I'd like to see recognition on the level-select screen of hitting the max score, like turning the stars silver, to encourage replay beyond 3 stars. Also, "Best" doesn't mark the best ever, just the most recent play of the level.
I actually did lose, in that I couldn't make any more moves (out of special moves and out of bees). The game didn't detect it, and I had to use the options button to start a new game or retry.
Hey physics-game developers: NES programmers solved physics randomness decades ago. For each frame you draw, update the physics clock by your target frame rate (1/30 second or whatever). If the graphics or calculations slow down the computer, the whole game slows down, but the simulation runs the same way every time. Using real time for a physics puzzle is sloppy programming.
The first time I played this, I couldn't get the hang of it at all. I came back months later, it clicked, and I got all the badges. The game does have a logic and rhythm, more than it at first appears. It's well worth your time, if you can get into its groove.
I rarely have to switch Flash to low quality, but this game was very laggy until I did. Nice art, but I couldn't see it at full quality and have my clicks recognized. If you fix the performance, how about a pizza-tossing sequel at the women's campsite? Also, please ask a native English speaker to rewrite your in-game text.
Horizontal movement in the air is horribly unintuitive. During a jump, you keep moving at a constant speed until you hit the opposite direction. In most platformers, you stop moving once you let go of the arrow keys, just as you do on the ground. Even on the ground, movement is too quick, mainly because there's no acceleration/deceleration -- you immediately move at full speed, which is inadequate to make small changes in position. If you're going to make a platformer, you need to actually study platforming mechanics and learn from what's worked. P.S. It should be "role", not "roll", in the description.
Great example of why you should fill out the Instructions: as a laptop user, action games that use the keyboard + mouse together are very annoying. If I'd known, I would have just gone on to a different game. Since you made me play through the tutorial to find out it's not my kind of game, though, you'd get a 1-star rating.
Creative idea, but the details work against each other. You spend most of the time performing the same sequence of jumps on enemies from the low pipe; it takes forever before you can reach the higher enemies. When the screen fills up enough to move around, there's still a flood from the lower pipe that requires you to keep near the ground to protect your body. Maximizing score is far more trouble than it's worth: since every ghost is moving, you can't aim one at another effectively, and the goal of protecting your body distracts from what's going on higher up.
Neat action-oriented counterpart to Gunbrick's puzzles, but it lasted half a level too long. Would have been 5/5 had you shown me a proper ending instead of crushers without a checkpoint. A "hard mode" with fewer refills and checkpoints would have been cool, if you wanted to give more of a challenge.
As 42nd_hitchhiker says, it's strange to get lower scores after you upgrade. A time bonus could balance that, or even the ability to undo/sell back upgrades.
So I set Veradux's AI to "defensive", and he still decides to attack with his puny weapon instead of healing me or refilling my focus. My so-called teammate turns on the paladin without warning, and just when we're winning that battle, every time he abandons me too. I can't even attack him in retribution. Fine, game, I get it: you don't want me to go any further. Goodbye, Sonny, good luck to you without me.
I did not get how the sliding portals in level 20 worked for the longest time. The game has an excess of flavor text and animations (like the extremely slow level-start injection), but very rarely explains any mechanics. I understand that discovering how things work is part of the fun, but I found it frustrating to experiment given the level layout and chances of falling back to the bottom. Overall, the game has the Nitrome visual polish, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts -- I didn't find it that fun to play.
Cute style, but a million shooters do this just as well or better, including a boatload of NES games with the same no-upgrades, no-checkpoints mentality. Nothing new here, and isn't that the reason to keep playing (or making) different games?
It would be quite difficult to implement failure detection for this game. Like in solitaire, you have to reset it manually.