Jojiro's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Arkandian Revenant]

I'm not sure this review will be useful; I've only played a bit of the first and this one, and you already have yet another game out in the series.

At the beginning of both games, the hit rate was rubbish. It didn't make me feel like I achieved more to overcome that, it made me feel frustrated. There is nothing wrong with starting out at somewhere in the high 80% range for all weaponry; lack of training in a weapon will rapidly result in that weapon missing.

Having the tactics upgrade in this game was amazing, as well as having secondary weapon effects. Kudos to you on that.

Movement speed in dungeons was far too slow, especially where backtracking was necessary. You could have a speed adjustment button or skill that could solve this. Item collection was also slow both after battles and from chests; a "loot all" option is standard and useful, as well as auto-looting if you have empty space from enemies.

Gear bonuses were really boring, and the one-on-one dice based hacking and slashing needs that innovative boost that the tactics system got. I noticed mind flayers had high resilience to magic this time around. A lot more variance in enemies and how they fight is needed to spice up gameplay. Also, introducing more mini-plot lines with actual plot would be nice. The tailoring and blacksmith quests and the like were nice, but would be much nicer if you had interaction with a mage or smith like in game one.

That being said, the amount of dialogue between characters needs work. You aren't a script-writer, and I really think getting some feedback or assistance in dialogue could make the game smoother and feel not as off-kilter at times.

Another thing to note would be the odd choice of statuses. A status that chips away at the maximum health seems virtually useless. Having a mana dropping status is also odd, since enemies really don't have that many useful spells (only the same set you have, really). Lots of roguelikes have really interesting statuses you could incorporate.

For magic, I wish the damaging and healing spells had a dice visibly associated with them like weapons did, so you didn't have to guess.

Better graphics could also give the game a big boost. The icons don't really fit the game in my opinion, and the background scrolling when you move from menu item to menu item is an unnecessary delay.

The wiki doesn't exist!

This review was kind of just a stream of consciousness, but hopefully I touched on a few useful points to improve upon. It's a polished game, but with its huge size comes some misses on detail and design.

[Oddo]

The game is boring with a lack of progression in terms of both new obstacles and in terms of powering up or feeling like there is a growth in our character. The graphics style, while interesting, needs to lend itself to the gameplay better: the squiggly nature of our character and some of the 'spew'-style obstacles makes it hard to guess where a hitbox might be.

The three achievements, if they can be called that, aren't fun and only provide a score bonus, which isn't a very high motivation compared to buying power-ups or somehow creating a different game experience. Overall, execution is decently done, the game just isn't ambitious enough to be truly entertaining. At best a time killer, at worst rather uninspired and boring.

wootra responds:

Thanks for the comments :) The achievements are missions, and they do provide a reward in coins when completed. Thanks for playing.

[no-one has to die.]

Fantastic story that still doesn't fully explain a variety of things. Why did the brain have to be taken out? Why did that one cockatiel survive when multiples died (and if it was the one that returned to the same timeline, why teach it the phrase "Christina lived")?

I recognize that in the limited time our characters have, what with the fire and all, this obfuscation of facts was necessary, and the player can kind of piece together what is missing. Still, with this kind of story I wished for more narrative rather than less. I really hope that you make a larger version of this game, or larger games of this sort. The continuous moral choices and the time machine concept were creative and definitely used to full effect here.

The gameplay wasn't that fun or challenging, and I feel like a little more could have been added there. The music and art, while fitting, aren't enough to really connect me to the characters. In the absence of cutscenes, in the absence of more plot, I feel like they are all very one-dimensional and only exist in terms of the experiment, rather than as uniquely existing people in their own right. Even at the end, I wasn't sure if Steve was sarcastic or mean or nice or in love.

And again...this is a personal preference of mine for closure. I recognize that the abruptness of the narrative and the minimalistic nature of the game may have been stylistic rather than incidental or accidental. Just the same, that's my two cents. Close to a perfect art game, lacking in several places that are mostly my personal preference.

[Sk8bit]

Not sure about music, concept or execution. The music, while classic 8-bit, is very monotonous and doesn't have anything to highlight it. It's nostalgic but not catchy, and is only even somewhat good because it uses a similar sound to which we associate these sorts of games. The concept seems a bit messy. The idea of skateboarding is cool, but the monsters seem to have nothing to do with this, nor does the level design. Skateboarding isn't exactly a sport done on grass, ice, desert, etc...normally. You didn't seem to use the skateboarding theme at all besides saying "this is here".

In terms of execution, the foreground has generic but decent pixel graphics, and the background has very blocky pixel graphics. Inconsistent! There were some enemies I landed on that did not bounce me, and killed me instead, so either it's a bug or the hitboxes are just strange. The sky is actually a ceiling, which is bizarre, and enemies can cross blocks that disintegrate as if they were still there. Sliding didn't feel right and the character immediately transitions from skating to standing while holding his board, which was very abrupt and removed the suspension of disbelief. There were times, especially in later levels, where hitting the z key yielded a jump sound with no jump! Enemies were all the same, just with slightly changed graphics, nothing new, nothing exciting.

Don't continue this. Make a whole new version of it and call this your trial run. Because this game is borderline unplayable and certainly not fun to play, even all those issues not withstanding.

It felt like a standard platformer, except instead of walking animations you have a freeze frame of him on a board. Concept and execution questions aside, it adds very little to the genre as far as I can tell, and has no achievements or rewards for anything like coin collecting or doing board tricks.

Flying enemies in the castle didn't even turn around to fly, they just repeated the same animation frames for facing forwards...while moving backwards!

Overall? This is a mess of ideas with odd enemies (are they just all randomly chosen?), odd levels, and very little novelty in terms of platforming. Some minor issues such as odd hitboxes and jumping errors make it borderline unplayable and definitely reduce the limited fun I was already having with it. You claim 25 levels across 5 environments, but besides the graphics work I can hardly tell that anything is changing. Laziness with some enemies and with the main character complete the picture of a poorly planned and prepared game. I appreciate the effort, and the talent is there, but it doesn't quite shine through in this game.

[Seed (Roan Contreras)]

Gameplay is smooth, though the controls could have been explained better with a tutorial than with the quick text in the first level.

However, the game isn't very exciting and I didn't really feel a sense of achievement from going through mazes picking up circles. It felt like the squares and circles were hitboxes awaiting some graphics to make them more pretty, or to have them make more sense.

The grass continuously twitching was endearing for all of five seconds before it became a bit disturbing, due to how unnatural it was. Then my emotions just settled on irritated.

For smooth gameplay, good concept, and good music, this gets kudos. However the concept needs more to spice it up, controls need to either be more intuitive, fun, or just presented better, and the game itself isn't too polished-looking, even for the square-circle aesthetic.

ToadieTechnika responds:

Sorry on some unpolished things there... I've rushed this game so I'll let it test for you guys, but I'll update this game again before the touch jam's deadline. Thanks for the comment and suggestion though. :D

[Wonder Rocket]

Nothing too new, but well-polished and fun achievements. I was curious about whether I could go underwater, or if flying laterally might bring me to a different continent; that would have been fun to explore.

I do like the way the game works, and I don't think it should be longer, but broader in scope of potential discoveries. Being able to land on the moon, to turn your rocket into a 'missile' into neighboring countries, or going underwater would have added a few fun gimmicks that might not necessarily be realistic, but just reward the gamer for trying strange things.

Controls were very smooth, graphics were fitting and cute, though I think the choice to do balloons at a low-height obstacle was a bit lazy. I also don't understand the mind behind the cheese asteroids and fireworks and whatnot in the upper atmosphere, but they were interesting.

Overall great execution of a tried and true genre of game. Could use expansion of the achievement system to reward player more for trying things.
4/5

[Snake]

Firstly, points off for not being original.

However, with that in mind, when you do a remake, there are things you have to get right: it's got to be worthy of the original game, which was in two colors of black and white. The colors you've added don't make it better, they make it make less sense. What's that oddly blocky lawn? What are those semi-shaded yellow circles? Why do the arrow key directions invade the game and stay there forever more?

So second, points off for not only being original, but actually making the game worse. There is no score-keeping system, no music option, no sound option, the menu looks like a resolution accident mixed with poor design...basically the game lacks polish.

Finally, a glitch: after playing a few rounds, the walls suddenly stopped being obstacles and I could go through them. I don't understand how this happened, but it was confusing and I feel like it was unintentional.

Kudos for a first submission, and I don't mean to dissuade you. But you're a developer and I'm a critic.
2/5

[Small World Alpha]

Again seemed experimental. Edge detection was lazily done as large rectangles, double jumping only works if you started a first jump; the midair jump won't work. The level design is shoddy and if one of the falling platforms drops and you fall with it to a lower level it won't respawn making beating it then impossible.

The lack of polish is astounding for a publication. It shows little to no improvement from your last experimental platformer and has nothing new as far as I can tell.

Also, occasionally edge detection will glitch causing invisible barriers between two adjacent platforms.

[Wilt: Last Blossom]

I wrote a review for Wilt: Exordium that illustrated all the issues I had with that game.

Those no longer exist. This game shows high degrees of polish on the programming front and a tight narrative (for NG anyway). The music was great and fitting, the drama was appropriate, bosses were creative and fun (unlike the one from Exordium) and just...so much went right in this rendition.

The art is beautiful, from the trees to even the blocks. The weather effects were a welcome surprise, and the opening sequence, with the light focusing on him, and then "8-bit skull" appearing as you exited, gave the game wonderful, welcoming feel despite the dreary setting and depressing feel that permeated afterward.

I'm giving 5 stars because this is on the boundary of a game I'd be willing to pay money for, and it's length is fantastic as well as its polish. I do have two main issues:

-Faces: the people's individual faces were really...ugly. Their staring, dead eyes somehow didn't fit even with your theme, because your theme isn't people without hope waiting to die - it's people clinging onto the last vestiges of it. And I dunno, the faces turned me off a lot from everything else, just because of that look. Gaunt is fine, gritty is fine, but I still need to relate to them. I don't know if facial expressions like in JRPGs would help, or just better faces. I didn't find the daughter endearing or the father...anything, because the facial designs didn't really indicate that thought went into the character from at least that angle of the game.

-Length: your game is long, and that's a turn off for lots of people. Even if it seems cheesy, sectioning your game into "Chapters" is an effective way of assuring the player that YES, they are making progress, not just trudging through a dark tunnel with no end in sight. Breaking up gameplay with cutscenes and dialogue is also a must as games get longer, and most of the dialogue in the game was very bland. When you make something this long, variance is important to keep energy up, and contrasting a lighter cutscene with some difficult gameplay is useful. Even chapters with titles can make the player use a different part of the brain a bit. Chapter Three: Hook, Line, and Sinker makes the player pause and consider what that might mean, before delving back into the game with renewed energy.

But again, my quibbles are getting more semantic because this truly is a gem of a game. Go 8 bit skull! :D

Asvegren responds:

Thanks for this review, and thanks for the one you left for Exordium. Feedback is truly invaluable and I believe this showed in Last Blossom. I am glad that you got the opportunity to see how your feedback affected an end product! Thanks for the help.

[SkullFace]

The pacing of the game is amazing. The slight but relieving changes in background scenery and game mechanics are amazing. The next-to last level seemed to have a lot of contrived bits of difficulty instead of the other levels, but even that was great.

The simplistic but challenging boss with its nods to all of the previous traps was excellent. Despite a lack of strong narrative or storyline, the little snippets were enough to let us know what was going on and to add a spice to an otherwise already flavorful blend of excellent platforming elements.

Controls were smooth, and while I experienced a little bit of lag whenever he entered a portal, I suspect that's a combination of my computer, Chrome, and the fact that I was playing on a low power setting.

This game, with no additional polish, would be one I'd gladly pay money for. Nothing copious, but easily a $5-15 game on Steam. With even more levels, more artistic vision, or this kind of excellent platforming mechanic plus an in-depth story, and you'd have even more of a gem.

I haven't played something this good in ages.

I do strongly encourage perhaps delving a bit into formulating plots and developing storylines, because this using whatever base you used for this and your great sensibilities with level design, you could just rehash the programming but vary the theme or message and build something truly great alongside such works as Limbo, Braid, and the like.

There is always room to reach higher, but on NG, and for a free game, this deserves MORE than a five-star rating. Great art, level design, animations, execution, and commitment to quality.