WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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

[Space Guardian two]

A simple twinstick shooter not really doing anything different. I've played this game before. Hell, I've *made* this game before. (It flopped. Probably because it wasn't doing anything different.)

So. I'll just list some random features that don't exactly distinguish Space Guardian, so much as tell you what bucket of twinstick shmups you've played before this fits into.

Mouse control. Smooth movement. Colliding with enemies doesn't hurt you, just their shots. Abstract pixel spaceship. TONS of screen shake. Scrolling, but confined to a small arena. You can't shoot down the enemy's slow homing missiles. Wave-based enemy spawning, but no real cutoff between "boss fights" and regular fights.

I just realized I could have said "Geometry Wars" and you'd probably have gotten the gist of it.

Recommended if the things I said made you happy.

Oh, and there's a TON of powerups that spawn at the same time, but you can only use one at a time and the player movement is floaty enough that you'll probably collect some without meaning to. It definitely does NOT stack the powerups you collect into a ridiculous arsenal of extra guns all firing at the same time like some sort of absurd bullet katamari, which would have been the awesome thing to do with that many extra powerups. I'm really not sure what the author intended, so it's possible there's a layer of gameplay I didn't understand, here.

[WrongKynd]

I'm not the best judge of PICO-8 games, but this felt hard to control and hard to look at. I kept getting stuck on tents that I felt like I should have been able to walk around, and I couldn't figure out how to handle the dogs or what the difference was between "press x to eat" and just walking over the (cultists? skeletons? townsfolk?) and killing them that way. Awful nice of the humans to try and save me with that heart monitor at the end, though. Would not recommend over a randomly selected Wario Ware stage.

[Newgrounds in 2019]

Literally the tutorial nobody asked for, the music still gave me shivers though. It says Newgrounds in 2019, but I have a feeling it will appeal the most to ancient relics like me that remember when this website always played sounds by default.

Useless, meaningless, ultimately pointless, somehow it still made me smile.

What the hell... for old time's sake. FIVEN!!

Little-Radiodemon responds:

Vote 5 without watching.

[DED GUY]

Extremely charming initial presentation with the graphics, but it quickly wore out its welcome. Couldn't make it past FIRST_STEPS because the game just WANTS every single gun-jump to send me into the pit, I guess. I wouldn't have made it that far based on intuition alone, which is why all that text in the Author's Comments needs to be moved into the game ASAP. But also shooting the gun almost straight down should make you only move to the side a little bit. It shouldn't send you straight up a wall and then arc you over the wall into the pit as if you'd pointed the gun at 45 degrees or something. I feel like I keep playing these game jam gimmick platformers and they keep getting worse and worse.

Don't innovate unless the new thing is actually better than the old thing! This could have been Hollow Knight But With Guns! Instead, we got this nearly unplayable mess. Steam reached Peak Ultra-Hard Platformer years ago! Just make a normal game, ConnorGrail! You're clearly good for it!

[The Wizard of elemental magic]

The Wizard of elemental magic is a pretty strong effort, overall, and it owes a lot to its graphics and music. Some of the background elements weren't always clear what they were supposed to be (lookin' at you, ceiling spikes,) but for the most part, you'll learn by doing, with only a few button prompts to let you know the controls, which is always the best way to teach novel gameplay.

But If there's one thing every puzzle-platformer needs, it's tight, precise, responsive controls, and this is one area in which The Wizard of elemental magic's is good, but not great.

The enemies never stop moving, which means you need to quickly get into position and then nail your jumps perfectly. Which might be okay if you could stop on a dime, but you kind of slide into and out of your movement speed, which makes the timing just a little bit awkward when a red blob is relentlessly barrelling down the hallway towards you.

The biggest problem, though, is the lack of coyote time. Every platform game should have coyote time in 2019. Hell, every platformer game on the NES *had* it in 1989. If I run off the edge of a platform and press jump and nothing happens, *that's the game's fault* for not implementing coyote time. The original Super Mario Bros had it. Is this game better than Super Mario? I think not!

Add coyote time! If you don't know what that means, Google coyote time! Then add it to your jumps!

[Pucamuc]

I'm not a big fan of gimmick platformers to begin with, but this one shows potential. The aesthetic is retro, but it can't seem to figure out what decade it's paying homage to. The music is 80's synth played on 90's hardware, the screen filters apparently want me to think this is a 90's VHS played back on a CRT monitor that degausses every time you die, and the vaguely postmodern writing style peppered with 1337-5p33k feels like it's squarely mid-2000's. After cell phones but before respecting your elders as a form of rebellion.

The gameplay is a weird blend of polish and jank. I died constantly, and it felt like how long I held down the key had only a random degree of control over how long I would stay in the air. The lightest tap on a keyboard key might move me one character or it might launch me into the next pit. Maybe it only works properly on specific types of keyboard or something.

I'm not sure to what extent my bad experience was caused by my hardware, so try it for yourself and see if it's playable.

(I only made it as far as the first baby, so my rating assumes it works perfectly for other people, it's at least a good 30 screens or so long, and the writing doesn't get any better as the story progresses.)

Good luck with the game jam, guys!

[INTO THE ABYSS: REBORN]

The content is really good, but the jumping needs just a liiiiiiitttle bit more polish. Google Coyote Time and integrate it into whatever platforming engine you've got under the hood here. (You'd think with all the money people spend on the Asset Store, they'd include basic features that games have had since the 80s.)

I also noticed some other minor glitches... jumping while going through a door results in strange behavior during the fade-to-black, and sometimes when I'd drop into a shallow pit and try to jump back out again, I'd either hit my head on a nonexistent ceiling at floor-level and fall back down, or else I'd sort of clip into the corner so I'm standing slightly beneath the ground. (Can't walk, but can jump out of it.)

Frankly, the lack of Coyote Time is the biggest problem. If I die ONE TIME and it feels like it's the game's fault, that makes me want to go play something else. That's why developers invented Coyote Time and other "corrective" mechanics in the first place.

Fortunately, Coyote Time is easy to implement. Just look it up. I believe in you! Make this a great game that even Miyamoto would be proud of!

[Dwarvania]

The movement feels slidey. The ladders are awkward. The spacebar move is unresponsive. (It's seriously <1 second after I press the button to turn into a box sometimes.) Even though the developer put this much obvious TLC into the enemies' animations, they don't telegraph their next move at all. They just suddenly flip directions and you're caught. In short, the controls are complete jank, which is the last thing you want in a stealth game. Ambitious concept, but Mark of the Ninja it ain't.