3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Beneath the Branches - demo]

So far it's doing a good job of setting up its ambiance, but I don't see a coherent story behind all of it, at least at this point. Hopefully that gets fleshed out as the game progresses.

There's not much in the way of gameplay. It's just walking around a map and picking up the next bits of the story aside from the encounter at the lake which was okay albeit weird. Even if video gaming mechanics aren't really your thing, it seems like it could use more interactivity to get the player more immersed in the game beyond reading text and walking. Even if it's just making choices that have some impact on how the story unfolds.

Walking seemed awfully slow. I can appreciate that having the character walk slowly might be intentional in trying to set a creepy mood, but I would still like to be able to move faster or hold shift or something to run.

Overall I feel like if you're going for an atmospheric storytelling experience then it's heading in the right direction but not quite there with a solid story yet, and if you're feeling ambitious then adding more serious gaming mechanics could have a big impact.

Primajin responds:

Appreciate the detailed feedback. The story is meant to be somewhat cryptic at first, but the demo is fairly limited in what it reveals, as you progress bits and pieces will be easier to put together.

I'm not sure I agree on the walking speed, any faster and it starts to feel wrong to me.

There is some more interactive gameplay later on but perhaps I should have included some in the demo.

Thanks :)

[Dying Rogue]

Kinda cool for a bleakly themed platformer. The ambiance is spot on, and bonus for keeping corpses wherever the player dies.

For the game mechanics I think I would've liked his climbing to have been a little bit faster, and it sometimes got glitchy when I climbed down to the bottom edge of walls -- he kinda stood there not in climbing mode but also not falling. (I think it was in cases where I jumped from one wall to another wall and climbed down to the bottom of the second wall, but I'm not sure on what triggers it.) With just the movement mechanics that it had and limited threats (spikes, golems, and falling blocks) it seemed like it was about the right length, and if it were expanded to a larger game then it would probably need new mechanics introduced as you progress.

The platforming difficulty seems fine -- I died some on the first playthrough but made it through without dying on a second run. But some players will probably say they don't like jumping into stuff blindly without being able to see what they're getting into.

The big falling blocks might've been better with some other sprite because at first I thought maybe I was supposed to jump onto one of those and ride it, but that's a pretty minor point.

BelowGames responds:

Thank you for the recommendations. I will definitely try and expand some of the mechanics and mess with the camera to make it feel like a fairer experience.

[In the Time of Pandemia]

Hotkeys plz?
Smth like:
1 - activate hospitalization mode
2 - activate testing mode
3 - activate quarantine mode
Q - buy tests
W - toggle lockdown
A - speed down
S - speed up
or maybe just numbers to be friendlier to people with AZERTY keyboards.

kikill responds:

Working on it!

[Annoyingly Helpful]

It seems like it could be a thing if you expand and tweak it to be a harder platformer or add enemies or a timer or something, and give it a little polish.

It can git jittery if you're standing on the cling-on and are off to a side, and that should be ironed out. Might also be funner if the cling-on sinks slowly while you're standing on it to keep things from being too still, unless you want to go down a puzzle game route and make it so the player gets stuck and needs to reset if they move it too high and get stuck on a level. If you want the main challenge to be platforming, then maybe don't make it possible to float horizontally by standing on it and moving a little to the side, which would both fix that jitteriness and make it so you can't just float horizontally. Otherwise, it would need some other form of challenge because being able to float horizontally and always able to move up makes it super easy.

& wth, you made it in Godot and in the software credits listed Unity?

ZenoGameDev responds:

'& wth, you made it in Godot and in the software credits listed Unity?'
Oh, yea, I forgot I used Godot. I'm too used to credit Unity lol.🤣

[Cryomancer]

Good game from a precision platformer standpoint with creative mechanics. From a puzzle solving perspective, in the last couple of levels it seemed like I was probably not solving them the way you intended at the end and was exploiting the block jumping mechanic you mention in the author comments (and have an example of in the video) which gets very easy when you have the freezing ability. At least for the final levels, if you don't want people to be able to do that as a cheesy way to win, then maybe have the goals on floating platforms instead of tops of cliffs.

If you do make any updates, it looks like this was made in Unity, so hopefully you're either not using PlayerPrefs for save data or you've implemented this to prevent saves from being lost on update: https://3p0ch.newgrounds.com/news/post/1086279

KanartStudio responds:

The game is full of shortcuts for those wanting to speedrun, some of them skip almost the whole level, and this is fully intended, also, the only thing using PlayerPrefs are the sound options, the save data is a file encrypted as binary and saved on the computer.
Thanks for the awesome feedback :D

[Musync]

You just don't see visual effects like this in a 48 hour game jam. The only thing I might have liked changed is being able to see the time remaining right after getting killed instead of going straight to snow static so I have a sense of how far through the level I was.

At first I thought that an avoider game mechanic would be mediocre. Eventually I figured out that the key is not avoiding the enemies, but is killing them efficiently enough that they won't be able to swarm you, and that mental switch made for a good game. There might not be very much more room to expand on the concept, but it's great for a short game jam.

As for the music, maybe it's just me, but something seemed out of key on the last level with everything overlaid (probably the background synth, the one without the sweep/flanger).

The only semi-buggy thing I came across is that when you select the note for the final level, the mouse can be right over an enemy emitter when the stage starts so you end up being instantly killed.

HealliesGames responds:

You got it right! The trick is to kill the enemies without getting "out of control" of the situation, making the screen full of enemies.
I agree with the nitpicks you say, also happened to me the mouse fact.

The music seemed right to me, but I'm not a musician, maybe there's a bit of off-key.

Thanks for the feedback, 3p0ch!

[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!

[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!

[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.