TharosTheDragon's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Devil Hearts]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 8 / 10

Very nice animated characters on a soothing background.

### Originality: 7 / 10

Cool take on color matching games by making it omnidirectional and removing the gravity aspect.

### Challenge: 9 / 10

It's certainly tricky but I never quite got a handle on the game mechanics (though you may notice I got the top score with the help of the review by the former record holder). It often feels like the game is screwing me over by giving me the wrong colors. I don't know why or when the hearts move the way they do and I don't understand what the upgrades do. My adversary keeps hinting at the word "charm" in a way that's usually a hint in games but I don't see how it helps here beyond establishing the theme. It would be nice if the game told you what the heck was going on but maybe figuring it out is supposed to be part of the challenge.

### Fun factor: 7 / 10

It was fun enough to keep me going but did get pretty repetitive.

### Content: 3 / 10

You say you made it in two days and I guess it has the amount of content I would expect from that.

### Total: 34 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

[The Neon Kingdom]

Oops, I reviewed this for the treasure hunt before remembering it's ineligible.

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 7 / 10

The neon aesthetic is nice, and the cute block is reminiscent of Kirby.

### Originality: 2 / 10

There's not much to differentiate this from other platformers besides the theme.

### Challenge: 9 / 10

Despite many amateurish elements, this game ended up being surprisingly challenging.

### Fun factor: 6 / 10

I liked hopping around doing double jumps and wall jumps and stuff, but the level design didn't feel like a lot of thought went into it.

### Content: 5 / 10

Levels 1 and 2 get repeated as levels 4 and 5.

### Total: 29 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

[CASTLE SLAYER]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 6 / 10

There's plenty to look at in this game including all the shiny gems underground and some weird fuzzballs I can't identify floating in the air near the mountains, but it all looks rather basic and doesn't have a lot of style.

### Originality: 2 / 10

There's just a little bit of originality beyond the basic clicker mechanics. It's interesting that besides clicking you also have to walk around to pick up the coins, and you also have to choose when to walk between the castle and your town.

### Challenge: 1 / 10

There's no challenge beyond strategizing when to click, move, and upgrade to maximize your efficiency.

### Fun factor: 3 / 10

Getting to walk around makes this a little more fun than the average clicker game, and there are certainly plenty of achievements, and it's nice to see the town get built, but it's just so slow and boring.

### Content: 6 / 10

Plenty of upgrades and achievements and stuff appearing on the screen, but it's a little weird that you advertised this game as having a dragon in both the description and the tags when it's just a stationary image.

### Total: 18 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

[Sky Jumping / Mobile Friendly]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 2 / 10

Nothing looks particularly good and even though it's all pixel graphics there doesn't seem to be any stylistic consistency.

### Originality: 0 / 10

Just a jumping game.

### Challenge: 4 / 10

I can challenge myself to get as many coins as possible but the game doesn't seem to even care how high I get. It doesn't throw any interesting obstacles at me and there's little skill involved.

### Fun factor: 2 / 10

This kind of game really needs a way to go again quickly and easily instead of returning to the menu when you die.

### Content: 3 / 10

You certainly included plenty of skins, but that gets ruined by the fact that the game forgets which skin you chose every time you die.

### Total: 11 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

[Autumn Garden TD]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 8 / 10

Very cute monochromatic retro pixel graphics.

### Originality: 1 / 10

I can't seem to find anything new here. It's just a tower defense game with a garden theme.

### Challenge: 8 / 10

I tried the "Water under the bridge" stage first and I gotta say it took me several tries to beat it. You definitely need to be strategic when it comes to which towers you buy and where you place them. Unfortunately you can't see the stats for either the towers or the creeps and you can't even see the towers' ranges so you just gotta guess for a lot of things and oftentimes towers work in unintuitive ways. In "Water under the bridge" I often expected towers to shoot at the creeps on the path next to them and they unexpectedly seemed to be out of range.

### Fun factor: 7 / 10

Fun but sometimes frustrating.

### Content: 4 / 10

This is obviously missing a lot because you said it's in early development, but some of the things it's missing are badly needed. We can't see how much health creeps have and we can't tell how much damage our towers are doing and we don't know if there are any systems like armor or armor piercing. We just gave to guess when it comes to whether or not our shots are even hitting the creeps. And like several others have noted, the game doesn't even do anything when you finish the last wave. There's a bug where you can click on an empty tower slot to bring up the new tower window, and then you can start a sixth wave.

### Total: 28 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

[Golf Escape]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 8 / 10

PICO-8 games always seem to look great.

### Originality: 5 / 10

The gameplay is pretty standard but I don't know what's going on with the premise. At first I thought it was gonna be a creative golf game but then I get this weird flesh freak bouncing around saving worms from radioactive waste. Are they your girlfriends or something?

### Challenge: 10 / 10

Nice and tricky, with a difficulty curve to teach you the moves. Sometimes the levels had easy routes especially if you go back the way you came after getting the worm and I'm never sure if that's intentional because it leaves part of the level unused.

### Fun factor: 9 / 10

The game makes sure it stays interesting the whole way through. As soon as water was introduced, I remembered that water mechanics always improve a game's quality.

### Content: 9 / 10

Feels like the right amount of levels to be satisfying.

### Total: 41 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

Davbo37 responds:

Thank you for the detailed review! Glad you enjoyed it :) 😁

[HUMANITY]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 4 / 10

While the maximum-contrast black and white line art certainly has style, it doesn't provide much to look at.

### Originality: 1 / 10

Barely anything new. Just a basic avoider game and a vaguely metaphysical story.

### Challenge: 10 / 10

It's not too hard to beat, but provides an extremely difficult extended goal for special players like me. I see bivn saying below me that he took 8 hours to get the hardest medal, but I took less than one :3

### Fun factor: 5 / 10

Whether or not you're going for the hard medals, this game can feel like a chore at times. You have to push yourself through the game while it keeps punishing you. There's little sense of action. Still, it feels good to learn the patterns and get them right eventually.

### Content: 5 / 10

It's kind of on the short side, but I very much appreciate the inclusion of quality-of-life features to help you get the medals, namely the timer and permadeath options.

### Total: 25 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

Ghilsh responds:

very insightful review, thanks for checking it out!

[9 Cam]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 9 / 10

Cool and creepy. Plenty of decorations.

### Originality: 9 / 10

I can't think of another game like this. It's a great gimmick, splitting your view into a bunch of simultaneous camera angles.

### Challenge: 8 / 10

Very nice difficulty curve, always delivering a nice challenge while never being too hard, requiring you to learn the skills inherent in the game mechanics.

### Fun factor: 6 / 10

While I generally enjoyed my time with this game, it was sometimes too awkward to be fun.

### Content: 8 / 10

A nice amount of levels with great variety.

### Total: 40 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

Mantis1 responds:

Thanks! I agree with your assessment.

[Dream Punk]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 9 / 10

Really nice atmospheric artwork and effects, great falling animation with the hair blowing all over the place, and I like the way the color palettes change between areas.

### Originality: 9 / 10

Recently I've begun thinking it's never a bad idea to take a preexisting game concept and adapt it into an adventure game. There are other games about falling, but none like this. Instead of the usual metroidvania where you relax and take your time, the falling mechanic means you're always in motion as you frantically explore. It's amazing how well it works.

### Challenge: 10 / 10

The game starts out easy enough and escalates into some fiendishly difficult challenges. It took me hours to get the last few bells, but I never got the sense that it was unfair.

### Fun factor: 10 / 10

I'm always surprised to see a game with this many medals fall under the radar. When I saw that it's an adventure game with the metroidvania tag I figured it would be good, and you exceeded my expectations.

### Content: 10 / 10

The world is quite large by browser game standards. I remember when I first got the map I thought the starting area was going to be the whole game, and then my mind was blown when I moved to a new area and realized what a small chunk of the map it was.

### Total: 48 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

[JACKSONJUMP]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 5 / 10

Nice color changes between levels. Nice two-frame idle animation. The background is a bit garish.

### Originality: 3 / 10

You made a Jumpking game, but to what end? What's Jason doing here? Why does Jason need to escape? Isn't Jason usually the thing people need to escape from? Why do the skulls look like masks?

### Challenge: 9 / 10

The difficulty level is exceptionally punishing, which can be good but it doesn't always feel fair. I beat the game after much time and effort, and I still don't feel like I have a grasp of how the game reacts when I jump into an obstacle. The inconsistency occasionally made me feel like I just had to get lucky. But mostly I'm happy with the amount of skill involved. Since the meter moves too fast for absolute accuracy, you have to strategize and plan your jumps in order to maximize your margin of error. So you have both the challenge of getting the power meter just right and the challenge of figuring out which jumps to make.

### Fun factor: 7 / 10

With a game like this, it's sometimes hard to tell if I'm having fun or not. I feel compelled to continue, but is it because I'm actually enjoying myself or is it because of the sunk cost fallacy? I think it's ultimately fun in a masochistic kind of way.

### Content: 6 / 10

Just three levels with no special ending after the third. But that third level took me so long that I'm certainly not asking for more.

### Total: 30 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

FreakyDAYZ responds:

Wow thanks for making the time to review my game I 100% agree with what you are saying. the game was a bit of fun and leaning for me I've made so many more games now.. all on https://freakydayz.itch.io/

IM SO HAPPY :) THANK YOU