3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[CityBuilder TowerDefense]

I agree with Georgikus, it could use a short tutorial on how the economy works, I tried a couple of times and got game over on day 2 for unclear reasons (maybe losing too much happiness?) Looks like the game could be neat and expanded on if that initial learning spike is handled well though.

AlkalinePineapples responds:

Shit, I forgot to communicate important mechanics again!
I really need to be more careful about this.

[Le Chat Fonce and the Secret of the Clock Tower]

I agree with the previous reviews - this is a great game but suffers tremendously from things that are very easy to tweak:

1. for horizontal movement, check for either A or left arrow, and for either D or right arrow, being pressed so players can use whichever they want.
2. jump with W or up arrow
3. interact with space or down arrow
4. helicopter with the same button as interact if there's nothing there to interact with
5. don't end the game if you reach the top before finding everything (or at least allow the previous progress to be continued if the player resumes afterward)

That should make it more enjoyable for most people, and the rest of the issues (aside from reports of lag) should be minor. I haven't encountered the lag that some people have, so can't really comment on it. It is a good enough game that I'm replaying it after having it end sooner than I wanted it to, even though it means I'll need to redo everything.

[Quest Finder Adventures]

The game won't load, and it's showing a 404 error under the browser's DevTools-Console window. Maybe try reuploading?

QuestFinder responds:

thankyou for that, I just updated!

[Golf Adventures! 2]

That last level set made me forgive you for the brutality of the mechanical zone :3

If you'd like to add NewGrounds medals for the achievements or a NG leaderboard, here's how: https://3p0ch.newgrounds.com/news/post/1211786

Aleksander-Sats responds:

Yeah, Mechanical Mayhem was made to test what you've learned so far, so in return the next one for your effort is more fun and easier! :)

Thanks for mentioning that post though! I will keep it in mind

[ULTRAFUN]

I ran into some serious performance issues - like other users I frequently got "WebGL context lost, please reload the page" messages after the game loaded and before it started. Every once in a while it does start, but when it did there was lag and the music was extremely choppy.

There might be an issue that's being pointed to by some odd errors showing up in the browser's Developer Tools - Console window (if you play the game from NG, press Ctrl+Shift+I or pick it from your browser's menu and go to the Console tab to see them). It makes me think that an autoload script might be acting up, but you might be able to make more sense of it than I can since I don't have the Godot source code. If you want me to take a look at it when I get a chance then msg me.

Other tricks I've found in Godot that might help with performance if you're not already doing it this way are 1) for most of my big scenes (like game levels or main menu or stuff) I'll make an autoload that holds the entire scene as a variable like
levels_autoload.gd:
var level1 = preload("res://levels/level1.tscn")
etc...
and then in other scripts instead of using get_tree().change_scene() you would use get_tree().change_scene_to(LevelsAutoload.level1) and it should noticeably reduce if not eliminate the stuttering and lag when you switch scenes.

2) For audio, maybe try compressing the music files in Audacity. If they're in stereo then mix them down to mono (Ctrl-A to select all, then Tracks -> Mix -> Stereo down to Mono) and then do File -> Export -> as OGG with the Quality slider set to 0.

3) The other thing you could do with audio is significantly more complex, but if you're up for it I described the process in a post at https://3p0ch.newgrounds.com/news/post/1148893

Hopefully it can get running more smoothly because now it's kinda barely playable for me.

Kwongo responds:

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback, it's really helpful :) I am still new to using Godot with HTML5 so this comes in really handy. I'm exploring some more options too, such as converting the game to use GLES2 instead of GLES3, which might improve compatibility (this is the source of most of the WebGL issues), but it comes at the expense of performance and not being able to use my pretty particles the same :(

If anyone truly desires the bonafide ULTRAFUN experience ASAP (and doesn't want to wait for me to fix it) the game is also available for free on Steam (Windows/Linux) :)

[MÆRE]

I agree that with this game it seems like having a failure state like "dying of fear" would prolly be cheezy or anticlimactic. But since you mentioned thinking about expanding it, I could envision a version where you're a soldier being haunted by real experiences, and if you fail to get enough sleep to be ready for the next day of combat then it could be your last.

[THREAT != CONTAINED]

w00t another 3D Godot dev!
I also ran into audio issues with my HTML5 exports and came up with a workaround to fix it. It was kinda complicated so I posted a description of how I did it: https://3p0ch.newgrounds.com/news/post/1148893
I'm not 100% sure this will also fix it for you but I think it's more likely than not.

Edit: Finished the game. The 2D-in-3D graphics were appealing and had a lot of nice touches, the creepiness of the things in the containment rooms helps make the game memorable. The design of having the player go into a J shaped area when they kill the power and have the monster where it is pretty much guarantees that the player will die the first time through and have to start from the beginning, and if they don't notice that the monster moves through walls right away then they'll probably die at least once more, each time having to start from the beginning. It's a short game so it's not horrible to have to repeat the path to the power room each time, but it's kinda monotonous to have to do each time before the real action starts. After figuring out how to really play the game, it's entertaining enough to make up for it. Looking forward to seeing what you do in the future.

Frosty responds:

Thanks a ton for the review. and i will 100% check out that fix, cheers!

[Sporit]

A very good game with charming graphics and music, and the later level designs take just enough thought to complete to give a nice fulfilling feeling. My only constructive criticisms are that it seems like it would be nice to include sound effects for stuff like jumping and bouncing on a head, and clarifying the comment from @p0t3ki - I also had a specific spot in the last level where the camera zoom was off: the dudes were separated vertically and the zoom didn't get wide enough, so both players were off screen.

[Lost For Swords]

Hi fellow Godot dev, I saw comments about issues I can help with.

First is the issue of zooming in the browser producing unintended funky resizing of control nodes. That's easy to fix and described here https://3p0ch.newgrounds.com/news/post/1157195

Second is audio playback quality for one of the reviewers being kinda bad. If it's what I think it is, switching to Firefox will fix it for that user because it's an issue with Chromium and probably depends on their computer's hardware too so won't necessarily happen for all Chrome users. If you want to make it play music without any glitchiness in Chrome, then the fix on the dev's side is a lot more complex but I gave a short description here https://3p0ch.newgrounds.com/news/post/1148893

Lastly, if you want to add medals or leaderboards, you can use the Newgrounds API implementation I wrote or one of the others at https://www.newgrounds.io/get-started/ but mine would be the easiest to implement (I mite be biased :3)

Oh yeah, as for the game itself, it was fun and had well-polished presentation, but after finishing the tutorial and clearing two rooms I started getting rooms where my only option was to backtrack and I couldn't advance anymore?

MaxBytes responds:

Hello fellow Godot dev!

Thanks for the nice writeup and help, I appreciate it!

I have just today published an update that implements your described workaround for the music using howler.js, works great. And your tutorial helped a lot! :)

Will try your suggestion regarding the window stretch mode... although I cannot reproduce the issues myself and zooming works correctly in my browser (chrome). I had suspected that the actual issue for some players is that their browser window is too small in height (and/or width) to display the game fully (on 100% zoom)... maybe I'm wrong though.

Regarding you being stuck in the game: the game does not do the best job at explaining what you actually have to do there. You're not really stuck, your goal is to defeat all Monsters so that there are no more monsters in the Dungeon Deck (or on the board). Once you achieve that, the Backtrack turns into a door that lets you continue :) If you cannot defeat the Monsters within the 3 rooms, you need to backtrack and take some damage.