Qu4drupleForte's Reviews

[Craving]

Friggin' hate magpies...Love the film though! great atmosphere and interesting setting, I like how the bird was characterized, although the body language was a bit vague at times. Also, the music was perfect, I don't know who did it, but I'd hang onto them if I were you. All in all, great atmosphere, short and sweet; keep it up!

Blackbeccy responds:

Yes I indeed have some things to work harder on :) The music are from several artists, one I know personally and from the other two I bought the license. You can find their names in the credits if you are further interested. Thank you very much for your comment and your rating! It means a lot to me!

[Big Mistake]

Awesome! I especially love the squash and stretch in this, gives everything a fluid, cartoony feel I never thought I'd see in stick animation.

[Agent stealth]

Pretty damn good, especially for a game jam!
I like the graphics style, the controls are odd but worked well once I got used to them and when I screwed up it was barely second before I could get back in the action.
Beyond elaborating on this game, my only complaints are that soldiers can see and shoot you through platforms (This happened in level 3 I think) which really confused me, since I thought it was there to be used as cover. Also, as others have said, a fast movement speed would be nice.
Keep it up!

[Spell Sorter]

Ok, this game is just great to me, I love this Papers Please-ish style of decision making that makes you really think about small choices.
First off, interface is easy to get around, nothing to change there. Music, sound and art style are both great in my opinion and blend very well.
Spells are generally pretty good and can be a fun read sometimes, my only concern is that their effects can be too unambiguous at times, for example, the power to make anything spontaneously combust is undoubtedly asking for trouble, and hey, maybe I want that, but I feel as the game progresses I should be expected to read into things more as the cost and benefit of spells gets harder to asses immediately.
Finally, this game is BEGGING for more depth in terms of the "spell stats" system. Why just crime and happiness? what about employment? poverty? hell, political stability? You could easily bunch these under the umbrella term of "happiness," but I just feel like choosing between crime or happiness is unchallenging and not quite as empowering.
Hope that's not too much to take in, keep up the awesome work, my friend!

[Treehouse]

So I never knew this genre of jazz existed which is not something I've said in a while but I dare say I love it? Immediately I have to say the atmosphere, sound design and mixing are superb, which is rare in a piece that has so much dark, rumbling pads in it. The whole band is restrained in the best possible way; there is room for more complexity in the drum patterns but since this is a moody, repetitive piece I think that's fine. I think the use of those strange, warbling ambient sound is especially good, they at movement to the piece without upsetting the dark mood. When I listen to this in inevitably think of cold, late night trips back home; I hope some game dev picks this up for their noir/dark RPG or adventure game because it'd be perfect.
Keep it up my friend, you've earned another fan.

Azhthar responds:

Thanks a lot for the nice, detailed review! I know what you mean with the complexity of the drum patterns. They are actually one of the most complex things in the song already but they are also basically the only thing that can be more complex in such a piece. I´ll keep it in mind for the next track. Also I´m glad you like the mixing. Actually I still think the pads could be louder but they would make the piece definitely more muddy If I don´t sidechain them extremely, which would create a strange mood in this track. I´ll try to play around with it a bit more. Thanks again and keep it up!

[Diamonds]

Not exactly complex, but still has a tight mix a moody feel; this one's begging to be used in some sort of dark, modern-day RPG.

MrMeowGD responds:

Yeah I was going for a simple but dark theme for the track lol, probably gonna be releasing some more complex beats soon.

[Journey (C64 Chiptune)]

This is a really solid chiptune piece! Firstly your melodies are all very distinct and catchy. You move back and forth between different ideas really well, it's repetitive but not tedious. Your melody and the eventual countermelody are well balanced and I particularly like the lead-synth at 1:00. The melodic elements and structure are great, but I feel the drums and bass leave something to be desired. The 8-bit snare and kick are authentic but lack punch and this is often a problem in pure chiptune music. I would recommend using EDM or D&B style drums (FL's free samples are good) in this piece, they pack a punch (you might need to layer the snare a bit) but should still fit in. If you want you could still run them through a bit-crusher on a low setting to get a slight 8-bit sound. The bass is also kind of limited by the synth. I'm not sure what sounds are in DefleMask, but a rounder, less sawtoothy sound would be best for this stuff, once it locks in with the drums it'll sound phenomenal. A solid effort and worth being proud of; I honestly think if you could port this over to something like FL Studio you could breathe new life by redoing the bass and drums alone.