Plasmarift's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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

[Madness: Sheriff's Compound]

Unfortunately, I can't give this game a great review:
- The only way I could progress through the game for the most part was by using the bat: luring enemies to me, hiding behind a corner, and slugging them as they came around. Anytime I tried to get into a straight up fire fight with guys who have automatic weapons, I'd be dead within seconds, sometimes less than one second (which is realistic, but I don't play games for realism). I'm sure part of the blame falls on my computer for being too slow, but even the enemies hidden up on the second story that you wouldn't see until they started shooting would have me dead within a second with little time to react, which feels cheap.
- You can't activate the door switches while holding the bat.
- You can't pick up ammo if you're holding the bat.
- If enemies are right up on you, you can't hit them with a bat or shoot them.
- Enemies seem to stop shooting you once they get really close to you (which worked for me and allowed me to beat the game, but seems strange).
- The bat gets replaced if you pick up a gun while holding it, which means if you do this and run out of ammo, you can't progress. It'd been better if new gun pickups just replaced guns.
- The damage an enemy takes when shooting them in the head feels inconsistent, as some will die from one shot, while others require multiple (and I'm referring to the ones that don't have head gear). This honestly takes away from the fun factor, plus I have no idea if shooting an enemy in the head does more damage than hitting just the body so it feels like a waste of time to even try at this point.
- As others have pointed out, ammo is inconsistently dropped, which means you might have to fall back on using the bat or force the player to open up optional doors, which aren't very fun since all they offer are either enemies or, more often than not, just a room with an npc in it and/or ammo.
- There seems to be a time element to this game:
SPOILER AHEAD FOR THOSE READING
as the sheriff can get away (implying you weren't quick enough), which sounds exciting, though I can't attest if you can actually catch as I've never been fast enough.
- The zombie part is interesting, but not as creepy as it could have been. No really creepy sounds or background music to really bring it home, plus it was probably the easiest part since they don't have guns and could just alternate between gun and bat.

I still enjoyed the experience so thank you for making it.

[Dream Punk]

While the game can be enjoyable at times, this is far out weighed by its many flaws:
- The control scheme for keyboards is very poorly implemented. You have Ctrl key for using Ness, which is not only extremely awkwardly placed compared to the other keys, but the Ctrl button, when used in conjunction with other keys (especially arrow keys), can cause other functions on the computer to activate (for example, on my computer, holding Ctrl and pressing the up arrow causes a screen to come up showing all the different windows I have open on my computer). You could have made the Right Mouse button Ness (or at least added an option to change the key assignments). Also, while you can move around with the arrow keys, you can't use the up arrow key to glide after unlocking the ability or move around Ness with the arrow keys.
- There's no option to mute the sound or to go back to the main menu. Also, there's nothing that tells you that Enter is the pause button.
- For the upgrades, while I understand that you don't want the player to change their upgrades for fear the player could redistribute their abilities at specific moments to easily overcome obstacles (such as maxing out bouncing, and then, after bouncing, switching the points to max out glide so you'd be able to gain massive height and distance). Still, couldn't you simply restrict redistribution of points to the one location and at least allowed players to distribute their points in the pause menu; that way, players wouldn't have to make their way back to the singular location to distribute points every time they find a tape (this would have especially been helpful earlier in my playthrough).
- Your earlier game "That Dream Again" worked well because you confined gameplay to a small area that the player was falling into, kind of like a pachinko machine. Back then, you could literally fall into powerups that made traversal easier and eventually would lead to upward momentum. Now the game's bigger and most of the areas you need to reach are above the player's starting position, all while they're still falling the same as always (and it looks awkward when you are bouncing along the rocks instead of standing on them). You've abandoned putting specific upgrades in areas and instead left tapes to upgrade as the player pleases (which is necessary if the player wants to win), but this almost seems to say "we don't know what ability should be upgraded in this area so we're going to leave that up to you, but since you need specific levels of upgrades to progress, we'll leave an inconvenient option for redistributing the points."
- While the game has the Recall ability, you have to unlock it instead of it being a freebie to account for the game's size. And, as I recall in the previous game, you gave players a map at some point not only showing their position, but the position of the obstacles and upgrades. In a game this large, that map is even more important and knowing where the obstacles are would help the player avoid them, instead of annoyingly running into them when trying to move upward because they moved in front of them (also, you don't indicate that you can bring up any type of map in the description. Maybe a character says it, but it seems rather important). Plus, it's very easy to lose your sense of direction when going between screens and end up missing something you were trying to navigate toward.
- Even with my movement skill fully maxed, it doesn't seem to allow the player to pull off the pin point accuracy you expect of them in bouncing on very small balloons (it almost feels like luck that I do it).
- The Ness ability just seems like a terrible choice for a mechanic in the game, especially considering the original move would usually only ever be used for traversal in that manner in desperate situations so to expect pin point accuracy in some areas is unreasonable. Right now, I'm drawing the line at the essentially "nothing but Ness" traversal section.
As much as I'd like to finish the game, the annoyances keep compounding, along with the aimless wandering and seemingly unfair setbacks where you need to re-tread old ground because you fell looking for things you missed. I wish you luck in your future projects.