hentaiwriter's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[DEAD PETALS]

Pretty good game and the procedural aspect is really neat, the visuals are great too, as is the auto-aim setup (since let's be real, no one needs to aim when playing most bullet hell games, the focus is on dodging bullets)

The only main pain point I would say is that once you beat a group of enemies (or if you died), it'd be great if the bullets on-screen went away; as it is, it almost encourages me to kill all *but* one enemy, wait for the bullets to go away so I can get gems, *then* kill that remaining enemy, which kinda slows down the pace of the game some when I want to just blow everything up.

I'd even be fine with enemies coming in in waves automatically, instead of waiting until you kill the last enemy, to keep the pace of the game going; it would encourage players to wipe out enemies faster so they get that "bullet clear" which would only happen if all enemies were wiped out, before they got overwhelmed with enemies.

Also, as a suggestion, maybe the green arrow powerup could increase the % of gems dropped from enemies or your firing rate so players get something immediately tangible instead of a ??? factor that might not have an effect before they die?

Really nice job, deserved front page :)

EDIT: You know, it'd be really good if Newgrounds let us reply to replies to our reviews!

All that you wrote about in your reply though sounds like a really good idea , looking forward to your future games :D

bandaloo responds:

glad you like it! thanks for the generous rating and amazing feedback :)

it's a very good point about the bullets persisting between rounds, which encourages the weird strategy where you slow down before killing the last guy. adding some sort of time based bonus for quickly finishing waves would let me justify it. but as it stands now, i find myself waiting around for bullets to clear too. the only exception is if i just popped a hyper and i don't want to waste it, so i push forward even if it means the screen is covered. (if you hold your fire, the hyper drains slower, so the former strategy still kind of works)

when you get hit there's a small bullet cancel around you but i should probably make it bigger.

as someone suggested, i'm going to prevent the luck bubbles from spawning during boss rush. it was fun to make it a sort of ??? factor but in retrospect it feels a little pretentious. it works like this:

the more luck you have, more bosses will drop 3 bubbles instead of 2, you'll see more ❤️2, more A and S tier companions, and more hyper bubbles with high percentages. once you get 10 luck they stop spawning, and the luck drop will be replaced one of the other items. i was wary about "permanent" upgrades because i wasn't sure i'd be able to balance it, but i might do something like that for the follow-up game. maybe increased maximum hyper, or drone type guys that move with you like gradius and other games.

[Madam Mim's Bet]

Rating is primarily for the puzzle/action game itself, which is really original and neat; it was engaging enough that I wanted to master it (and I did get a no mistake run on hard after 10 or 20 tries!), but simple enough that you don't feel overwhelmed by the rules.

Really cool idea, looking forward to more games from you!

PoliuxDimension responds:

Thank you for playing my game, hey, to be honest, when I got started few months ago, you are one of indie game creator I was researching and regarded as successful model, and I believe I've learned a lot from you when I was confused(I'm referring to the things other than game itself) So I also need to thank you for that, you have my respect.

[Rythm is Lava]

Definitely a neat concept; the only complaint I had was that you can actually backtrack into previous rooms, and doing so makes the room you've backtracked into need to be completed again, which I felt was a bit overkill, but otherwise pretty fairly balanced game!

egordorichev responds:

Thanks a bunch :D I should probably make a minimap, hm.

[Heavy Headed Hydra]

The reason I rated this 5 stars is because the gameplay itself gets a bit old pretty fast and it's pretty slow paced, the actual concept and control scheme is really impressive, and I'm surprised I got somewhat used to it as fast as I did.

If you added a lot of polish to this visually as well as better execution (faster gameplay, more things to do, upgrades, possibly things like needing to fly your ship through corridors, that sort of thing) this could easily be a full fledged game that would sell well just for the odd factor.

cubehero responds:

Thank you for your insightful comment! I'm not currently planning to make a more robust version of this, but I think I'd be able to make it more fun with more time (this game was made in around 8 days or so) and fewer restrictions from following the Game Jam theme! If I decide to work more on it I'll try to keep your comments in mind!

[Royal Cats]

Pretty solid concept! You could really make some complex stuff with this, and it's generally well executed, too.

The only things I would have liked to see would be a faster death animation (or a way to skip it), and maybe even a small bit of storyline as to why we were stealing food from the royal kitchen and what these coins are for, as well as even a single screen at the end as a reward for ending.

There's also an odd bug where if you click on the right side of the screen after dying, the game goes back to the title screen.

Otherwise, nice stuff!

AvixGames responds:

We promise to fix all these less polished aspects after the jam :)

Thanks a lot for playing and giving us your valuable insights! :D

['DUCKS!']

Great concept and execution in general, although these were my nitpicks;

Character speed, in general, was fine at first, but as the levels went on, the slowness of their movement started to make the game feel like a bit of a drag. If every character had say, a button you could hold to make them move faster, or even do a quick dash (which could even allow for new abilities too!), gameplay would feel a lot more upbeat (and match the pace of the music too).

I also think it'd be nice to have had all three ducks right from the start; the gameplay is straightforward and simple enough that the menu screen at the start could have explained all three ducks and allowed us to jump right into action with them.

Small nitpicks though, you could easily turn this into a full game with some extra polish!

Butzbo responds:

Now that you mention the speed, I did wanted them to have different speeds (Brick is the slowest, which is not so convenient since he has to travel great lenghts on stage 6, oh well) but since you have to do longer walks as the game progress, it's one thing to improve on an expansion.

I'm not completely sure about the 2nd thing as I went for a complexity curve where you go learning about each duck in the process -And I did wanted to include some one-duck and two-duck puzzles- that said, it's good to know that they are not so complex to learn and I think it's worth testing to see how approachable it is.

Thanks for the review and comments! :)