3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[My Father Sold My Soul for One Million Gold?!]

I worry that many people will be put off if they run into the bug of the game freezing when you pick a character to respond to an event (which happened to me a lot), and won't read the author comments and see that if that happens they should save the game (because that button still works) and restart (not needing to completely reload the page because that in-game button also still works) to keep going.

If the freezing isn't fixable, maybe instead of making the text in the event description in the lower left disappear as soon as there's a click, make it be replaced with "If it seems like the game froze, use the buttons in the top right to save and return to the main menu" and stay up if the game freezes at that point, and clear that text after the event has been processed so players won't see it if the game is running smoothly? Or some other approach to achieve a similar effect.

Aside from that issue, it's a pretty entertaining game! Having a fair amount to fiddle with in managing the tavern, and cutscenes scattered throughout to add an engaging story, kept it interesting. IMO it could stand to be made harder, but since other people were saying it's too hard I guess it's impossible to please everyone.

Marckel responds:

Thanks for the review! You don't have to go to the main menu actually. The bug is resolved by simply opening up the save menu. You can return to the game/cancel with right click. This and the disappearing text issue both exist because Reim has had to really push what we could do with Rpgmaker and its plugins. In future games we'd hopefully figure out a way to overcome those issues.

The original release version wasn't impossible, but it was a little too hard. In the future maybe hopefully we could implement a difficulty setting feature.

[Stonks]

After showing the four tabs, it gets stuck on what looks like it would be the main root gameplay scene with a never-ending Loading indicator. If I go to my browser's Developer Tools under Console it shows this error in red

FormatException: Input string was not in a correct format.
at System.Number.ParseSingle (System.String value, System.Globalization.NumberStyles options, System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo numfmt) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---

It looks like it would be a kinda neat game, but is currently completely unplayable at least for me.

Edit: Yep, game works now!

While the concept is great, there seems to be at least one playability issue. The list of stocks that shows up in the stocks screen doesn't seem to be fixed even if I mouse to scroll through the whole thing. I bought four different stocks and then didn't have any elegant way of going back to the stocks screen and selling them all off (2-3 would show up but not all four). In principle maybe I could make a separate list of which stocks I bought so I can go back and search for them later, but in practice people aren't likely to do that playing a video game.

The other issue might just be because of my schedule, but it's tough to get engaged when I can only play when markets are closed and I would have to just buy stuff and check on it again the next day, and keep doing that for the entire course of the game. Maybe it would be better if I were free during daytime and could simulate day trading.

MonoFlauta responds:

Ey! Sorry about that. It should be fixed now. We had an issue with the api. Let me know if you encounter any other problems. Thank you for reporting this :)

[1V1 Simulator]

Does the player not get any ammo, or is there some other reason I can't shoot?

Edit: I see what's messing it up -- it has to do with the gamepad. I'll send a PM since this gets complicated.

MountJoyGames responds:

Was your cursor visible? Should be unlimited ammo

[Asteroids 3D]

Kinda neat to see it done in 3D. I'd recommend a keyboard button like space to shoot instead of having keyboard control movement and left mouse button shooting, and to have it repeatedly fire when held.

chris3232 responds:

I've already done that. I Just have to upload it!

[TWISTY SKIES!]

I can't play, it just says
exception thrown: RuntimeError: memory access out of bounds,RuntimeError: memory access out of bounds

Reloading the page doesn't help. Neither does switching browsers between Firefox and Chrome.

chris3232 responds:

This keeps happening, I have no clue why!

[Bandits & Barbarians]

I just wish there were a way to play against an AI because waiting for an opponent maxed out my attention span.

larrynachos responds:

I think im gonna remove the region matchmaking lol, I thought it would help keep ping down but maybe it's spreading the players too thin.

Battling against AI was never planned, single player was going to be a target challenge mode and some minigames but we never got around to it. Also waiting for a player was supposed to have a minigame to keep you busy too but we ran out of time. Just a few kinks to iron out!

Thanks for the review!

Edit: I've removed regions, and added a minigame while you wait! It's a simple one but I wanna add more over time! The waiting for opponent screen becomes It's own arcade lol

[Newgrounds Intern DEMO]

It's enjoyable so far, but one comment: For a 3D platformer, I would recommend making the player cast a shadow on the ground so people can tell where they are when they're jumping.

Since the player's character is 2D, probably the best way to do it would be to attach a 3D sphere somewhere high above the player (outside the visible space when playing) and add a directional light to the scene pointing straight down with DirectionalShadow set to Orthogonal. As long as the walls/ceiling have their cull set so they're not visible if you look at the scene from above (which looks like it's the case) the ceiling shouldn't cast shadows and you should be able to see the player's shadow -- I'm doing that in the game I'm working on now and it seems to work well. If the ceiling is casting shadows so you can't see the player shadow, and the ceiling and floor are on different meshes, you could go to the ceiling's MeshInstance under GeometryInstance - Geometry and turn CastShadow off.

Scootakip responds:

Definitely the most requested fix, it'll be out in the next patch! Thank you for playing!

[Enoki]

FYI I wrote code to make Unity not lose save data when you publish updates and the source code is freely available.

If you're using PlayerPrefs, this would be the easiest implementation
https://3p0ch.newgrounds.com/news/post/1086279
and check puetsua's and IncontinentCell's comments at the end because I wrote that a couple years ago and maybe Unity updates since then have made it need tweaks.

If you're not using PlayerPrefs but you have the save data in a single structured object (or can get it into one) then you can use/cannibalize the Unity implementation of code I originally wrote to make it so multiple game devs could run a multi-game collab and just use it for a standalone game, which also prevents save data loss when you publish updates
https://3p0ch.newgrounds.com/news/post/1099579

If you incorporate either of these implementations then the save data will be wiped when you publish that update, but for any more updates in the future it will persist.

EnokiTheGame responds:

Thanks a lot for these resources!

We will have a look at them (and hopefully implement them, too :D) when we come around to it.

[Mirror Bastion]

It's fun for sure. My only gripe was having my mirrors break on me -- when I died I think it was because the mirror breakage led me to a situation where it was impossible to kill the shielded enemy that rekt me. If players can just end up screwed like that then I'd consider it cheap, OTOH if I need to git gud and figure out what makes the mirrors break and find a way to not end up in that situation then I guess that's on me.

JauqGames responds:

Glad you think its fun! Mirrors break when they are used to finish off an enemy (any enemy) Here's a tip: There are 4 mirrors that never break (They are thicker, double layered) I carefully placed these ones to allow the destruction of shield enemies if they get too close to the player's zone. Though it is best to try and save those back mirrors for the shield enemies.