Plasmarift's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Wispy Dreams]

It's fairly nice game for a number of reasons. The collectibles, while some only grant points, are visually appealing enough to make me want to collect them. The regular gameplay isn't too tough, but getting the secret seems like it may require higher skill so the game please those who like it easy and rewards the smart/skilled players. The sound effects and music are nice. It has the potential to be a fairly good complete game, but I have found problems with it.
- It seems like after killing all of them enemies and being able to kick the gear around, that the countdown until the (I don't know his name, so I'm gonna call him mask guy) appears happens quicker on some levels versus others. It's already tough to kick the gear since enemies can be around it and hitting them also means hitting the gear (and charging up an attack to aim your kick of the gear can leave you open to be hit by them) and if you're trying to activate the crystals while doing all this, you have to be careful not to kick it into the machine and you can't afford to wait for enemies to move due to the count down. My point is either make the time consistent or make it more obvious that the time decreases more when performing some actions.
- Have a quick restart option for a world. There are a number of situations that can warrant a quick restart like if you miss too many crystals in early levels, you might as well restart.
- I haven't discovered the secret path. I thought it had to do with getting three crystal stars, but that didn't change anything. I also thought defeating mask guy would do something, but no matter how many times I hit him with the gear, nothing happens.
- What's the point in spelling out Zinc?
- Can you make it so secret phrases are stored somewhere? If a player is focused on gameplay, they don't want to have to stop through process and write down the word.
- Make it so you can skip putting in your score. Some of us just want to play the game and being made to enter a high score is just a waste of time (if you see aaaaaaaa on the board, that would be me).
- Would there be a way to add in just a straight kick that doesn't require a charge? (I know that already exists if you are kicking in the air, but have a quick one for the ground would be nice)

I wish you luck with the project.

recon-project responds:

Hey, thank you for the comment! I'll answer some of your points.

-Yes, the timer for the countdown is different on every level, usually depending on how difficult it is to find the crystals.
-You sometimes do need to restart, the best option is to just die and hit continue on the game over.
-The secret path does have to do with getting 3 crystal stars. The full version of the game gives you more hints on this, but basically, after getting the 3 crystal stars, you should look around for powerups that might appear on the level before the boss.
-Spelling Zinc gives you +2 health

In terms of updating the game, I'm really sorry but as of now I've worked for 3 years on this game, the full version is finished and on Steam and I'm extremely burnt out on it. Instead of tinkering at the little problems that the game has here and there like I've been doing, I just want to start with a new project that will be a much better game from the beginning. Regardless, I still appreciate your feedback and kind words a lot. It is a flawed game and I've learned a lot since making it.

[M.A.I.day]

Kind of disappointing because it had the potential to be something decent. The music is good and graphics okay.
- At the boss level, my gun wouldn't always fire for some reason. Even when my character died and came back, I would hear the gun fire, but I wouldn't always see anything come out of it. This is a horrible time to experience a glitch like this.
- There's way too much waiting in this game. You have to wait for slowly moving platforms to move into place (usually overtop of bottomless pits) for you to proceed and if you mess up, you have to start the section all over again.
- While I found it interesting that you could do a dash jump and wall jump and that the player can figure it out for themselves, you might want to put a level section that requires the player to be able to do this early on and, if possible, make it so the player won't die if they can't perform it. You need to be able to do the wall jump fairly early, but you need to perform it over a bottomless pit. The dash jump is required later on (maybe half way through). Dying after getting all that way because you didn't explain the controls or put the player into a safe situation where you forced them to learn it is kind of bad design (I say force because most people would go into a game thinking the listed controls are the only ones available so putting the player in a situation like that tells them they might be missing something).
- Why does the main character stand out from all the other characters? He looks like Simon Belmont in the first Castlevania game while all the humanoid enemies have more color and are way taller. Also, who are these enemies?
- Most of the enemies I just ran past and tanked the damage because hanging around to fight them would usually cause me to lose more health. Some of their attacks patterns are just unpredictable or undodgable depending on the circumstance, like the stone throwing guy.
- Why are some of the characters not hostile? It's interesting, but confusing. Was I supposed to interact with them?
- You made the game screen bigger than full screen on a computer. I don't know if it's just me, but I keep seeing this in a lot of games. The only way to play it and see everything is to zoom out.
- Why even have a live system? The whole point of a live system back in the day was for the arcade cabinet to justify taking more quarters from kids.
- When you hit enemies, they become translucent for a little while, but they can still be hit. Why not jut have an animation for them to indicate they are stunned. Because, as it is now, a translucent enemy makes it seem like they can't be shot (like they have an invulnerability frame like the player).

Nevertheless, this was an interesting play. I do hope you will keep designing things. Good luck!

[Lightspeed Hideout]

I enjoyed the game for the most part. The music and graphics are good. The most notable thing about the game is the boss fight and the difficulty it presents in the higher settings. It's frustrating, but not insurmountable in most cases. The boss phases I initially rolled my eyes at in lower setting became fairly challenging later on. You have a lot of little things in the game like multiple control options, a mute button, quick reload after deaths, which are great.

Issues I had with the game:
- I can't speak for everyone else, but during the fourth phase of the boss, the game began lagging like crazy and would sometimes suddenly speed up (especially when the anchor was dropped) causing me to get killed. I think the water effects in that level are responsible for the lag. In any case, I reached the fourth phase in Master difficulty and I don't think I'm going to be able to beat the game with that lag. Also, after experiencing that lag, whether it would be losing and going back to phase 1 of the boss or entering the final area, the game would speed up drastically for a little while before moving at a regular speed again.
- Upgrading the city doesn't seem to have any notable gameplay changes (yes, I know doors unlock, but that feels separate from upgrading the city. After all, what do doors have to do with a city that is unconnected with them?) It just feels like a contrived connection when it just as easily could have been a "increase your security access". There's also no in-game story about why you're rebuilding the city (the only story I found was in the description of the game).
- The text in the difficulty screen that read "some items are only found in higher difficulty" was misleading as this only applied to things found in the boss room. I was running around the non-boss areas trying to find differences in the different difficulty settings.
- The non-boss play areas are kind of boring. Like they were stapled on just to have items and they didn't have to be.
- Lowering the game speed also lowered the menu loading speed as well.

Overall, a very good game. I wish you luck in your future endeavors.

jebouin responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback!
The lag during this phase is probably due to the inverse kinematics (which is disabled during the anchor attack). I optimized it a bit and managed to speed it 2-3x, hopefully that will be enough for you and other players experiencing lag there.

[Deep in the Lab - Chapter 1]

So far, I'm not very impressed. The game has good sound effects, music, and cutscenes. The graphics are okay, but the game just feels cheap in both presentation and gameplay. Most of the rooms all have the same bland look to them (same objects, walls, and background with only slight variations and arrangements). Enemies are fairly stiff. The gameplay only manages to be challenging by being cheap, such as:
- You basically have to die a bunch by entering monster infested rooms and running out of ammo just to find out where and how to get the new gun that you're going to need to utilize the other type of ammo you've been picking up.
- The fact that monsters can start approaching you when you enter a room before you can actually see what's going on.
- You can't enter rooms with your gun already drawn (let's be realistic; if I'm entering a room I haven't been in before that could have hostiles in it, I'm going to have my gun drawn).
- All monsters of the same type take the same amount of damage no matter where on them you aim.
- You can use your knife to kill enemies without taking damage, but there's no way to back up and swipe so you need to swipe, run away, reposition yourself, swipe, and repeat. It's just eat up your time.

Ultimately, there's no challenge to it. Just annoyances.

I have many other complaints:
- Why does it take like three seconds to leave the options menu, yet entering a room or opening/closing the inventory is almost instantaneous?
- Why does the sound of thunder play when starting the game or entering a room or exiting out of trying to open a box? Having the sound effect keep happening when I enter and exit rooms I've already been in just gets annoying. I get that Resident Evil did it in their opening, but a cutscene showed them outside at the start and you could at least see out windows in that game so at least it made sense.
- If you're too close to the enemy, your shots may not hit them.
- Dodge rolling results in you having to draw your weapon again.
- I can only speak for the keyboard controls; they aren't good. In order to aim your gun, you have to press the Ctrl key. This is an extremely awkward key to use. Why not make it so pressing the S key or the Down arrow equips it? Or, better yet, let us remap the controls.
- The M key brings up the map and the P key pauses, but the game description and the in-game instructions has them reversed.
- The Options/Skip function is mapped to the Esc key. This is not a good choice because pressing the Esc key makes you leave the full screen mode.
- A big part of this game seems to be looking for useful items so why does it take a second or two to dismiss the pop up image that comes up when there's nothing there. I was only 5-10 minutes into the game and it was already getting annoying. Maybe make it so the E key will quickly dismiss empty areas when pressed a second time.

I get wanting to make a game that pays homage to older classics, but maybe try breathing a bit of new life into them by improving on the formula instead of only copying parts of it. If this is a precursor to what your full game will be then, I'm sorry to say, it's going to need more work.

[Swordius]

A very good game, indeed. Aside from the extremely brief tutorial sections (which I also liked), it's very high action and rewards the player for remembering and utilizing all the abilities at their disposal. After unlocking most of the abilities, you can take bosses apart fairly quickly if you know what you're doing while it's still easy to lose or be thrown off of your rhythm if you are careless. Plus, I rarely felt the game was unfair when I lost.

The music is great. The visuals are minimalistically stunning (if that makes sense). Plus, your visuals are unique enough to where I recognized them almost immediately.

All that being said, I do have some feedback:
- Sometimes, when dashing through obstacles, it doesn't make the sound to indicate that I can do a dash counter.
- It seems like the Cyclone attack didn't always work when attacking the enemy close up while other times it did. Plus, I never really got much use out of it since doing a dash evasion was almost always more rewarding, both in satisfaction and gameplay wise.
- The Earth boss can get kind of dull when it keeps spamming the chasing spinning attack as this isn't difficult to evade (you just end up running around in a circle for 10 seconds or so). I've had him do it three times in a row (maybe even more).
- There's no option to mute the sound. There's also no option to reset your progress (that way you can go through the game again, beating the bosses with the limited skills you had unlocked at the time). You also have to keep in mind that while you have instructions for the game in the description below the game, the only time the game tells you what the controls are and how each skills can be used is in those briefs tutorials between levels and these can't be experienced again unless you wipe the cookies on your browser.
- I think my biggest issue with the game is that there's not enough of it. I know that sounds a bit spoiled of me, but you developed a very good gameplay system so I was sad it wasn't taken further with a few more bosses. It's like if Undertale ended after the fight with Toriel.

I do hope you'll develop this further, but if not, I thank you for this enjoyable gaming experience. I wish you luck in your future endeavors.

Yword responds:

Thank you so much! I'll try to improve it based on your feedback. I really appreciate your comment! :D

[FIDEOS]

The instructions in the description aren't very helpful at all (the gif visual don't help). They don't make it clear what my objective is and that throwing a fourth harpoon into an eel causes it to explode (I skipped the opening scene because I wanted to get right to the gameplay so if the instructions were there, that wasn't a good place for them). While some of this is explained after dying in the game as well, neither the description nor the game tell you that you need to hold down the mouse button to throw the harpoon.

The gameplay is interesting, but it does rely a bit on luck that, when an eel is ready to explode, that another eel will come along and you'll also have your harpoon ready to hit it. With it being partially luck base, it is a bit unfair that it's so easy to lose. it becomes too difficult to hit an eel when things start speeding up so you just have to hang on and just doing that is a bit boring.

It also might mitigate a bit of criticism and confusion if you put in the description and game that this is game was made for a game jam (I don't know if it was, but I'm guessing because someone else mentioned it).

The visuals and sound/music are well made.

I wish you luck on your future projects.

[Botanica (DEMO)]

While the artwork and music is good, I've found a number of issues with the game:
- It seems a little strange to have a platform game that has an attack that pushes you backwards when using it. If you start getting into precise platforming in the full game, this is going to be an annoying combination. Plus, the pause for the attack really interrupts the flow of the game. It worked in something like the first Castlevania because the game focused on combat and limited movement speed, but in your game, it's focused on exploring and traversing with combat. I like that attacking an enemy from above launches you a bit higher, making it easy to propel yourself over them. Also, what reason do we have to engage with enemies in the game if they're not in our way? Usually, I just jump over them because combat is kind of slow (you have to stop and kill them) and you get nothing out of it.
- I think I discovered a glitch: if you're hitting an enemy as you are bouncing off a mushroom, it launches you super high.
- There isn't really any incentive to collect the peppers in the game. As far as I know, they serve no purpose other than making the counter go up in the corner (if there is an incentive, you should probably indicate it in the game). The game itself seems reminiscent of older games, but you're leaving out outdated mechanics (like high scores and the extra life system) while leaving in something like this that served those mechanics. If there was something that unlocked after getting all the peppers in a level and an indicator as to how many peppers are in a level and how many are left to find, it would be different. Or you could have the peppers be fuel for something. If they're not serving a good purpose in the game then you either need to give them one or take them out. Also, the peppers are sometimes placed in such a way at times to where they look easy to collect (some are arranged to appear as if you could collect them just by following the standard path) only for the player character to miss them during jumps and you have to take a half second to go back and grab them. I'd also recommend only placing them in ways that doesn't kill the flow of the game, like if you give the player the special fruit (star powerup from Mario), having them stop to gather the peppers puts a stopper on the fun unless the peppers are ones that can be organically picked up.
- What's the point in having 3 different weapons you can pick up? Only one of them can be used to interact with the environment, like cutting down logs, so I stuck with it for the rest of the game (besides, the others are kind of lame). You could have went the Castlevania route and made it so stuff like peppers filled up the meter for using the weapon, so the more peppers you collect, the faster and more often you can use it and, if you haven't been collecting peppers, you'll have to wait. Just an idea.
- One of the medals for the game is to beat Iris without taking damage. The problem is (and this is a problem even without the medal) that her attack patterns in the second half of the fight are so random that she could teleport over top of you while you are surrounded by (carrots?) in the ground and, as you jump, she hits you with an attack you can't reflect back. This isn't difficulty. This is luck. And, quite frankly, that boss battle is boring, as it goes from fairly easy in the first half to unfair in the second, where most of the time you need to use your range attack to hit her because she teleported far away or too high.
- If you dash into enemies, you push them pretty far. Did you mean for this to happen?
- Maybe put up a wall to the right of the Iris door. I dashed over to the right thinking there was secret area, went off screen, rose in the air a bit, and ended up spawning back near the door, losing health.
- The spider in the tree in the mushroom section over the long run of spike is annoying because you can end up running into it, not really seeing it until you take damage.
- Maybe offer the option to rebind the controls.
- I like that you can lower the framerate in the options menu. A lot of games don't let you do that.
- I hope the dash mechanic is utilized further for more frantic platforming challenges. I say this because I went back to the bridge section and used it when I was behind where the bridge was falling and managed to catch up. It was probably the most fun I'd had in the game so far.

The game has potential, but I'd suggest not to emulator the past too much (or just the good parts of it). Good luck.

[Get in Santa's Pants 3: Knickerless for St. Nicholas]

I was initially overloaded with the amount of exposition when compared to the previous entries in this series, but I got into it. The story is definitely fun, well written, funny, and I liked the multiple endings. However, the game does a lot of things that other point and click adventure games do that just isn't good:
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
- It has the problem where it requires you to talk to certain npcs or visit certain areas to trigger an event which shouldn't require it. Like visiting Wissteria's office to gather laundry when there isn't any there and the quest giver won't admit you gathered all the available laundry until you visit the office. Speaking of the office, after finding out you need Wissteria to be a model, why didn't the dialogue change, where Fissentine could bring it up to Wissteria (you could have added something from Fissentine where she's like "I should wait until she's alone to ask"). Or Teeny Tom's death for example. You have to visit his house before his grave becomes available. This is extra frustrating because there's no indication or reason to check on him to begin with so the game requires that you scour the game when you get stuck to find this kind of stuff, like the mice or angel in the last area as other examples where no hints are provided to them being available. Or the bartender not offering you the actual job until later (I get that you couldn't allow the player to do so or else they'd have money enough for the turkey, but you could have remedied this in numerous ways, like by having a help wanted sign up later or just making it so the butcher doesn't offer the turkey until later, telling his customers he might have more to offer later or something).
- The game also doesn't allow us to do things that would make sense. Why couldn't I buy the turkey and give it to Teeny Tom's dad as compensation? Why couldn't you simply put the figgy pudding in a different container so you can take the horn piece? Why couldn't the player just take the horn piece from the artificial intelligence in the courtyard without using the pastry? You could have at least had Fissentine give an explanation as to why they wouldn't (like they couldn't touch the figgy pudding because they didn't want to mess it up or because it would look suspicious). Why couldn't I just lure the dog to the paint can kid with the bone? Why couldn't Fissentine just carry the few pieces of laundry in her hands? The problem with this line of thinking that the game uses is that it leads people to just watch walkthroughs of the game rather than organically figuring it out because it either doesn't make sense or is just annoyingly unfair. Even a game with magic and comedy needs to have some consistent logic in puzzle and challenge or else it will frustrate the player.
- Maybe add an option to mute all sound.

Overall, the game was pretty good. I hope this review will not deter you from continuing to create. I wish you luck and Merry Christmas!

[Recital]

The game is simple yet challenging. My only real complaint is that, for the last phase of the boss, the longer it goes on, the more my computer lags. However, if I lose and start the last phase fight over, the lagging immediately stops.

Also, on the end screen, it says "Stat (A)" or something. I'm guessing this means to press A to show stats, but nothing happens.

Lastly, I'd recommend putting the controls in the description.

[MÆRE II: Hypnagogia]

I'm sorry to say I didn't enjoy this as much as the first. I didn't really get scared much at all.
- The game had far less visually interesting ghosts and scary things and less disturbing sound effects (though it may have more stuff, it just wasn't as good and diverse in creepiness as the original). I decided to replay the original to make sure I wasn't misremembering, but no, there definitely was a lot going for it. One thing missing in this game was that most of the ghosts never got up close and personal like in the first (without it being a "punishment"). It could have done with some disturbing visual effects or something like a dead body hanging in the corner. Even something talking to you.
- The dream sequences were pretty boring and didn't really add anything to the game except to signify you were dreaming (I actually ended up dying during one of the sequences somehow). I enjoyed the original's "storytelling" dreams; these maintained the tension built up from the gameplay.
- I give you credit for attempting randomization with the sequel (or at least it seemed that way as I certainly didn't notice a pattern). That being said, having a grading system for the player for a randomized experience doesn't seem like the best idea as your score is dependent partly on your luck.
- While it is possible to die in the game unlike the first installment, it's fairly easy to avoid (in both games, it seems players have to try and do it just to see what would happen). It's certainly not a deal breaker since it seems most players can still get a good scare from the game, but I think it could have increased the fear factor far more effectively with more pressure put on the player.
- Having the clock as way of keeping track of time left is pretty cool.
- I guess the last thing is that it's too easy to escape the scaryness, which was an issue for both this and the last game since you can just close your eyes or look away; there's no desperate scramble to escape the scary. I can't think of a good solution for this except to have the escape methods sometimes lead to scary things to make the player anxious about what their next action will bring about.
- For further suggestions, see my review of the previous game in the series.

Nevertheless, I'm glad you are continuing to make games. I look forward to your next project.

Chris responds:

Thanks so much for the in-depth review!

I agree with a lot of your points and think the game is in some ways a step forward and a step back. I’ve definitely got another entry in me where maybe I’ll get the balance right.

I think the randomness might be hurting the game a little as well. With the first one I could control the series of events so it built up in a controlled way. Thats lost in the randomness. Probably need to look at a middle ground solution for a potential MÆRE III