Jojiro's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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

[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.

[CandynO 3]

Movements are honestly just far too slow to be enjoyable. The level design is also insultingly simple and straightforward. I recognize that later levels introduce things like spikes and false walls, but this should be done far earlier to increase the pace of this slow game. This game offers very little to the platforming genre, and doesn't stand out at all. However, it doesn't have anything too significant holding it back from at least being a functional game.

(You should also correctly spell "kidnapped" in the Author Comments)

flanbit responds:

fixed :P

[The Guardian]

Your games have a consistent theme of having intriguing messages, a gritty yet polished look, and a very strong establishment of mood through color, animation, and music. These are all fantastic.

Your games also have a consistent theme of repetitive and uninspiring gameplay, slow movement, and a general sense of tedium. These are all the opposite of fantastic.

Your concept is excellent, I just wish the execution were a bit more exciting, artful, quirky, CREATIVE, DIFFERENT, instead of this slow jumpfest followed by this slow stompfest.

VOEC responds:

Thank you. I replied to your other review on PTttM and really agree with you. :)

[Personal Trip to the Moon]

It's difficult to review this kind of game. Art games, as it were, are a niche that have a lot going for and against them at the same time.

As people have mentioned, the gameplay was lacking - what carries the game is the consistent gritty quality, the incredibly novel mix of pixel graphics with detailed textures, and the sense of longing that the main character has, for identity, for closure, for companionship, for escape. The fact that I've gotten all of that really is a testament to your ability as an artist.

But you need gameplay. You need something beyond artistry. As you know, there are many games with great graphics, jaw-droppingly beautiful scenes, spine-tingling music, etc etc that fall flat on the actual reason most games are sought out: the entertainment value. My recommendation is to research game mechanics, or to work with someone else, allowing your creative process to fuel the flavor of the game and the mood, but allowing them to sketch out how the game will actually function.

"Swimming through the sky" and "using mirrors" for example were great ideas, but could be fleshed out so much more than what you did. Now I realize a collaboration for this particular game would have been a bit grating, as it is so intensely personal. I do hope for future projects and career decisions you'll consider what I've said though.

You're a beautiful artist. And given the lack of glitches and smooth gameplay, probably a good programmer as well. However, when it comes to execution of your vision, I must say with all due respect that you fall short. I think another review said it too: with a great concept comes great expectations, and the actual game doesn't live up to the environment it is set in. It's like a slower, early form of Mario Bros set in the lush storyline and graphics of Final Fantasy X. There's a disconnect.

VOEC responds:

Thank you for this really detailed review. I like reading those the most and most often they really give much insight.
Regarding your criticisms I completly agree with you. I do a lot of research on game design in my spare time and know how to make an entertaining game (at least I hope so). And I do realize that the gameplay of PTttM is... well, boring.
I don't know why that is. Maybe I wanted the gameplay to feel protracted, empty and "calm". Or maybe I do actually not know how to do it properly (see Aether for a good example) :).
Some parts I really don't like about the game. For example the ending where the player looses control and has to basicly sit through a cutscene with text. I wish I could have done this part differently.
But I do actually have 2 different projects in planning which involve a somwhat more richer gameplay (Okay, my recently released game The Guardian doesn't have that great of a gameplay either). But the problem for me is in all honesty the programming. I'm really bad at programming, I get stuck often and only release decently playable games because I obsess about every single detail and problem. That's why my games take a lot of time.
One of the projects (spoiler: A puzzle game) I had to put on hold since I couldn't code all the physics logic stuff (Which is really sad because I really like that game idea). I wish I had a programmer to work with. I think concentrating purely on the game design (and also visual design) instead of having to worry about implementation would really aid my work. But for now I guess this will have to do.
But your right, gameplay wise I still have a lot to learn and hope I can expand my skills through my future work. Sorry if I rambled on a bit. I just wanted to give you a detailed answer since you put a lot of effort into your review. :)

[Obduction XP]

The music was tiresome and uninspired, and the object detection was bizarre. I rode a moving platform for a few seconds and then suddenly feel off of it, without having moved since getting on at all. One of the disappearing platforms, before the disappearing animation was even done, had already dropped me off. Most projectiles don't "hit" you, just go through you while you die awkwardly, via an exploding head almost all the time. This lack of attention to projectiles is kind of lazy.

The animation was strange as well. While smooth, I couldn't help but feel that my character was a robot and not a human. This wasn't a stylistic choice, it was a failure to make the animation look organic. Death animations mostly didn't make sense - you don't explode when you are set on fire.

For that matter, there was no intuitiveness with the jump mechanic. I tried to jump over a flamethrower and got roasted, despite being "above" the flame, and the pseudo-isometric design was a strange choice that was ambitious...but fails to provide anything novel to the game beyond frustration.

Grammar and English. These really aren't that critical to game design, but little things do matter, and as many people have mentioned, the game title is spelled wrong and your Author Comments are awkwardly phrased as well

And I don't care about my character at all. This is contributed to by the lack of a good script, his own robotic movements, and the increasingly frustrating gameplay that isn't there due to good level design, but just inherent in the isometric viewpoint and the awkward hit-detection.

Transparent platforms were even stranger: they don't have a sheen until you get near them, and then they shine continuously? What sort of mechanic is that? It would make sense in a game that advertised continuous deaths, but in this game it just felt like an artificial difficulty boost.

Overall the game was annoying, the level designs boring, and the difficulties I had seemed to be mostly artifacts of poor design. I applaud the smoothness of animations, though the main character leaves much to be desired in terms of organic motion and death sequences.

fliptico responds:

This is a large comment. Love it. Thank you for being polite.

[Reverie]

Beautiful and atmospheric game.

I for one would have loved more of a narrative. Sometimes less is more, but sometimes less simply is confusing. The symbolism as the levels progressed could have been more embellished, and a lot more could have been done with the dream mechanic than simple platforming aspects. If you polished this up, added a more comprehensive storyline, and maybe dabbled with the dream mechanic (like with Braid's time mechanic) you'd have a legendary game.

As is...I'd say it's decent, but feels unfinished, honestly. It left me wanting more rather than with a feeling of accomplishment. And that lack of fulfillment with the ending is what stops it from truly reaching its potential. 4.5/5

ladace responds:

Did you try pressing F at the end of the game? Maybe..Er....