00:00
00:00
WarpZone

242 Game Reviews

84 w/ Responses

5 reviews are hidden due to your filters.

//Initialize Expectations
game.quality = vampire_survivors.quality;
game.graphics.style = graphics.BLENDER_LOWBIT
game.graphics.quality = MID_QUALITY
if(music.volume > 0){
music.quality = MEDIUM_HIGH_QUALITY
} else {
musician = "VA-11 HALL-A - Second Round [Full Album]"
music.quality = HIGH_QUALITY
}

print("Hey, everyone. Warpzone here! And welcome to my review of Picayune Dreams on Newgrounds!");
print("The first and most important thing you need to know about this game is that you should NEVER play it on Newgrounds.");
print("The free demo on Steam, availible from the link in the description, adds several key features.");
print("Such as the ability to see the whole screen at the same time,");
print("and the ability to hear the music over the sound of your computer's fans.");
print("If only the developer had given us some indication...);
print("Oh.");
print("Well, I guess that's what I get for skipping past the title screen.");

//Try out the different weapons
switch (weapon)
{
case: halo

DoConfuseWithAngelWings();
game.quality -=1;

case: angel_wings
while (enemy_distance > close_enough_to_kill_you )
enemy_distance -=1;
} else {
DieBecauseYourWeaponWontFire();
game.quality -=5;
}

case: chainbelt
if (chainbelt_damage < garlic_damage)
{
game.quality -= ( garlic_damage - chainbelt_damage);
}

case: radio_transmitter
return;

default:
if(stage > 2){
game.enemySpeed.randomize();
}
}

//Thanks to milkypossum for helping me with my switch statements. I've always struggled with pseudocode, mostly because I can never find the documentation for it online.

if (fullscreen == true){
if(played_on_newgrounds) {fullscreen = false;}
}

print("Hey, everyone. Max0r here! And welcome back to my Hacknet letsplay.");
print("The second thing you need to know about this game is how to plug in your controller.");
print("No, seriously. Playing with a controller unlocks several key features not availible without one.);
print("Features such as discovering that the game only seems hard because you've been suffering from a disability all this time.);
print("Press the right thumbstick to diagnose yourself.");
print("Then bask in the thrill of playing video games at an average level of skill for the first time in your life.");
print("It's not cheating. It's called using the accessibility options.);
print("Of course, like anyone overcoming a disability, you will need to adjust your quality-of-life espectations.);
print("To zero. Because this game doesn't DO quality-of-life.");

if (fullscreen == false && playerYmovement != 0){
CollideWithEnemyYouDidntEvenSee();
game.quality -= 100;
DownloadSteamDemo();
}

print("There wre two main categories of equippable upgrades: weapons that put more projectiles on the screen, and memes.");
print("You WILL die. A lot. And it won't always feel like it's your fault.");
print("This is intentional. Dying a lot is just central to the intended game experience.");
print("I suppose that's what happens when you balance your difficulty curve using an aimbot.");
print("Unfortunately, I found that even with my gamer skills artifically inflated to the level of a baseline human, I still struggled to complete basic game tasks.");
print("Tasks such as "Enter level 3" or "Collect all of the numbers.");

//Make obvious comparisons
game_quality += (game.characters.count - vampire_survivors.characters.count);

if (game.Contains(FiveNightsAtFreddysLore) ){
game.quality += 50;
action.Stop();

if(action.IsStopped){
game_quality -= 51;
}
}

print("The game features colorful interactions with many fascinating characters.");
print("Such as a cartoon rabbit that tells knock-knock jokes,");
print("and a second character.");
print("All of this to gradually reveal an in-depth narrative about sisyphean legalized slavery and state-funded drug abuse.")
print("So, basically a typical dayjob if you were born after 1980.");
print("The struggle is real.");
print("Trust me, it's non-addictive.);

//Complain that the game's too hard
if(first_boss_attack_phase == 3){
DieUnlessYouUseTheBlackHoleTheGameNeverTellsYouHowToUse();
game.quality -= 1000;
}

//Complain about crashes/bugs
if (stage == orchid_sleep){
BlackScreenOfDeath();
game.quality -= 10000;
}

print("I would not call this game 'fun.' I personally struggle to understand why I've played it so much.");
print("But that's probably because I personally struggle to understand how anything works in this game.");
print("Mentally choosing to believe that you have a plan somehow causes you to die.");
print("Frankly, I don't understand how they implemented this feature. But I'm glad that indie devs got to it before Big Tech.");

//Rate game w/overall score
if (game.quality < vampire_survivors.quality){
game.quit();
}

if(still_reading_this_review = true){
// I'm a little surprised nobody called me on this boolean assignment typo. I decided to keep the bug in, since it literally forces people to read this far in the review. You might call that nonsense, but it worked on you.
psuedo-code_conceit.worth_it = false;
DoBlameNewgroundsForBreakingWhitespace();
}

print("In conclusion, if you must play this, play it using the Steam demo.");
print("And try to remind yourself to come back up for air occasionally.");
print("Otherwise, like the game's protagonist, you might find yourself unable to stop playing.");
print("Freebasing health upgrades and Black Hole drills, until you literally min-max yourself to death.");
print("It's not a bug. It's a statement on the healthcare industry.");

if(devs_respond_in_kind == true){
game.quality++;
begrudgedly = true;
}

print("Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go play Holocure, so I can complain that the Yagoo spam at the end is too easy.");

if(addicted_to_steam_demo_anyway){
game.quality = int(float(MAX_INT) * 0.8);
}

Stepford responds:

if(warpzone.showered = true){
girlfriend_get();
}

Andyl4nd responds:

if(warpzone.stinky = true){
instance_create(x,y,obj_stinklines);
}

milkypossum responds:

You didn’t format your switch statements correctly :-(

Cool concept but it punishes noob players who don't understand what the words mean before they spend resources and pollute their deck with unplayable cards. Literally everything in the game needs respec buttons because none of these things work the way a new player expects them to, based on the description.

Most upgrades are traps.

It feels like one of those deliberately painful pay-to-win games, except you can't even pay to win! You just have to suck, make permanent mistakes that ruin your deck, and lose. One of the enemies moves so fast they literally teleport past your towers between shots. You'd think the way to play around it would be to build more towers or upgrade the reload speed or something, but none of these work! No idea what the game wants me to do about it. Sink two different types of micro-transaction currency into upgrading the temple's health, I suppose. Thanks but no thanks.

Overall: it's 2005's core mechanics with 2020's mobile games mentality. They haven't implemented the cash shop yet. But don't worry! I'm sure it's coming!

Tell you what dev, when you finally put the cash shop in and let us buy mana gems and fucking origami birds or whatever, I promise, I'll deduct two stars from my review score. :D

Okay, I'm just going to say it. The game is too hard. I managed to progress, but it's too hard. Let me explain:

You shouldn't need to buy an upgrade to be able to one-shot the weakest popcorn in the game. I kept dying over and over again on the third room. Because I kept entering the third room with zero extra health. Because I kept taking two hits in the second room. Because the second room throws 9 popcorn and 2 area-denial mines, all at you at the same time, when it's literally only your second room!

Then I figured out that the embarrassing pile of un-collectable money that was accumulating in the third room was actually something I could recreate in the first room. Then I figured out instead of letting it pile up on the floor, I could just clear the first room, hold R, repeat until you reach the arbitrary "Pay $50 to not suck" threshold.

And my question is, why? Why make me jump through all those hoops in order to unlock the controls the game was actually balanced around? Why make grinding this unpleasant and awkward and forced if you're also going to REQUIRE grinding just to get past the third room?

There's some other minor things you could tweak, like replacing the mouse cursor with a targeting reticle so you can then disable OS-level mouse-smoothing and use raw mouse inputs instead, or making sure that when you switch from keyboard and mouse to controller and back again, it actually uses the aiming method of the new controller, not the old one. But those are just polish.

My main problem with the game right now is the same problem plaguing a lot of FPS games with RPG elements shoehorned into them in the mid-2000s: it means you don't start off playing a good game. You start off playing a shit game that turns good if you pump enough upgrade points into it. That's stupid.

Balance the starting areas for the starting weapon. I don't think that's too much to ask.

AKTStudios responds:

WarpZone there are definitely improvements we can make and we are working to tweak the balance in the full version to make progression feel more fair. In a game jam setting you don't always have time to play test and balance a game to where it feels right to everyone. Some people are going to find it easy, some are going to find it hard. Finding the right balance between those two is our goal. Thank you for the feedback!

Nothing in this game makes any sense the first time you start playing it, and that's a huge problem. The main issue is the fundamental UX. It's abstract, it's confusing, it's arbitrary... it somehow manages to be both too spread out and too cluttered at the same time... then the Tutorial pops up and tells you to do a thing, only you have no idea how to do that thing because you don't understand the confusing UX yet.

None of the structures actually look like anything, you have to manually decide which way BOTH ENDS of the conveyor belts face using giant buttons on the bottom of the screen buried in a menu, and GODS HELP YOU if you accidentally figure out how to put down the resource processor on your own before the game commands you to. You'll get trapped with a giant menu covering the screen forever and no way to back out of it.

Worst of all, this game actually has the nerve to name-drop Factorio! This is nothing like Factorio. It's not even Mindustry. At best, it's a super-buggy, super-abstract knockoff of Big Pharma, only with even more limited building space.

And did I mention the tutorial you can't skip breaks the game? THE TUTORIAL YOU CAN'T SKIP BREAKS THE GAME. Don't play this.

Now THIS is a strategy game. Though the rules are simple, and the graphics are even simpler, what matters is the gameplay. And the gameplay here is pure strategy perfection. Every single move is a shrewd calculation of carefully contrived advantage, yet your turns pass at a snappy pace. You can glean the entire board state in little more than a quick glance, yet the board presents a different tactical situation almost every single turn. The very definition of depth of gameplay over breadth of content. Extra Credits would be proud.

Lag killed this game. The tutorial freezes when you have just 20 ships! You click on a button and literally nothing happens for two seconds, real time. How is a flash game this slow in 2020? Are you using movieclips? You should be drawing all the ships as textures directly to a single "screen buffer" bitmap. Are you creating and destroying objects per-ship every frame? You should be using Object Pools! I've been out of the AS3 game for a while now, so the words I've used here might not be the most cutting-edge Flash optimization techniques, but I know pointless lag when I see it. There's no excuse for a game with this few moving parts running this slowly. But they're phasing out Flash at the browser level anyway, so do yourself a favor and learn Unity. Programming with JS in Unity is surprisingly similar to AS3, so the only thing you'd need to learn would be the editor.

DJStatika responds:

I made this game 11 years ago....

Got stuck after finding the screwdriver in the room with the rainbow clock.

I thought this was dumb, until I realized it was a Resident Evil 1 parody.

*slow clap*

Cool concept, poor execution. This is the kind of game the developer thinks is finely balanced because they find it challenging, but they don't realize they're just unrealistically good at playing it after playtesting it for a month straight.

If you could make the smallest possible hop a LOT shorter, while keeping the overall arc of the jump the same, it would be a lot better. Just use a different calculation the first couple frames the button is held down. If Super Mario Bros could do it in 1983, you can do it in 2020.

gamehoundgames responds:

Thanks for trying my game.

The hop length is as short as it is by design and is not a "technical limitation".

> ...because they find it challenging, but they don't realize they're just unrealistically good...

Thank You! I appreciate the compliment that my game gave the impression of multiple developers. Bunny Hop was created by one person (myself).

Every Wall. I'm glad it's free
because it just was not for me

It has gameplay, as you'll see later
it's no Walking Simulator

The story's kinda hit or miss
Not sure if aesop, or plot twist

When it cried out with despair,
I expected "walk on air!"

But instead of something bold,
it's just about getting old

Dry and somber with no humor
"My game is art!" "OK, Boomer."

But if you found these couplets vexing,
please pardon my crass Gen-X-ing

But I will say one kind thing
Meter's catchy; nice rhyming

If that's not good enough, sorry
It's no Blind Forest & Ori.

StuffedWombat responds:

I want to thank you, thank you kindly
because your careful words remind me:

making games is pretty hard
and every fucking game is art

if you compare game with game
I will gladly do the same

But not with games, or paintings layers,
No, I will compare the players

You are poetic and not wrong
But i prefer the feedback of Kadronk

They wrote their feedback hours sooner
and they did not call me boomer

They also did not make a rhyme
about whats free and worth your time

you still possess a saving trait
because you spent effort, to create

Age 44, Male

Joined on 1/26/05

Level:
14
Exp Points:
2,076 / 2,180
Exp Rank:
28,889
Vote Power:
5.62 votes
Rank:
Police Officer
Global Rank:
13,243
Blams:
268
Saves:
454
B/P Bonus:
10%
Whistle:
Bronze
Trophies:
1
Medals:
717