3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bulldozer]

I don't normally complain about game controls, and usually take the attitude that if the controls are challenging then that's part of the game's challenge and the player needs to git gud at it. But in this case it seems like it goes beyond challenging and gets flat out buggy. It's tough to put my finger on everything gave me that feeling, but what stands out the most are abrupt changes in direction when I hit a barrel, especially when moving at low speed (which happens most in areas where fine control is critical like level 19 and that behavior really messes with the game). And the controls are pretty much what makes this game what it is.

[City Escape 2]

I'm late in writing a review, but the two most important things have already been said.

First that during the invincibility after being hit, the inability to do any vaulting/springboarding until the invincibility ends makes it nearly impossible to get back up from the ground on later levels because you'll mostlikely be overlapping an enemy when the invincibility ends so you'll get hit right away (or in the air from a jump, but about to land on an enemy and get hit regardless). Making the player able to vault/springboard while invincibility is still active would fix that.

The other is as LethalElephantForce mentioned; there's only a small number of moves -- jumping, vaulting, and springboarding -- and enemies. The game is much more entertaining than I might expect with relatively few moves and enemies, but I feel it could use one or two more things like ability to move forward/backward a little bit within the screen's auto-scrolling or another technique that would be well suited for making it past pairs or multiples of cops that are too close together to vault sequentially. There's a potential for making a game feel too busy and cluttered if you add too much, but I think a little bit more would have been good.

Those things said, the game was still pretty fun and certainly enough to keep me playing, and a lot of the other commenters thought so too. The pace auto-adjusts to the player's skill since they slow down when they get hit. Although I'm not usually a fan of random level generation, in this case I think it helps keep the player involved and concentrating on coming up with and executing a good strategy instead of just remembering an exact sequence of optimal moves for each level. And while unfavorable random placement of enemies might happen and suck, it somehow avoids becoming frustrating when you'll just get a newly generated level on the next run.

Final thoughts are that I'm not as put off as others by the bright cop lights when it's close to a loss, but I would've liked a more streamlined way of restarting a level if I'm having a bad run than exiting to the main menu and picking the level again Edit: didn't realize double-tapping R to reset is an option now :3.

[Duck Waddle]

Excellent level design and good presentation. The puzzles were very rich considering that the only controls were the four directional buttons, and I'll have to disagree with others and say that the mechanics were reasonably self-explanatory without needing any additional instructions. The pixelated graphics are fine for a puzzle game, and the music I felt could have been better. Incidentally, it's possible to get scores under the star score for some of the later levels; I got 2-4 with 48 steps, 3-4 with 48, 3-5 with 102, 3-7 with 117, 3-8 with 28, and 3-9 with 40.

[Project Rocket]

Three things that could easily boost its appeal would be to either explain the controls or better yet include arrow keys as an option which is easy to do in Unity (add up for thrust and left/right to tilt), make it restart the current level instead of restarting the whole game if you die, and make the sound if you die be less abrasive -- just an explosion would do.

to-mahto responds:

Thank you! I will get on it!

[Prism Light]

Ack, my save data is gone :(

In case you're using PlayerPrefs to save data and have uploaded an update to the game that made everyone lose their data, plz read this... if not for this game then at least for any future games...
https://3p0ch.newgrounds.com/news/post/1086279

If it was just an issue with my computer not saving then nvm.

Edit: It was just an issue with my browser, IndexedDB was loading very slowly and wasn't completely loaded by the time the game started, so the save data wasn't available to be read. In case it happens to anyone else: try giving it a minute and reloading the page, and be aware that if you start playing again before doing that then you might overwrite the old save data.

[Josh Dumb]

I got to level 4, and even though I block the bees with the shield, Josh still dies when the bee would have reached him if it weren't blocked. Using Chrome on Windows, and I don't see any errors in the Console log if I open Developer Tools (just warnings about failing to load SourceMap).

Edit: Also happens on Firefox.

Catalystl responds:

I'm assuming you're blocking with the shield directly on top of Josh. This doesn't work because later in the game multiple turrets will shoot at you from different directions and that would make the game too easy to just block all of them in one spot.

Just block the bees right in front of Josh so they dont both hit Josh and the shield at once. I'll add this as text on Level 4. I'm really not sure what the warning is about but I've beaten the game many times on HTML5 so I doubt this affects the game much. Feedback was helpful, thanks!

[Heartship]

This seems like it should be completely rage-quit inducing because of the pretty unforgiving difficulty, random powerups, and level generations with the potential to really wreck you if you're put up against something nasty. And I feel that if I understand why it's not, then I'll become a much better dev.

[Reboot Resume Restore]

The music, visual effects on the guys' movements, and the fact that the game knows your name when you're logged in helped give this a fantastic ambiance. I was a little put off by how slow the movement is, but I admit that it seems like a key component of what gives the game its overall surreal, sort of dreamy in a computerized way, ambiance so ultimately after thinking about it I think it's not something I feel should be changed. Or at most, keep the overall movement slow but have less inertia when you start moving from a stop because I think there were points where that made it irritating to stick landings on ledges.

After finishing the game I tried playing again to see if I could figure out how to unlock the secret medal, but when I restarted there was no sound, and if I tried turning the mute on and off it didn't work (the graphics appeared but the sound didn't restart) and the dev console on Chrome had
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'stop' of null
at Function.ab.toggleMute (RebootResumeRestore.js:316)
at Vd.callback (RebootResumeRestore.js:172)
(and more but the rest of the stuff after that probably isn't helpful.)
But it didn't show that error if I refresh the page and use the mute button; it works normally if you haven't just finished the game.

HartfordGames responds:

Thanks for the feedback. I think I may have figured out the error. Will upload a fix soon.

[Get Kisses, Assimilate]

Seems like something's broken. I'm just in the scene with the bird, skunk, and fighter cat and can talk to them but after the last screen of text for each conversation it looks like the text flashes "null" for a frame before disappearing (I'm not seeing any errors in the browser's dev tool console window though). The game isn't progressing, it's just that one scene and if I walk to the distant end then it throws be back to the front. The 3D is pretty off 'cuz the characters' feet don't stay in the same place. This looks like it could be cool, but is way buggy rite nao.

Edit: Ok, it's working now without any major bugs. Ramasama-kun isn't changing colors after the kiss at least for me and looked like he was still flashing null for a frame at the end of the conversation, but the game still seems to count him as kissed because it completes after I talk to him and everyone else so it's not game breaking. And when characters spawn pretty far in the background they sometimes have horizontal movement as I'm starting to approach them that seems off in terms emulating 3D.

As for the game as a whole, it's sort of an art game without real gameplay so it's in the eye of the beholder -- I can respect making a 3D game from a 2D engine, but I didn't really feel a message or a sense of bewilderment at being in a surreal world or other sort of art game vibe. That's just me though.

BrandyBuizel responds:

should be working now!

edit: thanks for the feedback! Making a psuedo-3D game was my primary focus so I'm sad to say we didn't have time to add a dialogue choice system(game jams) or any larger form of gameplay