GrapheneKid's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fnuzzlee's CHEESE & HAM]

Not bad for your first game! The art style was cute. It was cool how you made the CPU's face and dialogue get angrier or happier depending on how you did. You could probably even add more of it or additional "stages" of reactions and it would go a long way.

The game was lacking a bit in difficulty though. One of the reasons, I feel, is the fact that Player 1 makes the first move each time, and another is that the grid is only 3x3. I suppose letting the CPU cheat is a nice way to spice things up. If you wanted to add more challenge to the game, you could consider randomizing who goes first each round, or adding an option to play on a bigger grid. This would also help avoid too many games ending in a Draw.

With games as universal and basic as Tic Tac Toe, it's important to have something that makes yours stand out from the rest, and the addition of unlockable bonus artwork for beating the CPU based on certain conditions was a good decision. It definitely kept me playing this for longer than I would have otherwise. The sound effects fit well, but some basic looped music would have been nice to round out the entire package.

Keep up the good work! You chose a great game for your very first project, and hopefully it helped you learn a lot about coding and game making. Don't be afraid to try something a little more complex for your next project, but don't bite off more than you can chew!

LiquidFreakStudios responds:

Thanks for the honest review!

You're right, the game is a bit too easy, even at level 10 selected on the difficulty slider. I think this problem comes with Tic-Tac-Toe inherently being a very simple and easy game (also not too difficult for beginners to program), but like you say, I could have included some additions such as larger grid options or even allowing the CPU to play first sometimes. The cheating was an attempt to add a bit of difficulty, but I could have found fairer ways to do so.

And yeah, I could have found some fitting stock music to loop over the game while it is playing to make it more engaging. Given that I found some appropriate sound effects, I'm not sure why I didn't consider music...

Even though it was far from perfect, I'm glad it did some things right, like the cute art style, unlockables and dynamic dialogue. Hopefully my next games will be more ambitious, and more fun to play!

(also, I'll avoid using emojis in my game menus again, since Newgrounds doesn't seem to display them)

[Smash Ringtail Cat 2: Dr. Glitcher's Revenge]

I can't get the game to advance past the title screen. The music keeps cutting out and sometimes I get randomly taken to a Game Over screen or the credits screen, depending on which button I press.

GlassSeastar responds:

I will fix the issue as soon as I can! Thanks for the feedback.
Edit: It's now fixed!

[Beachcomber]

Pretty fun game! I couldn't really beat the third level though, I kept dying whenever I tried to jump over the guy.

The graphics and sound definitely feel faithful to an Atari 2600. I'm getting some Pitfall vibes from the visual style and setting. I'd be curious to see if some kind of ancient coding sage could get this up and running on real hardware.

ThrillerStudio responds:

First thanks for playing, I was very inspired by pitfall and jungle hunt. It would be really cool if it ran on an atari 2600, who knows in the near future :)

[Star N Heart]

This was great! I adore the art style, it reminds me of crayons. Despite not having a word of text the main gimmick was super easy to understand and solving levels was a lot of fun. Great choice of music too.

Only thing I didn't like was the collision detection. It is very easy to get stuck on a corner because the player sprite is non-rectangular. I'm not sure if Scratch supports collision masks, but I think it would definitely help with getting stuck. Another thing I noticed is that sometimes the player will just teleport or shift around when colliding with a solid object. It is a little too inconsistent to say for sure what's causing this, but the game is short enough that it didn't get in the way too much. Also, it's easy to get stuck inside those "timer" platforms. I feel like it would look better if they pushed the player out instead, but that's just me.

Overall very cute game! I had fun with this one and it's impressive what you managed to do in Scratch.

BluecoreYT responds:

Well now v2.0.0. came out right now and fixed alot of those problems! :D

[The Forgotten Oasis]

Not bad. Visuals are cute and the sound design is appropriate. I think I ended up getting about 5 levels in before I gave up because of the sluggish controls. When you have the run button held down, your character doesn't always go fast, mainly 1) when they are changing directions in midair or 2) jumping and THEN pressing a movement key. Makes it very frustrating to cross large gaps. I probably would have been willing to continue past where I gave up if there wasn't a lives system that forced me to start at the very beginning.

Xaveternator responds:

Ya I see where the frustrations lie, I might look into an update with those notes in mind

[Windows 95]

This game really makes you feel like 95 different windows

TotalEmulator responds:

No windows paint has a very problematic bug!