Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Courtroom69]

The writing, graphics, and UI all look fantastic here and make this feel super polished. I've never played a Phoenix Wright game but the options you give for presenting evidence or bringing up the names of relevant characters feels intuitive and usable.

My biggest issue with this as a game is that I honestly can't tell if it's possible to lose. In most cases where I picked the wrong character or item in discovery, I was immediately allowed to pick the correct option, which made this feel so linear it's almost like an interactive movie dressed up as a visual novel. The password save system does make me think there must be some way to fail (why even include it if the player can't get a game over and kicked back to the menu screen?) but again I don't know what would even cause this since the game is so easy. To this point it does seem a bit odd to use passwords as a save system - why not just have a scene select built into the game?

The length of this game feels appropriate but I'd appreciate a bit more lateral content in the form of bad endings (which would also coincide with some much-needed difficulty.)

Veinom responds:

What you said is spot on. In this current version (v 0.3), you can't lose. This was intended to be an introduction to a larger case, but I couldn't finish the entire thing in time (for the Flash Forward 2025 deadline), so I focused on polishing this shorter version.

The complete story was to include two more witnesses and be three times the size. That's why I added the password system, in case someone needs to take a break. The story and dialogues are all mapped out, with various endings depending on how many jurors you have at the end.

This is the first visual novel I've ever created, and it was challenging to calculate the length of the game, or how long it would take me to finish it. I've realized it takes more time than I anticipated. But I'm pleased that I was able to complete something presentable on time, and I'm eager to gather some feedback. So, thank you for playing and sharing your thoughts!

[Riddle of the Rainbow Rune]

I REALLY struggled to understand this game. Too much is thrown at you at once (7 stats, 5 disciplines of magic, and a spellbook you have to begin purging before you even understand what the spells are or what they do.)

Probably the biggest issue here is that you're given tons of information about your units and their loadouts, but the gameplay itself is idle, making it nearly impossible to actually see the impact of your decisions. What spell did my unit use that nearly one shot an enemy? This makes it impossible to know which builds to lean into and what spells to discard. Clicking on stats to see a description of them doesn't matter if you don't understand what stats contributed to which spells or which spells contributed to which victories.

Plenty of things on-screen are shown but NOT explained. What is a "lonely" spell? Why are some AOE shapes different colors despite only being one tile?

Other game mechanics are also explained very poorly. There are 3-4 different "contexts" I've noticed between fighting, collecting, the rainbow "riddle" mode (I didn't even realize there were riddles to solve until I saw that there's a medal attached to them) and shops. One of the biggest points of confusion is that I'd give one of my characters a rune to level up one of their colors of magic and I'd see the regular level of a DIFFERENT unit go up. At first I thought the runes gave experience as well as a level in that type of magic. Later I realized that collecting all of the runes essentially triggers an "end of battle" sequence where the experience you already gained has now propagated to your characters. This is super counterintuitive and implicitly communicates inaccurate information to the player.

After playing and failing, I still have absolutely no idea what a good strategy is, and my intuition that having certain units specialize in different kinds of magic rather than being generalists is probably useful, yet I have absolutely no data to show on this account.

In order for this game to be even remotely playable, I think having the name of a spell being used appear as it's being used, as well as some kind of damage indicator that gets bigger when dealing bigger damage would be a good first step. As an example, seeing "Splash" next to big damage numbers would confirm to the player that one of the spells they've invested in is paying off, while seeing "Magic Missile" next to small numbers might suggest a player should discard that spell the next time they're forced to.

The music and voices are okay but nothing special. The game sprites are basic but I like the idea of having the units change color according to the type of magic they're strongest in, and the frame by frame animation for the spells themselves looks fantastic.

EDIT: After playing a bit more, I've found that a generally effective strategy (on novice at least) is to minmax for high levels in specific types of magic, then learn the spells with the highest level prerequisites and discard the ones with the lowest prerequisites. Reaching high levels happens pretty quickly, so conserving gold for healing is useful, as well as experience if a character ALMOST has enough experience to level. Runes to level up a unit's magic are nearly useless unless you already know the tech tree (which you aren't allowed to see.)

I mostly put all my units in the front because there didn't seem to be a straightforward rock-paper-scissors hierarchy between the colors, just that opposite colors dealt extra damage to each other (which isn't necessarily good or bad; it just meant fights would either go by quickly or slowly.)

I'm sure on harder difficulties you have to pay attention to the actual skills and perhaps place support units toward the back, but due to issues mentioned above I suspect if I picked a harder difficulty and lost I wouldn't really understand why. The seemingly endless levels (without content changing or even an indicator saying how far I'd gotten) make it really demotivating to try and "finish" the game since I have no idea how close I am.

The end of the game comes suddenly, and without any real content other than random magicians from start to finish (not even a boss) it's kind of frustrating (and anticlimactic) that the game just ends, especially if you were gunning for some of the level mastery medals.

VicBiss responds:

Implemented a couple of your suggestions. Appreciate the feedback and thanks for playing! The engine is built to be very complex, that's the kind of thing that I enjoy. It certainly has it's downsides, though.

[Red goes to the Store]

It's rough, but the roughness adds something not unlike the old Johnny Rocketfingers games. The voice acting really does wonders here for the game's personality and elevates the writing from lackluster to quirky. The music is also great, which makes the audio as a whole a really engaging experience.

The mix of actual fonts (as selectable text?) and badly hand-drawn text, inappropriate colors (door randomly has a red outline?) and grunted sound effects give this a really homemade feel which would be bad if it weren't for the fact that the actual animation is pretty decent. Small things like the car bouncing after launching off the ramp subtly show the difference between "bad on purpose" and just bad.

My biggest frustration was probably that picking the wrong options often led to interesting outcomes, which meant that accidentally picking the right option could necessitate a second replay to see everything, but the short length of the game makes this a very minor issue (though the game being too short is something of a problem on its own.)

Games like these are ultimately a great experience in a Game Jam as they're short and sweet and you can play a bunch of them back to back and get a novel experience each time. On the other hand it's a bit lean from the perspective of this standing on its own.

If you're concerned about the filesize, you can go to Publish Settings, change the bitrate under Audio Stream and Audio Event to be lower, then check Override Sound Settings. At 48kbps I was able to compress Slasher Click 2 to about 11MB and it has nearly an hour's worth of audio in it.

Redead-ITA responds:

Fascinating, thanks for the audio tip, admittedly my main reason why i was worried about it was because i recorded most of my audio on wav and i didn't bother much on converting them to mp3 (with the exception of The music which i did in advance), then i saw that newgrounds devoured 10 out of the 12 mb so i suppose newgrounds also does some optimization under the hood.

the inappropriate colors are actually intended as a way to tell the player that they can click it to see interesting things, it has additional dialogue and everything.

thanks for playing non the less!

[Chess Force]

I enjoyed this, but it's definitely a flawed game. The bullet hell genre is done well, though grinding is perhaps a bit more necessary than I wish it was; I went through the first two levels only to find I did basically no damage in the 3rd level, which was annoying as I was perfectly capable of dodging and attacking but simply didn't have the firepower, making level 3 tedious and leading to very few enemies actually dying and dropping money.

Regarding the actual upgrades, they're okay. Following chess as a theme obviously comes with certain limitations; you can't exactly have AoE attacks or homing bullets without betraying what the helper ships are meant to represent. Unfortunately, this also means that there isn't a ton of strategy to the upgrades, you just buy them when you can and do more damage. There were perhaps 2-3 instances over the whole game where I was able to strategically pick off enemies using the diagonal bullets fired by bishops and queens, but for the most part the utility I got came from these bullets making contact by dumb luck.

With that said, I really did like the way that the helper ships followed you. This made it possible to play more offensively or defensively depending on whether you simply got out of the way of the attack, or whether you got to the right altitude to line up with an enemy before wiggling horizontally to align all of the helpers. The delay on the following mechanism also made it possible to dodge an incoming beam from rooks while still letting your helpers dish out damage, which felt really good to do.

Boss phases are fun, creative, and definitely the highlight of the game. If this were to have any post-game content, I think I'd like some kind of boss rush, maybe with the ability to increase the refresh rate of the game for added difficulty.

My biggest complaint is that the pace of the game is slow. Partly this is due to the current memory leak in Ruffle, but this is an easy fix - just quit and restart the game. The main issue has to do with enemies appearing slowly, with large gaps of time in between waves, the levels themselves being quite long, and the difficulty of on-screen enemies being relatively low. Low difficulty and lack of checkpoints makes it so that most of the difficulty comes from making small mistakes during long, low-risk, high-consequence marathons, which leads to a very frustrating and artificially long game experience when I would have preferred much higher difficulty with less severe setbacks in case of a mistake.

This frustration is exacerbated by some visual issues; tracking your own bullets, the coins that enemies drop, and enemy projectiles is annoying, especially when enemy bullets can sometimes be shown at a lower depth than player bullets, leading to your own bullets hiding incoming fire. Combine this with pink bullets that match the pink background of the final level, the green and white projectiles that match the green and white projectiles that your rooks and queens fire, and the similar saturation of the main layer, background, and foreground elements, it's very easy to run into obstacles not because you made a mistake and got cornered, but because you didn't see the obstacle in the first place.

We've had this conversation at least once before; power creep and visual juice are hallmarks of your games. That's fine, and I've definitely put these features in my games, but one of the first things I do after adding any flashy background and particle effects is to add an option to turn them off. Having player bullets appear at 10% opacity, dimming the background, and disabling loot drops when you already have four queens would be massive quality of life improvements that would require relatively little work, and players that aren't bothered by these things would still get the same experience if they didn't change them in the options menu.

Not much to say about the visuals and sound other than that they're great. The colors are vibrant and varied. The animation is scaled back as you would expect from a Game Jam game, but the small bits of animation that are present look fantastic and there's a consistency among all of the assets that leads to this looking polished.

BoMToons responds:

Thanks for the thorough review. You'll be glad to hear that update to version 1.03 fixed the lag issue that you called a "Ruffle Memory Leak" (but was really an issue in the way I coded custom sound volumes naively).

I'm ok with putting an option to turn off the screen flash. Seems like that's the most-annoying component of the fx. Look for that update coming soon. Another good point is about enemy bullet depth... I'll see if re-arranging that can be done too.

[Untitled Cat Interactivity]

Having to click through the dialogue on each repeat gets VERY old. I've tried all of the options, and while it sounds like petting the cat could change some invisible variables that make the other options lead to a better ending, having to click through the entire game every time discourages the player from trying every combination. (I tried petting and then going to sleep because the cat was tired and still got the same ending you get if you sleep immediately.)

The brevity of the game also makes the game feel a bit pointless. On one hand it's nice not having as much to click through, but on the other you don't get enough interactivity or story to become more invested. In practice it plays closer to one of the old "choose your animation" games than a true visual novel.

Beyond the gameplay, the art is cute but simple, and the UI looks decently clean.

Given that you still have time to tweak this, I'd highly recommend adding some kind of skip feature that you unlock by clicking through that same dialogue at least once. I'd be happy to help with that if you'd like.

sonicgilberth00 responds:

it was my first time doing interactive story with endings, whats the point.

thanks

i'm fine, but thanks as well

[Project Ruffy]

I had no idea you were still working on this, but coming back to it now, it looks pretty good! The score system and presence of an actual objective make this pretty enjoyable. I really like the variety of hazards in the game as well.

Some things of note:
- Explaining the controls in the game would probably work better than clicking through a text explanation of all of it. Explain a mechanic, then force the player to demonstrate understanding of that mechanic to pass an obstacle and move on. I'm pretty sure you're using FeindishDemon's platform engine which is ironic as his tutorial actually begins this way.
- In terms of player experience, the zoomed in camera and slow movement speed make the whole game feel a little sluggish. Being able to run through the level faster would have definitely made for a more enjoyable experience.
- The game doesn't seem to distinguish between pressing a button and holding it. This means you can double jump by holding the jump button instead of tapping it twice, and you have to hold the D button rather than pressing repeatedly to execute an attack combo. From a player feedback perspective, it feels a bit better if you can make each button press correlate with a discrete action rather than holding.
- There's nothing to attack. Enemy AI is hard to code but having some destructible walls would be a nice easy way to utilize the work you've already done in coding and animating the attacks.
- Hazards drain health gradually instead of taking a one-time chunk of health from the player and knocking them back with some invincibility frames. A single instance of damage with a knockback and damage animation/sound gives better player feedback and makes it clearer when they've messed up.
- Hitboxes need fixing. It looks like the actual sprite of the buzzsaws is the hitbox itself, which means that you can hit invisible corners on the buzzsaw (the part between the circle and corners here -> [O]) and take damage from it. Creating invisible hitbox sprites inside your Movie Clip to better represent what needs to collide will help this feel more fair and natural.
- Coins are placed in pretty arbitrary positions; collecting them doesn't add much to the game so much as it just slows you down. I would recommend putting some behind optional hazards so that there's a risk/reward component to your score. Similarly, some kind of timer might raise the skill ceiling of the game and improve replay value.
- Lack of background and texture for the platforms make this look a lot less polished than it is. A simple parallax background and even just some chicken scratches and bevel filter on the platforms would make the game look like a complete project.

If you're open to it, I'd be happy to help you fix most of this stuff. I know I've written a lot here, but with the right guidance it shouldn't take more than a week to fix them.

MebroukTheCat responds:

Well, to be honest... Most of the programming codes were copied from a YouTube video uploaded by jemaster800:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AG_BUSfDc4

It's like I drew the Mona Lisa with a crayon and here's why:

The advantage: It can work.

The disadvantage: It's not perfect.

[Knight and Prison of Ice]

This is a really fun concept. I really enjoyed manipulating the sword and setting up attacks, and getting a good combo on a series of enemies in a line was also really satisfying. The hitboxes took some getting used to; I kept expecting the game to have some kind of perspective with hitboxes being around where the sword's shadow was, but realizing any part of the sword could collide made a huge difference since I didn't have to be as careful about aiming. Similarly the lack of explanation in the game in general was a bit of a hindrance; the in-game tutorial says to use O to use powerups, whereas on a keyboard it's Z. In addition, it's not explained what a "blessing" is until you buy one, and I noticed some powerups advertised as permanent (like the movement buff) went away after dying. An actual tutorial level would work wonders here.

Sadly, this game suffers from major lack of features. There are really only two enemy types (the towers and bubbles) and while each has their own variants (aimed shots, 4-directional shots, difference in health) they play largely the same to each other. The fact that the levels just rehash the same enemy types (and upgrades) repeatedly makes seriously discourages the player from getting deeper into the game.

I would like to see this concept expanded on, and I think some more enemy types (as well as more complex behavior) is the way to go here, as well as allowing the player to fight multiple types in the same room, and bigger rooms so the player has enough space to maneuver. Some ideas off the top of my head:
- Enemies that strafe perpendicular to the player so you have to time your attack.
- Enemies that deliberately try to get out from between the player and sword, perhaps you have to find some way to trap or block them to line up your shot, or you have to chase after them.
- More area denial, such as enemies that leave traps on the ground.
- Enemies that have shields or specific weak points that force you to attack from a specific angle instead of just calling the sword to you from any direction.
- A "twin" enemy that has two independent parts but can only be damaged if you hit them both at the same time.
- Some kind of bonus for hitting multiple enemies with a single sword swipe. Gold as a reward feels like really delayed gratification, what if you could charge up your special abilities through combos?
- I notice the sword has a hitbox that the player can't run through. I think using the sword as a shield to hide behind could make for some interesting gameplay and I'd like harder enemies designed around this idea.

voidgazerBon responds:

Thank you for detailed and valuable feedback. I really appreciate it!

[Tracie's Pursuit]

It looks like the game has a glitch, I was able to "fill up the affection meter" with one heart and IM Pico, he said his backpack and locker were open when they weren't. I assume the two endings are getting blocked and getting friend zoned?

For two weeks this isn't bad (especially seeing as you did everything yourself) but it's obviously quite short. It's really lacking things to do - even the quest items just help you fill up the affection meter which triggers the next scene, so there's no real problem solving or item usage to speak of, just collecting. It's also bizarre having what imitates a dating simulator but only getting one choice at the start of like three conversations you can have with Pico.

None of the components (art, gameplay, music) are bad, but nothing stands out, either. Many Game Jam games flop because they overscope and a half-finished game is released, it feels like this had the opposite problem with a fully functional end product but not a lot going on in it.

[Homecoming]

The animation here is really fantastic and I'm really rooting for this to win best animation with interactive elements because it really does look stunning. For the length of the Jam it's also a really impressive quantity of animation to produce at this quality.

Story-wise I found the choreography and dialogue good, but I didn't really understand why it started and ended when it did. From a narrative perspective we begin with the status quo of "protagonist alienated from family," then a conflict where she's forced to engage, and that arc is resolved by the character removing herself. The funeral and eulogy don't tie into this original arc, and we don't even get to hear the eulogy. The story also starts a little slow, it's not until the argument with the mother that the conflict came to the surface and I felt really engaged.

I suspected this was nonfiction so perhaps there are privacy reasons for the actual eulogy being omitted. If this is true, it also makes sense that there's no catharsis or conclusion because real life doesn't get wrapped up like that and as Bojack's writers would say, you can't have a happy ending because there's always more show. But Coming Out Simulator is a great example of how you can take creative liberties or even just break the fourth wall to make a story feel like it actually has an ending.

Bleak-Creep responds:

It’s not quite non-fiction. While the characters themselves are based in truth, the story itself is entirely fictional.

The funeral and trying to navigate all these complicated feelings surrounding her father are really at the core of what I wanted to do with the project. The conflict is meant to mostly be an internal one; what is she supposed to say? It’s all about balancing the expectations of others with her own experience. In my eyes, the speech is in the events preceding, having one at the end would only feel redundant.

Thank you for playing and all the kind words! :)

[Orphanarium]

The visual and audio presentation here is great. All the essential ingredients are here.

Gameplay-wise it's simple and linear but it plays really well. There are really only a handful of places to go, once you've explored things, and as a scaled down Metroidvania it's pretty obvious where to go when you pick up a new item. The platforming is generally pretty easy and this is probably the biggest gameplay issue.

I think my biggest frustration with the game is having to restart after every ending. I only got the Devastating ending and having to redo everything for a new ending is a real pain. You could circumvent this either by allowing save files, or by having a checkpoint you can go back to before making story-relevant decisions.

Veinom responds:

Yeah, I see what you mean, and it is something I had in mind. What I did about it, is giving each ending a Reward that can make the next playthroughs easier. The Devastating ending is the most easy to get, and tells the player how to go further as Evil Ucogi. I thought that this would have been a good incentive to retry. If you do retry, there's another ending that tells you how to get all the first 3 items.

Perhaps you are right, the Devastating ending would be a better fit to give the 3 items, since up to that point, the game is linear, and there are no other endings before getting the 3 items. I will try to fix this.

Edit: The Devastating ending now gives a shortcut Reward. Thanks for the feedback!