WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[The Last AntLion]

A nice, simple arena side-scroller with a decent amount of upgrades and some amusing character designs.

I loved the high-pitched ant speech. I was less thrilled about the ASMR- that's Ants Scurrying in my Malleus Repeatedly, AKA the walking noises.

The music was forgettable, and the actual art style, I could take or leave. (The pixel art feels very "busy" in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. Too many colors or competing pixel resolutions or something. And the back walls look somehow "blury.") But the ant designs and the gameplay carried it.

Recommend everybody and their aunts play this. It's a great way to kill an afternoon.

And, this. THIS is how you get antlions!

velketor responds:

Thank you for playing WarpZone!

I'm happy to see that you liked the way the ants talk, and maybe I could have chosen a better, less ASMR/annoying noise for the ants. There's always the sequel =)

It's disappointing to hear that you found the music 'forgettable' as it was created by two talented composers. I'm actually quite addicted to the music and I find it fits perfectly, but I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea. You definitely won't find the tracks from my game anywhere else because I had them custom made by professionals.

The pixel art for the characters was made by a professional Pixel Artist I hired for the project, Bruno Corgo (https://twitter.com/bruno_corgo) and the rest was done by me or using various assets from opengameart.org.

I appreciate your constructive feedback and I'm glad it was able to kill an afternoon for you =)

[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.

[Winter Falling: Prototype One]

A very interesting game, possibly the first *literal* real-time strategy game I've ever seen. I'm terrible at this, but I love everything about it. I'm gonna have to come back to this later and git gud.

Rarykos responds:

I'm really glad, thank you very much!

[Knightin'+ Demo]

A great little homage to top-down Zelda titles. Unfortunately, my brain kept comparing it to Enter the Gungeon as I played it, and that's just not a fair comparison.

Graphics are great, especially the 16-bit use of color, though the music sounded more 8-bit, and the sound effects were minimalistic to the point of being kinda dull.

What I played of the combat was basic, but rudimentary. I kept wanting to dash or dodgeroll or hold down run, and that's just not the way oldschool Zelda is played. This is where the comparison to Gungeon wasn't doing the game any favors.

When I accidentally went downstairs from floor 2 to floor 3, that's when I suddenly realized the map layout was completely random. So. If you want procedural Zelda, here it is. Enjoy!

Me? I've got a Rat that needs punching.

Edit: If there's no procedural generation, then you need some more classic Zelda dunegon design with a boss before you can go to the next level and a locked door before the boss that can only be opened by exploring the dungeon proper. I skipped most of level 2 somehow, without intending to, and that's a problem.

Check out Game Maker's Toolkit's awesome Boss Keys series for not only length breakdowns of what makes a good Zelda dunegon, but a system of taxonomy for describing what makes a dungeon wide or deep, the relationship between keys, doors, and key items, and a wealth of other information that could help prevent the problem where a player accidentally skips your hand-made dungeon as if it were a Rogue run where the Talisman was in the very first chest.

Wolod responds:

Thanks for the great review!

But there is no procedural generation in Knightin'+ o_O