenshot. it makes no sense to have it fading down when it isn’t the top block.
it now looks like this in game:
image
the reason I’ve done this whole thing here is because this is my favourite area visuals and music wise.
I love the red skeleton with CHOOSE above his head, prompting you to take one of the weapons. It’s also the level least cluttered with overcomplicated block sprites. I think the “bizarre adventure” idea would work a lot better if most things were easy to read (like the simple sprites in this level) but the game was sprinkled with eye-catching bizzare things such as this skeleton. These games could look visually pleasing without losing the strangeness of it.

Sound:
Not Much to say about sound. mostly default sounds and music (nothing wrong with that) The sound didn’t bother me, but I didn’t really like the sound of anything either. I’d recommend looking somewhere like freesound or zapsplat to look for sounds, or try a sound effect maker if you want something really unique. Three positives the sound department though are the jump sound which I thought was chosen well, and the red world music by hihilogic, which I had on in the background while writing this section, and that it opened a playlist of linkin park songs once I entered linkin park world. I’VE BECOME SO NUMB I CAN’T FEEL YOU THERE, BECOME SO TIRED SO MUCH MORE AWARE

Gameplay:
Levels were (allegedly) designed. I love the Inclusion of a double jump, but man it feels like you’re going backwards. TG3 by the end had 360 aiming, levels that were designed in way that made a bit of sense, and enemies that went towards the player and died fast with a pretty satisfying animation, It was actually pretty fun. now this game again has the player-controlled enemies from Halo: flowlab evolved and other enemies just move in a completely nonsensical way that gets them stuck under geometry. The enemies also feel like they were just thrown in at random. here’s my main improvement points for you.

  1. making the level look like a dinosaur skeleton should not take priority over level design. This would work way better as a background thing. (doesn’t have to be in the background layer, but just nonsolid)

  2. get some enemy AI. have those guys walk back and forth and damage you when you collide with them, maybe they could occasionally stop and shoot. just stop making them be controlled by the player IT DOESN’T WORK

  3. why do bounce pads exist if you’re not gonna use them?!?!?!
    design a level around bouncing on those mfs to get to the next large platform. Think Black N White by Tapeboiii

  4. make him a capsule.
    image
    He will slide down walls like he’s covered in butter, because there is no reason you should be able to do this. It does nothing.

  5. Make falling off the map kill you. being trapped moving under the map is anti-fun, and just shows people that your game is low quality. make a kill trigger object and sttrrreeeetttcchhhhh it all along the bottom of the game with the edit stretch thing. (this)
    image

  6. make your bullets nonsolid and enable collisions. also make them destroy on contact with objects and make them not damage the player when the player is shooting them.

JUICE/Polish:
All I can say is no animations isn’t really a creative choice, even if walk cycles are hell. No animations makes your game feel flat and unpolished, and there’s really no other polish details that could make up for it. But if it means you can focus your efforts on the level design and gameplay, go for it.

Story:

“Nenemu III, son of Nenemu II, is a very smart fellow. But when his father dies, he and his motorcyle go to rescue him. But angry demons who are afraid of Linkin Park music block their way and teleport them away! The man and the cycle are separated, but will they find each other?”

Hilarious, should be somewhere in the game instead of the description though.

overall, a step back for gameplay and level design from the previously reviewed entry. granted, this was a jam game made in two weeks compared to the other games which were developed in a span of months. Sorry for tearing this game to shreds, but I assure you 100% that it’s because I enjoy the ideas in these games and want to see them better. Good luck on future endeavors and thanks for submitting your game!

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Btw can someone remind me how to turn a link into text like I was doing before?

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You can format it like this:
[Text](Link)

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I’d love some feedback on Next Door, but im adding a few things i didnt have time for in the jam, so give me a week and ill let you know when the update it ready?

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I will update the game now, thanks for reviewing! Have a Gamougging day.

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Beyond The Glass by @CodeAlpaca and @00T_Free
(requested via discord)

Art:
Beyond The Glass is a beautiful looking game overall, but the standout area was The Sky. There is so many great colours, and so much good pixel art here, especially for decorative and background objects. This sprite in particular really impressed me:
image
along with the chained clouds:
image
As for the Overworld, something looked a bit off. I think it’s that the background is too bright and contrasty, a bit hard on my eyes. here’s my new proposed background colour: 378A62. could even be a bit darker to make foreground objects more visible.
it’ll look like this:
image
instead of this:
image
And for the Deep Underground, The background and the torches look amazing, but individual sprites were lacking.
this:
image
compared to the equivilant in the sky level is not even a contest. I felt that the area in general apart from the background looked very boring. I think having a larger variety of ground blocks like the other levels could help with this issue.

Sound:
The music in Beyond The Glass perfects the atmosphere of these great-looking levels. I’m not sure if it’s original or flowlab premium music, but it fits amazingly well regardless. As for sound effects, it’s a wide range of quality. the sounds for a lot of things sound great. Like picking up the key items (bottled clouds, magic leaves, etc.) and the amazing sound detail of wind getting louder when falling really far sound great, but everything else sounds just okay, or bad like the fan on the sky level. my suggestion would be to use the same wind sound used for falling on the fan as well if possible. If you have the time to do it, taking the time to get just the right sounds from off of flowlab, or finding more creative ways to use flowlab’s sound library could really level up the sound of this game.

Gameplay:
I’ll start off with the positives. I love the way the game is structured. The idea of a big area with multiple objectives reminds me of Mario 64 and it’s just really satisfying to get that delayed gratification feeling of grabbing an item and bringing it somewhere else to get one of the 3 “key items”. I like the inclusion of vines (I’m a big fan of DKC), and the character movement feels a bit better than the last time I played, but the problems start with that the platforming is just okay. The player character feels wonky to control, vines are frustrating, and the last two levels are confusing to navigate and have dead ends. I would have really liked if the glasses revealed pathways from these dead ends, but they ended up being pretty much useless. Not sure how to put the rest of this into a paragraph so here’s some points for you:

  1. make the glasses more integral to the gameplay, make it less obvious exactly where hidden platforms are so you actually have to use them.

  2. more variety to the gameplay

  3. (VERY IMPORTANT) make the continue dialogue button something other than shift, it activates sticky keys.

  4. Since I mentioned Mario 64 earlier, I thought would mention that I was disappointed (for no reason) that I couldn’t launch myself out of those bows. A separate thing that worked similar to the bows but launched the player would be sick.

JUICE/Polish:
The cutscenes, level transitions, and animations for objects in the world are super polished. The chained clouds are animated, the string above the target is animated, the game shows an animation of the lost soul moving out of the way in a different creative way every time. I think you guys did a great job with the polish in this game. The only thing that bothered me were the character animations. they look out of sync, Especially The walk animation, which looks too slow for the speed the player is walking. The other animation stuff is maybe an issue with states. Overall I’d still prefer if the player character was original to fit better with the rest of the game’s style but that’s pretty much it.

Story:
The Story was written by an AI. great time saving idea, and works well to make the game really weird. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on in this game but I found it really entertaining. Btw, can I see what the AI originally wrote for you guys? I’m really curious.

Conclusion:
Overall, an impressive game that could still use a bit of improvement to make it as fun as it could be.
beautiful art, atmosphere, and ideas. Thanks for submitting and I’m looking forward to whatever either of you work on next!

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tysm for the review, it was really great feedback!

Summary

Ty so much for liking the art in the sky level, we really liked how it turned out. As for the Overworld and Deep Underground, those could definitely use a lot more polish.

Sound design is also something that we need to work on a bit more, but I’m glad some of them were really good picks.

For the Deep Underground, we’re probably going to rework the entire maze area (and add a rough map to each level) so it’s not as confusing. Also making the glasses a bigger part of the game play is something really important that we’ll look into doing.


Also, the story made by the AI is in our GDD, here it is:
Prompt Given: “Write a story about a character who gets stuck inside of a snowglobe and has to go through separate hidden worlds to escape it using glasses as ways to see certain parts of those hidden worlds.”

One cold winter day, a young girl named Emily was rummaging through her attic when she stumbled upon an old snow globe that had been hidden away for years. It was a beautiful piece with a charming little village nestled inside, complete with tiny houses, trees, and even a little pond.

As Emily shook the snow globe, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia wash over her. She had always loved the snow globe as a child and would spend hours just staring at the tiny world inside.

But as she continued to shake the snow globe, something strange happened. Suddenly, the snow globe began to grow larger and larger until it was the size of a small room. And before Emily knew it, she was sucked inside, tumbling head over heels until she landed in the middle of the tiny village.

At first, Emily was terrified. She had no idea how she was going to get out of the snow globe and back to the real world. But as she looked around, she noticed a pair of glasses sitting on a nearby bench.

Curious, Emily picked up the glasses and put them on. To her amazement, the glasses allowed her to see beyond the walls of the snow globe, revealing hidden worlds and dimensions that she had never even imagined.

Determined to find a way out, Emily set off on a journey through these hidden worlds, using the glasses as a guide. She traveled through forests, across deserts, and even into the depths of the ocean, facing all sorts of dangers and challenges along the way.

But despite the obstacles in her path, Emily refused to give up. She was determined to find a way out of the snow globe and back to the real world, no matter what it took.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Emily came upon a door that seemed to lead back to the outside world. She tried the handle, and to her delight, it opened.

As she stepped through the door, Emily was greeted by a sight that she had never thought she would see again - the attic of her childhood home. She was finally free!

Feeling grateful and relieved, Emily made her way back down to the living room, where she carefully placed the snow globe back on the shelf. She knew that she would always treasure the memories of her incredible journey, and she vowed to never take the magic of the world around her for granted again.

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Also, we were thinking about adding another/more movement options for the player, so this is a possibility (also, also, glad you like the movement a little more this time. I made some slight adjustments with the feedback sup3r had gave and I think it improves the vine a lot)

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