TwinBlazar's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hungry Joe]

................................................................................................BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH

OMFGWTFBBQ!! Whoever thought of mixing those fabulous audio + culinary art + Megaman Battle Network deserve a lifetime free International buffet. Have you been smoking some angel dust or something? LMAO!! >o<

Holy shit. You got the freaking guts to pull this off. I really like this uniqueness of the game!!! >_<

Now, some problems:

- just like Megaman Battle Network 1, the gameplay mechanic is there but things are not so obvious and what not. They polish things up and make sure things are more smooth in later Megaman Battle Network. Most of the time, when I choose the attacks, I don't even know which does what. I choose whatever I can choose the most and just use them. But of course, if you know which recipe does what exactly, you can get strategic. But when things aren't so obvious, players will still stuck on "which does what" rather than flowing with the game and go "let's use this then that". It would be helpful if there is a little help text describing which recipe does what in battle.

- telegraphing: it is a bit hard to tell the behavior of some of the enemy attacks. For example, the flour rolling pin goes through me a few times and I still don't even know what it does.

- polish : what this game lacks right now is polishing department. All the idea are in and well, but if you can polish the game and make the gameplay formal and professional and you put it on Steam, I will probably vote for greenlight. Yeah... so polish it a bit, bro.

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Oh, well, that's all I wanna say. Now, I gotta go eat sashimi with ketchup with yogurt with rum and a bit of special powder - yeah, that kinda powder. LOLOL~~~

Kwing responds:

I did consider making it so that if you selected a recipe twice a message would pop up and tell you the nature of the attack. That might be something to add, as I'm still updating the game. I'll see what I can do.

Not all of the recipes' effects are immediately apparent. Checking out their function out of battle is really the best way to understand them, which means some will remain enigmas until you obtain them.

As it turns out, this game was a lot less polished before this - for instance, the recipes didn't have letters on them and didn't dim when selected until someone pointed that out very late in development. I did as much as I could to make the game perfect, but ultimately I only got 2-3 people to test this for me despite all of my begging. Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of fine tuning that's not accounted for.

[Project Box]

You got the simple visual aesthetics fine but the audio department need serious work and the gameplay needs a bit of fine tuning to be more entertaining and engaging.

Please find some audio and kick things up a bit. Let the rhythm guide the player around your game. It is a must or the game will be very dry.

For the gameplay, so touching an enemy means "game over" and if an enemy escapes to the left, it also means "game over"...

Tell you what. Since this Ludum Dare is "YOU ARE THE MONSTER", give that box the player controlling a meaner look. Give him teeth, cruel eyes, anything. Now, go find some sound of dogs with rabies for this new meaner box and pumpkin squishing sound for gore. Replace those "tum tum" stomping with the new monster and gore sounds. We got a monster!

For the gameplay, if you touch an enemy and you die, that feels inferior. Remove it. Instead, to make things more engaging, I suggest have the enemies try jumping over the player and sneak over the player at faster speed. This way, the game would feel more like you are the monster and will not let anyone escape. Let the game be over only if an enemy escape. With this, you now got yourself a cool cruel cube monster.

Sorry if I speak too much and make you feel bad but... I mean, hey, the theme is "YOU ARE THE MONSTER", so let's kick things up to eleven!

adiokristoffer responds:

hahah thanks for your feedback :) i made this with just 1 day before the submission so i know it's not good XD ill try to port it to mobile and i'll take note of your feedback :D

[Hyper Tunnel]

Got 1220 points in my first try. Damn, my eyes have been open up wide. brrrrrr....

Ok, this game would be good for killing times on smartphone - that is if you wanna take a break from the more casual ones. :P

VascoF responds:

It IS available on Android, in case you didn't notice: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vascof.HyperTunnel

[Strongerman]

Well, well, well, when the explosion of the mine goes off, the music is cut off. Is this intentional? That's nostalgic stuff. :P

This is a good little short game boy jam you got here. While those shots are pain to dodge, this is similar to back in the days a bit, but those games back in the days are a lot harder. Each level here is rather short, so backtracking if you die isn't so painful. (Try die in Dark Souls... oh god......)

Do you want to give it even more game boy feel? Reduce the number of bullets the player and enemy can shoot, and you will feel more like those games back then with limited hardware capabilities. ;)

So far, good job for the jam. ^_^

Gypopothomas responds:

Thanks a lot!
I'd like to say the sound cutting the music off was intentional, but it was a total accident. Haha! It gave my nostalgia button a good pressin'.
Aye, I kept the levels short to encourage replaying for scores. I think wee quick blasts keep people coming back for one more go.
Dark Souls is brilliant! It's punishing, but rewarding. No one appreciates things that come too easy.

[Geminis]

There are quite a number of bugs and glitches lurking around. One moment, I had the pessimistic sister climbing invisible ladders horizontally and then she got stuck on the floor plank. This occured on the third level. If my memory is correct, the stair on the left in the middle (from 1F to 2F) is problematic. This causes me to restart 2 times in the third level. There is also an instance that a sister push the crates backward and also an instance that a sister walks by standing still.

HOWEVER, since this is made for Ludum Dare 33. I would say "great job" for pulling this game off in just 72 hours. I didn't know siamese twins conjoined at the back could actually split apart then conjoin back. Did you thought of the splitting yourself and put it into the game? If yes, then good job for using it as a gameplay feature and incorporating it into the theme of Ludum Dare 33.

By the way, I reached the point where they fell off the rope. Is that the end? That's it?

[Iron Sunset]

After 2-3 playthroughs, I finally understand what's going on. At first, I did not understand why do I have to shoot. Yes, the game told me there is a traitor among ourselves and I must shoot. However, without character development, I have no sympathy with the characters I am about to shoot. It is like watching a war movie not from the start, but from the climax when it is about to end. The audience won't have the sympathy with the characters - it feels more like... these people are strangers that I do not care whether they die or not.

In addition, are you monitoring the messages that the players are feeding into your game? I got messages like "@@@@@@@@@@@" and some other meaningless text, and I was confused the first few times as I did not know these are other players' text. In fact, I was thinking, is the game glitching up?

Question: in each playthrough the characters change. There are deer, worm, owl (?), dog (?). Are there any significance toward these changes?

On the other note, I see this is an art game you are pulling off here. Very impressive idea and concept, but watch out for the execution. This execution relies on other players' input could either make the game shine or flop for the next players. (I was confused in the first playthrough so I ended up shooting the monkey cuz he bad mouthed the most among all the characters, and I was still confused after shooting the monkey. The second and third playthrough, I start to understand what message are you trying to deliver.)

The visuals and the music match the tone for this artistic game. I don't have any complain regarding those. Good job with those pixels and piano there.

So all in all, a unique experience you are giving us. Great concept and idea, but I suggest you thinking about the execution part some more as it wasn't until the third playthrough that I understand what message are you trying to deliver in this game.

[The Intergalactic Bounty Hunter]

At first, when I saw the spaceship shooting turtle speed bullets, I was thinking "uh-oh", this might be bad. But somehow, after I got the 3-way bullet and then... 9-way... bullet? Things start to get entertaining. The laser and the heavy bomb also have their own use in the right situation. I simply use all my heavy bombs in the asteroid fields as the regular shots (since they drain energy) can't destroy those asteroids fast enough. Same goes with the boss, once it stopped shooting, I simply went in right in front of it and spam everything I got and it goes down very quickly. So the game hooked me back after I had an not positive impression. Great job.

You got all the visuals serviceable, but if you want to kick things up a notch, I recommend having some "impact" visual and audio feedback effects for the regular shots, laser and what not. This is to give the player some gratification of destroying things. Also, you can hype things up, perhaps by moving the background faster when fighting the boss and you know shake the screen a bit.

For the font, it is a bit hard to read. You can use the current font for the title logo or a huge text label, but this font is not suitable for reading.

Other than that, great work. :)

TheCez responds:

I'm glad my game was able to hook you back in even after a bad first impression! :D

And thank you for the suggestions! Those are great ideas! I wish I had thought of them while developing my game, haha!

Yeah, you aren't the first to comment about the font. I'll have to be sure to change that as soon as possible.

Thank you so much for the review and the great ideas!

[ＢＥＤ✰ＨＯＧＧ]

A cute and simple game.

At first, I wasn't thinking much but after seeing what the pillow fights are all actually about, I like this game. I'm fav'ing it. 48 hours for this is awesome. Great work.

[The Valley Rule]

A puzzle platformer that is pure, elegant, simple, minimalistic and to the point. At first, I was walking around and was thinking what could you be offering in this game. But after I got the first ability, I somehow got hooked and have a strange urge that I wanna clear the game. The "what to do" and "where to go" aren't so hard, and that is where the game shines.

I have no complain with the controls. The whole ride is well done. It was good from the beginning to the end.

Great job.

[Barriers]

Hey there. This would be a good game for those who are in relationship and test whether their synergy is truly sweet and go well together.

The game's concept is simple. There is a man and there is a woman, and we simply need to have both meet each other. The premise is simple. Under that, the game proceeds as puzzle levels where both the man and the woman must cooperate. It is a must to have 2 players to play this game for the game to shine brighter than the sun.

However, I believe this is an alpha stage of the game. All the concepts and what not are in. What are left is to polish and ensure that the game experience flows well to the audience.

For example, when the man and the woman meet, we could show both the man and the woman slowly french kissing each other (and add a sound effect for this). This will give the players (or lovers) the gratification of accomplishment together.

Another instance is when one of the lovers hit the laser (?), the stage simply restarts. To ensure the game flows well, there should be a sound indicating one of the players is hit by a laser as well as disabling the movement for that player. After that, the game could splash an image showing an "ouch" image to the lovers, then restart. This will allow the game to flow better, rather than simply restarting. Yet, I do understand that this is your first game, but this game shows that you are now ready to proceed further in crafting richer experience. :)

The puzzle itself is intuitive and you always know what you should do. Nevertheless, a tiny mistake could punish the lovers to repeat the stage over, doing all the things they have done in the past minutes. This disrupts the flow of the game and could irritate the lovers, yet it could be easily fixed with a quick auto-save and allow the lovers to reload to rewind and fix their mistake. Does Unity have such feature?

Other than that, great job. Keep up the good work.

FSt-Germain responds:

I really like your ideas to improve game flow. I would like some reward at the end of each level like a kiss, or maybe a heart pops up and brings you to the next level or something. I will definitely look for a good end to a level like that. Also I like the idea that I could play a sound effect or something when they get hit by a laser. I'll look into it. I want the game to be challenging but I obviously don't want to annoy the players, so I will need to come up with a solution like you said. I'm not sure if you meant a rewind feature, or just the ability to restart a level from any point in the level. I personally think that would make the game less challenging, because there is no failure, but I get what you're saying with it ruining the flow of the game. I will have to think about a better solution to that problem. Thanks for all the feedback!