Enricos811's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[miniQuest: Trials]

I played it on mute, so I'll have to take BraveWorks word for it on music.

As (s)he said, it's a great platformer. Maybe a little cookie cutter, but I don't care at all. It's a great little game and its a beautiful style in itself. But, I also have to agree that it feels a little unimaginative. It would be nice if the different levels had different color schemes at the very least, and maybe new types of tiles. I did go through ten levels and found nothing new.

Besides that, the game is very pretty and mostly bug free. I wish the jump could have been higher, but I think that's an intended mechanic, so no complaints. But the ladders seem to create problems when trying to jump from the top of them. It'd be nice if the top of the ladder, were, well, treated as a solid tile until I hit Down to start climbing down it.

The Par times feel a little low to be possible to do while also getting the chests. Without the chests, very much possible. It'd be nice if I got a little reward or even a message/dialog that told me I made the par time on the few that I did.

4/5 would play again. :>

[Treasure Tower Trouble]

So this here game... this here game be gud. I gots 282,421 with Jill on my 3rd try.

Like a review written before me noted, it does take a moment to get used to it. I died pretty quickly with a lame score of about 2-3k. Once I understood it (and started wall jumping off of everything), I found myself easily going up the floors, and many times, I did suicidal jumps just to get diamonds, emeralds, and even sapphires, as little as they're worth.

The water rises faster with each level, but its not til about level 10 that it actually means anything. Once you get to 10 though, you cannot "fall" at all, or you'll hit the water almost instantly. It's not that hard to avoid falling, assuming you don't try to play like I did and collect every shiny gem you see. But that's the risk-reward part of the game that makes it pretty fun!

That the game even offers customizable controls is pretty nice, but I was pretty happy with the arrow-keys and Z-X setup. I might have switched Z for space, but only if I didnt need X for anything. Which, I do. Bats are annoying. Not tedious to remove, just something that needs to be. Similar to the furball creatures found in Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, these things simply slow and inhibit the character's movement. Albiet, its not that much, its obvious in a game like this that losing even the slightest will probably kill you. It'd be nice if bats meant something like losing treasure as well if you keep them on you. Or make them slow you some more. Dodging them is rather easy.

Another slightly annoying feature is the hidden walls and floors. Specifically the floors. I almost died twice because I was running and expected to jump, only to find myself falling into a hidden floor. Walls are fine, and so are the ceilings, but it'd be nice if the floors didn't fall through like so. That, or if the hidden sections had a slight indicator so I could know whether I need to jump or not jump before running over a section.

Also, the start of each level practically forced me to do a wall jump off the side. I don't know if its a glitch, bug, or whatever, but it felt a little limiting that I could jump onto a platform (without wall jumping or wall hanging) at the beginning of each level.

I discerned what Jump, Speed, and Attack do, but what does Floatiness mean in the stats? Obviously I can't float in the torrent of water, and it doesn't seem to make me float in air...

Ooh, can I request a custom character feature? Where the gear you wear is what determines the stats? And I can change the gender and face and hair and all sorts of things, and put futuristic tron stuff on him/her? :D

I love the style of the graphics. It's pixellated, but clearly done with intent and extremely colorful. The interface looks great (though I couldn't immediately tell where the keys were to unlock gold chests), and the collecting the gems felt intuitive, not required. It'd be nice to have milestones for score (such as 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 35,000, 50,000, etc) reported in the center (where the bonus is) and whenever I'm out of keys.

I'd definitely love to play this on my Android device as well, and see more features to it. What's there works beautifully and should definitely be improved upon. 4.5/5, would play again. :p

[Interceptor]

I got to 5,900. :>

A few things irked me about the game. Firstly, after doing engineering in high school, thinking in radians (as opposed to degrees) was preferred. It'd be nice to have a mode which could allow doing that (while appending pi to every input). Not an absolute necessity. Just seems like a nice little touch for a game centered around angles.

Next, despite having gotten plenty of score, I never saw any new enemies. They just kept being the same little missile. Cute little missile, I might add, but it got a little boring after I got to about 3,000.

On the control side, I'd rather have the missile firing rate limited, but each fire will automatically highlight the box to input a new angle. Likewise, can the enter key also fire? It feels like I'm running but tripping over myself with each missile fired, and would definitely make speed more of an issue rather than input lag. Further, I had a notification I wanted to check, but was unable to because I couldn't find an apparent pause button. The input problems lose a star and a half by themselves for me, no offense.

Finally, until about 4,000 score, for me, the missiles spawned at roughly the same rate (seemingly about 1 every 5 seconds). Once it hit that point, the spawn rate seemed to multiply tenfold. At the end when I finally couldn't send enough lasers (from the input lag problem listed above), my system was lagging from how many missiles were being drawn on screen. At least 100, maybe 200.

On the upside though, the Game Over screen and the Main Menu are done beautifully. Could use maybe some graphical spice on the actual game and some animations, but otherwise, the interface for the game looks great! And besides maybe the spawn rate bug I seemed to hit above, the game worked flawlessly with no bugs for me.

[Balloons n Such]

The game has a simple premise, so I have to say I love that.
But it feels a bit annoying that nothing has animations and even more so, it feels annoying that everything looks like it was drawn in paint across the span of 10 minutes. I'd want better graphics for the falling guy and the birdie, at the very least.
It'd be nice to have the UI done with a more flashy engaging animation.
And it'd be nice to have a comical purpose as to why I found myself falling from the sky collecting balloons.

So refine it! Make it cool! The game isn't buggy or bad or anything right now, it just needs more aesthetic changes to make it look awesome! :>

[Impossible Maneuvering]

Mah eyez!

The changing colors was pretty bad, in truth. Keep to similar color schemes, or make it easier on someone's eyes. I like the changing tactics towards avoiding the dead-zones, but like someone stated, all the losing messages are far too negative. They aren't funny at all. They made me want to close the game. Stick with something as simple as "Loser" or "You died!" Yeah, it's something slightly negative, but it isn't so bad that it's inappropriate for those who haven't played League of Legends or Call of Duty.

Also, I found I was able to cheat many of the levels by simply moving the mouse off the game screen . Even some of them, I could simply quickly move the mouse to the winning point to win.

UltraHammer responds:

Sometimes, cheaters deserve to win.

[Hack 'n' Slash]

So, the game froze on me when I went to kill the two enemies near the start.

Anyways -

-I'd like an in-game tutorial on how to move my character and do things. Reading descriptions is lame and boring!
-The graphics are beautiful, but somehow lacking in character. Like... they need something to make them stand out from the rest. There doesnt seem to be anything like that.
-I HAZ NO SOUND. Or if I do, I can't hear it. I'd love some music. Heck, I could maybe even write the music. And sound effects. I like hearing my sword go CLANG. :>
-Wheres the title screen? It feels wrong without a big flashy title screen saying "HELLO!" to me. :(
-Who is my character? I'm lost on who he is (or if its a cross-dressing sexy, for that matter). Tell me about her/him?

Those things, I feel like are essentials. Optionals I'd like to have -

-Control my facing direction and sword and abilities with the mouse if I like. You're obviously tracking it with a cursor in-game. At least, I think you are.
-Make the chickens not push me, please. I'm pretty sure a 2 pound ball of feathers can't push 100+ pound me.
-When I slash the chickens, I wanna get attacked like in the actual Legend of Zelda! :D
-Guide me around a bit. I have no idea what I'm doing.
-Explain why it looks like I'm wearing iron armor to begin with. Doesn't seem adventurous. Seems knightly.
-Make the enemies flash and do more glowy and crazy things if I hit them. It's hard to tell except when they get knocked back a little bit.

I'm certain there's more to add, but I was able to identify these in my playing. In the two minutes I did have with it, I didn't find it too terrible, though.

[A Game in One Week]

I had to stop at Day 3.

Day 1: I missed the first time, but hey, even hitting only Platformer is fine.
Day 2: The movement feels too "slick" to really control that well. Particularly for the size of the jumps you have to make as well. I'd prefer either smaller jumps or more traction for speed and and whatnot. The former, more so. Or, you could give me a double jump mechanic. I wouldn't mind that! It's just, in order to make 3 of the jumps, you HAVE to have full velocity, and you can only barely achieve it in the small gap of running space before the jumps.
Day 3: The shooting enemies are a fine addition. The cloud enemies are far too random to really predict their behavior. Combine that with a rather difficult movement system and you can imagine my frustration. I could only barely make it across the first major chasm after losing literally 1500 points on trying and retrying. On another note, the "detection" for the enemies and bullets seems random and off. A few times I died, the bullet clearly missed me. Same with the cloud where I didn't even touch it, but maybe clipped a few hairs away from it's corner. Were it me, I'd replace the clouds with a ground based "skeleton" enemy of some sort, and make their movements slightly more predictable.

I love the concept, but the gameplay implementation feels far too punishing and random to really be fun. Then again, I might just be a baby over it. I never did like platformers which relied on 102409158 deaths to finally win.

JeffersonTD responds:

Thanks for taking the time to write the review. Answers to your comments:

Day 2: I'll keep that slickness comment in mind when trying to balance the controls of another game. You're a bit exaggerating about the jumps though. One of them needs to be quite precise, but even for that you need less than the width of the player to gain enough speed. For the second longest jump you can jump one full block too early and for the third biggest jump is too blocks shorter than what could be reached in maximum. But double jumps could be an option too of course.

Day 3: I find it interesting that people have such a hard time with the flying enemies, but I'm also happy that you're pointing it out. I'm now starting to see how it is not that evident from the beginning, but once you look at their movement for a moment, you'll see that they follow a clear pattern in how they try to maneuver. The only randomness is due to the surroundings.

I'm happy you like the concept, and no, it's not really being a baby over it. It's just a matter of taste, really. Some people like a higher difficulty level, some don't. Feel free to pm if you have further comments.