Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Spacewar Championship]

If nothing else, I really enjoyed how smoothly this game runs in Ruffle. The controls are responsive and everything works without an inkling of slowdown.

The biggest gimmick of this game - that being the different ship types - is honestly not that interesting. Most of the variants are objectively bad, such as the random teleporter, the bullet going toward the center, or short-range rapid fire. On the other hand, I found the rockets and long range "sniper" ships to be significantly overpowered. These are things that should probably have some kind of tradeoff to make them all competitively viable against each other, or perhaps to have some kind of rock-paper-scissors where certain types have an advantage over others.

The map itself is very odd. The gravity well in the center is a neat idea, but it's way too strong and also doesn't matter for the AI players at all. What if your bullets didn't damage ships, but instead stunned or pushed them? Pushing an enemy into the gravity well would feel really satisfying. Having multiple arenas would be nice, too. What if the map was larger and had two gravity wells?

A couple other balance things are in order, I think. First, the ships need to loop around from one side of the map to the other faster. Too much of the combat happens completely off-screen, partly because you have to go far off screen to respawn on the other end, and partly because you can't spend as much time as you'd want near the center because of the aforementioned gravity well. Speaking of map balance, there seriously needs to be some invulnerability to prevent spawn killing.

The basic engine for this game feels great but this needs some pretty serious rebalancing.

IamJonathan responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback! The map is the way it is because this is a remake of the original Spacewar game form the 60s. The idea behind the different ships was to have opponents of increasing strength for the singleplayer and I only added the option to play as other ships at the last moment. That being said, these are some great suggestions that I'll definitely consider if I ever make a sequel.

[Jaded Slasher]

It was honestly kind of painful to finish this. At first glance it looks like there's a lot of content (60 rooms!) but the whole game is just clicking to attack. There's no resource management (health potions are useless since you can always run back to a town and heal without taking damage) and the best way to grind is usually to find an area with a high spawn rate of chests and just click endlessly (especially as they respawn on their own.) The whole game can be beaten with a pretty simple formula:

- Click enemies until you meet the quota to unlock the next room or get low on health.
- Proceed to next room when possible.
- Heal when necessary.
- Spend excess money on stat upgrades.

The quests are generic "kill X of Y monster" and the lack of equipment or abilities really takes away from any variety the game might have with regards to actual gameplay. Combine that with basically no story and me mowing over the witch without taking any damage (not really interested in going back to kill the ogre superboss) and you have a pretty forgettable game.

Steps to improve? I think having the spatial element of the rooms coming into play would be nice. Right now you just kind of teleport from enemy to enemy and the positioning doesn't matter at all. What if there were some kind of stamina system and moving farther distances exhausted more stamina? What if enemies had an attack radius and attacking ANYTHING caused you to take damage from any enemy if you were within that radius? Stuff like this would make the player think more carefully before they acted. Also make it so just traveling from room to room carries some risk for the player.

If possible, try and discard any system that functions around making stats go up in favor of novel upgrades such as abilities. When the only thing that changes is a number indicating the damage you inflict or receive, it can really take away from the sense of progression because that progress is only represented in an abstract way.

Better player feedback would be nice, too. I'd like to see damage numbers by the characters when they attacked, and maybe a notification or pop-up that indicates when you have unspent skill points. Lack of player feedback made this game feel pretty obtuse.

Graphics are vibrant and colorful but get old fast, especially given how long (and padded) this game is. A shorter, more condensed game experience would have worked a lot better for this project I think.

Performance is also kind of weird on Ruffle, I had a much easier time playing in Flash.

applessmillion responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I'll see what I can do to improve upon the idea in the future. I will admit the current game has fewer elements of strategy than what I intended. There are two types of quests (kill X of Y; Collect X of Y) and would totally be open to a 3rd type, just couldn't figure out what that would be.
I'll definitely keep in mind your suggestions for the update I plan to release end of March/early April. Thanks again!

[Bullet Heaven 3 [Prototype]]

Pretty solid game here. Having played Realm of the Mad God for the past few months, I felt right at home with the bullet hell mechanics, though obviously there's a decent amount of other stuff to talk about.

I wasn't a fan of the upgrade mechanics. It introduces too much power creep to the game, to the point where there's really no point worrying about your rank as you can S rank the levels with better upgrades later on. Introducing a money multiplier based on your rank would be nice, as it would give incentive for players to get higher rankings earlier in the game, as well as add more options for grinding money other than repeatedly failing the hardest level they've unlocked.

There are a LOT of enemy types here, and while the variety is pretty cool, it seems like there's a lot of potential for mixing different types that you didn't use at all. In most cases, dodging becomes very easy if you just get far enough away from the enemies. This creates a pretty redundant pattern of clearing a corner or side of the arena and then wiggling around in that area while clearing the rest of the room. It works, but there aren't many (if any) enemies that really punish this strategy or force other types of play. The other side of this is how enemies may spawn en masse before you're done clearing a wave. This is interesting and can keep the momentum going, but in some cases (particularly when there are still plenty of enemies left) it can feel really unfair, as the act of clearing enemies ultimately results in more appearing on screen. It can feel like the player is being punished for doing nothing wrong (it's also annoying when you rush in to grab some coins only to have to retreat immediately.) It would be more fair for only weaker enemies to spawn in these kinds of situations, and if your intent is to prevent players from camping in "cold spots" this could be done by a certain enemy type rather than through the game's spawning mechanic. You could also do this with more than just bullets; obstacles such as walls or traps (Amorphous uses puddles of things like oil or acid) would be a creative way to increase the skill ceiling of the game without just taking a "more is better" approach to the bullets.

Performance-wise, it honestly looks like you did the worst thing you possibly could. The number of objects moving on screen for a bullet hell is higher than potentially any other genre, and you did this while also putting glow effects on each of the bullets (since filters don't work in Ruffle, I'm guessing you used Soften Fill Edges?) I had to download this game and run it in Flash, and even then the game slowed down considerably. I switched the game quality to low, which worked for a few levels... and then, even on Flash Player and on low quality, I still experienced some significant slowdowns. Surely this game would run faster if your glow effects were pre-baked with PNGs?

Aesthetics-wise, the graphics look nice but it's obviously unfortunate that you had to re-use old assets. I thoroughly resented the music, but I'll admit that's a matter of taste.

Good game and engaging gameplay, but the content feels a bit padded.

matt-likes-swords responds:

Thanks for the feedback.

The bullets ARE bitmaps though!

[Ruffle:Another Mission]

Eh, it's okay. I like the silhouette-based graphics a lot, but the gameplay is in a pretty rough state. The first and most obvious issue is that J and H are pretty unintuitive keys for sniping. Given that this game uses WASD and won't have mobile integration, mouse aiming makes a lot more sense for shooting. The controls also feel weird regarding the platforming, specifically some of the jumps which require high precision.

Probably the biggest issue is the lines that you and the enemies have to telegraph where they're aiming. The limited range (both for the player and enemies) is inconsistent and makes it frustrating to know when and where you can be hit. Some kind of delay and audio telegraph would be nice, as it would give the player a chance to run the other way or try to quickscope enemies. The meat and potatoes of the game (running into the aiming path of an enemy, then sniping them before the line rolls over you) became intuitive with enough practice but never really felt enjoyable.

It's not a bad concept, but it feels clunky, as the actual challenge (timing when to come out of hiding and sniping quickly) feels pretty far removed from the actual concept of a run and gun.

speed8327 responds:

thanks for the feedback. ...really appreciated it.

And about the game controller layout, the game was developed with Mobile-first design approach ( arrows key movement and A/B button for sniping and shooting). So, it had to map the desktop controller layout.

But at the last minute of publishing because of this ruffle's GitHub issue ( https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/1972 ), had to drop the entry for mobile device (for time being).

If on getting more request and follow, I might upload another version of this game using openFl and haxe, adding extra levels with some extra playable characters with different abilities that might make the game more enjoyable.

So, stay tuned.

[Stupid House]

Man, this game slays! The first and most obvious thing to point out is how well the different filters (transparent PNGs?) work. The illusion of a curved-screen CRT and film grain really amp up the atmosphere, especially with the strange TV character that gives you hints.

Speaking more on the graphics, they're kind of all over the place. Some of the textures (shown by the TV, mirror in bathroom, plant) look really high fidelity, whereas others (most of the exploration) have the trademark angular Flash game "feel" to them. The jarring switch between art styles sometimes feeds into the surrealist theme, but at other points feels like a discrepancy in quality. For example, the clock room looks gorgeous and simply feels like a different style, whereas the ladders you traverse really are TOO simplistic.

The puzzles themselves are actually substantive - the first one is fairly simple, whereas the next few (including exploring the different rooms) gets trickier. There are only two issues I have with the puzzles themselves. First, the piano puzzle requires you to tap some pretty small surfaces. On desktop this is fine but on mobile, players are going to struggle to hit the exact notes. Second (and also dealing with the piano puzzle) is that there are so many keys it can be hard to track which one is correct, especially with the 3rd note which is a lot harder since several of the keys make a similar sound and you really have to pay attention to the interval it makes with the 1st note to get it right. It's nothing too terrible, but I do think it might have improved user experience a bit to take away some of the keys on the keyboard, both to make the puzzle simpler as well as to make the keys easier to tap on a phone.

A separate thing I'd note about user experience is that some of the animations and game loops you get stuck in really feel like they take too long. Accidentally clicking on the TV guy and watching the hint animation, or accidentally clicking on the door loops can be really tedious. At the very least, a skip button for the hint animation would be nice.

The only other thing I want to mention is that I was waiting for all of this to mean something. Obviously this isn't the most fair question to ask, as many other games of this ilk don't explain anything at all, but the environment of this game is so different and memorable that it's hard not to want to explore this world further or get some kind of answers.

[This is the Only Level]

I remember playing this a long time ago. It's a cute concept, and the single level feels very Game Jam-ish in style. A handful of the puzzles feel pretty similar to each other but all in all this is worth the time to play. The friendlier version of PT, if you will.

[Ball Revamped 5: Synergy]

While the most polished looking Ball Revamped, I feel like this is missing something that BR4 had. The synergy system is cool and allows for some neat puzzles, but the mechanics never feel fully realized. Similarly, the alinear style of the game feels like it has potential but mostly just feels like you never get the complete experience, especially since there's no clear way to be sure you've beaten all of the levels upon replaying the game. The alinear puzzle and exploration aspects don't really blend with the arcade style of carefully avoiding obstacles, and while this game is far less frustrating than BR4, I'd argue it's less rewarding as well.

Still, the beauty of the graphics can't be overstated and the music has gotten a big overhaul as well. I specifically loved the elemental animations for the ball, and the effects on the four colors shown.

[Ball Revamped 4]

This is the Ball Revamped I remember from my childhood! It's no wonder I liked this game so much, considering how polished it is for the year it came out. The physics are far improved from the previous games, the glimmer and shadow effect on the walls finally feel like actual graphics and not some kind of placeholder, and the music is catchy (despite the loops being very short.)

If there's any one thing I'd criticize it would be the general lack of design in lieu of powerups. There's a lot of content to be sure, but a big chunk of the middle levels feel more like a showcase of different features (bombs, lasers, fire, steel, darkness, etc.) than actually making challenging levels out of them. As a result I found myself struggling the most with the first couple worlds as well as the last 5 "countdown" ones. The final boss also feels kind of gimmicky in that there's really no point in avoiding the attacks so long as you can get to the goal when it pops up. Having the player be able to react to them in some way (especially requiring some tasks to be done to make the goal accessible) would make it feel more like an actual fight.

That said, this still holds up wonderfully! Performance isn't the best on Ruffle but I successfully made it to level 55 before having to download it and play the rest in Flash Player.

[Ball (Original Demo)]

Stupid me, I quit at level 44 before realizing there were only 45 levels. Oh well...

For 2004 this is plays pretty smoothly and still manages to be enjoyable nearly 20 years later. It is simple, but that's the point of a demo, right? Plenty of obvious things to change here, namely the music, textured walls, etc. but the core physics feel good, if a bit frustrating for some of the more difficult levels.

[Tricky Keys]

For this being a Game Jam game, it's really nothing short of incredible. Or maybe a sign I need to stop doing Game Jams solo. Either way, this is a really neat concept. Pixel art is so overdone, but the actual theme of a Windows 95/98 computer looks fantastic and really gives a sense of charm to the whole game. The puzzle platformer thing is also pretty done, especially when it comes to indie titles, but it really does fit the theme.

Level design is tight and doesn't pull any punches. However, I found a lot of the earlier levels to actually be harder, whereas later levels were longer but easier. Most of them felt pretty well-balanced, though the final level was a bit too long (the difficulty was appropriate, it felt like the puzzle elements should have been spread among two levels instead of one.) Fortunately the one level where I felt the difficulty was bordering on too much also happened to be the final level, so I also appreciate that the outlier also happens to be the closest thing this game has to a final boss.

There are really only two flaws to this game that I can think of. First, a few of the background elements are a bit too vibrant, making it seem as though the player could actually interact with them. A simple transparent black filter over them might make it a bit more clear what's part of the level and what isn't. Second, seeing the virus tap the keys is useful, but it's really annoying that you have to look at the other end of the screen to see what's going on. The amount of looking back and forth between the controls and the game world can feel frustrating in a way that doesn't feel entirely fair. There are a handful of things that could have been done to make this a bit easier to digest, such as having some kind of wind-up animation to show when the virus was about to hit a key, but I can also see these making the game too easy at some points as well. Overall I think there's a way you could have telegraphed the key presses without sacrificing too much of the game's central mechanic.