TharosTheDragon's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Wheel Propaganda]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 8 / 10

Pretty nice GB look.

### Originality: 2 / 10

Just a silly little platformer.

### Challenge: 4 / 10

When the boss told me not to touch it, it took me a while to figure out that I was indeed supposed to jump on it. I learned all about its movement patterns and I didn't even need to. Also I was challenged to figure out your birthday by trial and error.

### Fun factor: 6 / 10

You told me to ignore this game and I'm glad I didn't, though the idea is more fun than the actual gameplay.

### Content: 6 / 10

Multiple rooms and collectibles and secrets. Not bad considering that it was made in 4 days.

### Total: 26 / 50

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

[Familiars.io]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 7 / 10

You did a good job with the old-school look, but it feels a bit empty.

### Originality: 4 / 10

It's a Pokemon clone. The tiny MMO aspect seems like a cool idea but there weren't any other players when I played.

### Challenge: 5 / 10

There are plenty of hard battles and it takes some navigation skill to find everything, but this suffers from the usual JRPG problem of battles just presenting the illusion of strategy. Victory is based on your level rather than your skill, and leveling just takes time.

### Fun factor: 5 / 10

The clunky interface makes everything feel like work. You provided a lot of alternative keys for opening the menu but no keys for going straight to specific items in the menu. And to look at the map I need to navigate to it as an item inside my inventory every single time. And I need to drop off each individual monster at the resort while making sure to close the menu and open it again between each one because I need to move to a different spot. It's nice to explore the world, but I wish the environment was more interactive.

### Content: 10 / 10

An impressive amount of monsters with many types and moves, and the world is big by browser game standards even if it is compact by MMO standards.

### Total: 31 / 50

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

[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!