TharosTheDragon's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Henry Stickmin Shorts]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 10 / 10

Expertly animated.

### Originality: 2 / 10

Just more Henry Stickmin stuff.

### Challenge: 3 / 10

It is just an animation picker, but I appreciate that you gave me little things to do like looking for the coins while I watched.

### Fun factor: 8 / 10

Trying out everything and going for achievements is lots of fun.

### Content: 9 / 10

Three scenarios with 6+ options each and 20 achievements.

### Total: 32 / 50

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

[Snowbound Snowday]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 8 / 10

Very nice art and character design. I like that you can immediately tell who is a boy in a snowman's body and who is a snowman in a boy's body.

### Originality: 2 / 10

Just another visual novel.

### Challenge: 0 / 10

No challenge that I can see.

### Fun factor: 5 / 10

I guess it's fun to read a cute story.

### Content: 5 / 10

Plenty of words. A surprising amount of coding and a complicated options menu for a visual novel. I found it hard to tell what "auto-forward time" means. If you want it to go faster do you slide it to the left or the right?

### Total: 20 / 50

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

[Sunday Drive]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 9 / 10

Very nice looking pixel art.

### Originality: 1 / 10

Pretty ordinary car avoider game.

### Challenge: 6 / 10

I like that I don't have to worry about hitting the edges so I can focus on avoiding the cars. Most vehicles move in predictable patterns but you really gotta watch out for the unpredictable ones.

### Fun factor: 8 / 10

What a joyride. It's like the original Grand Theft Auto but just the part where you're running over pedestrians.

### Content: 4 / 10

There are just a handful of pedestrian and vehicle types on a straight road.

### Total: 28 / 50

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

[Tankmas Funkin]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 9 / 10

Delightful pixel animations.

### Originality: 2 / 10

This wasn't meant to be anything particularly original of course, but it's very unusual to include such an elaborate AFK warning sequence.

### Challenge: 9 / 10

It takes a lot of skill to get an S rank, which requires a lot of practicing and a lot of dexterity.

### Fun factor: 9 / 10

Just a funkin' good time.

### Content: 5 / 10

The song is quite long, and it feels like care was put into all of it.

### Total: 34 / 50

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

[The Void]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 9 / 10

Fantastic 3D graphics.

### Originality: 9 / 10

Very cool idea. It feels like I'm exploring the world even though I'm only moving in one dimension.

### Challenge: 1 / 10

It's just following simple instructions. You can keep trying to hit the targets as many time as you want if you're struggling with timing. And you just press the three buttons in any order.

### Fun factor: 3 / 10

If the game was programmed to let you proceed once you find the "right" button then at least you could feel like you got lucky once in a while instead of just carrying out a monotonous task for an automaton.

### Content: 5 / 10

You did populate the void with a lot of creepy stuff.

### Total: 27 / 50

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

[The Wingless Bee (DEMO)]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 7 / 10

Cute pixel art.

### Originality: 2 / 10

It's mostly just a Frogger game.

### Challenge: 4 / 10

Pretty easy to beat, but trying to get a good score adds a little challenge.

### Fun factor: 8 / 10

The levels in the demo show off some nice variety in game mechanics. I especially like using the mushrooms to kill the purple bugs, though I don't know why I'm trying to kill them.

### Content: 6 / 10

Three levels and a boss fight, not bad.

### Total: 27 / 50

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

[Poroto]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 6 / 10

Cool graphics.

### Originality: 5 / 10

I guess the idea is pachinko but with shooting and destroying things.

### Challenge: 5 / 10

I feel like I'm missing out on the pachinko challenge that I assume is supposed to be there. Rather than trying to aim so that balls bounce on the pegs to reach their goals, I'm just firing all over the place to destroy everything. It doesn't feel like there's a lot of skill involved.

### Fun factor: 6 / 10

Even with the improvements you've made, it still feels a bit awkward. I was very confused by holding down Z to see the projectile path because if a key shows a trajectory like that it's usually because releasing the key will shoot. I don't know why your projectile path isn't just always visible.

### Content: 6 / 10

Five levels isn't bad I suppose. I thought the boss was broken at first because he went off the top of the screen when I got him down to half health. I would've given up but I left the game running while I was writing this review and then I saw the boss finally come back down.

### Total: 28 / 50

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

EdVasq responds:

Thank you very much for reviewing my game! Agree that the challenge in these first few levels is low, I will work on making the rest of the game more challenging as the game progresses. I hadn't thought of making the projectile path visible all the time, I think I can maybe add a feature that lets the player toggle it from the Options menu and play how they prefer without having to worry about holding down a button.
I'm sorry that the boss glitched out on you, that was not supposed to happen. I will work to resolve that bug, thanks for letting me know!
I'm very grateful that you took the time to play and review the whole game. I hope you will try the full game (or the updated demo) on Steam. Thanks!!

[super meat boy 2 (OLD) (unofficial)]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 3 / 10

It's neat that you included two sets of graphics, but once I got stuck in 8-bit mode I felt like I wasn't even able to view most of the game. It was more like a blur effect.

### Originality: 2 / 10

It's the usual platforming but with some weird charge-up mechanic I couldn't quite understand.

### Challenge: 8 / 10

It was definitely hard to escape the levels after waking up the clock, but I didn't grasp the skills well enough to tell if it's being fair.

### Fun factor: 5 / 10

It has the potential to be pretty fun with the wall running and stuff.

### Content: 7 / 10

There are actually a nice amount of levels here.

### Total: 25 / 50

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

[Paint Them Red]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 2 / 10

Very basic graphics. Nice blood splatters I guess.

### Originality: 1 / 10

I've played tons of games just like this.

### Challenge: 7 / 10

I did find myself dying sometimes. The skill involved is mostly aiming while moving. You can shoot or deflect but there's rarely a good reason to choose one over the other.

### Fun factor: 5 / 10

I don't know what to keep saying about these games except that I guess it's fun to go around shooting people. In this case I feel like the game could be more responsive with things like recoil and telling how damaged the enemies are.

### Content: 4 / 10

Just three guns and three levels.

### Total: 19 / 50

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

[Swordplay]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 5 / 10

Nice line art. I'm not sure what the proper name is when the style looks like pencil or pen. It kind of reminds me of Mateusz Skutnik.

### Originality: 4 / 10

This includes some cool twists compared to the usual defense games.

### Challenge: 9 / 10

It takes a while to get in the groove and figure out how to deal with each enemy weapon. At first I felt like there were some impossible situations but after a few playthroughs it feels like you took care to make sure there's always a way to deal with the incoming blades.

### Fun factor: 6 / 10

I found myself wanting to retry over and over to see if I could get past the axes.

### Content: 2 / 10

Very small game, even with three attacking weapon types.

### Total: 26 / 50

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