Score: 7

"Very good, could've been much better"

submission: Eridani RTS

date: September 8, 2009

This game was very easy. Once you know how to play, you can beat the last level in a minute or so without much effort. You've got a good thing going here, but there's a lot missing.

I noticed the enemies never expanded to new planets. This is quite a problem. It means you need to take out a single building, and the enemies can no longer build anything. Additionally, you're at your leasure to expand outwards. The game would be several times more enjoyable and challenging if the enemy left the confines of their base.

The lower quality ships become effectively useless as soon as you can buy better ones. This is a problem because you never use them again after the first level. The ship cap is a large part of this. It would be fixed by adjusting the ship cap to include ship power, so you could for instance, have 20 regular fighters, or 2 of the orbital destroyers.

It's cool that your build speed advances as you get more power, however, the rate is a bit too extreme, especially when the AI does not take advantage of it. Getting +20 power lets you build planet destroyers in about 2 seconds. You should either tone that down a bit, or adjust the AI accordingly.

Speaking of which, the AI is in need of a lot of work. You don't need to make it terribly complicated, just adjust its behavior based on the game lay out. It should attempt to expand fairly early, build lots of power plants, and rush for resources, while attempting to distrupt yours. I generally found they would focus on a single attack structure, when attacking other things would've been very harmful for me. A better AI, with no other changes, would make this an awesome game in my opinion.
If you have trouble making the AI harder, make it cheat. Give it a higher ship cap, make it mine faster (though that was never an issue for me. The cap of ships left me with a whole lot of extra cash)

I'm alright with the bad Interplanetary missile tracking. It makes you want to control better situated planets. You should, however, make it more clear that they can't hit the far side of planets. A sentence in their description would save you a lot of complaints.

You should also allow, if enemies don't expand, for there to be multiple planets with enemies on them. It's very easy to focus your attack on a single target. Prioritizing between multiple bases would add a bit of S to the RTS.

Overall, I think this game is alright, but it has awesome potential. I can't wait to see a sequel.

Score: 9

"Quite fun, but short and shallow"

submission: Bullet Chaos

date: July 30, 2009

A very fun and pretty game. It could use some improvements. For instance, lower priced weapons are only worth buying if higher priced weapons aren't available. Each step up is strictly better. What you should have instead is some sort of trade-off. Make guns that specialize in different things, like a rapid fire, but low power gun, a high power, low fire rate gun, and things like that.

The menus feel cluttered and when buying things, I had to think to see what the gun attributes were. Buying menus should be intuitive, with relevant information clearly displayed.

The gameplay is excellent, I've played the game about 4 times, and am not bored with it.

A hint to people having problems: Wait a level to buy any upgrade, then buy the 4th gun, then save up for the 8th, and upgrade it. After that, get the max auto turret. Although upgrading those fully costs nearly the cost of two more, it is worth it since the new shots travel much faster and explode into more pieces. The display made me think it just shot twice as fast.

Score: 6

"Good idea, poor execution"

submission: Line Tower Wars

date: April 14, 2009

This game would be quite nice with a major graphics overhall. Everything looks the same. I have to look very closely to tell what is a wall and what is a turret. Walls should be very bland, just something to show a wall is there. A black square would be more effective that whatever sort of x thing you're using now is. It looks too much like the first turret. It was also not clear to me how much upgrades cost, or what would be upgraded, or what sort of things get you money. Interfaces should be intuitive and smooth. Information needs to be presented in a format that lets you see everything that is relevant. For instance, it would be a good idea if hovering over a turret gave you its stats, upgrade cost, and what the upgrade costs. An option to see the range layed out would be nice, too.

Since the game is long, you should certainly have a save feature yet. I actually haven't played long enough to find if there is one, but if there isn't, there should be one. I'm currently just really turned off by the clutter on the screen. The board tiles themselves with their 3D set up does not make sense and just obscures things.

Score: 7

"Good, needs work"

submission: John Citizen

date: March 27, 2009

Your time slow function is very buggy. On the final level. the timer for the explosion of the bombs the plane drops and the speed/rate of the jet aren't effected by slowing time. Also, enemy spawns aren't effected in the rampage mode. Additionally, the spikes don't charge in slowmo, or they charge, but the time alloted for charging is not effected.
I enjoyed it overall, though.

If you're going to put the names of real places to something, you should make an effort to make it look the part.

Score: 7

"Fun game,"

submission: Black Knight-Insurrection

date: December 22, 2008

Pretty fun. My only complaints are the movements of the knight. It can't jump over other pieces, and this is not explained. I've gotten stuck because of this in situations a knight should easily escape. I noticed the small note about limiting rooks, bishops, and queens, but it should be a bit more obvious.

Score: 4

"Meh... Not that great."

submission: Hallow Mind

date: December 6, 2008

This game could've been much better...

First off, if I'm in a zombie game, and I prefer pistol to shotgun, you've got a problem. shotgun's damage should be proximity based, most likely on the number of shots hitting. You seem to have it doing the same damage as a pistol shot. 15 fragments hitting all over, which look about like pistol shots, should do a bit more. You could up reload time to balance that. The machine gun shouldn't require you to be still, and if it does, it should notify you of this. I didn't know till I read a review. You should allow revisiting of levels, 'cause it's quite inconvenient to get to the market and not be able to buy the gun you need. Also, wtf with these tank things? They basically kill you right away, and there's not much to do about it, except try to grenade them without other stuff touching you.

You should be able to move while throwing a grenade, and why do you stop if anything gets near you? It's quite annoying, and makes little sense. If I've already primed it, I expect to see a boom somewhere...

Saving would be quite a good thing to have, too.

Score: 9

"Fun"

submission: Whiteboard Tower Defense

date: September 19, 2008

The "send to start" tower is useless if you play smart, though. I just made two paths, and closed one if someone got close, effectively making the path infinite. I lined it with max money and had two maxed out boss towers by the end, which destroy all. Maxing out a tower is worth it. You get a good deal. About 3 dollars per damage point, 5 for max boss tower.

Score: 7

"Pretty good, needs some work"

submission: Star Trash

date: September 2, 2008

I didn't notice any immunity problem, but then again I chose fire.

You need to balance things out. Commander mode lets you repair stuff in game. Woo!!
Hero lets you shoot a 30 second beam of uber death, generally enough to single handedly wipe out half the enemies, while a small elite strike force take out the rest.

A very monopoly like build queue. Small buildings are worthless, but if you can manage to get the best, you build like crazy. That's good. But you need to get that across to the user. Most people aren't going to get anywhere in this 'cause they don't realize only you can use that secondary, and building good buildings is better than building more defense.

What's the point of the slowing ship if 90% of guys are immune to it, it does no damage, and ships stop above cities anyways? A disabler ship would be much more useful, one that decreases enemy power or something like that.

And please, if you're going to take the effort to make a good game, make dialog that has acceptable grammar. That really hurt the game for me.

Score: 10

"Amazingly adictive"

submission: Frag Assault

date: February 8, 2007

This game is very addicting. Not only in gameplay, but the sounds, too. They fit the style well.

My only complaints are the health-blood thing and lack of health powerups.

You should either make health powerups, or make your health slowly regenerate. Having the screen 90% hidden is not fun at all...

You can keep the same feel without complaints if you have health regenerate, like most RTS games do nowadays. They coat the screen in blood to let you know if your about to die, and that goes away after a while. It'd fit this game perfectly, since most of the time, when you get hit by a large group of bullets or a flame thrower dude, you're gunna die anyways. Slow recharge, or fast recharge after no damage for a period of time is the way to go.

Brilliantly animated and coded. Very well done.

Score: 8

"Pretty interesting"

submission: Cosmic Crush

date: January 14, 2007

That was ok, but it could've been better. The view was a problem... You needed to either see more or have a radar of some sort. It also would've been cool to have a gravity-meter, just for magnitude. There was also a tad too much friction, especially for space ;)

You should have checkpoints more common for levels. It's frustration of restarting far along made me quit.