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B-Lock

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Medals

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Beginners Luck 5 Points

Complete Lock 1

History 5 Points

Go play any other game in the Battle Turtle story line. (Load Screen)

Can't Touch This 10 Points

Be perfect on any Lock. (Collect all coins, take no damage)

Speedy 10 Points

Beat any level in under 15 seconds.

Ball Deep 25 Points

Complete Lock 8

Master Unlocker 50 Points

Complete every level.

The Final Stretch 50 Points

Complete Lock 12.

Perfectionist 100 Points

Beat the entire game perfectly.

Rollin 100 Points

Beat every level in under 30 seconds.

Woah 100 Points

Beat every level on perfect in under 30 seconds.

Author Comments

Use B-Lock to set The Black Crow free! Make your way through 16 levels of platforming awesomeness! Be even more awesome by completing all the achievements.

Controls :

Movement - Arrows
Dash - D
Directional Dash - Arrow Key + D

** We Suggest playing on Google Chrome for best results **

EDIT : * Featured Games! Thank you so much!

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Agreed. That guy has no reason to waste that much time and energy putting down this game.
My only critiques are that you could possibly allow the user to configure the controls, or at least allow both arrow keys and wasd for movement and space for dash, along with Q or X, or really anything easily reached from the left hand without moving too far.
It also seems you must already be inputting a direction when you dash in order to change direction, which makes it difficult to react with a dash unless you plan ahead.
Sorry for the lengthy comment, though it probably doesn't seem like much anymore. lol

XD that guy below me sure was pissed at you to write such a long nonsensical review.

Anyway, the thing I enjoy most in a platformer is when the levels are tough and well thought out and this has some really tough levels. Some of the hazards are cheap and downright badly placed like for example level 13 has chips behind the exit so I basically perfected the level countless times only to hit the crystal and made to start all over again for the perfectionist achievement. I didnt like how projectiles could travel through walls and I also didnt like how touching a turret even while dashing would hurt you. Besides all of that I really enjoyed this game.

wow so this is what mighty number 9 would have been like if it were good

only complaint is that some of the level design discourages keeping up momentum

Please keep in mind that I write this review as someone who knows that you want to make commercial games
take the criticism to heart, and please. Don't write me back with a pile of excuses. For your sake.

Let's start with the easy stuff brotha

Naming and Search Engine Optimizing - SEO**************************************************************************

1) You may not have considered how easy the game would be to find, but if I google it by title, I can't find your game, not unless I type in your name, or business name along side it.

POINT>Putting hyphens into titles is also not a good idea
Even if I search through new grounds…. especially if I search through new grounds, your game is among the last results.

POINT > Offering images also helps SEOing (Im no expert mind you) So post images on Newgrounds, Deviant art, etc.

POINT > Offer a video walkthrough on your game. The only video I could find was a 50 second trailer showing 20 seconds of gameplay.

Take for example 'Lil Red Kunoichi' if you google it, you will find it right away. Image results and everything

You need to make a name that is both descriptive and unique, but doesn't leave false impressions either.
I initially thought based on the name that "B-lock" was a puzzle game

Design ************************************************************************************
1)The design is a little inconsistent, the tone of the opening narration didn't really gel with the rest of the game's tone.
The broody and somewhat 'dark' nature of the opening meeting the more goofy nature of the gameplay, just gives me tone whiplash.

2)Going back to me thinking that B-lock would be a puzzle game, that actually makes more sense to me. Given the story aspect about it being a micro lock pick. Obviously Im not saying to abandon what you've designed, Im just thinking that maybe for this particular story, a puzzle game would make more sense.

Character design -********************************************************************************************
1) Not a whole lot of personality here, The black crow was of course more interesting to me than this robot guy, but I will say that a ball with legs…. maybe spend some more time at the drawing board.

2)Games like this really ought to have a lot of colourful graphics and personality.

Game design ******************************************************************************************

POINT>I really recommend you play Super Meat boy, notice how tight the controls are, and yet a person who has played for more than 5 minutes is able to make highly precise jumps.

Now Im not saying that this game was meant to compete with the likes of SMB, but this game suffers from very sensitive controls. I can tell that the character movements are tied to a static variable. In other words you press left or right, and B lock moves at a consistent speed.

POINT>Id recommend having some level of acceleration and speed build up.
Like instead of him moving x number of pixels 30 for times a second, where x is consistent 10, make x reliant on a number of factors.

POINT>If you notice in Mario, Meatboy, and indeed most platformers, the player characters movements are tied to dynamic variables.

POINT> The Dash by the way feels rather inconsistent, I get that you're going for hard, but the dash being one of the central mechanics is problematic.
I don't think the idea is bad, I just think that the dash could be tweaked some and tightened a little bit.

The movement is very sudden and unpredictable I found.

Level Design ***************************************************************

1)A lot of folks use 'retro' as an excuse for cheap level design, but doing this can stifle your growth as a game designer.
Cosmic Sky, most of the obstacles appear out of no where and I have little time to react.

Human reaction time on average is about 0.25 seconds, but can take longer when you factor in how long it takes for your brain to send a signal to the fingers and also take into account poor controls (we'll get to that in a minute)

My recommendation is to record yourself testing the level, if the player has less than 0.25 seconds between when the obstacle appears and when the player is expected to react, then please, in the future, make adjustments.

POINT>The player needs to feel like it is the player's fault, not the games

POINT>You're a megaman fan, right? Watch the Sequelitis on Megaman, esp the part where Erin talks about how the levels teach you, with the level design.

To sum it up, Spikes are put in cheap places, and so are saws and spring boards.

POINT> You have a habit of having saws behind blocks that the player is expected to 'dash' through. Spikes on ceilings above spring boards, and the worst thing is that the spikes only give you about 0.15 seconds to react, but you can't really react because the controls are too touchy!!!!

Graphically, you need to work on contrasting the objects of interest from the BG, The saws don't have a black outline, just a dark grey one.
Well in world 2 sometimes that greyness blends in with the bg.
You should highlight the edge of the saws, and the points of the spikes.

Again Make the player feel like it's their fault, not yours.

Keyboard lay out and controls**********************************************

1 - This is a keyboard controlled game, you should give the player the option to navigate the menu with the keyboard.
2 - you press D to dash, but up or space to jump. Why didn't you also program the A, or S key to also jump?
I can get used to the up key, but it does feel unnatural, and having my thumb on the space with my index finger on the D is also not very comfortable.
I made a lot of mistakes with Marly in terms of controls, Please check it out, and hopefully you can learn from the whole thing like I did.

3 - I noticed that you can press R to reset the level, but only from the game screen. IF you die, you have to take your
hand off of the keyboard, move it to the mouse, and click retry. OR you can press space, but you didn't really convey that to the player...
Im not sure if that was an oversight or what, but please have the option to reset by pressing R on the game over screen as well.

POINT> I don't feel like a whole lot of thought was put into how the player interacts with the game
even just an extra day of play testing and note taking can help with this.

Music *****************************************************************

The music was catchy, but not entirely suitable to the gameplay. The menu music was suitable enough though.
This takes me back to Santas shoot out, and from our experience together back then, I know that you're hell bent on using EliteFerrex's work

EliteFerrex looks like he/she can do more than megaman wannabe music. He/she seems very capable in fact.
Why not branch out from the Chip tune stuff?

The visuals of the game appear to be high resolution, or even vectors. It doesn't really seem to match with music, with the music being more suitable to a 16 bit system/visuals

I really recommend that you expand your horizons a little bit bud.

Moving on to B-lock part 2****************************************

OK , the elephant in the room.
Battle turtle, Diggz, Protect the king, and Now Block.

You seem to make your games to big for their own boots. Seeing as you were hyping Battle turtle 2 since Diggz (another poorly SEO'ed game) came out.

Your games take a very long time to produce, and I am not sure why.

Today, CosmicSkygames.com is no longer operational, Im not sure why, are you guys changing names or something?

I will say that from being familiar with Protect the king (You've been working on since 2013 at least)
Battle turtle 2 (You've been trying to get off the ground since at least 2012)
and by the fact that B-locks very title screen indicates that a B-lock 2 will come out (and that was almost a year ago)

That you may have too many irons in one fire.

OBSERVATION>> I noticed that you bought a booth at comic con to advertise B-lock, and I don't understand why, for the life of me.
It's not a commercial game bro. IF you were relying on ad revenue, then I highly suggest learning how to name your projects
because literally every game you've made is impossible to find via google without typing very specific keywords.

POINT>
Battle Turtle, Diggz, B-lock are your biggest names, and google can't find them without us first typing your company name next to them.
Thats a problem. even typing 'Battle Turtle Game" Gets me teenaged mutant ninja turtles.

So I am concerned, what exactly was your plan to make money?

It appears as those each game, is just to advertise Battle turtle 2. A game your tried to kickstart 3 years ago.
But you still have not made any gameplay footy or anything for BT2.

In fact, it seems more as though that you prefer to abandon projects, than complete them.
Im not saying that this is the fact of the matter, but what anyone who pays attention to your games would think.

POINT> A game like B-lock in particular shouldn't take more than 2 weeks for 1 person to design by themselves.
This game has 4 names attached to it, but from all we can tell took a over a year.
The game play I saw of Protect the king, shouldn't take more than 3 months for a pro to make.
And Battle turtle 2… I reckon from what you described on your kick-starter, really should be doable in a week.

These are commercial standards of course..
but the emphasis of my point is, I dunno if you can do this commercially.

Alrighty, That just about wraps it up.
Happy Holidays to you folks at Cosmic Sky Games

Like I said way up in the beginning, I reviewed this game with the fact that you want to produce commercial games in mind.
As an amateurish endeavour, this was a fine game, 3/5

But you got to address at least 80% of the problems I listed above before you make a product that you could sell and be making a decent profit.

PS - I get the impression that you found your own game, a paint to play. You're trailer has 25 seconds of gameplay footage…. LOL so I am to believe that you couldn't be bothered to play for more than maybe a minute or 2 to making your trailer….

To date, No walkthrough is available either.

Come on guys!

curtisscifres responds:

Usually I wouldn't respond to something like this, however you have a lot of nerve. As a former partner I don't see why you would take the time (which has to be over an hour or 2 ) to type up this hatefest, then give me almost 4 stars on a game that I released nearly a year ago. When I go to Comic Con, my business choices, and whats wrong with my webpage should be of no concern to you. We had other plans for Comic Con but things came up. You don't understand. I really struggled to even go, it was a learning experience that I don't regret. I have never bashed your games or ripped one of your games apart. I make games as a hobby and learn more every time I create one. Regardless of what you say, my games have heart, love, and a lot of thought put into them. Last I checked you have a kickstarter 7 days away from failing, maybe you should spend more time promoting that (considering I didn't even know about it till now and we have made a game together). Worry about yourself bro.

This game is so hard, but I love it so much! Great work!

Credits & Info

Views
23,045
Faves:
38
Votes
57
Score
3.28 / 5.00

Uploaded
Mar 18, 2015
10:33 AM EDT