sharpnova's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Enter the Dungeon]

you fixed a lot of the problems from my first review so i'm just updating with any remaining issues i can think of.

1. you can enter a room and get the 5 gold piles to spawn and some of them will be out of reach

2. when your reload cooldown gets low enough you blast across the room too fast to really react.. but that would actually be ok if not for point #3:

3. when you reload into doorways at top speed from across the room, very often it won't trigger the door. u'll have to back up and re-attempt. quite annoying.

4. way way WAY too few talents.

5. way too easy. i got to floor 50 and only because i was listening to music and zoning out. but i was blasting through the levels so fast it was ridiculous.

6. needs a little more content. maybe keys, crafting, whatever. i know suggesting full mechanic additions to games is often over the top, but this is already approaching what i'd call a polished state. the only way to improve is to innovate at this point.

paulfromsmite responds:

Thanks, all of what you said is being fixed next update.

[Overlord's New Mansion]

i don't like the way your horizontal velocity just instantly drops to 0 when you let go of left or right while in the air.

i opened the menu thing a million times when i came upon books. because i'd hit spacebar (with natural timing) as i came upon them. and it would open the menu. unbelievably annoying.

also the sound effect on death is ripped from another game. it's a game that's on NG and it's an artsy'ish platformer that made my list of games that i considered worthy of keeping on a list. i think i have a good idea of which one it is but i'll be looking into it.

saantonandre responds:

Thanks for your review! The velocity drop is a deliberate decision, since this is a precision platformer I believe the player should have full control over the air movements. I'm sorry about the pause when going for books, I can understand it may be a little annoying to wait for them to levitate. I'll probably change that

I made ALL the sound FXs myself manually with a chiptune editor. Please check better before assuming such stuff.

edit: now you can read books as soon as you get over them, no waiting

[Retro Knight 5.0]

wtf..?

why are you using flash?

and even with flash it's possible to use localstorage so why did you require us to make an account to save? why not just save locally like a normal human being..?

i saw you tell another person to just use a random email. not the point. it's still a pain and something you have to remember.

and i saw you get annoyed with them for giving you a zero for that reason.

then you need to learn that mass criticism is a sum of rational and emotional feedback. you will get people who vote emotionally (like i'm about to do) and that is a perfectly valid way to vote. the final tally is a weighted average of the scores from people who voted out of anger/love (it goes both ways so why would that be a problem?) and those who voted in some tedious per-category type of way.

also the tutorial never actually tells you any controls... lmao.

why on earth would you have us click to use abilities when we're using the arrow keys..? you actually expect people to move their hands between the keyboard and mouse? that is bad control design. probably the most major cardinal sin of control design.

lmao.. you even have a section in your menu that you can only access if you just think to hit 'shift' and this 'controls' section? doesn't show any controls! it just defines UI elements.

ok i'm done. at this point... the 0 is more than deserved. you're welcome.

scpgames responds:

Great, another child.

"WA WA WA! This game isn't exactly what I want and I'm gonna act like I know better." - most of Newgrounds

1) I have been using Flash (now Animate) for 15+ years. It's what I know. It's what I love. It makes me the big bucks, and will for a long, long time even after Newgrounds can't support Flash Player anymore.

2) You can't use local storage and then expect the game to work on mobile. Your data would be erased when you had to make any changes to your device. Hence: mySQL.

3) When dealing with logins, refer to #2.

4) Annoyed about the email? Yes. Because its stupid.

5) It is not a valid way to vote because your judgment is not based on the game, but some kind of twisted, righteous vendetta made up in your brain and you just want to bash me personally. Which, cool. I'm not here for you. I'm here for normal/sane/smart people. I expect people you to be on Newgrounds, and it humors me because I get to write responses like this.

6) THERE IS LITERALLY A "KEYBOARD BUTTON" ON THE TITLE SCREEN AND PAUSE MENUS THAT LETS YOU CHANGE THE KEYBOARD CONTROLS TO WHATEVER YOU WANT. LMAO MORE.

7) Mouse/Keyboard? Again, its a mobile game. Jesus. Learn to read. Some functions can be translated to the keyboard easier than others. You ever develop ... idk ... anything ever? Or are you just waiting for "a cute boy to come teach you via webcam"?

Thank you for embarrassing yourself. I save feedback like this to show my dev friends when we need a laugh.

[Darkhouse]

the controls are kind of amazing. did you test several schemes and pick the worst one? if i was trying to make the controls themselves the primary antagonist in a game i don't think i could have done better.

you're like the dr. strange of control schemes. you tried out 14,000,605 and found the least comfortable least intuitive ones.

i liked the art and the audio. i found the flying guys who shot projectiles very annoying. especially when i jumped up towards them (with space lol.. sorry i'm still cracking up over how well you designed the controls to be terrible) and swung right on him it did nothing. why would you make attacks go through those guys?

anyway, i see a lot of talent here tbh. not just in art and sound design but in designing bad control schemes.

i'm honestly not being sarcastic. i realize that this may read like i'm mocking you but i am currently actually assuming the control scheme was deliberately designed this way and am genuinely impressed. it actually gives me an idea for a game i'd like to make.

ImmanentDeath responds:

I really appreciate that you find it humorous that the controls are bad. I actually did not intend for them to be bad, they were modeled after some other games I've played. I'll try to leave them in the update for people who want to play "Bad Controls Mode," but better controls are coming.

As for the problem you found with flying enemies, what's supposed to happen when you hit any enemy is 1: they take damage and lose 1 health, 2: they switch to a damaged animation, and 3: a sound effect plays. Did some or all of these not happen when you hit the flying enemy?

[The Origins of Tuuli: To Be Masked]

over in an instant but fun.

Theihe responds:

As it's just a demo it's short duration isn't surprising. :>
Glad you enjoyed it while it lasted though!

[Little Cherub]

what the hell is the control to make a cloud..? it seems like it inconsistently creates one not by jumping but by being in the air and hitting left or right.. what were you thinking with that?

also you have all these shiny gold pots that do nothing. you can't break or collect them. and the second level doesn't even have a key in it so you can't complete it. rofl.

re: author response

no. the projectiles i shoot just fly right through the vase. it does not hit the vase and do damage.

the cloud creation feels TERRIBLE. absolutely TERRIBLE.

FM-Studio responds:

the cloud is created when you release the jump button. you have full control of cloud creation. you can break all the pot (by shooting it) and inside there are bonuses to collect and obviously also the key. thanks for playing.

[DroworD]

the tutorial is incredibly long and unnecessarily annoying.

HealliesGames responds:

Before was too fast and confusing. I should find a middle ground. <.<

[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!

[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!