TharosTheDragon's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pixel Paintdown]

I can see that it's not feasible for you to implement NPC artists and art judges (even though Jackbox does it), but it would still be worthwhile to address the problem of waiting for other players to join the lobby by providing some kind of single player minigame (like old Flash preloaders sometimes had)

larrynachos responds:

I was considering it, because it's what I've done in the past. But I was at a loss as to what sort of minigame to offer

[FILL THE HEART]

It's a very interesting game with intelligent techniques to figure out.

[Die for the Lich [v0.3]]

This might be the best game of its kind. You've avoided the usual pitfall of having a million simultaneous abilities and effects to keep track of. There are still a lot of options and possibilities, but you've made it easy to focus on the task in front of you on a turn-by-turn basis by not letting the rules and special cases get out of hand.

Still though, I'm not giving it a 5 because I was so upset to learn that my Natural 20 and Last Wish achievements didn't get saved. It's one thing for them to not get unlocked immediately because the Newgrounds session expires, but I thought because you're also saving redundant achievement state in the game's own save data that I could unlock the achievements automatically when I reloaded the page. However, I found that the redundant save data didn't get saved either, so I don't know if the save data is tied to the Newgrounds API or what.

A few minor points: I keep forgetting I can use the eyepatch to reroll ones, the music is randomly muted when starting a fight, and the enemy growls sound like a toilet flushing.

Hint for Last Wish: most fights are easy enough, but the last few before the church will give you the most trouble. Try to plan ahead and pick a path where at least the final two locations are non-fights

MadNukin responds:

The goal was always to make a simple yet in-depth gameplay and I really appreciate when people point it out.
The medals are somewhat broken on the current build, I've been meaning to fix them and I will in the next build.
Great point with the reroll mechanic, it's not clear enough that it's activated.
And the toilet flush is part of the lore at this point.
Thanks for the nice review :)

[We live in a Bubble]

A game where the only way to win is to lose. All the game mechanics are unnecessary because you could reach the same goal by just doing nothing. Interesting twist!

[Cronela's Mansion GBC - Demo]

Good job making something retro like this that's compatible with old systems, but I gotta say it's clunky even considering the constraints you're dealing with. I wish it could actually respond to the mouse, even though that would mean making a special version for the browser.

I think it would be nice if the action you've selected didn't automatically become deselected after you use it, so you could easily try the same action on everything in a room. If there are 4 things in a room, I wanna select an action 6 times instead of 24 times. It would also be nice if the things you couldn't do in the demo were left out instead of left in as red herrings. There are two phone numbers in the game and a player could spend a long time trying to get the phone to work thinking the problem is just that they don't understand the interface correctly.

The item system is the most unintuitive I've ever seen, comparable to some of those games AVGN plays where the interface makes no sense. On the one hand, it's cool that you can only use items in certain places because that stops players from thinking they need to try every item on everything. On the other hand, it seems very redundant to have to walk to the exact right spot and face the right way before I can even take an item out of my inventory, and then still have to use the item on the right spot in the game world. Surely it should just be one or the other: either require the player to stand in the right spot before using an item, or let them stand anywhere and then pick the spot to use the item afterwards. Such a strange item system definitely needs a tutorial because when the pizza guy made me fish the slice of pizza out of the trash and then he kept acting like I hadn't done it yet, I thought I was going crazy or the game was just broken. It takes a while before you find a spot you can actually use an item on successfully and that moment should definitely come sooner. I still think the item system might actually be broken because I couldn't take the blue key from my inventory no matter how close I stood to the blue door or which direction I was facing, but then I remembered that I could use an item at the well so I walked back over to the well in order to use the blue key on the door on the other side of the screen!

Other bugs: I was able to walk up the wall off of the ground in the sewer. The robot is on a graphic layer in front of the player instead of behind, so that's a graphical glitch. After beating the game and starting over, there was a strange grid of numbers on top of my car and then after opening and closing a menu I was warped back to the final room.

[Traffic DIE Light]

I see you solved the problem of escape exiting full screen by just aggressively reentering full screen instead of just letting us use a different way to go back besides pressing escape

[Dreamed Date - SFW]

I gotta say I'm impressed that you were able to make a concise visual novel. I thought people who make visual novels always want to go on and on with the writing, but you focused more on the art. It feels more like a movie than a book in terms of the content density, so well done

[Razor Wizard]

Major bug: if you play normal mode after cruel mode, normal mode has permadeath. I was really confused because I tried hard mode first, and I thought maybe you had your own definitions of words like "permadeath" and "respawn."

Other bugs: one time I was fighting the hero in normal mode and his health bar didn't appear. Also, it looks like the cruel heart doesn't count as picking up an item in terms of the description showing up and the ending screen showing how many items you got.

I'm curious to know the likelihood of the cruel heart appearing. Some runs I don't get it at all, but one time I saw it spawned by three bosses in a row.

It would be cool if keeping the flower until the end had some effect on the ending.

I can see that a lot of people are unhappy with the core mechanic, but real gamers like me aren't going to complain about a special challenge like this. As your author comment implies, the idea is to give you a potential reason to shoot less often. You have to decide how many blades you want on the screen at once, and that's a fine game idea. It would feel more fair if your enemies could also harm themselves, but I guess maybe the unfairness goes with the premise of playing as the villain. It's meant to reverse game tropes and expectations.

[Fossil Rumblers Time-Stop Over DEMO]

Are there any hotkeys? This seems pretty fast paced to have to use the mouse for everything.

Why do my trilobites sometimes start with 30 HP and sometimes with 35? Does it have to do with where I put them or is it random?

The dynamite seems pretty expensive for just a one-time explosion. And I was never able to save up enough money to buy the wrench so I don't even know what that does. I guess maybe it repairs the time machine.

This is a pretty atypical tower defense in the sense that your towers can only engage in melee combat where they can be killed, but they also stop enemies while doing it. They're a bit like the reinforcements in Kingdom Rush except that you have to pay for them.

I wish I could view stats for towers and enemies. I just have to assume that the more expensive towers are better, but I don't really know if it's just their HP or if they also have damage upgrades or even special abilities. It's hard to work out what my strategy should be, or if there even is strategy to this

VoiDdraig responds:

Thanks so much for the feed!

By the moments no hotkeys but they can be a must, the game is indeed frenetic and goes scaling so it's more than understandable (We are working on major updates, so some things are being polished and fixed to make it better, including now 7 levels instead of 4 and the boss and even speed up)

The unit stats are randomized but they got an HP standar depending on creature (30/35) (20/25) etc

about dynamite we still are making tests to see how it works on all levels, actually (they're not much useful on first stages so it may be unlocked later on update, same for repairing tool) but all these features are explained on the tutorial from level 1-1

the towers stats are shown actually, it's explained on the tutorial but click on them to see them, but for sure enemies should have visible stats (working on that part tho!)

About strategy, i let that part on players (improvisation) even when units got some traits as more hp, faster attack, less damage, etc, you can see their stats to understand it. But is simplier than it looks, for sample you can put units far from the entrance so each new one you put closer will be full HP and the other will remain alive as an extra secure or can be healed later, constant healing units when are just close to death so they fully recover, use strategic spots as the ranged units can be on safe zones, etc it always depend on how you want to go (but surely the higher price got better stats and skills on general but always can work as complement for another)

WE NEED TO PUT AN ADVISE ON LEVEL 3 BECAUSE YOU UNLOCK A RANGED UNIT THERE! (on level 1-3 you unlock anomalocaris, try it if u get chance (they really makes a difference there)

[Trash Force Demo]

When I buy an upgrade that supposedly has me start with 5 extra credits, I expect that to mean $5.00 but it seems like game means $0.05 or something

BluePinGames responds:

Definitely something we need to look into! Thanks