Dioxymore's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Super Dangerous Dungeons]

(Non-english native here, sorry for any mistakes/mispelling)

First, I LOVE this game. And I really enjoy speedrunning it (for the moment I only achieved times on grass & water, which are easily improvable, and I'm training Fire, which is really difficult to speedrun).

But I face a dilemma : I have found a glitch/exploit that allows the character to double jump under certain conditions. Nothing really broken : it can't be done everywhere and it is REALLY difficult to do, but it allows some time saves in some rooms (that's what makes Fire so hard to speedrun in fact ^^'). I don't know if you are aware of that glitch, and I'm a bit scared to tell you more about it because I don't know if you are the kind of developper that patch unintended (but deep) gameplay. This exploit really brings the speedrun to a new level and require very good execution to accomplish, making the run very interesting in terms of risk/reward, and it would demotivate me to run if it disappears.

That said, I didn't spend so much time on a flash game since a looooot of time, and it is a real pleasure to play it again and again. Thank you for that game !

~MetalFox Dioxymore

[Super Gonad Smasher]

Haha, fun game ! (and not laggy for me, it seems important to tell xD)
I found an OOB glitch though : everytime (kinda) you destroy a blue block at the surface by smashing it, you can go at the left edge of the screen (where there is no transition) and fall infinitly out of bounds. To reproduce simply : at the very first screen, smash a bluc block and hold left =). You can trigger the boss fight by going right, and escaping it locks the game. Fun glitch !

~MetalFox Dioxymore

PestoForce responds:

Thanks for the review! That glitch should be fixed now in version 1.2 (PM me if it's not plz!)

[Kram Keep]

(Sorry for my english, I'm not a native english speker !)

Excellent game ! I love trying to achieve the best time possible and finding tricks to go faster =) !
I found a very interesting glitch (speedrunly speaking) that allows you to "clone" your hero, and even if I don't want it to be patched (it is so fun and I'm sure it can lead to insane times), I have to tell you :

if you retry at the same time than your death (may be frame perfect, but I'm really not sure. It is quite difficult to do), the death sound is played twice and you now control 2 heroes, one over the other. You take double damage while your heroes are superposed, but if you die, only one will be teleported to the save point and so you'll be able to really control both. Unfortunatly, the camera follows only one hero and, if you want the "shift" button to work, you must have an odd number of heroes (but you take even more damage). The enemies will detect only one hero, ignoring the other.

I am currently enjoying playing with that glitch, trying to use this to beat the game in the fastest possible way (one hero goes for the walljump upgrade while the other is on the way to the double jump, for exemple) and would be sad if it was fixed =( xD !

~MetalFox Dioxymore

[Flying Pigs]

Very good game with interesting mechanics... But I don't believe you a single second when you pretend this game was though to be impossible x). It may be a good way to bring the player to play this game though x).

Controls are a bit counter-intuitive, and need a little adaptation... I understand your choice in the button configuration, but for me, "E" is for taking objects, for exemple (since Source Engine, and even before)... I don't like either "Q" and "E" for shrinking/dematerialising, because that mean that I have to stop moving (letting the finger off "A" or "D") to do the action, and sometime I have to use them very quickly... What about shift/space (or space to jump and "E" to dematerialize) ? And, finally, I don't understand moving in the menu with arrow keyswhen moving the player is with WASD, and I would have prefered that, on the level selection, the cursor was set on the level I just quit instead of the last available... A lot of little things, but that doesn't cost more that half a star =).

What I like in this game is that there are little tricks that allows the player to do good times in time trial, and I like the leaderboard competition when a game is deep enough to allow multiple starts on a level. About that, little flaw : if you want to do a "time leaderboard" for your game, please don't round/ceil the time : show, at least, the decimals... This is way better, because it give the player more occasions to impove their time. Here, I'm like "Oh, I achieved a good time... Mmmh, I could do 0.3/0.4 seconds less, but it won't improve my score on the leaderboard... Mieh, nevermind"...

A little other thing : please, show the level number somewhere on the screen... Not only at the beginning of the level ! I want to now where I am xD !

I found a little glitch : hiting "R" twice fast (or while dying) makes you succeed the current level with the current time (0 if you do this at the begining of the level). Good to gather stars, but fortunaly, you can't submit this "0" to leaderboard.

Overall, good game with some little flaws, but I enjoyed it ! I didn't finished it yet, I admit, because I like to spend time to improve my scores on levels I achieved and find tricks to go faster and faster =) !

(Sorry for my english, I'm not a native english speaker)

~MetalFox Dioxymore

deathink responds:

Thanks for the review. Yeah, the game has some flaws, both technical and design. It was my one of my first games made way back in 2011.

People REALLY did complain so much about it being unbeatable that I really did hide it and considered it a failure.

The decimals is a great idea. If i ever have another time based game, I would like to change up the system greatly. I just was a noob when I made this.

[Chompy]

This game is all I want in a video game : easy to play but hard to master. Controls are simple, but there are some (intended or not) little exploits that allows players to improve their times, and that create a new depth to the game. A lot of levels can have different paths, and the most obvious is generally not the fastest. Finding strats is important if you want to have a good time, and this is the sign of really good level desing. I spent a lot of time improving my score, and I'll spend more with pleasure !

I noted some bugs :
- The scoreboard doesn't work. That's the missing half star. I like to try to be the best in games like this and I actually don't know how good, or bad, is my time. Too bad !
- In the level selection, you can enter a level placed at the floor above you by jumping underneath and pressing "down" at the right timing. This is pretty useful.
- In the level 28, in the "tower" part of the level, you can go through the blocks that protect the missiles launchers, creating big lags.
- In the level 30, climb the ladder and jump on the upper left platform (the one with the "=>" sign). If you press "down" to drop, you'll go through the platform underneath and fall to the begining of the level. That one caused me some trouble before I found a new strat for the level.
- Not sure if it is a bug or not, but sometimes, when I even my time, it shows "New best"... Not all the time, so maybe there are some unshown milliseconds ?
- Also, the game can lag a bit with all this smoke and shaking... Even in low quality.

Thank you for this game. If the scoreboard could be fixed, that would add even more interest to the game, but it is really, REALLY good.

Currently, my total time is 183.9, but I will certainly improve it !

~MetalFox Dioxymore

[Spiderling]

This game had everything to be awesome : great mechanics, maniability, atmosphere... Then I lost all my progression because of a weird glitch : I reached the room after the one where a rock is rolling behind you, and I wanted to play with a frog in there, but it escaped. So I went in the next room to come back and making the frog respawn, but the next room triggered a dialog sequence (i think). I was holding the right button, so I could come back in the previous room DURING the dialog sequence and it teleported me in the wall of the first room of the game, and saved here...

[Pandesal Boy]

AAAAAAH, I spent ~1 hour to achieve a 5 seconds strat on B4, and I realized that Bonus levels are not counted in the total time >.> ! Anyway, very good game, I love to find new ways to achieve levels faster and faster ! I am at 121 total time (without bonus levels), and I'm sure that <120 is possible.
One thing : it is quite frustrating that the timer doesn't stops exactly when you hit the house x) ! But very good and very addictive game !

~ MetalFox Dioxymore

kikill responds:

Been following you on the leaderboard, no denying an impressive performance.

Yes the engine takes a fraction of a second to check things and time is rounded to the nearest second so.

We are really glad you are enjoying the time you spend within this tiny world we created!

Cheers to you!

[The Pits: Just Jump]

(English is not my first language, sorry about any error/misspelling)
Not bad, a good base for a more polished game, but nothing than a base, so 2 stars. I think you may change some things :
- The jumps are very strange. Your character doesn't slow down if you release the direction key : air seems to have no friction at all... Almost all my deaths were because of that.
- Graphics are basic, some work is needed here... Black tiles are good for betas, but in the final version, I hope to see improved graphics ! And some animations too...
- 10 Mb for a 2 levels platformer with basic graphics !? There is a SERIOUS problem here... I am connected via a public WiFi, it took me AGES to load this !
- Reseting the music on death is never a good idea !
- No level end, the fact that I had to refresh a 10Mb game to play the level 2 was very disturbing...
- No sounds, only music ? A little sound when jumping would be appreciated =).
- Why does it have "Parkour" in the keywords ? A platformer is not necessarily a parkour game, especially when the player controls a rolling robot xD.
- The level design itself is bad... The two levels have no real challenge (except the terrible jump managing) or great design, just a bunch of holes that seems to be randomly placed.
- No pause, and I couldn't mute the music...
- No story ?

Actually, your game is just "a basic generic platformer" that just want to grow, and have some personnality. You must give it some identity, with its own graphics, sounds, music, and level design. When you create a game, keep in mind that you create a world in which you put the player. If you want the player to stay in it, it must have "that little something" that distinguish your game from the others. It can be astonishing graphics (like "William and Sly"), innovative gameplay ("Escape from Puppy Factory" is a good exemple, "Karoshi : Suicide Salarymen" is another), excessively good level design (the best exemple I've ever seen is "Cactus McCoy", but "Meat boy" is great too), great atmosphere ("400 years") or anything else that makes it different. It have to make feel something, and, for the moment, your game didn't make me feel anything. It is too much like "that bunch of platformers without originality". It is a good start, but it lacks of things to do. Collectibles and levels won't add anything if they don't bring anything new. Collecting coins to increase a score, who cares ? Collecting coins to buy things/upgrade, or collecting power-ups to have temporarly boost is a bit better, but level design have to be thought in that way...

You have a good base between your hands, now you have to use it wisely. Making a game is simple and fast. Making a good game require some coding skills. But making a GREAT game require a wonderful imagination. A game can be simple, but can be remembered by the players : Meat Boy (again) is typically the kind of game that achieved great things with a simple concept. A fast paced platformer with walljumps, any programmer can do one, but Meat Boy has this little thing that brings it to the top. The story is classical, the graphics are simple, but the game has a good atmophere, and is very challenging thanks to a magnificent level design.

So now, with a lot of efforts, you could make a great game. Or could just continue to add levels with no originality, and make someting that doesn't worth 2.5 stars. Here, you have a start, and I give you 2 stars for it. I'll be glad to play the next versions to add some other stars, if the game deserves it ;) !

(I hope I haven't been too harsh...)

~Dioxymore

AerionsRealm responds:

Wow, you have really opened my eyes about making games. I am still learning about flash games and in the future I would love to develop a game with a good story, good graphics and an experience that makes the player feel like they are in the game. You seem to know what you are talking about and your advice as really impacted me.
Thanks, Aerion.

[Barbarium]

Great game ! But one thing is strange to me... Some glitch abuse are possible, but it seems you are totally aware of it, because of the "YOU'RE A BIG FAT CHEATER" easter egg... Did you let this intentionnaly (in that case, I love you <3) ? Also, the game freeze randomly sometimes, forcing me to kill Firefox because it is not responding, but it doesn't seem to happen to other reviewers, so I won't lower my rating =). The sad part is that I never finished the game because of this =(.

Hypnohustler responds:

It was intentional. :) The freezing might happen for some people with more complex levels, try to update your flash if you haven't already.