Jojiro's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dragon Boy 2]

Currently, the selling and looting feature are a bit slowed down. Rather than click and drag, a single click should get the job done. Also, 'esc' should get you out of a stash chest and shops all the time...sometimes, it doesn't work.

After beating a level, teleport to town should be an immediate option instead of requiring a walk back to the teleporter.

Awakening of the dragon egg apparently doesn't happen for some time, making a lot of grinding necessary, and not in a good way.

The game also simply isn't varied enough to be fun. Level progression is grinding, and new enemies really don't add challenge-only the bosses do, and then it's still not really strategy-based. Just more grinding.

This game kills a lot of time, but for what? No achievements, no variance, no real reason to pursue it to the end.

[The Journey to heaven?]

Controls were nonintuitive with no text to explain anything (why double click?) and sometimes unresponsive. I tried single and double, and double seemed to be what worked, so I'm just guessing here. Dragging the doors took me a while to understand as well.

After the conundrum with controls, puzzles were easy and boring - nothing seemed to be themed towards the afterlife, artistic, or emotionally involving. Your sound effects are good, but you're desperately in need of a spriter or other artist.

Even a vaguely human shaped character would help with immersion, and having more puzzle elements would enhance your game. Finally, the game almost plays like a platformer, except relegated to point-and-click controls, which during the entire process felt awkward.

Potential is there. Keep improving.

[People]

Either keep the theme, but make the game shorter (even at half the current length, it'd still take effort to go through and there'd be the feeling of tedium you want) or keep the length, but provide some variation in the people, the environment, the appearance of the game.

The change in sound was a very subtle and cute effect, but I really wanted more. Otherwise it's just so boring.

The theme was great, and the presentation of said theme through the gameplay was great as well. Honestly there was nothing wrong with programming or theme in a normal sense. It's just...overall, the game fell flat because nothing changed, and it took forever.

Beautiful game though.

[Ghostly Me]

Has a fun sort of ambiance, and definitely has replay value. The bosses were a bit boring as repeats of each other, but level design was fresh and quite fantastic.

The feeling of "abstraction" was done well with both graphics and monologues, and the use of shifting colors with each level made them seem fresh even though mechanics were roughly the same. Adding the slowdown ability mid-game was exactly what was needed to maintain that excellent sense of momentum.

Having said that, grammar issues in the monologue of the villain and the honestly tedious bosses (bounce bounce bounce, go higher, bounce harder, bounce bounce bounce) keep this from being a perfect game.
4.5/5

[Memohuntress]

I can't really overstate how great the voices, music, and visual art come together in this game.
The gameplay is alright...it lags a bit on my computer, and movement isn't the smoothest it could be. But in the end, that didn't matter. You brought worlds you imagined to vivid life in this game, and it was one of the most immersive games I've played on Newgrounds.

Other games often try to hit this note; the author of a game will try to pull you in and make you really aware of what he or she was going for. This game hits it, solidly.

Work on your animation! It's really nice as is, but it's still a bit flat; more careful cel shading can solve this. Also, study arm and leg movement so that your cutscenes become even more vivid and realistic. The fact of the matter is though that the animation quality is already quite nice, and the flatness and limited animation in fact augment the girl's awkwardness and pull you in to the game more. Still, it's better when this is a stylistic choice instead of a limitation on your ability to animate.

I need to re-emphasize that every piece of music in this game fit exquisitely, providing the epic and yet serious mood that it needed. The plot meshes very well with the themes of abandonment and escape, and really characterizes Sellar for us.

And gosh, scavenger hunts are never this fun and multi-faceted in real life! Using many layers in the ways you did added depth, difficulty, and beauty to the environments, and that only increased with every level. There were little stories to be had by watching the animated environments as well, which was plain old amazing. The hint system, menus, and dialogue add polish on top of polish, creating a package that really can't get much better.

If this were a monetized project, or if you were working on a monetized project next, I would certainly purchase it. Beautiful.

5/5

[Quietus II]

Sometimes the level design required a bit more precision than I think the controls warrant; the controls in this game are highly responsive to the point that the character is almost twitchy. Particularly in the channel where you have to bounce up between two rows of spikes, I couldn't get it to be consistent no matter what I tried. That level was still beatable, but it was needlessly frustrating in my opinion, because rather than a feeling of achievement when I got past it, I just felt tired and annoyed.

Another low point was on the same level, where the ceiling blocks your head unless you jump at the last second. The artistic nature of the game makes this "last second" moment hard to catch, since I don't know where my character's edge quite is, nor the ledge.

Besides these two design quibbles, I also felt like level design could have more variance-many levels felt like filler levels and until the late-game it wasn't really challenging. It would also be nice, with so many levels, for you to feel as if the character had progressed some. He gains no other abilities, which is kind of disappointing.

Finally, the light that follows the character is nice, but doesn't actually provide anything to the game til the last level besides a bit of a special light effect. This is another odd design choice I'm going to call into question.

The music and graphics fit well, and enemy design was appropriately cute yet creepy at the same time. The game shows a high amount of polish and all things considered is a great success in platforming. It falls short a bit on level design, but even this is only noticeable if you play lots of popular indie platformers.

I do wish it had a bit more plot to tie it together, and those arbitrarily hard design issues weren't there, but even through that, this game is exquisite. Thank you for a great submission!

[Obsolescence]

Amazing sample of bullet hell. I agree that you need a focus option as well as either a very visible hitspot, or just a smaller one than the outline of your shooter as a base.

Challenging, addictive, and very cool artistically.

There's also things like a graze bonus or more features that could make the game better, but quite hoenstly it's quite a gripping one already. Love it.

[Breakfast]

A sweet and simple game with a nice theme of care leading to romance.

It didn't try to do too much, and what it did do was pretty cute. Worth a play or two, and I definitely think you could make more games like this, or make a story where this is a mini-game in that story.

[Â Rectangle Avoider]

A mute button would be fantastic, for one thing.

For another, I really wish you had the option to play this with keyboard controls instead of solely the mouse. It's really a bother when my touchpad registers my movement as more than I meant it to be, no matter what sensitivity I set it to. Still, that's a personal issue.

In terms of the game itself, it obviously isn't too ambitious or detailed; upgrades, more features, or even a level system alongside this 'time trial' version would all make it nicer. It's polished for what limited features it has, though the difficulty adjustment with a simple increase in speed is a bit boring. Overall well-done and a good time-killer.