SquizofrenicCat's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The 1000]

Extremely interesting premise for this game. I really appreciate the pad support, simple yet readable graphics and the effort that went into making it smooth, scalable chaos. The usage of the Newgrounds userbase as a generation of mook companions is an incredible idea. I actually had Tom Fulp himself come up and heal me before charging into the frenzied frontline, never to be seen again.

My one gripe with this at the moment is that, past the 10-15 minute mark, it turned into a hardcore idle game for me. Once the NPC infighting reaches the equilibrium there's nothing left to do but sit your character back and watch as the enemy healthbars slowly get bigger and inevitably push your army back. Basically I left the game running and checked every now and then, and after 1 hour I autonomously made it to top 3 of all time somehow. The game could instead just end with a boss - I saw there was one past the 1000 mark, but he just got deleted - The current "infinite" survival mode could be an unlock or a different option.

All in all, very promising work that feels inches from something groundbreaking. You totally could (and *should*) capitalize on this game concept before it gets stolen, it's a very fun premise that you can still refine quite a bit; more skills, on site constructions like towers, bosses, stuff like that. The userbase sampled mook generation could work on other platforms too; Steam comes to mind.

jefvel responds:

Thanks for the thorough review! My idea originally was sort of a territory regaining game, where you secure bases by adding NPCs to them, but had to cut down on the scope quite a bit. I’ll hopefully build on this in my future games though,with more content and less idling! Been quite burnt out lately so gamedev has been on hold sadly.

[Kissa]

This was a neat little experimental game, I liked the art design and the way you can inspect the environment. The audio was really well done, specially with the use of stereo sound, I enjoyed that quite a bit. It did make the whole thing very eerie, though nothing really jumped out or made extra good use of the sound engine. I think the apparitions could have definitely abused it for great results, like short whispers would have been great.

I feel there's a good chunk of redundant stuff like the "leave" option at the start (it did nothing but give me a black screen), the extremely long walking sequence that the player must repeat, and the end sequence not letting the player go back to the menu or start the game again. There's a lot of different things in the game (I liked the axe) but the biggest impressions were unfortunately on the parts which felt unresponsive and/or dragged on.

As for the story I'm extremely bad at interpreting surreal stuff so I won't try doing that, but I can say the sentiment of waking up half-asleep to take care of a meowing cat is absolutely there.

[Street Hugger]

I really like the art, you did a great job with the setting. The game is definitely new, lots of funny concepts here to work with.

This also means the rules of the game are also new and a bit tricky to figure out :) I couldn't figure out what made rude people huggable so I stopped playing after a bit; maybe making the rules a bit clearer would make it more enjoyable.

It's certainly fun though, the game over sequence is probably the cutest thing I've ever seen. Great job.

[BallCatcher (a html5 ball catching game)]

So yeah this is a functional HTML5 game you delivered, good job with that.

I guess it does what you wanted it to do, catching the ball with the basket. The mouse movement works well I feel. I like pace on Normal difficulty. It's a very bare bones time attack game, nothing changes, so there's not much going for it. This reminds me of Phaser.js but if you could add the tools and framework you used to the tags it would help a little with feedback.

Adding more audio, like the sound of a dodgeball as you catch it and even free music from Newgrounds, would make it more pleasing. It's also pretty obvious the ball teleports when it touches the basket instead of coming from off screen, which is pretty jarring.

The hardcore difficulty made me laugh because it takes so much longer than 5 seconds countdown to start the game and you instantly lose. You can also start hardcore and go into another difficulty and the game will glitch out. I also have a feeling most of the download time was spent getting the countdown audio.

I think you can definitely expand this game and add a bit more fluff to make it engaging, maybe more balls with different speeds, balls that bounce and you have to catch them before hit the floor again, etc.

[Kitty in the City]

Congrats on the front page! This one definitely got "first game" quirks, controls are pretty iffy and sliding off things is very easy; insta kill is rough, hit detection on the rats is already something everyone else brought up, but the game is playable regardless.

Story is silly cause you're trying to get coins for the mouse, and yet you crush mice anyway to collect them. It's still better than nothing, and it had a really cute intro for it. So good job on that.

I feel valid platform colors didn't contrast very well which made the next jump a bit hard to see at times, a discernible edge on walking spaces would help mend this.

The aesthetic and music choice were cute overall, and I wouldn't have stuck to the game to completion if it wasn't there; Kitty's big dumb smile and walk loop were amusing, even though the fact they do not have a tail makes me sad.

[OVERDISK💿]

Fun little game, I can't say I was OVERJOYED playing it but it felt solid and the aesthetic was very pleasing. I really like how the character turns around and it's implemented exceptionally well. Music and effects were top notch.

I was not a big fan of the screen shake and an option to turn that off would have been nice, considering you can attack very fast, it shakes every time you attack, and the game can go on for quite long, it got hard on the eyes after a bit.

[Out Twogether]

Very heartwarming, relaxing, surprisingly brain teasy puzzle/platforming game. Aesthetic was super nice, the floaty bits were incredibly subtle and responsive when stepped on, I enjoyed the subtle details and the art a lot.

Transition between Control and character got a bit fiddly at times for some jumps, but other than that this game was super well made. The design for the snake portion of the title was spectacular as it wasn't hard but still demanded some attention to do, combining the concept with platforming was nothing short of genius. For a 48h Jam title, this game is awesome.

The Skip button is extremely generous and I don't personally think it was necessary, specially in a puzzle game where things get more complicated as you advance, so if you skip one you'll probably skip everything. Maybe it's just not for me.

[Type Help]

It pains me to give this such a low score considering it's meant to be a submission to showcase and boost Ruffle (which is awesome in that regard), but unfortunately as a game it struck me as poorly tagged, designed, and presented. Clicking the Flash Forward badge at the start also made me unable to press the play button, forcing me to restart.

If you really wanted this to be presented as a user sandbox, it should definitely have been more straightforward and honest about it. Maybe the player could have started in a hallway with doors and could pick/enter any of the adventures within, maybe the first adventure (the one you've made) could have forced the player to interact with a "game-like" anomaly to get out of the cell, thus properly introducing the concept, but it just doesn't do any of that.

The "4th wall metagame commands" is something that just gets thrown at the player, completely for free, making it confusing at best, frustrating at worst. You penalize any sort of immersion the player managed to achieve in the first segment by forcing them to suddenly start using meta logic when it wasn't needed before. The game is straight up dishonest, as sometimes there are things you can look at that aren't listed (like the ceiling and floor on the cell), so I stopped playing.

An imp asking for an apple in a forest does not make it sound like I have to open a cheats menu, it should have been something more absurd to force the player to reevaluate what is being demanded of them.

The Red Demon "riddle" is some of the worst designed puzzles I've ever encountered in a text based adventure, specially since "sayonara" is a butchered informal term from the US; it's not even pronounced the way the solution infers. If the demon had said "THEY always say goodbye" it would have made a slight bit of sense, but again you're penalized if you pay attention to the game. The whole thing falls apart from the courtyard on, and it really feels like trying to play along with an 8-year-old storyteller that is bored, rather than trying to enjoy a game designed by someone who wanted me to have a good time and be invested in their work.

Sorry if I dragged on with this, but it legitimately pains me to watch how much of a missed opportunity this was. It's simply beyond me how it ended up the way it is, taking the goals you had in mind (embracing user content, boosting Ruffle, making an adventure). The engine seems to work, but everything else honestly baffled me. Keeping it basic and accessible would have made this a much larger contribution, but it went batshit for really no reason, driving its purpose straight off a cliff instead.

BoMToons responds:

*sigh* Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I, personally, deliberately, chose to "hide" the concept from the player as a surprise. I like the idea of starting a game under one impression and then slowly realizing the game is about something else entirely (ever play "Frog Fractions?" or similar games? Ever see the new show "Wanda Vision?" How about an M. Night Shyamalan film? The Matrix?).

There's probably fair room for criticism on how well I accomplished that purpose, but as a story-telling mechanism, especially in a game, I think it's legit.

One thing I didn't like about Frog Fractions was that you had to play for a long time before finally uncovering the "secrets." (I played it a couple times and quit before ever seeing the depths of it, it was only after it gained hype that I realized it was more than it seemed, and even then, I just YouTubed it). I wanted to mitigate that issue with this game, so perhaps I rushed the "turn" a bit.

Having hidden objects is pretty normal (and necessary) in text-based adventures (and revealing information piecemeal in a game is hardly "dishonest"). The mere existence of unlisted items is hardly a criticism. If they're used poorly (mission critical, or without clues/hints), then yeah, complain. But the fact that the author doesn't list EVERY little detail in the official "objects" output is a stylistic choice and can lend to the building of intriguing puzzles by rewarding ingenuity/creativity. It also helps to reduce "noise" while still partially rewarding the player for trying creative approaches.

Rather than rage quitting that you got a joke response when you looked at the unlisted "ceiling," perhaps you could have said "hey, that's cool that the author handled that!" (It feels so obvious to be arguing this point, but hey, you brought it up.)

I'll be, and have been, the first to admit that the red demon puzzle is somewhat obscure. But I also recognize that it is CLEVER! Getting lost in a weeaboo breakdown of American vs. Japanese pronunciation/formalism is, I believe, really missing the mark and assuming that everyone who plays this game shares your intricate knowledge of Japanese language and culture.

There's also something to be said about the "text adventure" genre traditionally including ridiculously obscure puzzles... ever hear of the "Babel Fish" puzzle from Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy? There's a frustrating game! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf_2faXuxEo

On the one hand you say the puzzles are non-obvious, and yet you eventually figured them out!

As for the Ruffle link "taking over" the screen and forcing a refresh... ironically, that's a Ruffle bug (that I've reported an issue for on their github and documented extensively).

I hate having to "defend" the choices I made in this game... but it's definitely not a trivial attempt at the concept. I'm actually really proud of what this game offers with its engine. Maybe my focus on making the engine actually work and be useful robbed from the introduction/story. I know it's not perfect, in many ways it's an un-polished "concept" for a game, testing my abilities and the potential for an audience out there for something like this. So, in one way, the fact that you, at least, saw the potential, means it achieved my intention on some level. Of course it sucks that you ended up, ultimately, frustrated and disappointed... but maybe it will stick with you enough to help me refine it (as other, similarly disaffected reviewers have done), or maybe even take a stab at making something similar yourself, but to do it "right" and see what kinds of challenges that endeavor presents.

Thanks for the thorough review, I hope my candor in my response isn't too off-putting!

[Catfishing Cuties <3]

The art direction is outstanding, unfortunately I was unable to get into the gameplay hook (no pun intended). I couldn't notice if there were any unlocks, and progression did not seem clear to me; you're either curious about the weird fish sex descriptions or you just aren't.

The fish started repeating very early for me, and the fact you've made the design choice of spreading the rest of the possible catches across arbitrary time segments based on browser clock is not appealing whatsoever; the player is already giving you their attention by opening your game, this gimmick simply squanders it. I also did not notice much of a difference in using other types of bait.

If this were an idle game of sorts I would see an appeal, but taken you have to tap attentively and eventually mash, I personally have no idea who this is for. So yeah, all score on art, no gameplay here for me, sadly.

[Breakout]

Awesome aesthetic, simple gameplay. My one gripe with it is that you can't lay flags while paused, which leads to some bothersome fiddling here and there. Characters can bunch up which can make separating them very weird, thankfully the challenges do not require perfect rate. Keybinds to swap flags would be good too.

Overall, a very compact and entertaining title for a 48h jam.