JorisRollfox's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Knightin'+ Demo]

When I died the screen turned black, pressing buttons did not fix this. When I refreshed the page my savedata was gone. I'm using Chrome & the music was still playing, if that helps.

The art looks nice, especially the animations and glowing stuff. There could be more going on on the screen though.

However, while the game is combat- and exploration-driven, their implementations offer little satisfaction to me. The moment I killed my first enemies I already felt like I had mastered the combat, given its simple controls and enemies.
The same applies to the exploration, whose main appeal lies in puzzles that are quickly solved using only your memory. Not that they should be more complicated, but they don't even make me feel smart.

Regardless, the design choices seem to complement a more laid back experience quite well, though I can't say for sure given that I'm just not into that. Besides the crash there was little that downright annoyed or bored me, it just wasn't memorable or enjoyable enough to play more.

Wolod responds:

I'm sorry that you stumbled into such an annoying issue.

I've received ton of very useful feedback since the release. Sequel, if I decide to make one, will be much more entertaining.

[TentaCat: The Lost Lineage]

I accidentally skipped the introduction because I thought I had to press a button to progress, some text that says "[Z] skip" should fix that.

While the game is okay it doesn't do anything new besides its quirky-looking main character, and it could really use some satisfying visual feedback. Enemies and especially bosses take way too many hits which makes you want to rush past them, which for most enemies is the only reason they form a threat as you can easily keep your distance and shoot them.

I did like how the level select screen starts with you entering in a boat, it makes the world feel much more real.

PKTORA responds:

I'll be making tweaks to fix the dialogue box. I've just updated the game to reduce the boss difficulty.

[Helicopter Shooter]

There is no content nor replay value. There is hardly any feedback to the player or satisfying effects, nor is there any reason not to move up & down and spam missiles. Each object has its own artstyle that looks good on its own but combined forms a disconnected mess. I also thought the orange controller logo in the start screen was for using a controller but it leads to another website.

I hope you can use the feedback to make better games, but to be honest given how often you release mediocre games I wonder whether you will even read this.

EDIT: I would really like my last statement to be proven wrong, because I hope you care about the games you release and the people that play them and strive to become better at it.

EDIT 2: Thanks for proving me wrong :)

games7510 responds:

Thank you for your response and as i see, you are my biggest fan. I will do better job next time and i hope you will continue playing my games. Cheers!

[The Last AntLion]

I lI love the art, story & music, together they really makes you feel like an important part of a weird world.

Regarding gameplay, there was not much reason to move instead of waiting in a corner, which is a shame because once I forced myself to keep moving the game became a lot more fun (especially since the weird jump allows for some interesting timing, given that you have a slightly higher movement speed in the air and you jump less high when shooting arrows). Same for the roar, it is so powerful that using it is boring. Just because some enemies are immune to it does not make it interesting, since there is only one enemy type per wave until the last one you can easily abuse it. Speaking of the last wave, it has so many enemy types that its chaos forms a huge difficulty spike. Whereas the other waves do not provide enough variation per wave to keep the game interesting enough to replay it, especially in the earlier waves where enemies can only run & punch even though you are faster and ranged.

The bosses also have more health than is fun, and the knights only dying from bombs is very confusing even though it fits the cruel queen. Controls were awkward, so it is a shame that I only read that there were alternative controls in the author comments after playing.

I'll be looking forward to your next game though, because while I may be ranting the charms of this game stand out.

velketor responds:

Thank you for playing GreetingsGames! I truly appreciate your constructive feedback and I too agree with many of the critiques you pointed out. I struggled a lot with trying to prevent the player from simply standing in the corner. It doesn't work on all waves and it certainly doesn't work against the Pharaoh Ant, The Dinosaur Ant, or the Queen Ant. I thought about putting a trap there or even having the statues attack you if you stood still near them for too long, but I felt like I was getting carried away and left it out of this version of the game.

As for Roar, it's definitely not balanced the way I had hoped. It's powerful, but it doesn't work against all of the ants. I was trying to make it both useful and not useful at the same time, with the intention to avoid players simply standing still and roaring their way through the game. I wanted it to be a very selective ability, but I may have restricted it too much.

The game was designed so that each wave is teaching you how to defeat a specific type of ant, with all of the 'learning' you did culminating into 1 final boss with where all of the ants, along with the Queen, fight you all at the same time. The difficulty could have been scaled better, but it's the best I could do at this stage in my ability to design well balanced games. It's a lot harder than I imagined and the comments have either been that it's perfect or that people hate it.

I've had the most comments about the Army Ants only being defeated with bombs being 'dumb', along with a slew of other negative comments, but that's to be expected in this industry. Gamers are the toughest of crowds and again I should have designed an alternate way to slay the Army Ants, even if it was just multiple hits with a regular arrow.

The controls were the best I could do as well. I tried to offer as many alternatives as possible, but in the end I should have just added a way for the user to define their own controls and I would have avoided all of the comments related to that issue.

In the sequel I will address all of these issues and make a much better game, thanks to constructive feedback from players like yourself. I'm glad you liked it, regardless of the negative aspects that were frustrating and boring. I spent 7 months making the game and it's nice to hear honest reflection. Thank you.

[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!

[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!