Jojiro's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Brawl Royale]

Checkpoints or options to change repeated playthroughs would be nice.
Great animation and characters, as well as nice nods/references to different things.

Thanks for a great submission! Short but sweet.

[Applez]

The game just plays too slowly and awkwardly for my taste. I like the fattening concept, and the achievements are clever. It seems to be a pretty straightforward platformer.

However, using fat as a concept automatically also utilizes slow as a concept, and that frustrated me to no end while playing it. The hitboxes of things were also shoddily done; the downward mashing dowels, for example, don't act as walls if you try to walk past them while down...they still somehow hurt you. There were also lots of glitches. The screen wouldn't quite follow my character, hitboxes would be messy, I'd land on a cat only to miss, I'd miss a cat only to bounce up as if I hit it...all of these were minor individually, but do add up.

It rapidly moved from humorous to tedious gameplay, and just wasn't my cup of tea for a game. As a parody of medals and a momentary amusement, it has some value, I guess.

[100% Complete]

Wonderfully quirky.
I feel like I can't say anything more honestly, because more or less ANYTHING is a spoiler.
Wished for better graphics and more musical variety.

Reminded me of Yume Nikki.

[Zin]

Music is nice and the game is simple, but I don't really understand the win condition. I didn't collect all the goals, and near the end I was just getting pummeled to death honestly.

Then it said I won.

Also, not sure how anything besides the music has anything to do with Zen. I don't think it's a good enough reason to claim connection to a large philosophical principle. Overall decent. Not too special or innovative, but well executed.

henrykun responds:

Thank you very much for you comment. The game was inspired by Zen using the "minimalism" philosophy, or at least what I understood about it: live in a minimalist way. My idea with the little creature was to simulate that you have to eat to live but not too much because if you do it it would be easy to get hit by the green squares, which are not good for you. The same situation occurs with the small goals that you achieve (darker green squares), you really don't need them to win but they are good because give you points (they represent greed), if you try to get all of them it's easier to get hit as well. In the end, there is only one space to be saved from the squares, if you stay small the probability to be saved is higher than being saved if you are large, That's what I tried to do, maybe I had to polish the idea a little bit, Thank you again :).

[Arkandian Crusade]

Points for ambition, size, scale, and degree of work put in.

Points off for a simple reason: this game is boring. It isn't polished, and it's completely mindless. As far as balance goes, you definitely fixed that in Revenant, and then re-broke it in Explorer. As far as battle mechanics go, Explorer completely trumps this with auto-battle, something that is so tedious in this version.

The menu system and character selection system were bizarre, the dialogue awkward, and the game itself just not very exciting to play.

I recognize that this is the first in a series. I would definitely say that how easily it was improved is indicative of it not being polished, though. This gets 3 stars. Explorer gets 3 stars for a different set of reasons. Revenant gets 4 for being the best in the set in terms of mechanics, plot, presentation, and polish.

Honestly though, so much potential for this series. It's just...too...boring...

[Arkandian Explorer]

If anything, this got worse due to an odd feeling of imbalance, and dungeon design being incredibly boring to mull through.

Regarding Skills:
-Remove "scavenging" unless it actually does something - I can't tell that it does.

Regarding Statistics:
-Add %Game Completed or some metric that can tell this.
-Have descriptions for reputations as well as a listing of previous reputations, that people can read.

Regarding Menus:
-Have a better backdrop for the menus than just your character and some hills.
-"Storehouse" was much more thinking is And or would make more sense for

Regarding Barracks and Teambuilding:
-Attack details should cover whether something is area effect or not
-Allow scrolling between team members in the barracks while equipping for efficiency

Regarding Shopping:
-Have shopkeeper quests for certain items.
-Have limited items or limited time items

Regarding Wiki:
-Have it exist

Regarding Motion:
-Have various motion speed options in dungeons
-Hotkeys on the main map would be appreciated so I don't have to click 'Head Down'
should be
-You could learn a thing or two from roguelikes and puzzlers. Have some overworld puzzles: it could be something as simple as a switch to a locked door, a key, what have you. Have traps and different floor tile types too. Currently the game is really boring on the exploration front.
-Dungeons with disappearing stairs after going down may have been done on purpose, but seems a bit odd.
-An 8-floor dungeon is way too deep and long. The key to dungeon design is DESIGN, not length.

Regarding Combat:
-Enemies should not all be humanoid in shape
-Some enemies should resist a set of attacks very differently
-Highlight the person whose turn it is for the tactics combat. I know the movement centers on the person, but as the map gets more enemies and people on it, it is *slightly* harder to tell what is going on.
-You shouldn't be able to drain health/mana that isn't there
-After selecting there should be a cancel option in the tactics session of the combat, in case it was a misclick.
-I think Mana Drain drains health while the enemy has mana or something strange like that

Just...a lot is awkward with the game. I got a few crashes while I was in my 'house', building with walls was very bizarre and the home improvement idea definitely fell flat. There was a reason you removed it in the second game, bringing it back with needlessly complex and awkward mechanics is a detriment, not an improvement.

Balance was significantly worse, as I found myself going straight from level 1 to level 3 dungeons more or less effortlessly. The map ended up being cluttered. There is no feeling of plot movement any more. The dialogues from before were annoying, but useful to show development. You should have improved them, not removed them.

You sped up battle, which is nice, but now it looks unnatural when the chest comes down, like you just sped up the animation instead of making a new, smooth one. Sped up animations always look sloppy.

I think, in summary, I'd say Crusade was an overambitious but high-potential game, Revenant was a fantastic sequel, and this is a flop of a third game.

I'd really be interested in working with you on a game of this style, or even whatever the next Arkandian game is. But if you look at the player numbers across the series, they are rapidly dwindling. I think it may be time for either a new plotline in the same universe, or a new series altogether.

[Dimension Jumper]

Kind of...mildly...terrible. The menus can easily be made better through 5 minutes spent in MS Paint.

The graphics could be made better just as easily.

Apparently you lose if you hit the side of any block, even if you are able to continue the game?

There are no checkpoints.

I can jump while in the air if I fell without jumping.

There are just...SO many flaws with this, in design and in coding. I appreciate that it was done in 8 hours, but please, POLISH your game before releasing it.