Plasmarift's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Castle Crashing the Beard HD]

The graphics are classical arcade and done well, the music is good, and the gameplay is good as well. I have some feedback on the game:
- I'm using a keyboard and there is no way to get off of the credits screen (I've pressed all the buttons).
- The hitboxes might need to be adjusted. Some fireballs that look like they should go over your head actually hit you instead (it doesn't happen too often though).
- While it's certainly not a deal breaker, the fact that it defaults to fullscreen upon clicking the screen is annoying. I get that you want people to see the graphics, but forcing it on the player is something else entirely.
- The skeletons' spear attack is extremely annoying. The only way I found to "mostly" avoid getting hit is to jump behind them and then attack.
- The main criticism I had was with the invulnerability frames for Tom. You can basically keep hitting Tom until the game decides "okay, that's enough. Time to move onto the next part" and it makes him temporarily invincible. You can't hit Tom while he's attacking and summoning bugs and skeletons. I'm having trouble putting it into words, but these kinds of things really take me out of the fight. It seems like instead of making the Tom head a more formable boss, it's like you just gave him invincibility frames at different sections of the game to give the illusion of difficulty. I replayed the original, which I enjoyed very much, and it was difficult in that you couldn't mess around due to the low amount of life you had and you couldn't stay in one spot for too long.
- This updated version offers a lot the previous didn't like 2 Player gameplay and little powerups to choose from once you unlock them (and with this, A LOT of replay value). I have to say I still prefer the original, but this is basically an entirely new game so it'd be like comparing apples and oranges. Great job on the game!

BoMToons responds:

I think your criticisms are valid, esp. the bit about Tom "deciding" to be invulnerable sometimes. I think, if I were to do it again, I'd maybe have him start smoking and turning red when that's happening, or pull into the background more so it's more apparent when you can and can't land your hits (maybe some kind of "ghost" mode or armor or something...). It was tough to balance the fun of being able to stun lock with combos (ie: combos feeling super powerful) and not ruining the fun of the boss phases progressing. Not sure I solved it as well as it could be (as you pointed out).

- Skeletons are tough, and yeah, the intention was to force you to sneak up on them from behind. We wanted some new mechanic for those "special" enemies since they're near the end of the game and difficulty should ramp up a bit.

- I'm looking into the credits screen keyboard skip issue

Thanks for your thorough feedback!

[Binary Quest]

There are some problems with the game:
- If you interact with the daughter while holding the cake, you will always give it to her whether or not you say yes or no.
- When you have the cake and you talk to the sword guy and he asks "are you going to save the princess?" and you answer yes, he says to take the sword, but he doesn't actually give it to you.
- Why are you give the sword by the sword guy if you say yes to "I can't believe I met No-e the hero" (note: you only get the sword this way when you aren't holding the cake)
- Can you make it so you can skip passed the ending story text by pressing spacebar to get back to the game? There's a lot of trial and error sometimes and you can end up seeing the same ending multiple times.

It's a pretty good game overall except for the problems I listed. The music is also very nice and fitting. I look forward to your next project.

being-brin responds:

thanks! I'll try to squash these bugs over the weekend :)

[Fateless]

While I liked the adventure and the retro-ness of it, the game has many problems:
- The English in the game, medals, and description is bad and it really takes you out of the story of the game (I can usually understand what the characters are trying to say, but it comes across as if either a little kid or a person where English isn't their primary language wrote it ). You can always ask someone to help with the writing. There are plenty of people on Newgrounds who would be glad to help, including me.
- The stealth parts of the game are cool, but there's a problem. There are at least two occasions where you want the player to jump over a patrolling cultist and on one of these occasions, you can't wait and see where the cultist turns around, putting the player in a situation where they are forced to guess when the cultist will turn around. It's too easy to get caught in these situations.
- Although you have a tutorial, you never explained in it that you can save your game by going to the pause menu (I thought the game autosaved and erased this data upon completing the game. I had thought the "Continue" feature in the menu was for players who closed the game before finishing and could pick back up where they left off). I did appreciate the save feature.
- You also didn't inform the player in any way that going into water with the cultist robes would make them disappear.
- No mute button.
- You make the player wait through cutscenes before they can pause and load a save (which gets annoying in parts where it is easy to mess up).
- In one part of the game, when it asks you whether to go left or right, you have it from the perspective of the character instead of the player (You have the "right" option to the left and the "left" option to the right). I thought it was a trick and picked the one from my perspective and ended up dying.
- In the scene that follows this, where Alex, Kevin, and Michael are escaping, it says "you are controlling Kevin" when you aren't (or at least not completely). I've played through that scene twice and in each instance, both Michael and Kevin fall into the water and don't leave yet the game's dialogue shows that Kevin got away while Michael didn't. I learned from the Choices Map that you would need the bow and arrow to help Michael escape and it really didn't appear that way in the scene.
- I was hoping that the Choices Map would let you jump to any scene in the game so I was a bit disappointed when it only showed you a layout of all the choices. The game has a lot of portions that become very annoying when you have to repeat them (like waiting for the water to rise completely so Alex can escape or pushing crates to switches so you can get a bow and arrow). Still, I was impressed with how many paths there actually were (I hadn't expected this and hadn't come across a lot of these other paths).
- The ending and cutscenes are unskipable, which becomes annoying in a game with multiple paths and only one save slot.

As much as I'd like to play through the game more to get the medals, it's just too tedious to do so multiple times. I still enjoyed the premise of the game (it's a pixel version of telltales and such games like that, which you don't see pixelated). I wish you luck in your next project!

[Drop Cannon]

I definitely enjoyed the art and aesthetics; they are top notch! Most of the humor is good and some of the music is good as well. After playing for a few minutes, I was almost ready to go straight to the comment section to say the game was too easy until I played the rest of it. I did enjoy the later levels though I have a few criticisms in general about the game:
- I found a bug where one of the exploding bugs went off screen and didn't come back and exploded my vehicle.
- A mute button would be nice especially when that song "Gonna Drop" is playing.
- For resetting the level, can you make it so it skips the dialogue and gets right to the level? (I already dislike the countdown, but it is helpful so as not to start the level immediately and throw the player off).
- It might just be me, but the early levels are mind-numbingly boring due to how slow they are. I get wanting to ease players into the game, but most of the early levels feel like they just make you wait. I ended up getting perfect scores on later levels and none on the early ones because it felt so slow and there was little challenge to them.
- I'm torn on the exploding bug segments during the levels. On the one hand, it provides a break and changes things up. On the other hand, there's no challenge to it (especially after I found out you can just hold down the mouse button to fire infinitely. I had been rapid fire pressing it through most of the game). You can just center the mouse on the game screen, fire, and it will kill/damage like half of the bugs. Even if you didn't want to do that, you can just wait until they are done moving to kill them; there's no reward for killing them faster.
- I did enjoy the end of the levels where your guys are fighting the enemy. Not only is it fun to watch, but adding the exploding bugs gives you something to do while you are waiting and watching (the hungry skull guy was kind of lame though).
- Why isn't the "perfect game" medal operational?
- Overall, while I did find the game challenging near the end, the levels are just too similar to one another, where the main things that change between them are a slight increase in speed and having more weapons to drop, which isn't difficult (in fact, going faster made it easy to get into a rhythm).

However, it seems like most of the reviews are positive so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. I may have just become a bit more picky with games over the years. Someone did suggest that this could make a great mobile game and I agree! I wish you luck in your future projects!

[Arm Of Revenge Trial]

- You make the player wait for the bad guys to stand up again so you can hit them. Why not just make it so the player can hit them when they are on the ground. This get more annoying when you introduce the super large enemies that take a lot of damage to kill. The old version of the game had this problem as well.
- Going off of the whole "can't hit enemies when they are down", even if I am punching over them as they get up, they still have time to hit me as soon as they get up while I somehow wasn't able to hit them. That doesn't seem fair. Plus, as soon as the player gets up from the ground, the enemies can stand over them and hit them as soon as they get up, leaving no time to retaliate.
- Something just seems off with the combat in general. I'm getting hit by enemies in front of me while I'm attacking them (I think they walk up while I'm attacking someone else and they aren't getting hit). It seems like you can't hit multiple enemies at once. You also can't interrupt enemies' attacks, but they can interrupt the player's?
- The fighting in general just seems repetitive and boring.
- You should work on the grammar in the game.
I do like the artwork and the combat system seems more complex compared to the original with new equipment and skills. I do wish you luck in your future of game design.

MagicWing responds:

thaks for your feedback

[Silent Wind]

Here are some notes:
- Due to the similar surroundings everywhere you go, I've found it is easy to get lost because both points of the compass look the same so if it is pointing at something, you have no idea if you are going the correct direction or the complete opposite direction (I know now that during the day, the sunlight will obscure the compass and the compass will keep correcting itself if you are going the wrong way,). Regardless, it would help out tremendously if you gave one compass point a different look, like make the point that guides you red. If you don't, you're most likely going to make a lot of players mad and confused.
- When on the menu, the mouse is hidden so you don't know where it is on the screen.
- I'd really encourage you adding some sound effects (for the environment, enemies, movements, goop depositing, etc.) especially footsteps for the "creatures". It's very easy for them to creep up on you and I think it might make things a bit scarier. I get if you don't want to add environmental sounds like wind (since the game is called Silent Wind), but consider the other ones).
- I'd be cool if you added a bit more choice to the goop machine. When you interact with it, you deposit all your goop, which becomes a problem later on when you can sell the goop. Maybe you only want to put 100 goop in the machine.
- I'd highly encourage adding a full screen option as well as an options menu in general, such as to lower or increase sound or mouse sensitivity in game and to reassign the controls.
- What't the point of the knife? The syringe does the job really well already and the knife can't collect goop. And what's the point of the little boxes you can break open? There's nothing in them!
- What triggers the darkness? It doesn't seem exactly like it is time related, considering I came upon a darker sky, went back to the house before it told me to, and when I got back, the sky looked normal again.

- The last thing is the gameplay. The first level was interesting, but that's when I was under the impression that, upon exploring the world, I'd find new stuff, like letters from other people that had been in this guy's position or new weapons or new, unique enemies, not the same two enemies. Perhaps these things will come up in future levels, but as it stands, I don't want to go through the same process of killing for goop, put in the machine, and go back when it gets dark (the machine that gives you money was something I would've liked in the first level considering I had over 200 goop when I got back to the house after dark).

[Consume_Evil]

Big glitch I found:
- I only unlocked three areas and can't progress any further. I ate the dude who was on the couch just before going on the second mission. I don't think that was supposed to happen until after I beat all the levels in that area.

Aside from the glitch, I was enjoying the game. There is dialogue that you can miss by not interacting with things in between missions. The missions are short and sweet. It feels as though this is a continuation of this universes' story; was there a game before this one dealing with the same universe? I would've liked to explore more of the game, but I'd understand if nothing could be done about it since this is an older project.

Fred-Bird responds:

UPDATE: Apparently I had changed my mind about the "romance" conditions for Philon halfway through and forgot the adjust accordingly :V
It fixed now.
Im glad you enjoyed the world! This game goes before heavenly escape, and there will be more that go both before this and after h-e. But it'll take a while haha

[Heavenly escape: REDUX]

The game is pretty good. I like that you make talking to characters optional instead of required. While a backstory for all the characters and such isn't provided (like why the main character was in prison, why does he not burn when using the sword, etc), conversations reveals pieces of the story, which is cool. Parts of the game were fairly challenging though I found some flaws with the game:
- There's a glitch with the prisoner kin (shadowy guy). After killing him, you can continue to strike the area where he was to get more angel wings. Although the game will only display three pairs, I believe I had 8 wings (some of the attacks during the boss didn't hurt me in the beginning).
- The game doesn't alert you or hint at the fact that you can "teleport" after getting one angel wing. While the instructions do say to use "Arrows/wasd/d-pad only", I pressed all the buttons at the beginning and when the back button did nothing, I figured it wasn't going to do anything.
- The hitboxes for the boss' attacks is confusing. Sometimes they'll hit me even though I swing at them. Yes, the player's health goes down whenever they are hit, but the player can't be focused on the health bar to see which one hit them. You do include an animation after an attack is successfully hit, but I only see this working for top and bottom attacks (also, they're pretty subtle so it's hard to tell).
- I wish the beginning cutscene could be skipped. It isn't too long, but regardless, it lesses the replay value when your forced to sit through cutscenes you've already seen.
- (this one is a personal preference) While backtracking in games is not necessarily a bad thing, it is when the player doesn't have any control over the pace of the game. To get two of the angel wings, you are required to backtrack. It gets old going through the same battles you just went through.

The art is cool, I like the haircut of the main protagonist, and I enjoyed playing the game.

Fred-Bird responds:

Thank you for the feedback!
I added a skip button and fixed the exploit - I really thought I had that one sealed up!
I also adjusted the effect when destroying Azrael's attacks so it's a bit more visible.
Cheers!

[Jewel of the Stars]

For your first game, this is very good. You have backgrounds, sound effects, sprite animations for the protagonist, enemies, and the environment, and a pretty solid design altogether. I haven't found any glitches. However, it is far from perfect. Here are some suggestions:
- Be sure to list all the controls in the description. Also, you didn't show the spacebar or enter key in the initial startup of the game as a possible control. Some dialogue came up and I didn't know how to get rid of it and ended up getting hit by the first monster because the dialogue box was blocking my view.
- Like the others have said, change the Ctrl and Alt keys; those who play on apple products will have trouble with this key assignment due to the Ctrl key shifting the screen as well as other problems. You could change them to the z and x key for example. You can also add the ASDW keys as alternate movement keys and assign the k and l button.
- The game lacks music. You can find plenty of songs in the Audio portal (search adventure music or something) or you can use stuff from Kevin MacLeod (royalty free music. Just be sure to give him credit).
- For advancing dialogue, make it so the spacebar or enter key, when pressed, will show all the dialogue it was going to scroll out and the next press will dismiss it and start the next string of dialogue. It gets annoying having to wait for dialogue. Also, make the font size bigger; it's hard to read.
- Include what program you used to make your game in the description. This will give the people who created the program some publicity and answer the player's question (believe me, others will want to know).
- What is the protagonist's sprite doing? It looks like he keeps opening and closing his mouth. Also, when the protagonist is falling, you can add in an animation of his cape waving as he falls.
- Now for the important part. The game doesn't offer a lot of challenge. You could literally go through the entire game without killing any of the monsters. Plus you don't offer an incentive to kill them such as the monsters dropping gold or killing them makes you stronger, etc. The most difficult part of the game was the platforming and that's only because a few levels have a bottomless pit so a single mess up will result in a restart (mind you, this isn't a complaint about the bottomless pit). However, I'm sure the difficulty will ramp up later in the game.

This is a great start for it being your first game and I can't stress that enough. I've seen people put out some pretty horrible first games. I enjoyed the fire power and I look forward to the continuation of your game or whatever project you chose to work on next. Also, if you need a voice actor for one of your games, let me know. Good luck!

KAY-s-JAY responds:

Hello, thanks for playing my game and also thank you for the feedback, it really helps a lot, you pointed out lots of errors, ill try my best to fix them all and i'll definitely let you know if I want a voice actor