dreamcastgh0st's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fight and Flight]

This game's got some promise, but there are a few big issues holding it back. Obviously, the presentation is good. I love little details like the background when your character speeds up, or the revving up animation at the beginning, and the art and music is pretty nice! Lots of work was clearly put into the details, and that is important.
However, the gameplay comes with a few issues. All of these issues would be pretty easily solved on the developer's side, but when you put them all together, the game is dragged down more than I wish it was. The first that stood out to me is that the animations for attack and dodge are either the same, or very similar. This isn't great, because at first I didn't even realize they were two different things, and even when I did, it was hard to keep track of which button was for which, when the visual feedback was almost identical between the two. The dodge has got other issues too-- As many of the other reviewers have pointed out, by spamming dodge, you can basically become invincible. This obviously isn't ideal. However, I haven't seen anyone bring up that if you dodge, there's a moment afterwards where you can't move. That moment is way too long-- I understand having a cooldown to try and discourage the player from spamming, but especially as the speed builds up, it makes the dodge less and less fun to use (unless you are trying to cheese the game by only dodging.) Dodging and then quickly switching lanes becomes impossible, which isn't great for this kind of fast paced game. I would recommend removing this cooldown, so the player can move immediately after dodging, but make it so they cannot DODGE immediately after they already did. This would encourage the player to use all the moves at their disposal, and really make the game more fun and fast paced.
While those are my gameplay complaints, there are some parts of the gameplay that I really like. For one, the risk-reward of taking the easy path (just being in a different lane to an enemy) or the hard, but high-scoring path (attacking the enemy head on) makes for a lot of fast paced decisions. I also really like that you can dodge while moving vertically, but only if you NAIL the timing. While some people might say that it is too hard, it builds on that risk-reward idea-- There was never a place where I needed to move and dodge at the same time, but sometimes I would try in order to collect more points. It feels incredibly rewarding as you build that skill, and it feels fair when you mess it up.
Oh, and last complaint-- The entire game is keyboard based, except for the "Try Again" and "Exit" buttons at the end of each round. It's annoying to have to go from keyboard to mouse back to keyboard every time you die-- maybe map those buttons to Z and X.
Overall, promising game, with no big issues, but the small issues do really hold it back. It's important to think of the feeling you want to give the player (fast paced, quick reaction based action) and think about how every little aspect of your game contributes or takes away from that. Even little things, like a dodge cooldown, or having to use the mouse to click replay, when all put together, can really drag on the end user. Definitely going to keep an eye out though, to see what sorts of things you can make on the future after learning from this project.