TharosTheDragon's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Wanted!]

A good game for NG's 30th anniversary, even though it includes a lot of non-Newgrounds characters

[Zui's Witch Academy]

It seems the only things that gets saved are the difficulties you've unlocked and the fact that you've viewed the tutorial. I wish it saved your progress in a run because it takes about half an hour to get through all the bosses. Still 5 stars, though

When you're going down a hall and you hear the door close behind you and you go back to check on it, you can keep triggering the door slamming sound effect indefinitely. I assume that's a bug

[Fantastic Contraption]

Servers still seem to be working for me. http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=12703549

Sarah Northway does have a Newgrounds account but guess she only made it after Sparkworkz became inactive

[CA-6 EX (Picture Poker)]

I lost because I thought a straight would count.

I wish betting high amounts was easier. There should be an all-in button, and pressing a button that would make your bet higher than max should just clamp it to the max. Maybe the bet buttons could also increase their amounts as you rank up.

I see that you're monitoring the issue about the user session expiring. I certainly didn't leave the page for an hour, but I may have been playing for about an hour. I'd occasionally scroll down to read comments or check other tabs, but I was never gone for long. And yet Return On Investment, Constellated, and the secret medal all remain locked for me :(

Also there's a bug where Constellated keeps getting unlocked every hand. I don't know if it's related to the user session expiring or not.

EDIT: There is an option to fix the medal problem that you might not have considered, but you probably won't like it since you haven't implemented a save system yet. Some games will save their own redundant medal state so when the game is loaded up again it immediately retries unlocking all the medals that it knows should be unlocked for the user

GlitchyPSI responds:

About Straights: Yeah, the prize table is based on Luigi's Picture Poker, there being only 6 possible cards would make straights super easy to do so they're not in lol

About the buttons: Thanks for the feedback! I will see to add an all-in button since I did not initially add it because I ran out of space. I'd like to keep the bet buttons as they are though

About the session expiring... I've tried about everything I can without having to ask the user to re-login :( I can't even reliably check when a re-login is needed, it just doesn't tell me properly. I might just hardcode a timer so they log in with NG Passport again in the meantime this bug gets fixed...
EDIT: I'm probably gonna have to implement a save system just for this. I had not intended to have one at all, but this bug is going to make it a necessity :/

About achievements getting unlocked every hand: yeah, it's related to the session... it only shows the achievement if NG says that you got the medal, but if the session is expired it'll be like if NG said you didn't get it every time it tries.

Thanks for the feedback! If you have a screenshot of your stats to confirm ROI and others please PM me.

[Level 9 Access]

I killed the boss and died at the same time. The restart screen was active throughout the ending sequence, but it looks like the victory still counted

BlueEagle421 responds:

Thanks for letting me know. Will fix ;)

[Painter Blazer]

In the construction zone, I fell through the clouds and had no way to reset my character. I had to return to the hub, where I discovered that I lost all of my progress including the key to my house.

EDIT: Fixed. What's the deal with Blaster being a controllable player 2 in the sewer?

aapiarts responds:

Edit: this has been fixed now!

That has been reported multiple times now so I'll look in to it and fix it soon. Didn't come up when playtesting the game.

[RoboNips]

No pause?

[North Pole Noir]

You get Gruss Vom Krampus! medal by following the gnome clue in the Sofia/Rosie case.

I've gotten everything except Bottoms Up!

[Get in Santa's Pants 3: Knickerless for St. Nicholas]

I'm curious to know how the gnome's gift works. I'm guessing he gives you one of the 5 horn pieces that you can't get in the palace if you're missing one of them, and if you already have all of them then he gives you the Easter egg.

EDIT: Okay, thanks for letting me know what the Easter egg does, but I was asking how the game determines what the gnome gives you.

The game runs very smoothly, almost flawlessly, but there are a few mistakes to point out. The unfortunate character substitutions seems to indicate faulty font embedding. There are typos here and there ("I can't breath" for example).

I very much like the option to Britify the money notation, but there seem to be some bugs with that. I liked figuring out how many coins each thing translated to, which was almost a metagaming puzzle. 1d. = one penny = 4 coins. 1s. = one shilling = 12d. = 48 coins. Five shillings is a crown and four crowns is 1l., a pound/sovereign I guess. But the way it gets displayed in the menu is bugged. It says things like 2s. 10s. 1d. when I do indeed have 12 shillings and a penny but I think it means to display crowns instead of having two spots for shillings. The only way to display something larger than a shilling is to accumulate 1008 coins which shows up as 1gn. I'm guessing that's short for a sovereign, even though the game established that a sovereign is the same as a pound which is 960 coins and not 1008. And when the street deviant charges 1008 coins, that seems to be the only place where the amount doesn't get translated into the alternate notation, because it still says 1008 coins regardless of which money type is configured.

Louistrations responds:

It'll give you a different drawing on the credits screen. ^^

[Milk Quest 1+2]

I always like games where the levels are designed to feel totally different when you're controlling different characters