b-random9's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gyro Gear Tournament+]

No idea what I'm meant to be doing besides just ramming the characters together, seems the winner is always determined by however scores the highest at the start.

I way able to get bouncing on the opponents head with the second character who felt significantly better to control, which felt like I was doing something right but the bar says otherwise.

rotcivsette responds:

Sorry if it wasn't clear! You have to press a button to attack the opponent to prevent damage. Also avoid touching their attack ring. Jumping on their heads is effective, but takes time. Unless you're up against Centin, he cancels jumping attacks with his helmet.

[Afraid of the Dark]

"Hey Edmund can I copy your homework"
"Sure just don't make it too obvious"

In seriousness, whilst I expected a straight up Isaac rip-off from the thumbnail, I kinda wish it had taken more from Isaac. Isaac has variety and items to keep it interesting, it's more non-linear to add some strategy, here things quickly get repetitive.
Like, I'm not sure why there's randomly generated levels here when non-random would probably be more interesting. Since as far as I can tell you can't perma-die so you're not doing the levels again anyway.

[ACCESS CODE: HEAVEN]

Well polished enough but very unoriginal. I don't think every game needs to be a massive subversion, but a boss that moves slowly back and forth and then drops to try crush you is lackluster when the game's core mechanics are also very familiar.

Character also feels extremely sluggish.

Dying in one hit is also annoying, I never died because it was challenging, just because a hazard was too close to the door and I'd walk right into it.

[SELF]

Feels fun but the control scheme seems a bit needlessly confusing, like it's odd that holding up and right ultimately launches you curved down. I got through a lot of levels without really grasping the exact nature of how it works.

Got softlocked about 15 stages in on a black screen after randomly crashing into a wall.

[Rusty Wind Blows]

Feels like it drags on a lot longer than it needed to. I'd gotten the basic rhythm down by about section 2 and there wasn't really any need for the game to go on past that.

I never really felt much of a struggle to manage everything, there's never a sense of urgency. You have plenty of time to dodge out the way, I got hit once throughout the entire game.

The stormy sections of map never really had any impact, if that's what the map up top is indeed indicating. I never had to change my approach to deal with them nor could they be avoided.

The HUD as a nice look to it and the more abstract artstyle works well enough given it's consideration to the atmosphere but it certainly feels like it was done more so out of ease than anything else. The killer shooting bats feel more like a placeholder enemy with how out of place they are compared to the rest of the tone of the game.

I can't help but feel the story would have been better were the reason we are going to the island not given away at the start. Like, as is, we start having to burry a body, and it ends when we burry the body, ergo nothings changed. Were it more ambiguous there might have at least been some intrigue and payoff. Perhaps if we had an extra task, say to keep the body on the boat (except it's not clear that it's a body, kept wrapped up perhaps), then that would raise the question of what we're doing through gameplay alone.

[Advent NEON DEMO [Web Version]]

Feels nice enough even if the controls are a bit hard to get used to on keyboard regardless of how you map it.

Problem is, I can't for the life of me figure out how to start the first level. I'm over the open door, I've pressed up, down, left, right, jump, attack, super attack, dash, escape, enter and nothings happened. I would assume down given the arrow above the door but I just duck.

CryoGX responds:

I'm sorry you're experiencing this! That's definitely weird.

If the door is open, then pressing "up" (without moving) is supposed to start the level. I have never seen or heard someone mention this specifically *not* working before, so please use the feedback form (https://forms.gle/Ag5KMrfHHqRRsaSM6) to describe what's happened in more detail if you can spare the time.

If for some reason you've clicked outside of the game window nothing will respond at all until you click back inside it.

[Flavouride]

It's clear a lot of work was put into giving this game a sense of style, kind of feels like a GBA game. It's really quite impressive how polished it is.

I do think there may be an issue at the conceptual level though. The game feels very at odds at itself on what it wants to be. Like it's got this open map concept where you start again if you die but the player mechanics feel more in line of with something like Celeste where you die instantly but only get back a short amount.
Like, it feels like the game's not sure what it's testing me on. I died in cheese land after getting the key and came close to quitting, the only thing being tested with the shooty enemies is my ability to wait for an opportunity to attack which isn't really related to the core mechanic. Chocolate land does this better by having to hit a dude up through the stream.

The bosses were the more interesting part of the game for sure. Chocolate boss felt a bit lacking though, like all was being tested was the ability to jump over the boss then stand in the right place, had it tested the prementioned mechanic I think it would have been on par with the rest.

In the end I had to give up on cheese land, there was no way I was redoing the entire stage because I died to the boss.

Overall I'm guessing the goal was just to create a polished feeling platformer and it does that. I think the biggest flaw is just not knowing how to create challenge. Like the levels almost feel like padding between the bosses.

I think if you really wanted to commit to open levels, making it feel more like a world with a few characters in it and perhaps being less formulaic would help elevate the feel the game goes for to the next level.

Oh also this couldn't bother me less but I figure I should say that medals don't seem to unlock for me.

HealliesGames responds:

In general yes, I think it could use a better level design as you say and a more creative use of the mechanics.
Not pretty sure about checkpoints, since the levels are quite small and relatively simple.

I see you unlocked the medals: it can happen that you may reload the page.

Thank you for a detailed feedback!

[Becloudead - Christmas Special]

Really can't get into this game due to the combat system. It's weird that it's so heavily rhythm based yet has no real audio feedback regarding if you pull of a combo or not, there's a good reason most rhythm game's are music games, without the feedback it just feels off. It's a rhythm game without a sense of rhythm.

On top of that I don't really get the point of the combo system. Like, I seem to be able to swing faster just by mashing the button.

To make things worse, I get sent back to the start when I die, I'm trying to a grasp on the combat system, why am I being forced to do the basic platforming again? Gave up after getting by the zombies only to die to the wolf twice.

Not sure why the roll is down + x. Perhaps x gets used for something else as I didn't get far but it seems like there's no reason it couldn't just be down or x.

Credit where it's due on the atmosphere, nice to see a game have a foreground layer with faster parallax than the main, works well with the tree.

Overall though, wasn't much incentive to try and grasp the game's mechanics.

HeadbanGames responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

Like we mention in the demo and in the description, these specials are built on an early alpha build of the game.

There is a lot more we are planning, we're aiming for a 2020 release and we'll be polishing it regularly throughout the development.

Adding sound cues to the combos is a nice idea, I'll look into that.

You can swing fast if you choose to, but you will only alternate between hits 1 and 2.
Hit #3 does more damage and has special attribute with some weapons, the knife for example cuts off zombies arms (zombie minus one arm does 25% less damage, 50% if you cut both)
Hit #4 is even stronger than hit #3 and with the knife it will take off zombies head (reduce 50% damage).
Also hits 3 and 4 pushes enemies back further.

Currently there are only two weapons, but we have more planned and you could eventually build your own combos mixing different weapons.

There are 2 checkpoints in each special, each special takes about 10 minutes to beat. I think that's fair enough.

X without down is used for the dashing ability later on.
Rolling can't be just down, because that is used for crouching, low attacks and to drop down to a ledge or a ladder (with jump).

[Dead Estate CLASSIC]

I found it more tedious than challenging. Even the meant to be tough yellow dudes that chase you can be beaten by just walking around in a circle whilst shooting. Enemies take way too long to kill. Only times I ever really took damage were as soon as I entered a room or by the worm things that I couldn't see.

Weapons never seemed to do much besides bounce a lot, they never changed the gameplay up at all, it was still just "hold click to shoot". Seeing as how there's no alternate weapons to choose the minute details didn't change anything.

The shops I was able to buyout every time past the first floor which took away any choices there.

Ended up beating the game first try. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the cutscene showed the wrong character flying away on the broom.

Overall, I can tell a lot of effort went into this game but it doesn't really have the fun design to back it up.

[Karoshi Portal]

No idea why this is so highly rated, it's unfocused, unpolished and buggy,

I fairly consistently managed to spawn 3 portals. Level 3 feels more like a bug than a feature.

The art and lack of animation is just dull.

Plenty of levels like level 4 felt like padding, and of the levels that felt like actual levels, all of them were easy exercises in following a linear path.

All the excess elements in levels rob the feeling of everything coming together.

The continuous music gets obnoxious.

I usually try to be nice even to games that are fairly awful and find something of value the dev clearly did well, but this just feels like a complete lack of effort, shame when the core concept was promising.

orange08 responds:

It's highly rated because so many people like it.