kaiakairos's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gappy's Adventure : Coinkeeper's Cantrip (DEMO)]

so i already played an earlier build of this game, but i was having performance issues and didn't get to really experience it.
the movement in this is RIDICULOUSLY clean, feels superb. art and sound are super nice too and help make the movement feel real punchy. my biggest and only gripe is the difficulty. I understand wanting to do the NES throwback thing, but even then Mario 1 still had checkpoints, and multiple ways of obtaining more lives. This game has almost no checkpoints, and no way to obtain more lives (at least that I found). Moving fast in this game feels so good, and the levels are geared towards it, but because of how unforgiving the life system is, I found it too much of a risk to play fast and had to go slow, also refusing to do risky maneuvers ( normally I'm a fiend for yoshi coin esc things but i was just too worried about losing lives to bother )
there's also a couple moments in some of the levels that are a bit too precise, which I wouldn't mind if screwing them up didn't cost a life and a level restart.
this game is at its most fun when you're moving fast, but it punishes risky movement a little too hard for me to ever want to try it. I feel like just dropping the life system entirely would help, I don't particularly mind having to replay the individual levels after dying, it lets me use my newfound knowledge to go through the level fast which is fun. Also maybe falling in a pit or spikes should just take 1 health away and place u back on the last safe platform, instead of being an instant death.
it really is a lot of fun though, i just wanna be able to move around more without the fear of wasting my time replaying old levels !!

[Unstabled Horse]

pretty cool, although i do think its a little finicky. died most often to just falling off because there's no signifier for when a platform is going to drop, leading too a lot of deaths from just being a teensy bit too slow on the reaction time. there's also no signifier for landing successfully on a platform, i died a LOT from freaking out thinking i hadn't stuck the landing, when in reality I had, and since the horse moves so fast, even a split second of thinking like that is enough to cause me to run right off the ledge. i also died a lot from jumping onto platforms that were just a couple frames from fully refreshing, which was irritating.
overall i think its pretty cool and silly i just think it needs a little more player forgiveness

[Lightspeed Hideout]

it was fun at first but after realizing i needed to grind the boss over and over to progress i lost interest, the boss just gets tedious after a couple runs. I got up to level 4 but there isn't anything interesting to find, i found a chest that i was able to open but not able to get the loot, loosing it forever. this game has a lot of nice polish, but is too tedious and unrewarding for me to want to put time into it. i haven't unlocked anything cool so far, so grinding out the boss seems like wasted time to me, even if there is some cool stuff later on
i also think the controls should be listed in the game somewhere, was a bit confusing at first

[sillinder's somewhat uneventful tuesday noon]

this game is awesome, felt like perfect difficulty for me. occasional moments where its hard to see where exactly can or can't be stood on, but the check points are forgiving so trial and erroring those parts is not irritating at all. bosses are really fun. i think those bounce platform guys with the 2 legs need to be a little more forgiving with their hitbox, often had a lot of trouble hitting them which was kind of annoying. i liked green mode a lot.... needs MORE green mode.......
oh and while i do think visually the levels get interesting later on the first segment is kinda lackluster which made a bit of a bad first impression.
overall i like this game a lot this is a certified 5 star from me

[Death of a Dungslinger]

like qwerty said the controls take a bit of getting used to but i think they are otherwise pretty fun. the worm fight was pretty good, the only issue i had was in the first phase, i had trouble telling which hole the worm was going to move to, and by the time i found it it would move to another hole.
in the colony level, moving the head into the hole isnt super obvious at first but it once u figure it out theres no issue really, works good. the ant queen boss was pretty aggravating. when she does the "shockwaves" or whatever of the nasty floor muck the game has a lot of trouble telling if ive stepped on it or not. i would often take damage when i clearly never touched it, and sometimes i WOULD touch it and not take any damage at all. during her second phase, the last flying bug is ungodly hard to hit, since the queens hitbox is in the way. it forced me to just shotgun blast the balls until i got lucky and enough of them hit.
during the race, there are certain segments where there is no snow, meaning if you get hit by an oncoming snowball, youre just fucked and you have little chance to actually recover. the snowballs have very little build up, really just feels like luck is the only determining factor in not getting hit by them, which sucks since not getting hit makes or breaks winning the race. also, hitting him during the race does delay him but by such a miniscule amount that it doesn't counteract the time to actually build a new ball and catch up.
as for his fight, it starts off not so bad but gets way too chaotic too fast, again feeling largely up to luck whether or not a stray snowball hits you and knocks you into everything else. at some point i clipped into the wall and got stuck so i gave up.
i also had overall bugs and issues. in the options menu, the dark yellow (unselected items) on purple is near unreadable for me. at one point the game got like a pixel filter that wouldnt go away? like the game was suddenly running at 30p? Also, the longer i played the more crusty the audio would become, hurting my ears (ive seen similar issues in other godot games). The music would sometimes cut out too, which diminishes the vibe quite a bit lol
overall i think the game is pretty cool, i think the movement mechanics and having to sacrifice movement to attack is really interesting and fun, having to collect sauce from the ground is cool too. Each level also offers a cool unique experience, used to too many games where level 2 is just level 1 but longer so props to that. i think this game needs a LOT of polish though, and probably some heavy playtesting (i guess thats why im here!)

[Turf High Retro]

There's a lot of nice polish here, animations look and feel good and clearly a lot of effort went in to making all the cutscenes and whatnot. unfortunately tho i think the game is dragged down by a lot of small issues. Firstly, the game advertises itself as a beat em up but after the tutorial you have to do 3 tedious minigames before actually being able to fight anybody which is a really strange way to introduce your game. I'm not against the day structure with different minigames, I think it could work well with proper pacing.
During the fights, there really is never a reason to do any move other than the basic punch. the frontflip kick takes longer to come out and does almost no damage AND doesn't knock back like the basic punch does making it completely useless. There is also rarely a reason to dodge, most of the enemies wait around for forever to attack. The only enemies that take advantage of the mechanics are the big guys, which ask you to punch em and then roll away, which i liked.
lastly, i understand this game is meant to be playable on mobile, but if you're going to make a game that requires both hands on the keyboard, don't make buttons on the screen require the mouse !
i think the game has a lot of promise tho, so keep up the good work

[Pengu: Lost and Wanted DEMO]

i liked the platforming. game is unbelievably quiet however, every volume slider on my computer is maxed out and it is still so quiet that I have to turn off my house's heater to even tell that there is audio at all. otherwise fun game

STANNco responds:

it's possible my own speakers are just really really really loud. I might update to make stuff louder!

[Rubblar]

this would be a very cool game, but glitched spirit already said everything i was thinking. level 1 is too hard, and takes longer to try again than it does to actually play. I don't need to see the ooh ah every time, the prison break sequence is neat but unnecessary. It took me multiple tries to realize that right click sends the hand back, it isnt tutorialed at all despite being necessary to beat the first level. the mechanic is so neat tho and the game is super polished! i could see the idea being returned to, it'd make a great game

Heytibo responds:

Thanks : )
"It took me multiple tries to realize that right click sends the hand back"
The controls are on the main screen, but it's easy to miss :/.

Also, yes, it's a jam game, it's a bit rough, Rubblar is definitely one of those projects I'd like to come back to and do a full version on :)

[Kill The Healthcare CEO!]

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