TharosTheDragon's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Die for the Lich - web demo]

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 :)

[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

[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.

[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. ^^

[Pizza Kidd - NEW DEMO! 🍕🔥]

The boss got stuck in a permanent sideways drill attack state and there was nothing I could do. It was impossible to attack him without taking damage myself

PizzaKiddo responds:

Thank you so much for providing this feedback! We will continue to refine the enemy AI along with the rest of the game...we apologize for any additional issues you may have experienced. 🦾🍕

[Scrap Your Pants]

Exploded with less than a second left :(

QualityStuff499 responds:

You can do it! Best card for starters is no centipides or a shield, buy repair every time even if costly!

[Powerline Guardians]

The game feels unfinished. Is there a win condition? When the spiders reached the core they didn't seem to be able to do any damage to it, and my drills didn't seem to have any progress bars either.

I started a game with just one other player and they left so I was by myself, so maybe it just doesn't work under those conditions

Jurfix responds:

The progress bars of the drills are located in the upper right corner, you need to repair all the lines so that they are yellow until they become green, the goal of the game is to fill all 5 progress bars