StretchJohnson's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Coming Out Simulator]

Great tags, bro.

[Memory]

Love the atmosphere. I liked the nonlinear story telling, implying past events through the environment dark souls style.
Rogue-likes are weird, because they often ask you no to think in terms of winning and losing, and more about the story that unfolds from your actions. My mind sat somewhere in between, where landing a bad-ass shot was a win, but losing health was no different the first or the third time, the ladder resulting in death.
All of this blended together into a pretty immersive experience. The game-play itself was pretty boring, seemingly inspired by Spelunky's design choices. This would've been the perfect game for some more complicated puzzles than find the key and the door; more world story telling hinting at secret areas, languages you need to translate Fez style, just make the world more rich while maintaining that immersive experience, where we would need to figure it all out the same way the avatar would.

[Crown Dungeon 2]

I love these meta-game type experiences. It's immersive by nature and really makes you think outside the box!
However...
The levels didn't seem to be in any particular order though, many felt easy to the point of triviality followed directly by real progress stoppers, and thematically there wasn't any real progression like you were moving through the world to get to your friend. To fix this, I would make every level available from the start, so you could move to another if you ever got stuck, naturally ordering the levels based on what different players found hard to be completed in a progressive order. Also, players should be given a drop box where they can put levels they get stuck on till later. With this system, easy levels serve more as practice and hint providers for the hard ones, which they can return to at any time. I would also split the game into chapters, providing that thematic progression and preventing the player from getting through the entire game before returning to the hard ones they saved.
And this might be one of those chrome issues, but in level 30 I couldn't feed the finger to the vampire. I'm pretty sure this is the solution, where a key hole would appear after he's fed, because nothing else works either, so I assume I'm stuck.
All in all, fun stuff.

[The Other Side]

So the premise is that it's a platformer where you can't see things that are about to kill you reliably? Seems fair.
This game has the same issue that 3D games have to deal with; you have to juggle moving and looking simultaneously, since both are dependent on one another. First person shooters deal with this by having cover where the player can sit stationary while they aim, and by having a wide field of view, meaning the player can focus on moving or aiming one at a time. This allows them to master the controls more and, eventually, do some pretty clutch, coordination heavy things. This game fails to do either effectively; there's no practice lead up section, the area revealed by the mouse is so restrictive that no amount of practice would be enough to prepare the player anyway (fully prepared is the point where they can beat every challenge). To counter this, you made the game easy, the ultimate insult a designer can give to their game.
To fix this game, I would make it anything but a platformer. The conflict between the controlling and the looking is central to what's holding this game back. Maybe a stealth game, lending itself further to the horror theme? Or a puzzler? The beauty of platformers is the very fact that moving simultaneously moves the camera to follow you.

[Space Swapper]

The game was a challenge when there was two spaceships, and impossible when there was three. It just asks too much from the player in terms of coordination (there is after all a human limit), and it's such a simple idea and execution you'd have to change the idea to improve it.
I suggest not introducing a second key, having one key cycle through all the spaceships (though the third spaceship wreaks the idea fundamentally, this might help a little). Or if it was touch screen based you could select the spot between spaceships to swap rather than using a specific key, that could help too.

ThalesQwerty responds:

This is a demo version designed for desktop, the full version is designed for mobile devices and implements the ideas you've suggested: two ships swap their positions when you tap anywhere between them.

You can try it out :)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thalesqwerty.spaceswapper

[ANTIDOTE city HALL #1]

Needs a better translation. I loved the mechanics and the story though. Can't wait for part 2.

[YumemiSushi]

I love this idea for a game. The web browser idea justifies limiting the player's options without limiting I M M E R S I O N perfectly. It was pretty short (I liked the apparent set up for a conspiracy or secret purpose for the software type plot, without spoiling anything), but all in all a magical experience :D

maruki responds:

Thank you so much for your kind words!

[Monster Sanctuary]

The combat encounters, I feel, are uninteresting. You just go through the motions, feeling like there's no way to improve your performance, using the same attack rotation every fight, and never being challenged. Take your average ability for instance; it's only real considerations in if you should use it or not are the elemental type and the Mana cost. You use whatever ability is their weakness, or if you are low on Mana, whichever is cheapest. That's it, that's how you beat the game. The best strategy to beat this game is also the most boring. There are definitely situations where certain ability pair allow some damage optimization, such as debuffing the enemy before attacking them; the problem is that these types of games more or less live or die based on how many opportunities the player gets to do this. It's not that it's super bad, it's a tiny bit bad times the number of times you have to do combat, which is a lot. As long as it is the act of engaging the game and trying to figure out a solution which makes progress, players will try and optimize how to beat a situation, thus having the game engage them. It did get better with harder enemies, but still.

The systems in general are overwhelming at the beginning, providing way to much info at the beginning, a failure of the UI design I think; ideally you would be given the appropriate information as it becomes necessary for strategy, but in this game it's almost all information you might need all the time. It is also pretty unintuitive, in that you don't really get the relationships between presented information as it appears, which especially hurts since you have to basically figure it out for yourself in it's current state. This is basically an issue with pacing, making the player dive straight into systems that aren't overly complicated, but feel like they are because they don't understand it.

What is supposed to be the focus of this game anyway? Is it collecting cool Pokemon? Becoming stronger and beating the game? There are elements of cool games you and I both enjoy, obviously, but what is this game trying to do with those elements? The part I enjoyed the most, strangely enough, was the platforming. This game has better feeling controls that 80% of the games on this site which focus on it! Exploration was fine, but I'd hardly describe either of these as the game's main idea.

From an artistic standpoint, this game is really good. The animations are nice, but the graphics feel ripped from Terraria. I liked some of the music too.

I hope this gets better, I would like to play it for real one day, like on a DSi or something. Thank you.

[CopyCat]

Needs more levels. Not an original concept so that would really help sell it...

[Just Passing]

Loved the music. Having to get the money over and oer again made me quit though.