Ragebolt's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[CASTLE SLAYER]

A shameless Cookie Clicker rip-off that has the exact same values for every building/upgrade/achievment, but reskinned into fantasy style. It seems to be a mobile port from some other platform, since it has UI buttons which don't even work (including "watch ads" ones).

Graphics and sound are nice and make very chill and relaxing vibes. It also have some references and humor probably? And you can buy a skin for your char... Okay, I'm bad at describing good things, here comes the usual stuff.

For some reason, instead of having a clickable object anywhere, you have to walk to it very slowly, click a bunch of times and then walk around to collect the coins, because they have a 5 seconds lifetime. Then you have to walk all the way back to build the thing you want. It becomes tedious very fast and kills any idea of active game/autoclicking. So, your only option is to idle for hours (at least the game does update your money on a separate tab).

Knowing the author, I expected his text to be messy as always, and he didn't disappoint. The ranguage is google translated, has lots of typos. Some descriptions are missing, some appear in russian even in other languages and some are cut-off mid-sentence. It isn't hard to guess what the game tries to say though.

Achievments can re-lock themselves if the condition of unlocking becomes false (when you spend money on upgrades, it locks acievments "get X coins". For some reason, closing achievment menu creates a 3-4 second lag (and other menus lag for 1-1.5 seconds).

Anyway, it's an okay game if you want a fantasy-reskinned cookie clicker with only the basic content. Otherwise, just play the original.

Vonka responds:

Thanks, that's right, everything is according to the facts)
There is a character leveling, you can increase his speed and the radius of collecting coins, but a bad tutorial.

[DEAD PETALS]

Extremely mediocre. Background causes massive eyestrain, and I feel pity for those who actually try to get good at this game (including myself). Sounds are alright (some of them I like, some not so much). As for the gameplay...

Random elements can make or break the flow of the game, and this case seems to handle it very poorly. If the game spawns 5 enemies who shoot extremely fast barrages of huge bullets that cover half of the screen and then a boss who does less than a single mob every third run - this looks like the author didn't even bother to try balancing it at all (or maybe the author is just sadistic, trying to make sure players will bleed their eyes out looking at backgrounds while trying to finish the game). This is also proven by the fact that boss rush feels as easy as waves 1-2. Hyper can help with some impossible patterns, but the bullets it fires are very distracting, and there's no guarantee that the next wave is safe from the same BS. Hyper also makes heavy lags if it generates too many crystals instantly, the similar issue as getting hit - the game slows down and makes it hard to see what's going on, often resulting in you making more stupid mistakes. If the game is all about dodging bullets, please make sure your visuals help your players doing it, and not the other way around. Boss drops aren't clear either - I didn't understand any of the bonuses (except for hearts) until I checked the manual for their definition.

On a good note, the controls are pretty solid. The char does exactly what I make it to do, which is the most critical feature of bullet hell games. The game itself is extremely short, so losing to random BS is not too infuriating, as it takes like 2 minutes to come back (though I spent about 2 hours clearing it, and my eyes really hurt now). The auto-aim also works well here, since you want to kill enemies before they fill the whole screen with bullets. I'd rather dodge the bullets slow and methodically, "touhou-style", rather than just sit out of enemies range with auto-aim, but oh well.

bandaloo responds:

TO THOSE READING THIS IN THE FUTURE: i've optimized the case where there are lots of gems on the screen that seek out the player. i was doing something lazy before due to time constraints of the jam. hopefully the lag on large bullet cancels reduced greatly or completely eliminated. apologies to those who were effected by this!

thank you for the review. i will add options to reduce eyestrain. if your eyes start to hurt, don’t push through it and please stop playing!

as for the random elements, it’s definitely an experiment. not trying to compete with a touhou style game with scripted, carefully crafted attack patterns

i don't think i'm sadistic -- a lot of the lack of balance comes from the fact it was a jam submission. not because i want people to have a bad time. i agree with most of your points however, and i do with the gameplay encouraged getting up close, as others have pointed out. all things i am thinking about for a follow-up game

edit: i did test it to the best of my ability. i figured if i could beat it 10 times in a row without losing, it was okay enough for public consumption. still not perfectly balanced, and i'm continuing to make adjustments. still, thank you for spending so much time with the game. the slowdown when you get hit, however, is an intentional slow-mo effect meant to help out. if people find it hinders rather than helps, i'll look into adding an option to disable it

[Wigglesmith]

You probably like games by Bennett Foddy, huh?

There are some glaring issues with the game, and no, they're not about the controls (the game is purposely designed to be wonky), but everything that supports (or rather, doesn't support) its core mechanic.

First, the balance: the game tries to trick you into thinking that giving the soldiers requested weapons is the best way to defeat enemies, and that's completely wrong. Even with 0 damage, an armed soldier stops the enemy on its tracks, which in turn gives you more time to arm more soldiers. This means that the best tactic is to craft weapons in advance, so the soldiers will take their weapon right after they ask for it, which defeats the whole point of this mechanic. There is no "try to get the parts you need", only "how many times you'll be able to deal with crappy controls without failure?", and it's pretty disappointing.

Next, the window issue. The mouse controls use RMB to grab, but since all the parts are near the game border, the player has a high enough chance to click off the window, triggering context menu (I've done it a lot). In the best case scenario, the player will click off menu, closing it (and losing some precious time), but he also may accidentally click on the menu, triggering refresh or going to previous page. Not only it's infuriating, but also resets all your progress, forcing you to kill all the bosses again. And for whatever reason the game does not allow you to use LMB for movement and Space for grab at the same time.

The game also crashes on the 4th boss for me. Since I spin my arm like crazy, sending soldiers instantly, they start stacking on each other when the boss gets close to the castle. I checked the console when the game crashed, and it had stacking objects errors. This completely blocks me from clearing the game, which is sad, I would like to see the ending.

Now, for the good parts. I like the pixel aesthetics and most sounds (except 3rd and 4th bosses), the music is a bit repetitive, but still enjoyable. The game is also absolutely hilarious to watch - the blacksmith flailing his hand around while a streamer suffers in frustration is a sight to behold.

kukiol responds:

I'll check the crash of the 4th boss, not sure what happened there.
As you provided an extensive review, allow me to explain a bit my relationship with gamedev.
I enjoy hard games since I was a kid, but I have never been a good player, every game seemed too difficult, when I grew up I started to beat games but I kinda lost the feeling of the challenge that I got when the games were like Contra or Fzero, so I started to like games with artificial difficulty, (foddy games alongside others, yes)
This is my first contact with releasing a game and as it was for a gamejam, the time spent in the making of all the elements were minimal. I agreed with my artistic partner to make a hard broken wonky game and every complain about the controls makes me really happy.
Thank you very much for playing the game, this is about the experience playing and the inducing rage rather than the game itself, but I hope you had fun.

[LOVE and KILL]

Very immersive and atmospheric. Google translated English is yikes, but luckily it's easy to understand by characters' actions alone.
One thing though: NEVER try to enter the basement with a loaded forklift over your head. If cargo falls, you can die or get trapped inside the basement.

Vonka responds:

Thank you, in the future I will release an update where he will drive the car away)

[Nymphiad]

Nice game, fellow Construct dev. I'll tell you why the players keep saying that Z/J/Shift don't work. The way the game prompts run controls is very misleading: there's no indication that you can run in this game, so most players will try to tap those buttons to no avail; also, the shift button has an arrow on it, giving players a thought that something is up there; the thought is also strengthened by unnecessary placed blocks with the gaps just above the character and the coin. So, the players may think that in order to clear the level you should not jump over the gap, but use something to get to the ceiling and get to the other side from there (and no one bothers to read the manual). Was also the case for me, tbh - I tried tapping those buttons with no response, then tried to combo them with movement and noticed the running animation.

Wolod responds:

Thanks a lot for the feedback! I think that you're right. I have plans to make an extended version of this game. Going to explain controls much better there ;)

[Pico's School prequel]

I liek ur typoos
Nice immersion though.

[RED LINE]

Bruh, I told you to send me the missing text and not google translate it. Why rush?

Vonka responds:

sorry bro, but no one pays attention to this, such little things are not terrible.

[We Become What We Behold]

GIVE THE AUDIENCE WHAT THEY WANT
...and they will do what you want.

Ladies and gentlemen, right here is the ultimate proof of how a global worldwide problem can be described in a form of 5-minute game. It's so simple and short, and yet, so greatly depicts the mass media affection and society degradation.
This is just perfect.

[Mighty Knight]

Okay, this is a good example when a good designed game is getting much worse with a bad coding execution and (maybe) balance.

Good side:
- Graphics and sound are great. I can really enjoy this.
- The interface and tutorial are simple and easy to understand.
- The upgrades and bestiary look awesome.

Bad side: there are a lot of things making the game much more frustrating than it should be.
- If the game lags, the difficulty raises dramatically. It slows your (and maybe your party) actions and enemy spawnrate/speed, but not the timer. So, the timeup missions can become impossible at this rate. Imagine wasting 3-4x more gold than stage rewards per every try on missions 2-3. On 12 and 14 there are barely more that a half of enemies shows up before timer reaches 0. If you have this issue, set the graphics to low (after I did this I could complete those missions in 1 try, after countless trying with high res).
- Another difficulty issue with lags is the last boss (he makes me remember Thanatos Phantom, huh?). Your party is slowed by the lag, but his vulnerability time seems to not been affected. This leads to low damage to boss (which is critical when he goes enrage) and high spawn rate of adds (who make your party do random stuff). These things raises his difficulty to near (if not) impossible. After 5 hrs of frustration cleared it with 1 try with low res.
- Party members' AI is awfully stupid. They just target random enemy and come in contact with them, ignoring everything else. Leads to random dying or failing time events quite frequently.
- Balance could be better. Mostly the gold problem: it's not interesting to spam 12-C while afking to get everyone to max. The 1st upgrade (which gives stats) seems to be much more effective than any 3 other. The last boss is nothing at full hp and oneshooting you at low.
- Found a lot of glitches while playing. Sometimes there are "ghost" enemies spawned at the edges of the map. Sometimes some (usually 1) enemies won't spawn or won't die, making you to restart the level (totally hateful at 14-A). Sometimes your roll doesn't seem to give invulnerability (maybe due to the lags). The last boss can suddenly show you the win screen or he can stop doing anything but move (you should restart then, he becomes unkillable). The medals are not working well (I cleared everything here but got only 1 of 3).

TLDR; It could be 5/5 with more optimized scripts.