Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gooby]

I liked the aesthetic of this game a lot, the simple brush tool art screams Flash, but there's also enough flair in the animation (I especially like the running animation) to make it feel as though all the simplicity is intentional and reflects a consistent style, rather than being simple out of laziness or inexperience. The graphics and dialogue are really cute and make me want to see more work either in the same universe or in the same style.

The gameplay is unfortunately kind of lacking. The controls are smooth and the rules are fair, but when you combine the simplicity with the lack of difficulty you end up with something that feels very forgettable. The auto targeting makes this game feel like an even easier version of Archero where you don't even have to stop moving to continue attacking. The enemy AI only comes in a few flavors, and because none of them try to encircle you and just have basic rush or projectile attacks, the hardest part of any level is surviving long enough to begin circling all of the enemies that clump together in the middle of the screen. The game's progression seems like a difficulty curve at first, but since the upgrades scale proportionally to the increased enemy density, you realize it's really just a single homogeneous experience with power creep to make it look more dramatic over time.

Despite having a few forks in the map, the game ultimately ends up being very linear, since you still have to clear every level, and one of the areas is actually soft-locked (in a very conspicuous and intentional way) by having enemies that are too fast for you and have to be revisited once you unlock the first speed upgrade.

The upgrades are really basic and the false choice of building out your character (since you eventually max out everything anyway) feels like the design of this game was borrowed from a mobile game. On top of that, the lack of a final boss really is a big letdown, because it essentially means that the first and last levels have the same content - just the same 3 basic enemies that are all dealt with using the same circling strategy.

For a one-time experience, this isn't bad, as it's short and doesn't overstay its welcome. That said, there are so many little tells that indicate that the game is a very tightly controlled experience (from the upgrades to the path the player takes to the single dominant play strategy) so its replay value is going to suffer dramatically, player agency and skill ceiling are low, and playthroughs of the game from player to player are going to look nearly identical, as there's really no way to play the game aggressively, defensively, or even like a speedrunner (since you can only attack at the predetermined autofiring rate.)

[Portal Defenders: Fast Break!]

Really good looking (and feeling) game. The sound design and animation in particular really make this pop and give it a really exciting energy.

Gameplay-wise, it's fun if you play the way you're intended to, but it's easy to cheese the game. Once you're in the lead, you can essentially stand still and run the timer out. I saw an NPC run up to me and use an attack to steal the ball ONCE, but even if this happens you can generally just run and never shoot. The extra obstacles in each level sometimes mitigate this, but not to the point that this wasn't a dominant strategy toward the end when the AI became really oppressive. If anything, the level gimmicks feel like a desperate attempt to fix underlying balance issues with either the mechanics or bad AI.

The controls felt a bit annoying, it was never clear what it took to block a shot (sometimes my jumps could knock a ball away from the hoop, sometimes they couldn't, despite me jumping with almost identical timing and in the same place.) Having attack be a button combo instead of a fourth button also seemed strange and unnecessary.

The fact that the turbo only replenishes under certain conditions led to some frustrating situations where you literally can't do anything except block, especially with late-game AI players that would jump in and grab the ball at lightning speed, making it nearly impossible to grab the ball without directly attacking. On the other hand, the "on fire" bonus felt really overpowered and like a cheap way to give a struggling player a free win if they just kept playing long enough to get lucky. I think the solution to this would be to make it so that turbo slowly replenishes on its own, and have On Fire only last for a certain amount of time, not until the opponent scores again.

In terms of content, this game feels bloated. Too many levels and too many characters, with the gameplay changing too little across these variables to make it tempting to replay. It feels exceptionally demotivating when you consider that the most reliable way to beat the game is to run back and forth without actually shooting.

Overall this game feels like an overly ambitious project with some fundamental flaws in enemy AI and balance that were hastily covered up with lots of characters and level gimmicks, rather than addressing the underlying issues. The result is something that looks and plays like a great game from the right angle, but has a few gaping holes in it that become obvious upon closer inspection.

BoMToons responds:

Great review, this is why I love NG :-)

[Alister - Monster tamer]

Going into this, the polish and production quality of this game (especially the buttery smooth animation and vibrant particle effects) made me think it was going to be a serious contender to win the whole Jam. Unfortunately this game is either incomplete or just buggy beyond belief.

Defense Cut is the only attack that seems to do a reasonable amount of damage, and even then you can only barely kill the two turtles at the beginning before they kill you. Unless you reload from a save, those turtles are actually still there after you defeat them, making it impossible to progress, and if you DO make it past them, dying puts you back at the start with the turtles respawned, forcing you to load again. Sometimes even winning a fight will do this, which is quite annoying. I was able to trigger the cutscene inside the castle, but that was as far as I got.

Keep going, there's a game here but it's clearly not finished.

Alex303 responds:

thank you for the feedback! I increased the starting level and removed the turtles after you beat them or lose and it saves it. yea sadly didnt have any time to add anymore thanks for playing.

I forgot to mention the reason some attacks do less damage is because of the typechart. there is a working typechat but did not elaborate on it here

[SPERT BALLS]

Have you played Brainsplatters 2? This reminds me a LOT of that game and it's hard not to directly compare the two (which is kind of crazy considering that game is nearly twice your age.) Anyway...

Virtually everything about the aesthetics of this game are pretty flawed. The drawings, voice acting, writing, and gameplay could all stand to get some major improvements. That said, I have a lot of appreciation for the level of detail put into giving this game every little bell and whistle, even if those bells and whistles are themselves flawed.

For instance, the animated intro, animated menu, and voice acting are all inclusions that aren't strictly necessary for a "click stick figures to shoot them" game, but contribute to a really cinematic experience. In a way, this feels more like a concept sketch or animatic of an actual game, given how lacking the assets are but how complete the structure is.

Aside from the rather generic advice of "put more effort into the graphics" something really critical in making this a better game would be ramping up the difficulty. Forcing the player to click the stick figures faster, making the stick figures move, or more complex methods of killing bad guys (similar to having to find the hiding sticks in the last level) would make this more engaging instead of allowing the player to cruise through the entirety of the game in a single attempt.

Ibs571 responds:

I did actually played Brainsplatters 2 about when I was 6 yrs old (8 yrs ago) on stickpage but the main inspiration I took was from a game called Sift Heads I remember playing that game with my brother years ago

Note: Originally I was going to add puzzles and different mechanics but the 2023 flash forward deadline was near and then I rushed it

[Ucogi GO]

There's not much here other than a walking simulator. The graphics and overall production quality are nice, but there's not enough here to really call it a game.

The biggest issue with what you have (and this issue really does stand front and center) is that rolling over the circles to move to them just feels really bizarre and unnecessarily tedious due to how small the circles are. Using arrow keys (even if the arrows have a button overlay on the screen, as many mobile games do) would make this feel so much more accessible. As it is, the awkwardness makes it feel like I'm playing a port even on its intended platform.

Veinom responds:

I wanted this to be a game that you can play with your mouse only, but you are right. I was considering making the blue circles bigger, and I will try adding keyboard controls as an alternative. Thank you.

[A Dress Up Game]

Well, it's a dress-up game, taken a bit more literally than anyone expected. The music and graphics are solid, but the clicking and dragging mechanic is a bit frustrating because the depth of the objects being manipulated can make it so the mouse gets stuck dragging objects around.

Some simple QoL improvements would be to have a toggler for things that are obviously meant to go in one place (such as clothes and accessories) and allowing the player to dynamically spawn and delete decorations like arrows, circles, and spirals, rather than just having a bunch of them shoved into the corner. Also, manipulating the background with something other than the spacebar would be nice, it seems like a total non-sequitur to include keyboard controls.

Cyberdevil responds:

Indeed it is, though hopefully that unexpected literal twist was an appreciable entertainment factor too; redeeming point of an otherwise functionally I agree somewhat limited game. ;) Mmm, I've wondered why the mouse sometimes gets stuck like that, it doesn't seem to happen often (for me at least) but I do agree, not ideal. An extra click seems to let go of the item that's being dragged when this happens.

Such things go beyond my coding capabilities, but all good ideas for sure. In regard to the background you can toggle it via one of the on-screen arrow buttons as well. Personally I feel like keyboard shortcuts are always a benefit; the quickest way to perform an action. If however you're on mobile/touchscreen everything but music can be toggled within the game also, thinking of it now I really should've added a button for music too if you actually do not have a keyboard, essential feature...

Appreciate the feedback Kwing! Maybe I'll up my coding capabilities a bit till next year.

[Tidying Up + Secrets of the Sewers]

The aesthetic for this game isn't my style, but there's no denying it works really well. The UI and music just look really polished, and you even have some filters (film grain and the scan lines over the character avatars) to make the game visually pop.

That said, there are a couple UI things that I found a bit annoying which should be easy fixes. The dialogue and music buttons take up a lot of the screen, and I'd rather just have a settings button for music and a popup for dialogue that went away completely after the cutscene finished, as they take up a lot of real estate and make the game screen look cluttered. The controls on the right also seem cluttered until you realize they're there for mobile players. This could potentially be something a desktop user could hide to free up more space, but it's less important. Finally (and this is really a 5 minute fix) I was confused by the fact that the only way to tell who the player is controlling is the "ACTIVE: 1" indicator at the top of the screen (and the sparkles, which only pop up for a fraction of a second and then are gone completely.) Why not have some kind of effect or even just a color change over the active player character?

One more small nitpick regarding presentation is that the amount of juice in the transitions and the quantity of dialogue (which is kind of cliche) make it feel like too small a percent of the time the player spends with the game open is actually gameplay, which only becomes more annoying with the puzzles themselves being so easy. I finished this game feeling unsatisfied, and while the level creation system hypothetically allows players to enjoy more content and more difficult levels, it feels a bit like outsourcing an important part of the game onto the player when the content included in story mode is so lean.

On a more fundamental level, there's an interesting concept here, but I REALLY didn't like the level design. Most of the levels are braindead easy, and the ones that are even slightly hard hinge entirely on keeping one of the characters trapped until the end of the level. Sliding puzzles where a character can only stop when they hit an obstacle are common, and the idea of being able to manipulate an obstacle (the capybara) so as to put the sliding character in optimal positions is a novel twist, but if all of the difficulty comes from keeping Capy locked away in a little area where she can't help, your level design has undone the exact mechanic which differentiates this game from every other slider puzzle.

I get why you made an easy game. Harder games score significantly lower on the site and it's clear whoever designed the game knew their audience. At the same time, there are ways to reward more skilled play, even if basic completion of the game is easy. The most obvious idea is to keep count of how many moves the player has made, and recognize if a player is able to complete the same level in fewer moves.

4.5/5 for a really solid concept, but I'd like to see a player pack flesh out the content with a bit more difficulty and replayability.

Bleak-Creep responds:

Thanks for the in-depth review! The character portrait labels are a bit buggy yet and could definitely use some work, I agree there. We're planning on having the characters flash briefly when switching between them in a future build too, we just ran out of time and used the sparkles as a simple replacement for the time being.

As for the levels themselves, I know we did struggle a bit at first at trying to determine exactly what levels mechanics would be kind of make sense in the house setting as well as how to keep Capy from feeling too "OP" once he's able to move around freely.

There's a good chance we might go back in and add some bonus levels that add more challenge later too, but we aimed toward making the storyline a more accessible experience so players could get the whole story within a a single sitting without getting too frustrated.

[Shadow Gauntlet]

I really wanted to like this. The concept is really cool, balancing the recoil for movement as well as attacking targets or grappling.

That said, the physics are really an acquired taste. The recoil is too weak and the player's momentum decays too slowly, making everything feel really floaty. I couldn't get past level 6 because of how unequipped the recoil strength is to counteract gravitational force.

Having a bit snappier controls, specifically stronger recoil and weaker gravity, would make this much more accessible.

EDIT: Finally figured out that where you grab the bird in level 6 affects its tilt and therefore the direction it flies (it flies straight, relative to where it's facing.) Still totally lost on how to unlock the portal in level 8.

VicBiss responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I've had to do all of the level design and testing over the past week or so to get it out for the Flash Forward Jam. So it's quite rushed. I actually just weakened the gravity a bit and think it is feeling better.