3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[ANOVA]

This game reminded me of Trader of Stories a lot, and that's a good thing. If it were longer, I would definitely say it's at least in that echelon.

I wasn't as put off by the UI as much as other reviewers; initially I did think it was a little unnatural dragging stuff out of an inventory screen to make the inventory panel go away and then be able to use it on objects, but it was easy to get used to. I'll grant that maybe it's worth thinking about tweaking, especially if click-dragging stuff all over the screen if you have a trackpad instead of a mouse would end up being a significant pain in the butt. But I get the feeling that time would be better spent building an immersive story with clever puzzles than cutting down on the number of mouse clicks that players make.

For the issue of whether the cursor should indicate on mouseover which items are interactable to make it less of a "pixel hunt": I'm in the camp of saying you should be able to expect the players to look at the game's amazing graphics and find stuff instead of just having everything handed to them, as long as objects aren't ridiculously obscure. If you do decide to include a mouseover indicator, I would recommend making it be optional, and default to off.

MontiGames responds:

Thanks for the thoughtful review and constructive feedback! Puzzle design is clearly something that can be highly polarizing, but your thoughts on the UI and cursor indicators are appreciated and something we'll try to keep in mind as we continue building out new content.

We're definitely working to make the game longer, but as you might guess, it's a lot of work for a small team. As long as we have fans who want more, we'll do our level best to make them as happy as we possibly can!

[Unstable Engineer]

I saw that this is an Unstable game from WigDev and I rated 5/5, then started playing TBH. Now that I've finished, I'm not changing my score. The puzzling is top notch. The graphics outside of the puzzling gameplay are great, and the graphics during puzzling are attractive as far as puzzle games go. Overall it plays like a pretty professionally made game. The only weakness is the music which gets repetitive pretty quickly; if you're not determined to keep this a one man production then maybe ask some musicians if they'd like to contribute to the game.

I did run into a save issue - usually it saved fine but after I finished the game and came back I had the progress knocked back to only having 100 lock points, still with the character change that occurs, and probably but IDK for sure with the same game state that I had at some point in the past (same set of levels cleared and dialogues with the characters used). It might have had something to do with clicking the credits just before the progress was rolled back. Using Chrome on Windows.

WigDev responds:

Thanks for your comments! I'll look into it as I build an extended version.

[GlowPaint]

This is a very well made game. The controls were fluid and seemed natural. The graphics were appealing. But, at least for me, it lacked "fun-ness". The issue was that I had to take things pretty slowly and jump / wiggle around a lot to paint the place which got tiresome instead of being fun, or else just go ahead and rush forward and end up dying on spikes that I have no way of knowing are there. But looking at the other comments, it seems like I'm alone in that regard. And this still was a very well executed game, so I'ma give it 4 stars.

[Azumi and the Vertical Slice]

This is kinda cool. The only things I would say to be tweaked are that 1) the keys still affect browser scrolling -- specifically, when I hit up and attack to throw a star or down to change menu options, that makes the browser window scroll. 2) When I played the game once and then said not to make me do the tutorial again it made me do the tutorial again. 3) After I died the second time I said I don't want to continue and was put directly back into combat on level 1 (without the tutorial). But that seems kinda random because I tried it again after dying a third time and it behaved as expected. Using Chrome on Windows. Less critical: some people like using up arrow / W to jump so maybe make those keys do that (with some other way of throwing stars), and if I click the webpage outside the game so I can't control the guy any more I'd like the game to pause until it regains focus. Overall I'd say this is a good start at making a great platformer along the lines of Ripple Dot Zero or Phoenotopia if you're feeling ambitious enough. 4/5 only because it's still just a demo.

Edit: FWIW I wrote that while the game was still under judgement and I couldn't see the other reviews. Guess it's nice to see that I'm not alone.

PopStrikers responds:

I think I might have figured out the menu bug: It determines your menu choice based on the X coordinate of the cursor, so if you press an arrow again (to say, for example, move the page back into place cuz it scrolls), it will change the menu choice after the option should be locked in. Throughout development, I tested the game running in a new window so I never noticed this behavior since there was no page to scroll. I will go back and fix this and update it as soon as it's working properly.

Thanks for the feedback, it really helps.

[Rise of factions 0.2.5]

The underlying concept is great, but there are a lot of issues with the execution that leave the player baffled about what they're trying to do and fighting with the interface as much as the game's underlying puzzles they're supposed to be solving.

Some things I would recommend:
If people have placed a conveyor belt and want to change the direction that inputs/outputs are facing, then let them rotate them without having to destroy the transporter, bring up the transporter building page, change the directions of the inputs/outputs, and then place it on the map.

If people have placed a production tile like a furnace, let them change what it's supposed to produce without having to destroy and rebuild.

If I'm trying to build a production line and don't have all of the units I need available, I'd like to be able to buy more from the building screen instead of having to exit out to the trade tab, buy more, then go back to the build screen and place them, especially if there are multiple different types of units that I need to buy to make the production work.

I am confused why I can't set up a collector picking up something like iron ore and wood from two different source tiles and feeding it to a furnace and have it work.

I get the feeling that things could be clarified a lot better with the guide tips, and the wikis look kind of like a computer programming reference that can only be understood by the person who wrote it and some professional programmers so they could use a little more of an "English" explanation about how to make things work.

GrafixGames responds:

You can change the direction of the belt and recipe of production object by just clicking on it. No need to destroy it.

The reason I was not allowing people to buy objects from build menu because I wanted to make the experience like real life. You create a shopping list then go to shop and buy all the stuffs in the list.

I am constantly working on wiki.. Next version I will create very detailed wiki.

PS If you want more help or want something else, can you please post on my reddit page or support forums? It is really hard to create a comment chain on newgrounds

[The Question - Web Edition]

Well, you've proven that it can port to a web game, so mission accomplished I guess. The game itself was kinda sucky, but that'll be the task of actual game devs to solve, amirite?

The only bug I found was that if I go to fullscreen and then back to window mode, the positioning of everything (including where I need to move the mouse in order to highlight an option) gets a bad case of the fuckups. Using Chrome on Windows.

Beuc responds:

Haha, I didn't mean this upload to appear in the New Games section, yeah it's a really short game.
Thanks for the full-screen report, I'm still investigating this, from the preferences screen there's delay and mess-up, though it seems to work fine with the 'F' keyboard shortcut...

[Locked inside]

I'm the type who usually likes puzzle games and usually isn't particularly into moodiness. In this case, the piano puzzle was pretty much the only thing that I would consider a puzzle. So I'm basically evaluating it based on its merits as a sinisterly moody game.

Some things worked quite well in establishing a sinister mood. Starting off with a sort of exploration-game feel without a time factor, then introducing creepiness with things like the painting with eyes following you, then sheer terror with a specter that looks like it'll kill you unless you react fast enough all work well. But then I hit the piano puzzle which took a fair amount of time to figure out what was going on and what I needed to do with no fear factor, and it sort of ruined the horror experience, and throughout the rest of the game after that it never got so immersive.

[Elite - New Age Parkour]

I thought it was pretty fun although sort of short. I suspect that a lot of people will complain that it's too slippery because of the guy's momentum, or at least think so even if they don't post comments saying so. Personally I think getting used to handling the momentum it is just part of playing, but maybe games in the future will be received better if there's less momentum and they use other mechanics to keep the difficulty reasonable.

Ace-Productions responds:

Thanks