Limited by graphics and gameplay

Sorry, but I think that you can do so much more with this piece - the game is what I've come to expect from lesser known people making pieces around 100k in size. I know that Tom was able to make a piece that was awesome in that size, but there seems to be so much more involved these days.

Right, the music and sound effects were a little quiet, everything seemed to be just a little slow to react on the controls side of things - it seemed to move in a jerky fashion, as opposed to smoothly, which was something that games in the 80s weren't guilty of.

I'd suggest that you take this further by adding colour to the proceedings, giving the piece something better in the way of music and clearing up the programming issues, to stop it from seeming such a mess. If you take those things out of the equation, it wasn't a bad game, so there is a chance that you can make it better, so stick with it.

[Review Request Club]

Not too bad, but far from being good

"Not too bad, but far from being good" seems to be the general consensus among reviewers and I have to agree with them. But hopefully you aren't discouraged by this insight, because this is your first submission ever. Usually "first submissions" are far worse than what you submitted here.

I like the idea of the game. It has a very simple gameplay but it also has the potential to become really addictive.
The controls work pretty well, even though I think mapping "Z" and "X" is a poor choice, at least for me. For me, the keys "Y" and "Z" are switched (meaning that I'm typing on a "QWERTZ" keyboard, not a "QWERTY"), so it's kinda hard to keep my fingers on both keys. "A" and "S" would've been much more convenient. Even more convenient would be the option to chose my own keys. That way, everybody would be happy.
But other than that, the controls are very respondive and work good enough.

The music fits well to the game. As the graphics are made out of simple lines it would've been very unfitting to listen to anything other than some 8 bit music. Even the sound effects seem to come from some old Atari or NES game, very nice.

To make the game even better: Some sort of upgrade system would be cool to have. Maybe more bullets on the screen at the same time, bigger radius of the triangular fire, or something like that. I think this would add another element to the game that would make people come back to it.

{ Review Request Club }

Could use some work

Well it is not too bad anyways for an attempt at making a shooter game anyways. Seems to cover a few bases and stays really light. However there are a lot of things that could have been done here I think. The game is far from excellent but it is not bad either.

The audio is the first thing worth noting to me here. It is pretty basic but I think something that could have been done instead is instead of having that kind of music is to choose some other song, maybe a bit faster sounding too. That or left off the background music and added sounds to all that happens in the game allowing the sounds to create a song through game play instead kind of like the old Galaga games.

Game playing here could be fixed up a bit. Kind of sucks how you aren't able to move up and down on the screen or at the very least jump. Game doesn't ever get to hard which is good but sometimes I would encounter two O coming at me and it was kind of hard to knock them both out at once but it it did not happen often thankfully.

Another thing you could possibly have added was upgrades to make the game more interesting and to keep people playing and possibly even a high score board maybe if the game was improved a lot. Point accumulation is rather easy though which is good since it is meant to be basic in style. As for Z making a triangle fire, it looked more like a <D shaped thing than a triangle.

Shooting at platforms did nothing. Shooting at bombs gave a cool explosion, activating the protective fire destroyed the circles so the basics are covered but I would work on the audio here to make it slightly less annoying or at least at the ability to mute the sounds all together.

Overall, would make the fire more triangular shaped, add the ability to mute and possibly the ability to move up and down after accumulating a large amount of points. Aside from that, not too bad.

Review Request Club

Not too bad

But not too good either. There is one thing I liked about this game more than the average game of these sorts, and that is the magic. It's a nice addition, but unfortunately that is the only really good thing about this game.

Although everything works fine though, I haven't passed across any glitches. It would be nice if you got a warning a second before a bomb or circle goes into the screen though. You will have to have an insane reaction time sometimes, for example if you have to go to the right completely to dodge falling rectangles, and suddenly a circle rolls in your screen.

It was a bit wierd how setting a bomb on fire didn't kill you. A nice extra would be that you die if you tried that.

I had hoped for an instruction in-game though. After reading all of the author comments I found out that the rupee-like things falling are worth points. You could've said that somewhere, along with simple instructions.

The high-score function is nice. It gives you something to keep on playing. An additional thing like new levels after a few thousand points would be nice though.

Review request club

Ok, let's try this.

You probably don't know me, but I use to belong to the Review Request Club. Well I think I'm joining again. (We'll see it's not official yet) If I decide to you will be the first submission that I review as an official member. :P

~ Animation/Graphics ~

There's nothing like the old fashion gameboy style black and white. I actually really like it and think that it's fitting for the submission. The graphics were all simple, but good. I think there could have been some variety even though everything was black and white. For example, if there were a different variety of gems or enemies then this would have been better visually in my opinion. Other than that, nice and simple.

~ Story/Content ~

I'm a sucker for upgrades in a game so that's where I'm going to focus this part of my review on along with some other things. I wouldn't have mind seeing some sort of upgrade system. The gems for points were find and dandy, but why not have a laser upgrade that widens the shot of your laser or a shield upgrade that allows you to take damage from an enemy or obstacle once before it disappears? Or even an almighty rare gem that gives a tons of points?

Other than that I felt like the game was fun for about thirty seconds or so. It never really got harder and in fact, the only reason I died was because I took a second to make an icon for you. (You're welcome, the empty icon was very ugly so I added it in for you. Don't worry I didn't hack I'm actually an icon mod :P No worries here) Perhaps there was increasing difficulty and I just didn't get far enough, but if not please add this in!

~ Audio ~

Beep, boop, bop, beepity, boop boop! It started to give me a headache so I just turned it down a bit. It was actually very fitting and went well with the old school style of game play. I just warn people to please keep it turned down while playing so you don't hurt your ears!

~ Overall ~

A nice simple game, but I feel like it's a little too simple to really be enjoyed by the community. You are definitively on your way to being a good game maker though so keep up the good work!

~ One Last Tip ~

This is from one submitter to another. Put the instructions right in the flash because people really don't read the author comments that often. This will avoid people leaving ignorant reviews about not knowing how to play the game because they'll have no excuse on why they didn't read it.

~ Review Request Club ~