sharpnova's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ruby & Rusty Save the Crows]

this makes ori and the will of the wisps look like back door metroid 5

maxoakland responds:

I don't know what that means

[Rewound]

music not working. level 10 impossible. tried several approaches and have extremely high platforming skill. there is no method that works.

HelperWesley responds:

We never added any music to the levels, it's just sound effects and the musical jingle at the end of each level.

The trick to lvl 10 is to try and stay to the right as you fall and place the checkpoint as close to the stairs as possible, then to start jumping as soon as you spawn at the checkpoint. If you fall down to the bottom floor you can't get out of it.

Hope that helps beat it. 👍

[Quantron's Game]

i hit the key to control the ai partner and it just made an exclamation mark come out of my head and i wasn't able to use the player 2 controls, despite the author description claiming that's how it worked.

what a huge oversight. practically half of the game doesn't work and you released this game?

ImmanentDeath responds:

I just want to clarify for anyone else who might be confused. In singleplayer, you don't control the other player character, Sleeper. They have an AI, so they'll act on their own.

When you press S, you're telling them to stop following you and stay put. As of v1.0.2, it's the reverse if you're dead and Sleeper isn't, and Sleeper will wait unless you tell them to move forward (I found it's easier that way, to communicate to them or to respawn yourself).

Sleeper won't always listen. And they're going to do something dumb quite a lot. I list that in the known bugs because there's some things I wish they wouldn't do. Sleeper is supposed to feel like another player who's bad at the game, and you're having to cooperate with them. They're my stand-in for a real player 2.

I hope I'm not coming off as pretentious, I'm just trying to explain my intentions with the game design.

[Rogueblast]

i don't really like how unclear it is what a new weapon does compared to your old. i picked up a ring and my mage went from being an unstoppable bullet hell murder machine to garbage.

all because i thought a ring would be an accessory or something and not just replace my weapon with trash.

thanks for ruining a fun empowering run.

ErikSwahn responds:

Ah sorry to hear. The ring is supposed to be a trinket though so perhaps you picked up the dagger which has poison damage, or perhaps two items were on top of each other which should not happen.

[Acro-bot]

Controls are genuinely bad. Mar what could otherwise (and would likely otherwise) be a great experience.

edit: updated my review to be less vitriolic

re: dev: I'm sorry, it's not my job to design your game. Others agree the controls are bad. They are objectively bad.

I?

P?

And btw, many of the tutorials lead to combinations that don't even work. It says forward + P is a dive and forward + space is a vault? Neither of those do anything.Space is just a regular jump.

I have to stop myself with this response because it's so infuriating that I'm about to get nasty with you again.

Just fix the controls.. and make it so the tutorial signs actually suggest button combinations that do what they say. (or do anything at all)

Sikowny responds:

There are only 3 buttons to press aside from moving and jumping. Is it really that hard? DM me and suggest what the "real" controls should be.

Edit: About the tutorials. The ones you describe clearly show a hint at what state the player should be in to execute the move. Ex) Dive requires you to be airborne. Which the graphic intends to describe. Vault requires you to be sliding after a dive, which is also displayed by the tutorial. Part of the design philosophy was "less reading, more showing" wherever possible. To see where I got the idea for the Dive and the Vault, look to Super Mario 64.

About the buttons -- people like WASD for movement. If those are the movement keys, what would you suggest the action keys to be? Whats the fix you're looking for? DM me about it. Consensus on the controls ranges from bad to good. I hope you play again when the update to customize the controls comes out. Controller support will also be added.

[Super Gravoor]

panning back to the starting point just to reload the entire level anyway is really annoying.

re dev: thanks that improved it a lot!

Chris responds:

Completely fair point. Thats a hang over from an earlier version of the game where the levels were connected and it had a bit more of an open world design. I should go back and take that panning back out. Thanks for the feedback.

Edit: I've taken out the panning and reduced the time it would have taken for the panning to start. Hopefully that should speed things up a bit.

[Blast Magus]

i just don't get how you go from a masterpiece like everloom... to this.

re: how? it was fantastic. beautiful pixel art, good animation/atmosphere/music and didn't overstay its welcome.

Kajenx responds:

Lol, a lot of people hated The Everloom. XD

[Heliox Station]

'x' throwing the object you're holding by default is very very VERY annoying.

oh and some of the puzzles require you to be so fast (hitting a button and jumping over to a box that is disintegrating from the button and leaping off it up onto a ledge and leaping out off the ledge to catch the replacement box mid-fall and doubling back mid-air to get that box up on the ledge for laser redirection.. and all of this in like a half second. that's unreasonable. just because i can pull it off doesn't mean any other player can.

also in this very puzzle, there was a bug where once i'd pulled that off there was an emancipation grill up top, making it impossible to get over there with the fan cube. when i reset the level, it just didn't do that again so i was able to beat it. very frustrating level. and the x throwing instead of dropping by default was game-breakingly bad.

it still gets a 5 from me because this type of game is my favorite cup of tea

re author: well when i looked up a walkthrough to hopefully find a more natural way of doing it, i literally found someone doing it the exact way i did it.

you obviously need to refactor the design on that level. if you didn't intend anyone to be fast then you did something hilariously wrong.

also re author: don't call it a fizzler. call it an emancipation grill (like i did) because that is absolutely what it is. pay respect to your inspirations. don't try to pretend they didn't inspire you, as in the case of portal 2 directly for that particular mechanic.

kaiakairos responds:

idk what shit you were doing but you did it WRONG. The only reason you can hop off the disintegrating blocks at all is because its a lil speedrun bug i left in intentionally (for silly). Not a single one of the levels (except maybe one in the glue area) require you to be fast
ALSO the fizzler on top is not a bug that is intentional level design

[Paper Planet DEMO]

upgrade options popped up. so i clicked the one i wanted. nothing happened. clicked it a few more times. and then the options just went away.

afterwards, i was left wondering if it was designed so that we had to press a key to select an upgrade and if that wasn't immediately obvious to us, you punish the player by taking away any upgrade at all.

edit: i see. i wasn't aware I needed to shoot to select them. thanks for clarifying

Willops responds:

I think you might've been sitting on the continue button by accident? If you rotate the turret to face the upgrade you want you can shoot it to get it.

Edit: I went ahead and changed the way continuing from the shop and item waves works. Instead of sitting on a button you now shoot a box, hopefully this should make it easier to avoid accidentally skipping items.

[Amazing Monk]

music/art great

mechanics/gameplay loop? -10/10

death almost NEVER feels fair. i'm zooming my way up and then i'll see something far in advance and somehow still fly straight into it.

the handling/mechanics are just way way way off and need to be completely overhauled.

Relieable responds:

Thank you for your feedback!