WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Shattered Colony]

Only thing shattered is my immersion. The game worked fine until so-called Endless mode. Then it started saying I had negative numbers of survivors, so I couldn't tell what my actual numbers were. About 5 depots into the Endless map, suddenly everything sped up to insane speeds for no apparent reason. I'm not sure if this was a programming bug or a UI failure (as in there's some sort of non-obvious 3x speed control I toggled without knowing it,) but either way, it's a complete deal-breaker.

Update: Also, zombies just randomly appear in the middle of green areas for no reason. You know what? From now on, I'm deducting another half star every time I find a bug. This is just ridiculous.

[Crypt Shyfter: The Blazing Knight]

A text adventure with a nice, clean presentation. Unfortunately, the writing didn't quite grip me. It starts off super generic, then after a while, I started just reading the choices, since they summed up the preceding description of what had happened pretty succinctly. Then I suddenly hit a 4-way branch and realized I had lost the plot by skipping everything. I wish I could tell you what was missing. Maybe I'm just not the right audience for a good old fashioned swords & sorcery CYOA? Or maybe I got the impression early on that none of my choices mattered, since they felt like the kind of decisions that might change, at most, one NPC line of dialogue before immediately rejoining the main path.

CaptainJackTHAC0 responds:

thanks for giving it a shot :)

[Duane Crashers]

An absolutely brilliant mashup between belt-scroll game and twinstick shooter! Choose your Duane, and Duane it up through several office buildings! (Protip: Ivy wins Best Duane!)

Jack responds:

My personal favorite is Wendy but we can agree to disagree

[Boomer Retrograde]

Retro games came out in the 80s. Baby boomers were already in their 20s by then. And while you might think of that as a reasonable age for a gamer to be, back in the 1980s, ONLY KIDS PLAYED GAMES.

If you're gonna mock an entire generation, at least google it first and do like one subtraction problem.

Sincerely,
Generation X
(We complain about everything.)

[May One]

You don't know what happens on May 1st? Oh, you sweet summer child. Fortunately, Johnathan Coulton wrote an educational song about it! It's called "The First of May," and it's about an old-fashioned tradition!

[everything else]

Slick presentation for how low-fi everything is, especially the opening. Unfortunately I ran into a problem at the end of the first level as I could no longer tell the difference between winning and losing.

It would always LOOK like I was killing the last enemy while holding space, but no matter how many times I did that, it would always make a noise and say "too slow" and zoom the camera out without me being sure if the enemy actually shot anything at me or not. There's a point where the whole "Hotline Miami" thing gets too intense and expressive and wraps back around to boring again, and that point lies where, between the minimalism, the camera shake, and the abstract nature of the objects in the game world, the player can no longer tell what's going on.

Literally style over substance. Which hurts me to say, because I can *feel* how solid the controls are. Maybe I'm just getting old and there's some kinda really cool killing blow animation the enemy is doing with an obvious way to respond that I'm just not registering.

Judging by the other reviews, apparently most people found the game playable. So I'm probably wrong, here. But I can only review the gameplay experience I had. It keeps doing the same thing over and over again after I shoot the second enemy in the first level, and I have no idea what that thing is.

Sorry, StuffedWombat.

StuffedWombat responds:

hey thanks for those precise thoughts!

the thing with "space to be faster" is a communication mistake on my part!
pressing space actually only restarts the level and has no impact on gameplay whatsoever!

to end a level you need to go to the place where you spawned after killing all enemies.

I will try to rework that text and am sorry that it caused confusion!

cheers and thanks again for taking the time to write this,
josh

[Helicopter Shooter]

A simple, no-frills side-scrolling shmup that feels like something out of those "How to Program AS2" books from the 90s. Technically playable. Nothing special.

The most amazing thing games7510 ever scripted was whatever botnet attack got this thing featured. (I'm KIDDING, obviously. It might have been a social engineering attack.)

[Escape Pong!]

An interesting experimental game that delivers on the concept expressed in the thumbnail. The tense music does a great job of keeping the story from becoming too cheesy, and the ball-manipulation action only becomes more intricate as the levels pass. Every time you think you have it figured out, the devs throw a new challenge or limitation in your path. A great example of minimalist storytelling done right, right up there with Thomas Was Alone.

[Lockdown]

Wow. A nice, simple, oldschool Newgrounds "escape the room" game. Neat!

The art's a little rough in places (or rather, a little too vector-smooth, if you get what I mean.) The music is quirky loops that aren't too impressive technically, but each track has just enough personality to set the mood. The puzzles are Adventure Game Moon Logic at its finest, but I really do feel smart for figuring out Eggs, and some of the animations were cool in an understated, minimalist way (but with some surprising TLC put into the camera work.)

Overall, it's a humble homage to a lot of the classic experimental Flash games on this site. I don't just mean stuff like the Stealing the Diamond or Meet 'N Fuck series. Older. I'm talking the original Pico game. Back when all anyone knew how to make with Flash was these weird little cartoons where any movieclip could be a button. That's what this feels like.

And it's kind of awesome to see the tradition still alive in 2019.

Afferz responds:

Thank you! Glad this reminded you of the good ol' days of NG <3

[A Bunny+Spider Platformer - Soul Exchange]

A fun platformer prototype with a novel movement style. My only complaint about the spider is the spacebar didn't always seem to work. Also, this is built using the Corgi Engine, which is a fantastic Unity asset in *nearly* every way, but for some reason I've never quite understood, the developer refuses to implement coyote-time (google it.)

Other than that, my only complaint is that the spikes look like harmless background vegetation. At least make them red plants so we don't keep forgetting they're dangerous! Right now this plays liek if those trees in the background of Super Mario Bros insta-gibbed you. Funny at first, but it quickly gets annoying.

I look forward to seeing this made into a complete game.

Also: WHAT A TWEEST!