Amni3D's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Towerland]

I like how simple the premise is, "Climb up the tower!". I also think that celshading works really well in a tiny web browser window.

Room design feels like it throws more enemies without any overarching idea room-to-room. You start out with enemies that explode bullet patterns on hit, but suddenly that stops being the case in the next few rooms. I want a feeling like "oh god it's the spider room" rather than "fight the enemies".

Some of the enemy patters are good, but some of them don't do much and are easy kills. In my opinion, the easy kills should take one hit to kill rather than sponging 3 bullet hits. So I can decide "do I fight the big thing first or do I clear the weak ones" at least.

I liked what I played, but it didn't feel like there was enough of a level design hook.

Pitigamedev responds:

Thank you for the feedback!

[Tankmas ADVENTure 2021]

The warning for Brave browsers is a nice touch. Also seems to have good support for different control schemes. While the characters can only really waddle, it's enough for people to scheme up different ways to interact even so, lol.

Will have to see what happens day by day, but I love the aesthetic.

BrandyBuizel responds:

I played ADVENT 2020 on PS4 last year, it's very slow but I'm glad we added it lawl

[Daxolissian System: Espionage]

I found it fun, although I'm not sure I like the decision to switch engines between levels.
The controls are fine once you get used to them, but I feel a WASD + QE for roll makes more intuitive sense, although ideally you'd want XINPUT bindings in too (this kind of game would play better with analog movement).

It does feel nice when you can just barely make a turn, but I do feel there should be some leniency with the slopes, some kind of dot product comparison.

I give some serious props that you figured out how to make simple level design feel tense. Good luck on your future stuff!

3p0ch responds:

Aerial Guard when? <3

Edit: if anyone sees this and is wondering what I'm talking about https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/764962

[The Fancy Pants Adventures: World 4 part 2]

It's been a while since I played a Fancy Pants game. Controls better than it ever did, instantly was familiar with it all. Also, the original "ow" voice clip is still there, so I appreciate that :p

I really think that the "Play with Newgrounds Player" option should be on by default at this point. For me it just showed an unsupported plugin spot. So I think it should be on the top of the description to link you to this page: https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player

Even better than the console FPA on 360 and PS3. I really like it.

DrNeroCF responds:

Yeah, Newgrounds Player is a great solution. Shouldn't be surprised to see Newgrounds doing more for Flash than Adobe yet again, though.

[Daxolissian System: Saboteur]

Controller support would've been appreciated, because I think analog works better for this.

Zooming out is a must for playing this, should just be integrated into the camera. The default zoom is borderline useless, even if standing still. Camera is my biggest complaint. The game occasionally bugs out between writing this review with it losing and gaining focus, but I understand Phaser isn't crazy used. Button choice is a little weird, if I miss the zoom button, I exit out of the level.

It has its fun tho, and I'll probably play more of this later to be honest.

3p0ch responds:

I guess the buttons are weird because I was originally planning for the game to be substantially different, but only ended up keeping the elements that you see now. It would be fairly easy for me to remap the keys (although making them user-configurable would be kind of tough for me to do before the Jam deadline), let me know if you'd like to suggest different and more natural ones that are still AZERTY friendly 'cause I got too used to this layout during development. I'm not sure why you're exiting the level if you miss the zoom button though, I intentionally made X be exit with the C key falling between that and the zoom keys to avoid that problem; are you exiting if you press any other keys or something?

And now I wish I had a gamepad so I could program for one and be able to test it.

The zoom level forcing the player to rely on the radar was intentional and I meant for operating by radar to be part of the challenge, but I realized a lot of players might not like it so made zooming out an option. I hope that you consider it reasonably fun when you can set the zoom however you want. If enough people think it would be worthwhile, I should be able to recode the game so it stays at whatever zoom you were last at between levels, or at least when resetting a level after you die.

[Final Fharmacy - Arcade Demo]

I like the premise, reminds me a little of Diner Dash, but with an air of JRPG ness on top. The music helped sell it.

There's some quality of life features that could've been neat. Why do the icons have their own page, they could just be on the recipe page and save time. Want a few dedicated slots for hoarding potions before the shift starts for example, rather than taking the whole pot. Also a quick empty button for when you accidentally put the healing potion into a pot.

I think if you merge this with super simple adventuring to hoard ingredients before going back to the Pharmacy, you have a surprisingly good formula there. It was fun, I liked it.

FutureCopLGF responds:

Yeah, I'm really happy with the music as well! Was cool working with another composer for this. I appreciate the feedback: sounds like some good quality of life changes that I plan on building, especially the 'empty' button which seems to be a common request that I definitely should've caught the first time around.

[Weird Bunny Banana]

A fun, retro sugared Mario like game. I appreciate the Xbox controller support, and the medals are a neat bonus.
It feels like I can only sometimes count on the dash to break blocks, and it sucks that it's not directional. I have a weird thing where I can only dash in place if using my gamepad. Maybe it has something to do with my controller's damaged analog, however.

Although I do suck at this (can't even beat Gameboy world...), it does have a challenging sweet spot, I like it. The other worlds have charming art.

(Oh, btw I've also been having medal unlock bugs on my game. Web games can be annoying to make sure it works 100% of scenarios)

TristanMX responds:

well, the intention of the dash was to reach distant platforms and break horizontal blocks, didn't planned anything else although it is feasible.

Medals are a headache on NG, sometimes work, sometimes they just don't... I had to implement a "re-send" of the medals in a couple of my games.

Have fun! and thanks for your feedback!

[Pumpking]

I like it. The game teaches you pretty quickly without being overbearing, and I like the simple but chess like enemy design. The game has a nice pallet to it too.

nyunesu responds:

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it (:

[Balls to the Brawl]

Pretty fun, although I think that the game needs some spice to sustain itself for the longer levels. While I appreciate not making the enemies pure bullet sponges, it does end up becoming button mashy due to how frantic the combat gets. And for that, I feel that controller support would've been a good touch there, as it's a bit uncomfortable on keyboard after a while. The game feels in some ways mechanically better and worse than the games its inspired off of. It feels more free form, and one of your best calls in this game is the near dodge. Where in other games a time stop effect works about as what you'd expect, here it's just an added layer of spice that's there to tell you "this guy is so good, he stopped time" and it's so over the top I love it.

I really liked the air of over the top humor on top of it too. All in all, I thought it was fun. Although I think the levels could've used more tropes in specific, to make it feel more varied. I like my beat-em-ups, but pacing is important too. And to do that you'll need to switch it up from just "fight more" at times. It's fun, but it gets repetitive.

PS: Newgrounds version took forever to load, while Itch.io version loaded really fast for me.

FutureCopLGF responds:

Cheers for the detailed feedback! Very true, I do feel like I could've done more to spice it up with a few more unique enemy types or environments, looking back at it. At times I might've made it a bit too possible to just button mash as well, leading to even more repetitive feelings. Gotta get better at project design and management in the future so I don't have to cut as much.

Gamepad integration was one of the things I sadly wasn't able to do well due to being on such an outdated codebase (actionscript 2.0) and not moving porting to a newer one. That's what I get from digging up this decade-old abandoned project; next time I'm gonna stick with more modern codebases and finish it quicker!