Not bad!
Nice idea to improve an old game with some new abilitys.
Great work!
Reviews for "Super Brick Duel"
JPB responds:
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
Kind of hard for me to review since almost
everything that can be said about this game has been said.
I like how you added a training mode. I didn't use it much, but it's something that isn't usually included in pong styled games. It was something I could appreciate.
I'm gonna agree with the other reviewers about the FourPlay mode, it was pretty cool. The main issue I had with it was that there wasn't a "Play against cpu" mode. It would've been cool to play with other people, but I didn't have other people here so a cpu version would've been great.
The single player was ok and I like how you tried a different approach with the AI, that was actually cool that the cpu would try more realistic things. An "extreme" mode where the cpu had a slight speed boost in addition to the "hard" mode cpu's AI would've been cool too.
Overall, a decent game, but you need to work harder. I read your responses to the other reviews and I understand why you didn't work harder on this, but I wish you would've had more motivation. You have alot of potential.
<Review Request Club>
JPB responds:
Kind of hard to me to make a response when what I want to say is in other responses
Overall, I think I did work extra hard on this, I just took for granted that the way the game works is fun enough, when it isnt
Motivation did vanish after a while, I just found really that flash isnt my thing, I'll certainly keep flash installed and do something from time to time, but its not my life how it once was (you know, every ng noob, wants to code for nintendo or animate for pixar, thats not what I want anymore, and as a hobby, Im not gonna force myself to make something perfect, most of all, it should be fun for me)
Thanks for the review!
Interesting
This is a pretty nice game, I like the idea of putting bricks behind the paddles that have to be destroyed first. Only problem is that the game can get very tedious if you have to destroy brick after brick before you can finally score a point.
I liked the addition of power ups, they add more fun to the game. What can be better than to freeze your opponent and then score a point easily?
Fourplay looks like it can be great fun, but I couldn't play it since I'm alone right now. A CPU mode would be very nice to have there. It would also be nice if the game screen didn't scroll up and down the whole time, can get very annoying after a while.
I liked the addition of the tutorial modes. This can really help you to get better in this game and I liked the varity of the tutorials.
Overall, this can be a fun game for a few boring evenings. I think that Fourplay can be really cool, but since you need three other players for it it's unlikely that too many people will play it. It would be really nice if you could add CPU players to that game mode, so you can have some fun even if there's only one or two human players.
{ Review Request Club }
JPB responds:
Regarding the slowness/boringness of the game, I felt the same, until I added the powerups, but it seems more powerups wouldnt have been a bad thing. CPUs in fourplay is really fault of my laziness, turns out the 2 player hard AI was retarded in fourplay, should've spent more time. Thank you for the review!
Really just Pong with new graphics
This game essentially just felt a lot like Pong except there was background music and power ups added to the game making it a bit better anyways. However aside from it just being a pong remake I didn't find much to be completely fun here and kind of felt boring too.
The audio was alright and sounded pretty nice along with the voice. Kind of sucks that the voice is only there when you win though and never win you lose asking you to try again or anything at all. The song during game play was still pretty nice though.
Now for the game play....
The classic mode felt like normal pong except with said power ups of arrows, fireballs, freezing the opponent, and the power up that removes any and all wall siding left making it harder to keep the ball in the game. Also as there is no break between starting it feels like you are being cheated a bit. Could try coding the ball to wait until you press one of the arrow keys giving you time to take a bit of a break rather than keep playing. However even up to Hard mode it still felt easy and very winnable.
The tutorial was nice and helpful so great work there on doing that for those new to this game.
Lastly it looks like you missed out on and did little with Fourplay which could have been the stand out moment of the game. I doubt everyone has four people to play with at one computer on the game so a better idea could have made it online play and allow lobby creation while people wait for others to join the room allowing for maximum chaos in the room.
Another thing you could have done with fourplay is allow all the opponents to be AI and then putting them all on hard mode would make it far more interesting to play too. Fourplay could have been what made the game stand out but as it requires four people to play it feels a lot like a let down.
Overall, it's pong with new graphics, some power ups, and a fourplay that could have been the crowning moment of the game but fell short of it. Have fun with more games in the future.
Review Request Club
JPB responds:
Seems I really shouldve focused more on making the game more fun/fast/chaotic.
Regarding online: I spent a month trying to understand smartfox server, Still didnt get it, maybe thats to much for me
Unfortunately a lot of what I would answer here is in my other responses, so sorry about that.
Ultimately, thanks for the review!
Not the best
I think that you need to make the controls a lot more responsive, as otherwise the computer can beat you at lower difficulties, with ease. I like the way that the two games come together with brick breaker and pong, but you need to work harder to get the blend right.
Try having different coloured blocks and put the powerups in there at random positions - having them float down the board for the players to catch with the ball is ridiculous. Hit a certain block and get multiball, for example, which in a game like this could really work. The other interface thing I didn't like was the fact that you can kill yourself off by missing the ball by a fraction of an inch. Have the ball pass through the paddle on the way back past, otherwise stretching to reach it could be game over.
While I can see the entertainment value of 4Play, that's something that I can't really test as a single player / reviewer. Needing 4 friends to crowd around a single keyboard is nearly impossible, so getting 4 players on 4 different computers would save a lot of fighting, but would cause a programming headache, no doubt.
A mute button would be nice as well. That, or some sound effects for the balls bouncing off the paddles and then different sounds for the blocks etc.
[Review Request Club]
JPB responds:
Controls: are you sure your keyboard is working? :P I guess the speed of the paddles could be bigger
Blend of games/Powerups: I see what you mean, should've thought out the game more, I do happen to be slowly recoding the game (have in mind this probably wont ever see the light of the day), and am trying out other ways of implementing the powerups, I was thinking about making a slot machine for the powerups (a la sonic casino night zone)
Multiball: Why did I forget multiball!!!111!!!1!1!1 that would've been some epic chaotic fun
Mute button: there is one (below the scoreboard, I'm pretty sure you can also press M, I dont remenber if I put this in this game or in another)
4play/online: I looked into smartfox server, NOPE.jpg
Thanks for the review!