Afro-Alchemist's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Stealth at School]

Not a bad game. There isn't a whole lot to it, but it is solid and functional (I didn't encounter a single glitch while playing the game normally, good job).
I think the game is a little too easy. Except for the last three levels I had absolutely zero problem getting all of the coins while beating the levels for the first time. It wasn't until about level 15 that I learned that you could actually be in the enemies' line of sight ( I assumed it was an insta-kill like the first Classroom game), and wasn't until the last three levels that I didn't clear it on the first go.
Speaking of the line of sight, I think the amount of time you can spend in their (except for the bully) is a little too generous. The fact that I am able to dive in, grab the coin, and dip out all while the enemy is staring at me makes getting some of the coins that were set up to be a challenge to just be trivial. All while without even using the airplane.

Then there is the paper airplane. It's way too good. Even though the Nerds aren't much of a threat ever, the fact that you can stun, pick up the airplane and continue using it makes almost every level way too easy. The airplane should simply not be re-useable (you could have the tip be crumbled to signify that it can't be used again), and even then it would still be too strong. Like with the Bully, you cant recover the airplane if you use it on the Bully, not like you would need to. The Bully was a welcomed enemy, but with the fact that I can stun him in on position forever makes him more like a small wall that isn't a threat. What would have been better is that it stuns the bully for only for a little bit (like maybe 5-7 seconds[similar to the nerd]) so that the player can use the airplane strategically and with timing with the other enemies so they can dash and grab the coin, that would have been more enjoyable than just stunlocking the Bully.
I like the paper airplane, it's a nice concept for the gameplay. It just makes a fairly easy game even easier.
So overall for difficulty, I feel like two things would be a good change; make all enemies' line of sight's detection meter go up significantly faster (or even just make it an insta-kill) , and make the paper airplane an one-use-per-level kind of thing (maybe even some kind of powerup they have to grab).

Animation-wise. It is fine. I don't like how the enemies just snap in angles instead of smoothly turning around ( the same for the line of sight, which could have amped the difficulty a little more). But my actual complaint goes into the main character's walk cycle. By itself, it is fine, however, do you see how it is when he walks up, down, left and right? And then see how he walks in all of the diagonal directions. His diagonal walking looks like it would be a lot faster than his normal direction walking. His diagonal walking animation looks like running, while the up/down/left/right walking animation looks like he is just casually walking. It would be good to fix it to have all eight animations to be consistent in the appearance of speed, as it is currently jarring.

Art style is fine. It's appealing to look at, but that's as far as it gets.

The controls are alright, but a little clumsy-feeling when colliding with any object.

The audio is fine. Good choice of music, since I didn't get tired of hearing it by the end of the game, and I appreciate the option of muting it.

All in all, it is a functional game with an enjoyable concept. Zero story, but that is fine. No obvious glitches. Simply a good example of an average flash game, perfectly deserving 3 stars. It was enjoyable. Just kinda too easy, could use some more levels, and could use some general polish to make the game feel and look better.

MonoFlauta responds:

Thanks a lot for your review! We will take in mind all of them for our future games.

Also, about the difficult, indeed, maybe it would had been even better to have different difficulties. It would had been as easy as multiple the fill factor in this case... (if we wanted to add it fast). We will take this in mind for sure.

And about the multiple use of the plane. Now that you mention, I think we failed in giving the real need of using it multiple times, like, actually need to grab the plane again to finish the level. But maybe, that one is another way to fix what you say.

Other than that, thanks once again for the review and for playing the game, we really like these game design reviews, they help us to improve :)

[Test 442]

Juuuust me again. I really don't know what to say, because your seb games are exactly like this one. So really, just about everything I said there can be said here, the only this is that the player sprite is not so unsightly, since you did make it yourself. Everything else is completely the same, in fact I feel like you used the same collision size for the seb games, which now explains why you have it that I can have my character floating like I am still on a block and I am not. It was not because you sucked at making the collision size, it is because you are lazy. Which is even worse. I would ask "Do you even play test through these games?" but I know you had to because on the first two of these terrible games, you had a jump that you had be to pixels from falling off of a cliff to make a jump. Which in the seb games made it more ridiculous because due to your laziness, the character HAD to show the player that you made a terrible collision size for the player. So you did actually playtest them, you just did a really terrible job at thinking on how it would look to people who did create it. Which ended up being terrible.

In the seb games, I took note that I was able to do some kind of "wall jump" even though it was never said that you could, so I said it was most likely a glitch. After playing your first game that used a stick figure that could not have been yours, it actually indicated that you could wall jump, so I was thinking maybe it was a secret function that you added, which, if it was true, I could really respect. But then I played this one, and a tank wall jumping? Nope, that made me sure it was not a secret function, that even though you aren't exactly aiming for realism with your idle-moving sprite of a tank that can jump five times its height without any indication it is using some kind of technology for that, I am in serious doubt you placed a secret function like that for a tank.
There is also the bit of a fact that you had to press Up to go through the door, this problem is pretty minor, it does not take much to guess pressing up will have you go through the door, but somewhere on telling the player is a necessity.

And then the music, it did not take long before I had to mute my computer so that the poorly-looped music didn't not make it sound like I was grinding some metal on a grindstone.
Also, the lack of a screen saying something like "you won! Replay this game? Haha just kidding, why would you want to replay other than to see if this was not just some nightmare?!?"

This is how your games have been going:
1) (Stick Jumper) Decent stick figure, decent platform and background graphics, lack of game goals whatsoever, terrible everything else.
2) (Test 442) Decent single sprite of the player because it was from another game, terrible everything else about the character, actual somewhat goal, decent backgrounds I suppose, unstable music, terrible gaming experience, terrible everything else.
3) (Seb's Adventure) Just about the same as the one before, but even worse. Excluding the fact that the music was not unstable like Test 442, touching the door made you go to the next level, and there was actually an end screen. The single sprite of the player was atrocious. ET from the Atari is the good-looking brother for this one. The sprite's feet does not even touch the ground, the sprite can appear to be floating due to the collision of the sprite I already mentioned, the burger is not recognizable as a burger, and some other things I can not remember off the top of my head.
4) (Seb's Adventure 2) THE SAME AS BEFORE EXCEPT EVEN WORSE. AGAIN. The SINGLE sprite's legs were even further away from the ground, he would appear to be floating more because the sprite is smaller, but the collision size is the same for the tank and the previous game's person. And it is even easier than the previous ones, somehow.

From your first game to your fourth, in what I believe your games deserve you went from 1 star rating (Stick Jumper) , to .5 rating (Test 442) , to 0 rating (Seb's Adventure) , to "Why did you even post this?" (Seb's Adventure 2).
It should have been the other way around, you are suppose to learn new things, and master the things you already know when you make more and more games. You just grew lazier and lazier, it is atrocious. Really.
Don't think I am saying you should give up on being a game designer or anything like that.
Even though you are 10, it doesn't mean that your terrible games should stay on newgrounds. You being young should NEVER change the reviewers strictness, it should any change to amount of profanity used in the review.
But, because you are 10, it means you have a lot more time to learn and become much better than anyone older.

Instead of having the community of newgrounds test out your games you just whip out, have people you actually know give their honest opinions to tell you the many flaws of your games so you can retry until you make a game that actually deserves a 1.6 star at the least.
You probably won't listen to this, so you know, brace yourself for me for your next "game".

sebastian4ester responds:

I=<

[A Quest for Hero's]

Not too bad, a nice little text-based adventure. The consequences aren't too bad since you can just go back from when you failed, but it does make it easier to see what were the results for the wrong paths once you get curious. I enjoyed the music through playing this, would have been cool if in the ending that everyone lives, it would have been possible to fight through the soldiers, stop the king, and take the talisman. And if you let the rouge die, then the heroes would have just been locked up, with the lack of manpower or that the rogue became suspicious of the royalty around them once they got back to the castle and had the team braced for betrayal, or something like that. Nice and fun. But short and same ending. Overall, I think you deserve the three stars.

mark9135 responds:

i was planning on continuing the story in another one , but from the ratings i see i think ill just move on

[Potato Run]

Really fun. Can be quite the classic, in my opinion. There is a problem that the rest of the world does not stop when you get the potato so the one(s) that end on the same platform with the other farmer(s) going around, they can kill you before you click the next button. The menu isn't exactly flashy, but it gets the job done. And I failed at getting past level 23. Oh well, my family can live off 23 potatoes until next time.

Anyways, even though the aerial momentum isn't realistic, it is great for platformers, if my guy didn't go into an almost immediate stop in the air, a lot of these jumps would have been incredibly harder. I love the sound of the walking, and the flow of movement just felt really nice and controllable. The music is nice, I heard it before and have been trying to remember from where, Jaltoid? If I did hear it from Jaltoid, I don't even know if that is where it originated from.
Anyways, this game is pretty fun, so I believe it deserves 4 stars.

If many more people have trouble with Level 23, with the beginning wall jumps with small room for error, it might be a good idea to make it a bit easier.

Meitnerium109 responds:

Thanks for the response. I find level 23 pretty easy, but some other people are having problems with it. I'll have to make it a bit easier so people can beat level 23.