ZaronX's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dragonsweeper]

I keep coming back.

It's been at least a week. I play multiple rounds a day. I've roped multiple friends into it. My neurons are extremely activated.

This is extremely good. The learning curve is a bit sharper than Minesweeper's, obviously, but the attention to detail is somewhat astounding. Learning monster patterns and tells is as useful as coming to grips with the numbers on the board, and seeing people in the reviews lay out the patterns they found was both fascinating and made me better at the game. I find myself calculating, taking the odd shot in the dark on an educated guess, and having the ever-elusive "a-ha!" moment whenever I figure out exactly where the slime wizard is hiding.

My only gripe is that I'm not sure why some rounds I get closer to a perfect game than others. I'm not sure how random the board's actual contents become, but I always seem to come up short. Regardless, pursuing the challenge runs is a fun added challenge and wrinkle.

I have no idea how one could meaningfully expand upon this, but I'd love to see it done, because I cannot even get enough of what's already here. Genuinely excellent work.

[Fist of the Neverwake]

God, I wish I liked this.

Love the vibes. Love the ideas. Feel like I'd be in less suffering if I could rebind the controls somehow, as the S and D key situation is making my wrist hurt like hell.

I did not feel like the magnet punch explained itself in game well at all, especially in regards to the bell-chaining you can do, so I got stuck in the sewers for quite a while. I think charging it up can both help and hurt your control of the timing, which is especially felt at that weird turn in the walkway where the edge of the platform isn't especially clear and you need to time and space your punch to hit the floaty boys to then enter the bell chain. Honestly, by the time I hit the tower, my patience was already pretty shot, but the physical pain on my end was a big part of that probably. The game is fine, just awkward to get the hang of with a pretty steep difficulty curve.

If things got expanded out and refined, maybe broken down into stages like in its inspirations, I'd probably vibe with it more. There's a certain catharsis in these sorts of things to being able to break away from what's ruining your run and go back to an earlier stage and see how much you've actually improved through scores and ranks and such. I wish I had that here instead of one long-ass level with a timer that should probably just switch over to saying "SKILL ISSUE" after five minutes or so.

I think I'd appreciate the punch more if it just had the immediacy of Sonic's homing attack or the ability to be charged on the run instead of making you hover in place. I realize that'd have level design ramifications and is completely a matter of personal preference, though.

It's not bad. Could be a lot worse. It could also be a lot better. I'm very mixed, here.

[Impact-Effect]

A bit easy (I never once used or felt pressured TO use an EMP, and went all-in on the offensive options), but enjoyable for what it is. This could pretty easily go on semi-endlessly I think, but having an end goal helps keep it focused and polished.

Not bad.

[my favourite place]

Mechanically and aesthetically fine but I responded to death by audibly grumbling "oh, fuck off" a few too many times to say I was having a good time before calling it somewhere in level 2. Maybe I'm just too tired for this shit but the combination of the timer making me want to hurry and the utter lack of forgiveness of being booted back to the start of the stage after every slight fuck-up really wore on me very quickly.

[Valkyrie: Sacred Feathers S]

Not bad, could use some polish. Enemies will sometimes spawn directly on top of you with no real warning or mercy, and some indicator of when a powerup spawns off-screen might be nice and serve to tempt the player into danger. a visual warning or cooldown for the big invincibility murder attack coming to an end would likewise be pretty nice. Little things, mostly.

The perspective kind of throws me a bit and some of the hitboxes are kind of unintuitive (ie. aiming for flying enemies' shadows instead of the big obvious sprites) but there's a solid foundation here.

ByEthanFox responds:

Thanks!

The power-ups *have* an effect - it's a lightning bolt/thunder sound (they spawn with a lightning strike) but what I'm taking away from this is that the effect gets lost in the mix, so I'll have to look for something better. Ditto the attack power-down, there's a rising tone but again, it must get lost in the mix.

The perspective thing, similarly, I'll see what I can do. It has to do with how the mode-7 style visual work, but it might be possble to adjust.

[Fish Canon (Prototype)]

It's a solid start. The groundwork's here and everything seems on-point, but there's not a whole lot here.

I'd love to see the view zoom out a bit at high speeds so something like the glider would even be feasible to use and get anything with; as is, I feel like I'm working half-blind and it's not really worth the item cost. Upgrades for something like orb grab range could also help, but in its present state this is really a grind to get anywhere. I finished the demo with nothing upgraded past level 2, and I didn't feel particularly inclined to keep pushing.

Some reward for distance or an orb/item bonus for clearing goals would be a nice touch, and perhaps a little more going on in the game itself. A lot of these sorts of games have obstacles and helpers scattered around the playfield that add a little dynamism to the experience, and you could potentially work that into an upgrade / unlock progression as well to help keep things a little fresher.

I hope you keep going with this and turn it into something special!

[Super Sonic Pinball]

A little basic...

The board was sparse and half the game window's space is taken up by Sonic and Tails just standing there. The bonus boards and single-slot slot machine are nice touches, but don't do much to justify how open and empty the layout is. The collision is largely passable, but the flippers don't seem to hold any power to them, and there's a visible delay between when they flip up and the ball gets going with barely any speed. With the bumpers helping out it's not as obvious, but in the bonus rooms it's a glaring fault that makes getting the ball up past the bottom third of the board feel like dumb luck simply because unless it hits the top of one of the lower bumpers it's not going to get any higher.

simply put, what you have here is a foundation, and while I've seen you saying Flash couldn't handle much more, I've been having terrible lagging issues due to some Firefox bug or other that's been going on and it's about the first thing that's run decently for me on this site in a week. I don't know how you're handling your collision logic, but there shouldn't be enough here to slow things down by even a remote stretch, even for Flash. :/

And, on a more minor offense, while I had no trouble finding the music and ball options, the fact I couldn't hear the chosen audio until I started the board authentically irked me. Your menu is bizarrely silent, and no harm could come from it playing a little something something.

The physics are decent save the flipper collision, and this doesn't feel like a lost cause, just very aimless. Give the board more, or make the space it consumes less, maybe add some rollovers or an orbit shot, something. If you're already having issues keeping the game running smoothly a ramp or two is probably out of the question as then you have to handle layering, but I find it hard to believe more couldn't get into this. :/

[Tetraform]

Long-Lasting...

The game seems a bit long for something with half the medals revolving around beating the thing and no save feature. While the gameplay isn't bad, most of the enemies don't seem to do that much so the variety seems almost purely cosmetic, and I found myself frequently annoyed by having one enemy left on screen, forcing myself to give up a spike for it or some such thing, and then having another enemy or two pop up immediately after. It's not like i wasn't waiting for that to happen, either. Why can't the enemies spawn steadily over the course of a wave? Would help this thing's pace a lot.

As is, dull at the beginning, only moderately better at the end. That medal for full spikes seems a bit outlandish considering most of mine were lost by the bosses ramming into them. A couple more layers of strategy and a better pace could have helped this a lot. It's not bad, but it's not particularly good, either.

[Toss the Turtle]

Still a Bit Too Much Luck Involved

This is one of the best games of it's kind, but would be all the better if your ability to manipulate the turtle as much as you can made a bloody lick of difference.

A genre mainstay that you've neglected is some manner of radar or warning indicator of the assorted hazards and aids coming up, a serious problem with the latest patch's assortment of floating spikes and increased number of aerial adversities, never mind the ludicrous speeds things move at that render most obstacles a single-frame existence that makes them more decorative than a way to test the player's skill.

And, again, this is a shame, as you've done a lot to try and make skill a factor here more than just straight luck, and I commend that in any cannon game. The assortment of upgrades, variety of things to ram into, and assorted achievements and medals all do a lot to make up for that shortcoming, but I do wish they didn't have to.