Valio's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sniper For Hire: Trollday]

This is not a real sniper game and it doesn't have real trolls in it.
You just want to troll Newgrounds!

[Comatose]

It was okay.
The overall story development was good and the music was fitting.

However

1) The gameplay and controls were often frustrating, especially concerning
a) jumps (for this kind of game I would expect that it doesn't keep jumping, if hold the up key),
b) collision detection (sometimes I slipped down a platform without giving any input) and
c) the behaviour of disappearing blocks (made it sometimes hard to jump away from them).

2) The story screens disappeared often too quickly to read them thoroughly (especially for non-native English speakers). I would have either
a) waited for some user input to make them disappear or
b) give the user possibilities to re-read later again.

3) I would call the textures/graphics mediocre. Yes that's debatable for an "imaginary world made up by someone's mind". Personally I think more effort could have been put into that (e.g. changing textures into something more realistic with each level).

[60s Burger Run]

Worthwhile mini platformer.
Hardly anything to complain, except the extremely repetitive music.

I see you added further medals in the meantime (10 in total).
Currently I'll try to get all medals; 2 secret ones are missing.
Are there more than 3 shortcut medals?
Could there be an immortal medal? Or a score medal?

whileworking responds:

no. no. yes ;)

[Seedling]

I played till the room with the decaying lava bridge (the one where you have to walk from left to right and where there is a chain trap) and then rage-quit (thanks for the automatic savepoints!).

1. The whole level is frustrating for players as can't guess which floor tiles are decaying and which ones not as they have exactly the same texture. Most game designers preach to avoid such situations, where the game seems to punish randomly without giving any clues.

2. IMO said room was extremely hard compared to all the rest. In contrast to other rooms I tried this one hundreds of times and never managed to get to the end of it (probably that's also because the game is slightly lagging for my PC there). I would prefer if the room would be split into 2 rooms at least.
I guess I'll try to script the controls for the room in AutoHotkey later on...

Apart from that I can hardly complain. It's a solid Zelda-like game with great music, graphics, story and design.

[Slime's Cake Quest]

However had the idea to put the "Quit" function instead of the "Quality" function on the Q key should be executed by forcefeeding for using pre-2000 era controls . Apart from that the game was a nice timekiller; almost perfect, etc.

[Scarlet Stranger]

Looks joyful but needs bugfixing

I played this game for about 20 minutes and found it very entertaining and joyful.

I somehow managed to have my inventory scroll button (that round yellow coin thingy) go of the screen below which ruined the shop for me (because I could not scroll again up, thus could hardly sell or craft combine anything)

Later on I managed to jump from a block with a height of 2 levels on a closed chest. From there on I had to stop playing because I was unable to go down or jump back to the block again (of course I could neither open the chest).

Please fix such crucial bugs. They really ruin the experience of your work where certainly a lot of effort has been spent for graphics, programming and sound :-(

[Drugsdrugsdrugs]

Okay

The game was okay for a 48 hour game competition, but not overwhelming; e.g. there are certainly areas for improvement (game balance, consistent controls [instead of mouse, usual keys, spacebar], further drug effects, full-screen option, a lexicography of drugs that had been acquired).
The concept of drug visualization has been used in other games as well, the most ancient I can recall being Tetripz (DOS game) which had a number of excellent effects (especially for that time). The most recent submission on newgrounds I recall was a game where one had to collect falling antidepressants; can't find it currently.

Natpat responds:

Yeah, the balance isn't quite right, and I could flesh it out more, but hey, it's supposed to be a quick fun game that keeps people entertained for a few minutes. :)

[Dragon Rescue]

Solid shot'em up

Music, and the graphics are excellently carried out.
The sound effects were not great, but fitting.
The basic storyline was supporting, however some details were either described extremely incomprehensibly to grasp or just didn't make any sense. E.g. why do they separate and join each time? Why are they separated after level 2? etc.

Then there were two other aspects which I considered flawed:
1) It seems to me that the keyboard controls are slower than the mouse controls; i.e. it was impossible for me to evade certain attacks of the end boss with the keyboard, but it was not that hard with the mouse (the speed
2) I would have wished for an option to disable the Kongreate leaderboard form completely. Some people might like to decide after each level whether they want to submit the score or not; I don't want to use this leaderboard altogether.

I also would have wished for medals and that the music would have been released somewhere in some form (for free, for pay-as-you-wish or for a small flat-rate fee).

[Reincarnation: TEND]

Everything great as usual, except

I personally think timed riddles should not be given a huge percentage in a point & click adventure. In this one it was even more than the common timed riddle (you had to do multiple actions on different screens) and IMO it took to much space from the usual enjoyment of thinking about possible/useful combinations for items.

[Robinson Crusoe: The Game]

Please enhance the controls!

I would have given a 10 if it wasn't for the controls.
Concept, sound, graphics, game balance and the rest of the game-play were just perfect.
But the controls spoil it all. There were so many occasions when I got frustrated, because Robinson was not behaving the way I intended him to.
Some suggestions:

(1) add shortcut keys for different actions on an object. This avoids e.g. situations where I wanted to actions A+B on it, but Robinson instead walked away after doing A, because I clicked slightly into the wrong place for doing B.

(2) is there any reason not to carry around certain tools? if not please get rid of the "pick-up tool" action; it doesn't add up any atmosphere; if you'd implement suggestion (1) then it would be less frustrating as well

(3) I found out quite late that you can pause the game at left side and go through the recipes without pressure. having to learn recipes by heart and/or to hastily clicking through a menu does not add up any fun. please make that more clear.