WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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!

[TentaCat: The Lost Lineage]

A perfectly servicable megaman clone with a delightful main character!

The gameplay is pretty solid. At first, I thought they had implemented coyote time (google it), which is something a lot of platformers are missing these days. But then I tested it a few times and I couldn't tell for sure. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. If it doesn't, it doesn't matter, because thanks to the absurd width of the character's legs, I always jumped well before I needed to.

If I could change one thing about this game it would be to get rid of the opening. You press the button, you're at the first dot on the island. Period. No unearned Chrono Trigger homage. No old man expositing unskippable backstory.

Just press Z to start (which was a good move) and keep pressing Z until the end of the game! MAYBE put some arrows and the letter Z in the background the first time you need to jump, and an X in the background the first time you need to shoot black lemons. That's ALL the tutorial this game needs! And all the story it needs is "Are you a bad enough octocat to rescue some old fart's stolen jewels or whatever? I wasn't paying attention."

I can give you four good reasons to play this game, and they are all four pairs of legs jumping at the same time. That sounded funnier in my head. Just PLAY IT.

Who am I kidding? You've probably already played it, because you've seen the main character.

PKTORA responds:

There's no coyote time, but it wouldn't hurt to include it. I agree with the idea of simplifying the intro.

[Balls to the Brawl]

BWAHAHAHA! I love everything about this! I haven't played one of these beat 'em up games in years, and this scratched every itch, tickled every funny bone. But my favorite part was the ability to tap left or right mid-combo to change which enemy gets the punches. That's just... it's amazing. Never before have I felt so welcome... TO DIE!

Wait, it's part of a series!? Guess I know what I'm doing for the rest of the day...

Protip: Skip the opening cutscene. You'll love what happens.

[Polar Potential]

Oh, I like this. It was close, though. I almost didn't figure out how to play. Maybe a little flashing arrow that says "click and drag" until the player demonstrates that they know how to fling ships is in order.

Give this sucker some real graphics, a title screen, and other assorted polish, and you just might have something here!

Edit: Dunno, maybe something like this? http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=75c29f13c9598be51e3b04c890f36119

JorisRollfox responds:

Thanks, glad you liked it :)

I prefer intuitiveness over an in-your face tutorial, but since it came close for you I'll think of something. Perhaps a short how-to in the title screen of the expanded version.

As for real graphics, what do you propose?

Edit: thanks a lot for the amazing art concept, though it looks hard and time-consuming to implement so I won't promise anything. But if I can do it, I will.

[Gravity Control]

When I touched the first star, this popped up and the game stopped working:

"The page at https://uploads.ungrounded.net says:

An exception has occurred, but exception handling has been disabled in this build. If you are the developer of this content, enable exceptions in your project WebGL player settings to be able to catch the exception or see the stack trace."

But before it crashed it looked like another dime-a-dozen mobile phone game from like 2016 with absurdly inoffensive art, and tons of easy-to-make levels that you probably get 1-3 stars in when you beat them. So in other words, nothing of value was lost, probably.

[Miner Dash]

Motherload meets Minecraft with a ton of polish. My only regret is you can't use the arrow keys. Worth playing!

[THE LEGEND OF BUBBLE BOBBLE]

A surprisingly playable mashup of two classic Nintendo games. Precise adherence to pixel rules and absolutely perfect sound for that nostalgia factor. The only downside is that the Bubble Bobble theme is going to drive you absolutely crazy. (Also, you are a 12-year old reading this from your iphone and therefore you have no emotional attachment to relics from my childhood. OH WELL, MORE FOR ME!)

[Air Flip Drive (WIP)]

Darn it, I really wanted to like this. I was expecting Mario Kart, but instead I got Sonic Team Racing but with Worse Music. Fix the camera angle behind the racer (basically, make the camera more like Mario Kart,) replace the music with almost anything upbeat by nosoapradio, and you just might be onto something, here.