pawles22's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Prism Indigo]

Ok, first and foremost, for the love of God, MAKE. THE. BULLETS. DISTINGUISHABLE.

Seriously, one of the last things you want your player to do is to wonder whether the thing they're flying into is a collectible or a bullet that's about to wreck them. There's not a single reason you should do that, unless you want to make the game annoying on purpose.

The art itself is quite nice though, low-res but that's what you'd expect.

The music quickly gets on your nerves, so I'd appreciate it if it was more of a background tune, especially given how it repeats over and over and over without too much variety.

Now, the gameplay. This is where the game lacks the most - this thing simply isn't fun to play. The stages themselves feel like typical grinding for exp - you do it because you have to, not because it's fun. It doesn't require much effort, and gathering the cores like that quickly gets very boring.

Regarding the first stage boss - his second phase is absolutely horrible. While the spiral looks dangerous, every "wave" hits precisely the same positions, so all you have to do is position yourself in a blind spot and hold "z" until dude drops to 0 HP. It's the same as if you had just put some random lasers on both sides, and put the guy just there, doing nothing, waiting to get killed, except here you try to make an illusion that something is happening. The only thing you achieve is making the player annoyed by both boring the person who already knows the pattern, and annoying the person who doesn't and might get hit for no real reason other than the design being bad. Please, don't do that.

Stage 2 boss was somehow even worse... Its third stage was alright, the bullets explode in different positions, so it's at least a bit less annoying than the other two, but it's still just.... fine? For the most part, you made it just as an big pool of hitpoints that the player has to get through, a little at a time (as far as I understood though, you wouldn't even have to shoot them? The actual HP bar never went down). The only thing the first two phases do is slow your progress. They don't pose any real threat to you, they ONLY slow your down. Again, don't do that.

Overall, the game simply isn't fun to play. I didn't play past second stage because it's just draining.

PS: I rate things harshly, so don't take this as hate or something.

EDIT: the bullets actually do have a similar colour to the cores, they should contrast stronger than that. And regarding the music, the melody of the tune is, let's say, "sharp" to the ear. The high pitch paired up with very regular time interval between notes quickly tires the listener out. I understand the limitations of the engine, but take a look for example at VVVVVV's soundtrack. While the music there clearly can be better due to the lack of limitations, even short parts of it have a lot of personality and are nice to the ear.

F1Krazy responds:

I always appreciate constructive criticism, and I also appreciate the fact that the game may not be to everyone's tastes, so thank you for the detailed feedback, and rest assured that I'm not taking any of this as "hate".

The first two problems are down to the game engine. It's hard to make the bullets and the cores any more distinguishable than they already are when they're both four pixels wide. I was hoping the colour would be enough for that, but perhaps not. I'll have to go and have a rethink. As for the music, TIC-80 limits songs to about 90-120 seconds, so I unfortunately don't have much scope to make them less repetitive. When you say to make it "more of a background tune", I assume you mean just turning the volume down?

My next update will be focused on improving the game's difficulty curve, which I'm already aware needs some work, and I'll take into account what you've mentioned regarding the first two stages. They're definitely a bit too dull and easy at the moment, and I'm sure there's plenty I can do to spice them up and make things more interesting for first-time players. I hope you'll be willing to give the game another look once that update arrives, and perhaps let me know whether things have improved.

[Arcade Wizard]

i just needed 5 minutes to fall in loe with game. Seriously.

First of all, the music is one of the best I have heard in a while. And not only here on Newgrounds or anything, I mean OVERALL. It's so catchy and I absolutely love it!

The graphics are also perfect, I have nothing to complain about. They're just great!

The gameplay is just as amazing. The game is addicting as hell! I got a bit scared of the grind when I got to second level, and to be fair it's the only thing that still bothers me, that final wave is a big overkill. I haven't got very far into the game (yet), but I agree with peptrace - I don't know how many types of enemies there are, but if those mentioned by them are/would be here, it would be an awesome thing!

Also, the story is also very well done. I usually wouldn't care that much about the excessive plot put in just for the sake of it, but here it was actually interesting - especially with those great images!

Love the game, if it were released as some bigger project, I'd pay for it definitely

gamemakertim responds:

Hi, thank you for the great compliments! I'm happy you enjoy the game :D

[Wrath of Nightmare]

I'm probably not the best person to play this game, as I have had very little to do with games made for Gameboy and such, oh well. That's one of the reasons why I won't rate it as low as I feel, others might enjoy it way more than I did.

Now that that's out of the way, I'd point out the good stuff first. The graphics are what you'd expect - not in the bad meaning of the word, quite the opposite actually. If there's one thing I think about when it comes to this kind of games made for older devices, it's definitely the lovable pixel graphics. It was one of the things that amazed me here as well, as the tiles are very clean and they do their job perfectly.

Sadly I'm afraid that's all that's really worth mentioning when it comes to the good parts. The music basically gave me a headache - true, it's kind just of how it often is for those types of devices, but there is still a ton of music like that I will actually enjoy - and that's just not one of those. To be fair, at this point I'd rather have it completely silent, during some parts it's just unpleasant to listen to, there's too much noise fit in one place, at least for me.

I've heard that's kind of how the older games often were, but throwing me into a world just like that and expecting me to find something placed I-don't-even-know-where isn't the greatest idea (at least given what people right now are used to, like I said, I'd imagine it'd be nothing out of ordinary back in the day).

Overall, I wasn't really interested at all, and I quit rather quickly, but there's a fair chance that it's SIMPLY not my environment. Regardless of everything, I see you definitely put a lot of work into this, so good work! I hope other people will enjoy it more!

TheEnkian responds:

Entirely fair comments, I appreciate you giving the game a shot regardless and taking the time to write this. All the best!

[Tiny Golf Puzzles]

Artstyle is absolutely amazing! the sounds and the music are also 10/10!

The gameplay is fun and relaxing. The level design is really great and clever, too.

There's just some bug - when I tried to repeat one level (because my move count was over the expected number), the game just skipped over to the next level over and over again. It seems reloading the page fixes it, though.

Overall amazing game!

beepyeah responds:

You're right. Thanks for letting me know. That bug is now fixed. Thanks for playing!

[Cryomancer]

Music and art are top notch! 10/10

Whew, this game is fun! The slow character takes a while to get used to, but after I did, it was all good!

The level design is nice, the game is a lot of fun to play (though maybe starting being a bit frustrating as soon as I hit lv 11 lol)

It only feels a bit weird when I want to create an ice box below me (so that it stands for example on ths spikes) but it's near the edge, the box tends to fall down sometimes. But I guess that's just me being used to the obejcts being rather "stable", and it's not the fault of the game itself.

Anyway, amazing work! I somehow passed lv 11, tho in a rather weird way, since I didn't even use the button, rather placed the ice blocks on the spikes (since I truly had NO idea how to get back up after pressing that button, lol). Gave up on lv 12, the difficulty spike after lv 10 is rather big, I feel.

KanartStudio responds:

Thanks for the feedback, this helps me keep improving the game and become a better game dev in general.

So I saw some problems with the game physics in general and the box tend to tilt when you fall too fast on top of it, so it's not 100% your fault to be used to it.

About the difficulty spike, I agree, I had someone to blind play the game, and they ended up stuck at the same level, not because was too difficult but because the way the game is made, the open way with more than 1 solution for the problem confused it a bit, and he was just trying something that would never work.

Anyway I'm planning on an update to fix those problems but I'm currently working on a new project so this may take a while ;p

[DRM simulator]

I loved this haha. It's a funny little story you made there.

Also, after finishing the game, the "click to start" button doesn't seem to be working, dunno if it's just me.

The minigame was nice, funny, and not too long :D

Pretty good job on this!

porwaltz responds:

Thanks. I don't know why occurs the restart bug. I´m looking for a solution.

[Cataclysmic]

art is pretty good. Music is okay. Sounds are typical but not bad.

The idea isn't anything new, and I feel like there's a lot of stuff to think about here. The fact that the player is never able to go left in theory should be okay, but in reality it's oftentimes annoying - especially since in the second level the player can literally get blocked by the dogs...

Instant death from water is awful and annoying, the big jumps in level 2 require too much precision - if you're aiming for the gameplay that's supposed to be fast-paced and dynamic, don't put so much tightness in the game.

Also, the gravity feels odd, is it just me?

Could become a pretty good game with more time spent on the design.

MissingTheMoon responds:

Thank you this is really constructive and helpful! I like that you took your time for this and gave me candid feedback! Not many do this, but I really appreciate it.

[Musync]

Very clever idea! It certainly feels original.

The art and music are really good. Well, maybe except the sounds in the menu, they were a bit annoying, actually.

I didn't actually feel like completing the 3rd level anymore, though I got to the "reverse" part- it was actually quite interesting, although you should definitely warn the player that someting like that is going to happen (if you do and I just didn't see, then maybe consider making it more visible? I didn't notice any warning at all).

The change in 2nd level was rather annoying though, I didn't enjoy this "repeat" (iirc) thing at all.

Also, the instructions aren't clear for me... like, at all. It took me good 5 minutes to realize what I had to do x_x

Oh, and the levels feel too long, way too long. 2nd level was actually kind of boring after a minute.

Overall the game has potential though. Can't exactly say anything about further levels sadly, but I just don't want to complete level 3 - especially given how long it is. It's a great game for a while, but I feel like it quickly gets boring.

HealliesGames responds:

Yes I agree the second level is unnecessarily long. I haven't noticed the same issue in others, though.

I think the main cause of discouragement from playing is having to do it again when lose, but from my point of view is more like a challenge.

I didn't have time to add more difficulties, and I always fall into the trap of making a difficulty not accessible to everyone.

Thank you for your time and feedback, pawles22!

[COSMOS]

The game is REALLY fun to play! However, I find some of the game mechanics a bit nonintuitive.

This point may not be the game's fault, but I thought that I had a pretty big cooldown on the weapon and it took me a few levels to figure out I could just hold the mouse button instead of pressing it.

The wall jumping is counterintuitive as well in my opinion. The tutorial shows the player to jump up, and that's what I did. I had trouble with getting up the walls because of how low I was jumping and I had to spam the jump button to move up. It took me a while to figure out I could jump the walls more effectively by manually moving the character left and right, which to be honest is a little bit weird when you see how wall jumping works usually (I don't really have any problems with that, though. Don't get me wrong, it's still fine for me.)

The game also never specifically tells you that your character can double jump. This also took me a while to notice. If the game told you, then even wall jumping would be more intuitive.

Now more about the gameplay itself. The enemies' design is fairly simple but really fun! I was really happy when meeting a new enemy, and with each one, the game became more and more interesting.

The game started to frustrate me a little bit at the last level when I died near the end. It's not a big issue as of now, because the levels are still fairly short and not so difficult. I suppose the number in the corner of the screen is the amount of life left, so I guess there will be more lives in the future.

If you're planning to make even longer levels than that, I'd suggest adding some checkpoints, maybe one per 3-4 sections. However, it's possible that you find a better solution!

Other people are also talking about the music. I, on the other hand, actually didn't even notice the lack of music in the game. The gameplay is just so interesting, each new level felt original, different from the last one. The graphics are glorious as well!

Overall a really good job with the game! I REALLY enjoyed playing it! :D

Citybuilder14 responds:

Thanks so much, for putting the time into writing this
The tutorial will be improved a lot in future and its great that you enjoyed playing
For now all the levels will just have 3 parts but in future if they're longer adding check points is a great idea

Thanks,