JorisRollfox's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Bunny+Spider Platformer - Soul Exchange]

I really love this game, it has enough new mechanics to feel refreshing even in a genre so overdone as platformers. The art and music engross you into the world, which makes the simple yet surprising narrative powerful. And since you move quickly you can blaze through the easy parts, making the difficulty curve feel perfect.

Pressing P or T to switch shape was quite difficult during the action though, and I don't understand why a sprint button was necessary (I would just make it the normal speed).

I'll be looking forward to your next game :)

[Balls to the Brawl]

This is the first beat-em-up I enjoyed playing :))

There is exactly the right amount of story such that it does not detract from the gameplay, and the little there is is comical.

The combat is satisfying, deep, and diverse. Though I would like to know how the scoring system works. Because even though button-mashing is fun, I would like to be motivated more to use tactic to prevent repetition. Same for the taunt, since I don't know when to use it I hardly do. The slomo-counter also feels cool to perform, so it is a shame that it lasts so short that you can't actually use it, and one time I got it I actually still got hit by the attack which feels unfair.

I also really like the tutorial, though I would've liked it if it were easier to train your specials and slomo-counter here.

FutureCopLGF responds:

Cheers! Happy to hear that most of my decisions played out right: originally the game was gonna be story/cutscene/dialogue-heavy, but I ended up chopping it out in favor of just letting people get to the action like old-school brawlers did (though maybe I chopped the tutorial too much in favor of getting to the action, haha).

Yeah, the scoring mechanic was something that was gonna be in originally, but it got cut for time and performance issues. For now, the combo mechanics are mostly driven by momentum (hitting enemies in a short time while dodging attacks) with variation not being as important as it should be. It was gonna be a Tony-Hawk style combo builder that I agree would help incentivize doing multiple moves; next time, next time!

[Don't Look Away From The Colors]

Love the artstyle. The colors and music are calm and pleasant whereas the shaking & music slowdown/speedup make the camera feel alive. I would love to know how you did that music effect by the way. A few times I died because I could not interpret the geometry of a part of the level, because I couldn't look at it for too long and the 1-bit shadows don't help much with depth perception.

The core mechanic is interesting, but extremely stressful because the camera starts shacking and slowing down way too quickly. I understand that this is where the challenge comes in, but I think it would have worked far beter as a relaxed experience. For instance, the camera slows down when you're not looking at a "color", but I would do it the other way. Right now you easily slip off a color because the camera speeds up once you look at it, which feels clumsy and frustrating. If it instead slows down on a color, it would be much easier and less stressful to play. I also had to get used to the overall speed of the camera.

Given your creativity and artistic profoundness, I'll be looking forward to your next game :)
While I did not enjoy playing this one, it was very interesting and I am glad I could try it.

[Newgrounds in 2019]

Very informative for a newcomer such as myself, and I enjoyed how you turned it into a small game. So thank you for making it :)

I should mention though that the music and moving background were quite distracting, especially the latter since it cannot be turned off. Also, the default song does not loop properly, which is quite noticeable given how short it is.

Little-Rena responds:

Thanks!

I should have probably used the longer version of the first song, oops! And it would have been possible to stop the background with a simple button, but I didn't think that would be an issue!