HuckleBerry’s Reviews

I’m sorry, it’s just, it was really bland and boring :frowning:

It was the best AI FLowlab ever had. Period.

3 Likes

Thanks lol, but i’m sure I could have made it better though. Ok, it seems a lot of people liked it soo, I’ll make a poll.

1 Like

I’m getting to your review now, but I would prefer the flowlab link. This game (as well as almost every other exported flowlab game, including my own most of the time) has obnoxious repeating achievements. I’d recommend adding a save that prevents an achievement from triggering more than once, or creating a clone without flowlab achievements before exporting.

2 Likes

There’s a way I thought of to prevent repeating achievements. Say you have to kill a boss once and you get and achievement for it. In the code that makes the boss die, put a Number block 1 attached to whichever behavior the boss directly dies from. The Number should be connected by its Get input. Have the Number go into a Global block with a name matching the boss’ death. The Global block should output into a Filter block set to “Equal to 1” although you can use other settings too. If the filter passes, grant the achievement.

If this doesn’t work, you can check any of my games with achievements to see how I made them. Gamougg 3, 4, Mouse Slayer, CubeTales 3, all have achievements done in this method.

2 Likes

That’s actually not a bug on my part, that’s a flowlab thing. If you click “claim achievement” then “cancel,” it goes away. However, here’s your flowlab link.

2 Likes

TWHF: Midnight Cry DEMO by @meburningslime

Art/UI:
I like the style the character are made in, but I think this style could definitely work if it had a better colour palette and some interesting stuff to look at in the background, like a back wall, paintings, photos, and wood carvings. Also, the stamina should be visible in a bar, especially as it’s important for something I’ll suggest later down in the review.

Sound:
I really like the main menu intro music, but other than that, I feel that the sound in this game doesn’t reach the standard of sound I would expect from a horror game. The game really needs some sort of sound or music in the background, it’s surprising how much of a difference that makes from feeling like a prototype to feeling like a finished game. Also, having visceral and terrifying sounds is one of the best things you could do for the atmosphere of the game. The sounds currently are very weak. I’d recommend looking for some good horror sound packs to download.

individual suggestions:

  • breathing or other sound from the monster based on distance so that the player is aware of where it is even when a bit off screen (this is kinda already in the game but the radius is very small)
    -heavy footstep sound for the monster, again scaling volume with distance

Gameplay:
I’ll start of this section by being honest and saying that I didn’t have a very good time with this game. I found the gameplay of TWHF: Midnight Cry frustrating and uninteresting, making it difficult to want to keep playing after a death because I’d have to go through the entire level again. The player moves at a snail’s pace, even when sprinting. The watcher instakills you on contact and moves faster than you, meaning that depending on where you encounter it, you could have absolutely no means of survival as soon as it enters your camera view. The combat is janky and barely functional, making it near impossible to deal damage without taking damage, especially before seeing the tip “your attacks strike farther than it seems”, which just made me think that you should make the sprite consistent with the attack range instead of leaving in that issue and adding in a loading screen tip. The enemies get knocked down by the first hit, then die from the second hit, except when they sometimes get up 2 more times with no warning. The shade is repelled by light, except that he walks right through it, so I have to flicker the lightswitch on and off to kill him, except that sometimes he just keeps walking through that and kills me anyways. It feels like there are barely any consistent rules, a necessity for a game of this difficulty.

individual suggestions:

  • have enemies stun in place for a second after a hit (including the watcher and shade to give a small chance to escape)
  • add a ranged weapon with limited ammo that can stun + knock back enemies (including the watcher and shade)
  • increase the speed of sprint but limit stamina by having other actions also cost stamina (attacking, a dodge?, a jump?)
  • going off that last point, a dodge and jump would be a great addition. currently the game only takes place on one dimension, which gets boring extremely fast. having a way to move on the y axis could make level design interesting and lead to more different strategies, and a dodge could add some depth to the combat that currently consists of backing up and hitting attack. get more space from an enemy by sacrificing stamina that could be used to fight or flee. that adds an interesting decision, something that I feel is lacking from the current game.

JUICE/Polish:
It feels janky in many places as mentioned in the last section, but I’ll go into more detail on what I mean by that. I’ll put it in a list format:

  • start can be pressed infinitely in the main menu, halting the game start and allowing the sound to repeat over and over. It’s an easy fix with one of these beauties:
    image
  • the attack animation feels really wrong and floaty to me. it also feels weird that the player can move while swinging. I think that the pipe should stop at a diagonal angle, and have no in between frames softening the impact. something more like this:
    image image
    windup pose could also have the pipe go a bit further behind the head than it is currently.
    image
  • you get pushed sideways in a weird way when an enemy runs into you. I think this would be fixed if enemies stopped and did an attack animation when getting to close to you instead of continuing to run into you. this would also fix the continuous contact damage you get from running into the same enemy.

Conclusion:
I said a lot of negative stuff throughout this review, but I hope you also got some of those ideas you were looking for. I’ll be looking forward to seeing improvements to the game as time goes on, and I don’t think you’ll have to do too much to the game to make it way better, as the basics are all there.
good luck with the full game!

4 Likes

Would you be willing to review CubeTales 3? I want to get as much feedback as possible

(Note that only levels 1-7 can be completed at this point)

2 Likes

Can you reviews this?

3 Likes

@HuckleBerry

Will you please review this little game of mine? I’ve made a large cursor update. If you find any bugs or general problems, please report them.

Link:

1 Like

for sure! I’ve gotta catch up on the last few reviews, but I should be able to get to yours pretty quick

3 Likes

Tks

2 Likes

CubeTales 3: Flames of Destruction by @nhgcr_for_the_3rd_time

Okay, so I didn’t actually manage to finish the entire game, but I did beat what I thought was the end of the game, which was level 6. If I’m going to get to another review anytime soon, I’m gonna have to leave it at that for now.

Art/UI:
The game overall looks fine. however, I was impressed by the detail put into the backgrounds, especially in level 5 (water level) as well as the animations of the player character. they’re simple, but convey the motion well by just stretching the cube and moving the hands/weapon. you’ve manage to convey a lot of character through these animations as well. the jumping animation in particular I like a lot, and it kinda reminds me of the jump animation in my game Inheritance or it’s inspiration, which was Donkey Kong Country.

Sound:
The sound design is probably the weakest part of CubeTales 3. Certain sounds are incredibly irritating, especially the sword sounds and the music from the 2nd level. Other sounds just sound fine and don’t stick out. I would spend some time scouring the audio library to come up with some more satisfying and memorable combinations of sounds. Otherwise, I don’t really have a problem with much in the sound department.

Gameplay:
This is the part of the game that I’m most conflicted on. On one hand, There is a great set of movement abilities that allow the game that let you soar across levels if you get better at the game. I love chaining together jumps, dashes, double jumps, and wall jumps, especially on it’s better designed levels. But I feel like there’s a lot of missed potential here, because the game seems to have just as big, If not a bigger focus on combat, which is the main part I have a problem with. The combat of CubeTales 3 is a mess. You constantly have the moving enemies stuck ontop of your head where you can’t hit them, there’s no indication of how much damage you’re dealing or when you’re receiving damage, and you use the mouse to swing your sword despite not being able to aim it. I don’t think It’s unsalvageable though, because there is some things I like about the combat. I like the slam and slam jump, I like that there’s a heavy and light strike, I like the enemy variety, and I like the enemy death effects. here’s what I think you need to do to improve gameplay overall.

gameplay suggestions:

  • have moving enemies stop when they get too close to the player.

  • have non-moving enemies be non-solid

  • have a visual and audio effect when players take damage, along with a small amount of i-frames after.

  • have the player be able to aim the sword with the mouse to hit enemies from above or below

  • have a way for players to bounce up a small amount when hitting an enemy in the air (like HK or blasphemous)

  • respawn players take a small amount of damage and respawn at the last safe place when falling into a pit instead of restarting the whole level. look at what beyond the glass did, where they save the last place you were standing on solid ground and teleport you there when you fall.

  • zoom out the camera to at least 50% by default. (I can’t see ■■■■ when I’m platforming)

  • skip all dialogue automatically on level restart

another gameplay thing I want to discuss is level 5, the water level. This level made me say things to the blue cube that I won’t repeat on the flowlab forums. I know you’re just keeping in videogame tradition, but outside of the nice art in the background, this level is super frustrating. part of that was me not knowing you could kill those sentry bots, but I have some real reasons as well. (also mostly to do with the sentry bots)

  1. Unless you’ve memorized how long it takes for one of those guys to turn around, they do it completely without warning and kill you instantly. even a split second telegraph where the light flashes for a second or something would be huge.

  2. something this level really reminds me of is the set of levels called 20,000 Lums Under the Sea, from Rayman Legends (that’s a good thing) and in those levels, there’s a short amount of time it takes to be killed by the security after being spotted in the lights. (probably like 1 second.) I think even a tiny bit of leeway on the detection would make this level a lot more fair.

Okay, last thing finally. I want to talk about the boss on level 6. It’s very cool in concept, and almost very cool in execution. This boss has a similar issue to the sentries. there’s no telegraph for any of the attacks! especially when at the default zoom amount, you can’t even see when the boss starts to come down on top of you. again, just a simple thing could do the trick and make this fight so much more fair.

JUICE/Polish :poland: :
I love the effects on the dash and the way that the jump animations work. It’s beautiful. If you can get close to that level of quality into the enemies at least, that would improve the feel and consistancy of the game a ton.

Conclusion:
I like this game a lot actually, even though there’s a lot I think could be better. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the movement mechanics especially and the amount of effort that clearly went into this decently long game. good luck with your next update or sequel or whatever you go on to do next!

4 Likes

(Dang. This is long. You are Galaction on another level with reviews.)

2 Likes

Wow! Thanks for the in depth review!

Lengthy response, forgive me

I was going for a more dirty feel, but I guess I overdid it :joy:

You do actually have i-frames when you get knocked back in the damage animation.

I am currently working on fixing the combat, by giving players a reason to use heavy attacks (you can’t spam light attacks anymore), and implementing an uppercut attack to launch enemies into a midair combo.

Yikes, now I’m confused. Galactian said that this is the only level he liked, while you and John + his 50 alts think it’s too difficult.

I was planning something like this, I guess this is go mode then.

1 Like

I mean I actually think the level itself is really well designed ( especially because It’s focused on platforming rather than combat), just the sentries need a bit of work. you could even add more of them to balance out the difficulty after. maybe they could also take 2 light hits to kill instead of 1.
having the camera more zoomed out would also easily make that level in particular way better

also thanks for quoting that part lol, I didn’t see my funny little missing word before

3 Likes

(Which level is frustrating? For me, it’s the first level.)

2 Likes

we’re talking about the water planet, level 5

3 Likes

I’m sorry to say this, but I think that’s just a

Skill Issue

1 Like

I don’t think it’s too difficult. It’s my favorite level in the game too.

1 Like