ErasmusMagnus's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Necrowave 5.0 (Old version)]

See, I told you this was one of the few games where the art direction with my normal color vision is what draws me in!

Do I even need to say the art is stunning in all the right ways? Playing your own beautifully realized cartoon is a surreal experience. The delayed pipe poof is a bit off putting, but the mime helps to balance it out.

Arfhis responds:

That's so good to hear! Thank you for the kind words. And thank you for the feedback!

[Lethal Potato]

The game design is quite strong. The loop is rock solid, with smooth movement. It's just plain fun to move around, aiming is very easy with the mouse and line, and the frantic pace of the game is balanced out by breaks for upgrading between the ever faster waves, allowing you to choose how to strategize in the future with great possibility for emergent tactics. It's just a visceral joy to dodge and weave through the playing field choosing the right moments to strike, and how. There is some oddness like not being able to predict how the potato will bounce off enemies, making combo strategies difficult, being in danger staying near the edges of the screen as enemies don't telegraph spawning in, or not being able to differentiate which potato flying around is the throwable one until it stops moving. But the gripes are minor and there is a huge amount of raw fun to be had here, making it all the more remarkable this polished work was made in a mere manner of 48 hours.

The mere act of being able to choose how you spend your upgrade every 10 enemies while the difficulty continues to climb keeps things perpetually interesting, and you keep asking, oh, I know I can get further next time. I can change strategies, do different upgrades, have different luck, etc. It's quite addictive with that 'easy to play, difficult to master' level of approachability. Combine that with the potential for emergent tactics, and it's simple presentation hides an engrossing little game.

Add on top of that a great visual style with the simple pixel art but made all the more excellent through the use of a CRT filter and admittedly a bias in the excellent sound work and music, what on paper seems really simple is just a damn fine game with all the bells and whistles you could expect out of an unassuming but intense arcade romp!

crypt1x-dev responds:

Ty!! If I could give this review a review I would give it 5 stars!

[Terminate]

Fine for what it is even with its clunkiness, but I couldn't figure out how to get past the second level. Finding the keycode took some trial and error since P isn't listed as an alternate PAUSE button. But it is. And that's where the code is. Fair for what it is, but breaks pretty easily with the menus and collision and breaking the keypad logic and whatnot. Not to mention even entering the right password first try is broken and you can't continue.

Update: Now the password works, but you get immediately stuck upon entering the 3rd level. Can't look around, can't move. Only shoot.

DevDynasty responds:

Thanks so much for the review and taking the time to play our game, we're students working on our first game and it's so cool to see this. We've already taken these bugs into account and will have these fixed and updated in the next build

[GÖRF]

Now I know where the Size Matters frog comes from! :)

As for the game itself? I hope you'll forgive me, but honestly, I can't say the design is good. There's no fluid movement or much strategy. Moving on a grid-based system feels stiff and punitive. Underwater, you can move left and right simply enough (not smoothly), but it doesn't help you get into a flow. The hit detection for the fly seems wonky, seemingly missing when it's touching the fly when not simply difficult to line up, since the there's no way to aim the narrow tongue, so you have to eyeball and hope for the best, and the heron barely telegraphs the bite by just briefly appearing with an open mouth above you for a split second, making it nearly impossible to react, and it's suddenly over in one confusing instant. If you do react in time, you'll still probably die, as you explicitly have to remember to press down, which isn't obvious as your first instinct is to chase the fly, that getting the fly automatically saves you, and there's nothing visually enforcing that you can only go down while above water for some reason. You just have to remember, so it feels like you get stuck a lot. And that's when you're not just missing the fly or dying instantly.

While the concept of a simple arcade game of being a nimble frog to pop out of water to catch flies to avoid a bird works well enough for this arcade game and could be interesting, there's really nothing to keep you engaged. Just a high score number, and that's it. One static challenge, nothing dynamic or interesting, and no possibility for interesting anecdotes.

The best part of the game is the aesthetic style. They're not bad, but they're not interesting. The retro pixelated style is nice, but there's not much to look at. There's the title screen logo, the hastily slapped together default buttons, up to three frames of animation per basic sprite, inconsistent black or white outlines, and the curvature of the fly's path. The sound too is nothing special. The music's fine, not amazing, and the sound effects are underwhelming. At least the details of the rewarding, exaggerated Minecraft chewing sounds in tandem with the frog sprite chewing, and the clown honk with trying to eat underwater are cute.

I'm afraid to say the game is pretty messy. With the gamey abstraction and confusion about mechanics, the distractingly modern sounds vs retro arcade noises, and a decent pixel style contrasting default menu UI, it tends to fall apart.

I can't honestly say I had much fun with the game. On the occasions I could get into a flow with the stiff controls, I tended to die in an instant to the heron, and seems to mostly be an exercise in precision. Mostly, the game left me bored when it wasn't frustrating. My high score was 15 and I didn't care to go beyond that. Finishing a game in 48 hours is always a feat, so props to you for taking on that challenge. Perhaps with some polish to could become a viscerally satisfying challenge. But for me, this game wasn't it.

crypt1x-dev responds:

It's ok, you're forgiven ;)
To comment on your review:
- thx for the feedback :)
- there is one strategy, which is quickly emerging and going back in to then emerge in another spot, which will make the heron go for the first spot you emerged and give you more time above water in the other spot
- i personally really like the music but it doesn't really 'come into it's own' (idk if that's correct but that's what google translate told me) because the game is very hard so you die very quickly
a highscore of 15 is actually really good, my own highscore is 17
- I'm not going to develop it any further, but thanks for the tips
- It's probably an underwhelming game compared to my newer games, but GÖRF was my first ever working game i made with Godot and also my first working jam submission

["Loss" Collab!]

I love this website.

RustiTank responds:

everyone does

[Doodlepup's Missing Wagon]

Classy. I enjoyed all the references. And the cameo by @Droid. Highlight was threatening Beatrice with the piece to be done with all the fetch quests.

While I had frustrations, I enjoyed the game to completion. The direction is solid, but it feels lacking outside of fetch quests and the final boss. It's a little arbitrary coherence-wise but with some interesting moments like dialogue trees and the Beatrice choice. The focus on plot and context is quite strong, and the visual and audio style are of a high and consistent quality—the vibe was nailed to a T.

Loopykins responds:

Thank you for the criticism and im glad you enjoyed it overall!

[DCK: Drunk Klunk]

I'm atrocious at this game, but it's good fun with a catchy tune. My best rank was B.

Cycon responds:

ALL HAIL B, LONG LIVE THE KING

[Endacopia - Demo]

Awesome, I really like this. This is exactly the kind of stuff I love to see on Newgrounds.

The design of the game is strong. Walking around is comfortable. While unusual to see WASD for a game like this, I have no complaints. It's very smooth and is seamless to walk around, helped in no small part by the animations of the main character. Click to move wouldn't hurt though. Interaction controls on the other hand are a bit unintuitive. The instructions and experimenting around eventually make clear how to interact with the environment, but it takes getting used to. The puzzles at this stage are simple, but adequate. I assume because it's the beginning? While there's no wacky moon logic puzzles to figure out, there's no particularly challenging puzzles yet either. The coin puzzle I solved by accident and laughed at, so that was funny. Replacing the usual flavor text of newer point and click games, the return of '90s style clickability is very entertaining, which also makes sense based on the unique setting. I cannot call the gameplay exemplary, as it could probably do with some more tightly designed puzzles and more depth (at least with what I've seen in the demo so far) and/or inventory interactions. The fighting especially seems to come out of total left field gameplay-wise (which is maybe the point). It's lucky I'm already used to arcade-based reflex gameplay as a player, otherwise this change would utterly alienate me. While they can be fun and add variety, non-optional action sequences are a very poor fit for otherwise deliberate, slow-paced, and non-violent gameplay, even if they're well-designed (which this is). Any player who isn't already used to arcade-based reflexes will be thrown for a loop, as it asks them to recall skills that they may not expect or already have, and the rest of the game doesn't cultivate them. It's not like the core game heavily alternates between integrated combat and exploration—it is just an occasional minigame that asks for an entirely different skill set and can't be bypassed. It's like a sudoku player being asked to win a round of arm-wrestling in the middle of the puzzle. But overall, I would call the design quite strong for the genre. Great feeling navigation, decently fun puzzles, joys clicking on every object in each room, helpful NPC interactions, and it leaves me wanting more.

The storyline definitely conveyed what it was about and I never felt as though I was missing something I wasn't supposed to. I mean, I felt I was missing something, but in the way the game intended to. This is definitely one of those semi-abstracted plots that require both attention and detachment to make sense of it, so I felt I was along for the ride, not lost more so than I believe I should have been. The intrigue was very strong and I was very curious and felt compelled to see where it led, to see if the broken surreal pieces of the nostalgic and off-putting puzzle would fit into place. No hand holding at all in that regard. My favorite character was Tip. What's nice is that the slow pace allows for you to decide how much you want to soak up the information. I loved hearing the drawing talk muffled back to me, guessing the password as "...password?" and laughing both when I thought it was right, and then learned it was wrong, and more beyond that. No complaints there.

From the visual and sound aspect, the game executes the style perfectly. It's consistently highly polished, with great attention to the small details to not only the clickable objects, but to superb sound design as well. It really adds a sense of joy exploring every little nook and cranny and moving the character around. It just feels… good. The place where classic graphical techniques and modern sensibilities collide. Add to that the insanely charming dialogue and character expressions. Fantastic.

As a wholesome experience, the demo is totally cohesive, with the gameplay feeding into the context and vice versa. This is seen in instances such as the player being an identifiable entity in the context of the story acknowledged by characters, cheesing the game and politely acknowledging it, and umpteen touches upon those really makes it feel like you have a presence and agency in the setting, which works wonders for investment and immersion into this bizarro setting. The tone wonderfully skirts the line between unsettling and cutesy and inviting. The sum result is quite engaging, never knowing if your next encounter will be warm and fuzzy childlike glee, or a glimpse into the darkest recesses of your mind. Great stuff.

Overall, Endacopia is great. Super fun, weird, charming and funny. So many fun little touches, between the art style changes, clickable interactive elements, and the surreal, uprooting setting. It is a bit clunky though (I never could quite figure out how to kick the ball, and the talk music with Tip got stuck and played after I left until the loop ran out), but I have a particular fondness for point and click adventure games, and the mild shortcomings of the gameplay notwithstanding, the demo not only engaged me on a purely game level, but through strong feelings and thoughts that only good art can. This is something really special here, and the net result leaves me hungry for more. I'll be following the full game's development for sure.

Andyl4nd responds:

Wow, thank you for the in-depth review Erasmus! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the demo, it fulfills me to see people take note of the design choices made.

Yes, the puzzles were made with simplicity in mind for the sake of having the player focus on getting used to the gameplay before things become complicated later on. I plan to have the puzzles progressively escalate in difficulty over time in the full version of the game.

I agree with the the sudoku-arm wrestling metaphor, even if that sounds totally rad haha. The idea is to occasionally break the repetitive nature of this genre, but I can see how it's a turn-off for certain players. I'm considering having alternative methods of defeating enemies without having to necessarily engage in battle for those who'd rather skip those obstacles in the future.

I had to jump through too many hoops to get the web version up and running thanks to the strange nature of the engine used, so Tip's theme playing after the dialogue is over is one of the few side effects of the html5 version.

Thanks again for dedicating the time to play and review Endacopia, I look forward to completing the game's development if the universe allows it :)

[Days of Survival]

Not bad. The day/night resources/monsters loop works nicely. The biggest problem is that during the day phase, I was mostly just waiting around for resources to spawn. There wasn't anything else to do. At night, when the monsters attack, the way the sword always points right or left makes it hard to hit enemies above or below you, making me vulnerable. If I got hit, and I did, I never was able to get enough ore to make potions to heal fast enough.

The game's lacking in depth. There's nothing really to do outside of combat and resource mining which often involves idling about. I was at a point where I was at one heart from the mentioned difficulty hitting enemies, and the pressure increased. I tried to survive until daytime, where I could then mine all the resources that spawned at night to hopefully make a potion. But I died. That was on day 5. It took a while, so I ended it there. So if that was polished up a little more, if the timer was hastened, or other mechanics like hunger was added, that'd improve the experience. As for everything else in the game, it's nothing special, but it works well enough (graphics, music, premise). So while I had frustrations, and wouldn't play it for a long time, I still had fun with the game.

MacaroniAndGames responds:

I’m glad you could still somewhat enjoy the game, but I do know from play testing that it is definitely boring during the day. Maybe I could add animals to the game that would spawn during the day, and that would be useful if I added a hunger mechanic. I definitely have some ideas for an update now, thanks for your feedback!