Well shit dude if you needed proof reading you could always send me a transcript.
I might not have time to play through a whole game but i can def do a proof read.

If i could give some unsolicited advice too, when it comes to trailers. Less is more in the future try to reach that 1:30 mark. Best of Luck

Understanding the industry, I really like this animation.

The thing about a career in art is that it takes more than just a boat load of talent and skill.
It is a very difficult field. It is sickening to how often people will expect you to work with little to no pay. Just go to freelance.com if you want a good example.

It is bad enough that many artist have to start out pro bono just to build a portfolio.

With that said, freelancers also need to learn to stop lowering their price just to get the job. I understand full well that in tough times, the almighty dollar will overtake self respect, but hear me out.

Quality artists and designers need to stop altogether accepting low paying jobs, that is the first step to gaining respect. After all, why should a business or company pay you top dollar when someone of comparable skill is willing to accept peanuts.

There is a real good message here, light hearted, but very genuine.

Unfortunately I see no indication that the industry intends on changing.

A nice little short, the only thing that irritated me was that the ad was longer than the clip lol

good work other than that trivial annoyance that is in no one a stab at the quality.

Artwork and animation is good, sound is good, etc With that said don't stop improving.

Best of luck and I hope you can top this one in the future

Without being rude... this really isnt great. I see you used https://scratch.mit.edu which is well and good to play around with, as a game this is very clustered and I don't quite understand it. the collision detection seems very very off and all around it doesnt *seem* to work for me.

When I lose the game just stops/crashes and i cant try again either.

best of luck in the future though!

I saw this on greenlight (voted NO....actually That's a joke, I voted Yes lol)

This is a great little game, I highly recommend it to people who like this kind of puzzle/platformer genre.

The goal is simplistic and the game is intuitive, and if the price is right Ill probably go pick it up on steam today :-)

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!

Excellent work, Im almost speechless ...almost lol

awesome i had this tune stuck in my head

sine i was up last night for like 4 hours catching the legendaries for my ladyfriend :P

about the tune. I love the baseline to it but i like the base in most pokemon tunes.
keep up the good covers

may i ask if you have a midi of this tune?

lol this is great

I love how its widely assumed that everyone on the internet knows what shippuden is. Its naruto but 3 years in the future. I call it naruto "cash In"
Since its the same repetative scenerio just theyre a bit taller. I watched a few episodes cause i was told it makes up for all of narutos short comings.And Im always willing to give a "good" animation a chance. It didnt though I was sour.

ah well ya cant complain, narutos already more popular than god.

Anyhow i like this track it would be good in a futuristic board riding game i have been working on (off again on again)

keep making more like this please.

good job!

Can i give you a small pointer?

Your style allows you to 'get away' with highly exaggerated jesters, but this one isnt working for me.

Try to do her pose yourself and you will see the issue, Shed have to break her back in order to do that. The maximum a persons upper body can turn from their lower body is shy of 90 degrees (varying on flexibility, but generally in that range) Where as her upper body in the image is almost 135 degrees.

It's not a big deal, i just personally couldnt look past the spine twist, even if it is cartoony :-P
all the best
Don

Thats Awesome! I really like the color choices, Im curious did you paint this traditionally?
or did you use painter or photoshop?