sharpnova's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[ANOVA]

I absolutely hate the UI.

There is no reason to force us to wait for the awkward animations to interact with things.

No reason for us to have two options (look and interact). Literally all point and clicks nowadays just do it with one. And if it's designed well it makes for a very seamless quick interface.

Also having the inventory pull up a whole screen of its own and forcing us to hold down the mouse and drag things off to use them on the environment feels incredibly clunky. Not to mention slow.

And when you do inspect something, having to wait for the animation of the portrait sliding over before the descriptive dialog appearse is clunky and cumbersome and annoying as heck.

The way the cursor doesn't react at ALL to being moved over an interactible region makes this a pixel hunt sort of game. Having to resort to clicking that lightbulb was very very ugly imo.

The art and music and sound effects are fantastic.

I'm at the part where I have a small cork. I powered up the robot and you know what? If it was a straightforward even remotely decent UI I'd keep trying every possible combination of sticking the cork in the teddy bear, the robot, the skull etc. and not be horrifically annoyed at the cumbersome UI. But I just can't.

It needs an absolute overhaul.

I feel awkward giving a game with production values this high such a low score, but it is close to unplayable.

And trust me. Your overall score of only slightly over 3 stars with a production quality this high is because of the UI. I'm sure I'm not the only one blown away by how cumbersome it is. I can't believe you made it this way tbh. I really hope you fix it. Because then this could be a lovely little gem.

edit: just an example: with this stupid small cork which has no logical bearing on anything in the environment i'm forced to open the inventory, click and hold, drag off the inventory, and try to click something else in the environment for EACH AND EVERY thing i experiment with. What on earth were you thinking..??

edit 2: ok so i plugged the hole and took off to the next location. as i said the art and sound are top notch which is why i really wanted to at least continue past that. and i would definitely play further if you overhauled the UI. but further than this i simply cannot. sorry.

MontiGames responds:

Thank you for the very detailed and honest feedback! We want to make the game as accessible as possible, although some of what you suggest would eliminate the way we designed some of the puzzles. Everything was intended to be challenging rather than frustrating, but there may be ways we can accomplish the same thing with a slightly different implementation. We'll definitely look into this further, but thank you again for taking the time to clearly detail your concerns!

[Eluder 1.0 Game]

very very terrible handling.

[Pixel Hop 2]

this needs heavy polishing. do so immediately. the music and art is very nice. the level design is also quite good.

but the mechanics need serious polishing. if they were polished from where they are now (shit-tier) to where they need to be (flawless) then this would be a fantastic 5 star game for me.

[Cyborg Highway WIP]

You earn money. But don't waste your time searching through the game for a way to actually use the money to impact the game in any way. There isn't any. It's just a glorified score system.

And the music is just... pathetically weak. The graphics are annoyingly bad. No variety and the road doesn't contrast sharply enough with the vehicles.

The sound effects are also weak.

This just screams low effort.

Pyrian responds:

Thanks for trying it out and giving feedback. This was a Ludum Dare 44 game jam project and is now a work in progress for a more complete experience. Purchasing upgrades will come. I've added dynamic traffic, plus a melee and a ranged weapon, with lots more in the pipeline!

[Hyper Maze]

it's like bioshock infinite but with the amazingness of half life 2.. combined with portal 2, witcher 3, and uncharted 4.. and red dead redemption 2, with a splash of breath of the wild. a heavy splash.

[Pit King]

it's a high quality game but i'm not a fan of the health = currency mechanic at all.

also i don't liek that you can't maze. you should implement a simple pathfinding mechanic. djikstra's algorithm would be fine for this. no need for any heuristics

edit: just a quick update. i came back to play again today (second attempt) and could have easily gotten to wave 30+ but got bored. i liked it more this time when i realized it was all about just spamming bombs and replenishing walls

Oultrox responds:

Totally understandable feedback, The gamejam theme was "your health is the currency" so heh perhaps isn't yoir jam and that's okay.

there's no maze sadly, we didn't want to design this game as maze one but rather something with a bit of spin-off (Say, plants vs Zombie), so A* or Djikstra's algoritm was out of the equation.

Thanks for your feedback!

[Sneaky Bay Day 2]

Pretty poor game. Nothing original or interesting. This is the norm for selfdefiant. Just a quick cash grab and nothing more :)

[GlowPaint]

it was a big oversight to not let us use the up arrow to jump. it would have been much more comfortable.

also there needs to be

-more soundtracks

-more level mechanic variety

-more sound effects

overall i really like these "paint the world" type games and this was decently done.

[Super Pig]

the limited lives really killed the fun

[Robot Phone Home]

how did this slip by my notice..?