Frosty Four Digits - Purianite's reviews

Posted by Amarin on Jan. 10, 2012, 11:56 p.m.

(Be sure to play my game!)

http://64digits.com/users/index.php?userid=Purianite&cmd=comments&id=272281

Here are my reviews for this batch of games for Frosty Four Digits. A lot better overall than Scary Four Digits, I must say.

Frozen - JID and colseed

+ Great art style

+ Good visual effects

+ Ambience was excellent

+ Boss battle was interesting

- Normal move speed is extremely sluggish and frustratingly slow

- Those red wood plank things flying at me were pretty lame considering how the slow motion threw off my aim, contradictory to what most slow motion stuff does

- In slow motion, my gun fired places I didn't aim it at

- Shooting that piece of wood down to make a ramp? That seems a bit unrealistic and would be the last thing I'd think of doing (I like to save my ammo for enemies, I don't know how much I'll be up against if I've never played the game before)

- 49 MB for all that? Rather bloated if you ask me.

Epic Christmas - Mega

+ Megaman influences, even has some of its tight design

+ AI and enemy placement are good

+ Not afraid to have a high difficulty level

+ Proper quality chiptunes

+ Funny basic plot

=First boss was well-thought out, but my friend found a safe spot where jumping was all he needed to do, and it'd have been much more reasonable if snowballs had no trajectory

=Trajectory isn't exactly intuitive and seemed clunky at first, but I started to like it, despite the fact it doesn't quite fit in a Megaman clone

-X to jump, V to shoot? That's bad for reaction time. Why V and not Z or C?

-Able to snipe enemies (especially early on) outside of their line of sight, making stages considerably less challenging

-2nd level, bunnies got caught on the sides of ledges

-Downward shot is really only useful for one yellow snowman in level 2, useless for everything else

-The final battle against Santa is easier than the first boss

Super Snowball Fighters - Daggerhog

+ Nice and simple, just plain fun

+ Chiptunes that don't suck

+ Good character design

- AI isn't very good

- After you hit someone, camping their position after being knocked down is relatively easy

- With the exception of the final round, it's too easy

- Environments and menus are extremely bland

Surrounded with White - sirXemic

+ Aside from the pool of red, it was pleasing to the eyes

+ Great atmosphere

+ HOW DOES THIS MANAGE TO BE RELAXING AND ENJOYABLE?

- Inverted mouse by default? What?

- I got eaten by a red blob, and managed to escape. From then on out, I moved without the mouse

- There really isn't much to do, and some of those later hills that you can climb are ridiculously high.

Eternal Winter: The Spirit Breaker - Qwilderwibben

+ Simple concept, not too boring

+ Somehow managed to have a story

- No scoring system? I'm sure you could add one in.

- Mouse tracking fails sometimes in the second room

Jared the Friendly Pumpkin: Christmas Edition - Stevenup7002

+ BEST GAME EVAH

Transition - Flashback

+ I was able to play it on my Android tablet.

- There really isn't much to do.

Ogres & Elves - Iasper

+ Very short learning curve for a fun game. For a strategy game, it's relatively easy to know what you're doing.

+ Unit upgrades find their way into the game without complicating anything

- Ingame money isn't really worth spending on the graphics and music upgrades

- Too easy to stack units and faceroll the enemy

Snowball Commander - Unaligned

= Pretty much a carbon copy of Missile Command, except with one less thing to shoot with. It seems harder than Missile Command, though.

Persistence - Acid

+ Loving the concept

- World seems too barren and devoid of wildlife, and it seems to be your only way of gaining stamina

- Stamina decrease is too fast

- Of course, it's underdeveloped

- How do I make fire? I can't drop a log and strike it. I can't put down the log if I want to make fire?

Deep Freeze - link2x101 and anthonyloprimo

+ Excellent puzzles, you should really expand on this game, because I'd be so excited to see that done.

+ Externally loaded levels (Is that some level editing I see in the future?

- Trapped in a cave and the ladder's frozen, and all you can do is shoot a fireball? It'd be kinda counterproductive if you had to bounce it off all that stuff. You could just walk (or slide) over to the ladder and unfreeze it that way. Come up with a better premise, guys.

- Those last few playable levels are ridiculously easy.

- Bad idea to end a submitted game with an error.

- Undo button WHERE?

The Fall of Sarenta - Kilin

+ Bullet hell! With good patterns.

+ Good story for a short project

+ Best music out of all of the games (even with that Touhou song in there)

+ Channeling mechanic is quite nice

- Jump feels useless when it comes to dodging for the most part

- Jump to dodge low bullets, get hit by ones higher up

- Player hitbox is probably too fat

- Some enemies are a bit too hard to hit because they're either moving too fast or moving constantly (or even teleporting)

- Needing to put up with the latter while dodging bullets, now that's a bit harsh.

Comments

flashback 12 years, 10 months ago

Quote:
Transition - Flashback

+ I was able to play it on my Android tablet.

- There really isn't much to do.
Yeah that's basically the game.

BP Scraps 12 years, 10 months ago

Quote:
+ Somehow managed to have a story
:3

JID 12 years, 10 months ago

Quote:
- Normal move speed is extremely sluggish and frustratingly slow

- Those red wood plank things flying at me were pretty lame considering how the slow motion threw off my aim, contradictory to what most slow motion stuff does

- In slow motion, my gun fired places I didn't aim it at

- Shooting that piece of wood down to make a ramp? That seems a bit unrealistic and would be the last thing I'd think of doing (I like to save my ammo for enemies, I don't know how much I'll be up against if I've never played the game before)

- 49 MB for all that? Rather bloated if you ask me.
What's funny is that I was aware of all these problems, before submitting the game. Just had no time to fix them because I had class in like 5 minutes. We made most of the game in about 4 or 5 hours.

EDIT:

Oh, and the slow movement thing was purposefully done, to add tension. Sadly there were no enemies, besides the boss, that we put into the demo, because of time. I did however program another enemy, that just didn't make it into the demo.

EDIT EDIT:

Oh and about the unrealistic ramp thing. I was thinking about making a ladder, but I was rushing and I was too lazy to implement it. So collapsing walkway was my quick solution. We were also going to have drawn cutscenes, but that didn't make it into the demo either, because of time again, for the 967540th time.

Kunedon 12 years, 10 months ago

Quote:
- AI isn't very good
Yeah, it was my first time attempting AI, so it obviously wouldn't be very smart.

anthonyloprimo 12 years, 10 months ago

Quote:
Deep Freeze - link2x101 and anthonyloprimo

+ Excellent puzzles, you should really expand on this game, because I'd be so excited to see that done.

+ Externally loaded levels (Is that some level editing I see in the future?

- Trapped in a cave and the ladder's frozen, and all you can do is shoot a fireball? It'd be kinda counterproductive if you had to bounce it off all that stuff. You could just walk (or slide) over to the ladder and unfreeze it that way. Come up with a better premise, guys.

- Those last few playable levels are ridiculously easy.

- Bad idea to end a submitted game with an error.

- Undo button WHERE?

NOTE: THE GAME HAS BEEN FIXED. Level loading issue corrected.

The game will most definitely be added onto, and expanded, resulting in quite a few more puzzles, items, etc. And yes, the externally loaded levels are specifically intended to permit level editing. (These questions would be answered had the game been previously complete-able. Given not much time to think of a basic idea, that's more or less what we came up with. It's a puzzle game, should it really make sense? :P I kid, I kid. The levels were partly rushed, and some were intended to be deceptively easy (make you overthink it). Epic fail on our part I'd say. Undo…. was not yet implemented. No time left. :S

Amarin 12 years, 10 months ago

@anthonyloprimo: Put your all into the final version, because I think it can be truly great if you pull off the great level design your game is destined for.

Astryl 12 years, 10 months ago

Quote:
-X to jump, V to shoot? That's bad for reaction time. Why V and not Z or C?
I keep forgetting that I'm in the minority that prefers X and V. I really should start using a configuration screen in my games.

anthonyloprimo 12 years, 10 months ago

@Purianite: I'll be doing that. I intend to do everything I can. I'm looking to get this out as a fully polished game. …And then port it to Flash (and/or Java).

Castypher 12 years, 10 months ago

Quote:
Best music out of all of the games (even with that Touhou song in there)
Correction. Two Touhou songs (I tried to make those two themes myself but time was against me).

Quote:
Jump to dodge low bullets, get hit by ones higher up
I knew I should have bought the variable jumping warranty (no really, did you use that?).

Quote:
Player hitbox is probably too fat
I couldn't work out a better hitbox without causing more confusion. =<

Quote:
Needing to put up with the latter while dodging bullets, now that's a bit harsh.
I wanted her to be annoying as hell, but I gave her a very simple bullet pattern.

Acid 12 years, 10 months ago

Here's another link: http://www.box.com/s/lmnp0nb589bk8dfmqmh9

I tested it out and ran the game, everything should work fine.