3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[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

[Past Persistence]

Nice little game. Even though it's only one stage with one enemy type and not many objects on the field, the increasing numbers of friendly ghosts gives it a sense of progression and keeps it from getting repetitive. It looks like the NewGrounds window size is larger than the window setting in your project.xml file; make sure they match up on the NewGrounds project's upload page. And one bug to fix before the Jam deadline: I did a second playthrough and let the curse kill me, and when I started a new game after that the curse bar was at max so as soon as I died again for the first time the game was over, so it probably needs variables reset at that point.

SuraimuStudios responds:

Thanks for the information! I'll try to fix everything in time.

[Drones]

The graphics are pretty awesomesauce. The only graphical thing I might suggest tweaking is to have the machine gun bullets leave a trail as they're being fired out showing their trajectory, but more importantly the biggest thing the game needs is some music and sound. The gameplay was ok but got repetitive quickly; if there are more enemies and challenges to unlock as you get further into the game then maybe I'll come back and try to get more into it, but only if it's updated so it saves progress. Also, a very minor note: when I play for the first time the mouse arrow still shows up along with the reticule and it only goes away after I die and then relauch, so it might need another FlxG.mouse.visible = false; somewhere.

filipp8 responds:

Hey, thank you for your comment.
The mouse pointer is now fine and now the game automatically saves progresses.
------
Edit
I added explosions and some other things like ingame hints.
I plan to add more content. Would you mind play it again?

[Ghost House]

Great game and I bet it'll do really well in the jam. My only comment is that my download time was ridiculously long, and if that's a file size issue and not an issue of my internet connection sucking, then maybe try encoding music and/or graphics at lower resolution to help the download time. Less than 1% of players will ever notice a change in encoding quality (and 34% of quoted statistics are simply made up on the spot). Might also be nice to reduce the canvas size so it fits in most people's screens without having to zoom out on their browser, but that's a minor point.

RubbishPandy responds:

The total size of the game is 43mb, which is large for a browser game I feel... I am inexperienced and didn't consider this, I will have to look into some proper encoding as you say