P-Arc's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[MOUSE SOULS]

This... sure was one of the games that exists. I don't really know how to comment on or review this...

I'll start by saying that cheese duck is busted since it IGNORES ALL WALLS. You can skip the entire level through the power of cheese duck (unless there's water in the way), and there's really no reason to play the levels and fight the enemies since they don't drop anything. Other glitches (?) include being able to move during the dialogue before some (but not all) bosses, and keys... seemingly not doing anything, and the frog suit's magnetism not actually being able to be used. But all that can be ignored because basically every level is ignorable with the cheese duck.

There are other, non-glitch gameplay problems. First and foremost, the movement is WAY to stiff; only four directions of movement and forced pausing when attacking are quite annoying, especially considering how hard it can be to judge the hitbox of your sword and the enemies. I've died from walking into enemies that I tried to get close enough to attack. It would be much better if there was multidirectional movement and any sort of movement during the sword attack, which should probably have a larger sprite and hitbox.

I wish that you could move faster in the overworld.

Speaking of fast movement, the dash was rather disappointing. When I see a game with the word "SOULS" in the title, and see that there's a dash, I'm primed to expect that it will have I-frames, like dodge rolls in the Soulsborne games. And I'm assuming that those games were inspiration for this one, judging from the description talking about a dying world and all that classic Dark Souls stuff. But the dash in this game... doesn't have I-frames, as far as I can tell, and its utility for fast movement is made redundant very quickly by the cheese duck.

The dialogue when talking to NPCs is oddly small and often hard to see, and the cutscene dialogue, while larger and easier to see in that regard, is quite blurry.

Still, I did give this game at least two stars, and that's largely due to the writing. While not super complex, it did get genuine chuckles out of me. From inexplicably racist frogs to chess pieces with hair to sudden whale, it's quite absurdist, but I quite liked that (though again, I would have liked it more if the text was easier to read).

Seriously though those frogs were dropping slurs.

[Under the bed]

Short but fun! I liked the pixel art, and while I didn't find the art alone very scary (though that may just be because I find shadow monsters more cool than anything), the sound effects did an amazing job of setting the tone. The puzzles did lean a bit into trial-and-error for me, but the checkpoints are frequent enough that dying to one of the monsters isn't really a problem, at least on the first ending route. A simple tip for the first route: once the monsters start shimmering in the dark, they can be gotten rid of.

The trial-and-error was a bit more frustrating on the second ending route, since there's only one screen and thus a single checkpoint at the start, where you have to wait a few seconds for the main character to wake up each time you restart. I feel like if that animation was skipped when you respawn, the trial-and-error would have bothered me a lot less, though.

One last thing; press F during the credits for a nice surprise!

[Swan's Song]

Wow, this game's style reminds me a lot of games like Shipwrecked 64!

(Sees who the author is)

Oh okay that explains why!

In all seriousness, this was a really atmospheric experience, one that really reminds me of analogue horror with the slow zoom-ins, wavering camera when taking close looks, and POV pointed to the ground when running. Really cool.

Wish you didn't have to go through the loading screen with the instructions on it every time you died and restarted, though. At the very least, I wish there was a skip button (and maybe there was one, just one I couldn't find). The only flaw to a short but sweet game.

Also I never ran into Packrat. There... just weren't that many barrels, I suppose? I didn't even realize that he existed till after beating the game, though the hint after the 3rd switch did make me suspect that there was an enemy waiting in barrels to jump out at you. Wish you could hide in the barrels yourself, but I guess only rats and beavers can fit in those things.

[Phantom Debris]

Defeated the second boss and was trapped in the void of space with nothing but spooky noises for company for the rest of time. I'm going to assume that there's nothing past this? Nothing that I can find, at least.

A short but fun experience! I do wish that the asteroids had a bit less health, since it takes ~10-12 shots (I think) to destroy a single one before you get any power-ups, and the fire rate is pretty slow. My only other criticism is that I wished the bosses did more than just slowly chase you, but there are other threats during the fights to spice things up, so it's not that big of a deal.

Also as far as I can tell the acceleration has no cap, and you can theoretically build up to infinite speed (though this can really only be done after the final stage is completed), and I find that really funny.

To reply to your reply (since you can't do comment chains): I personally suggest keeping the infinite speed, personally. It won't really come up in normal gameplay, since it seems like a fast track to smashing your face into an asteroid, but it's quite fun to mess around with once the game is over. If anything, maybe just reduce how fast you accelerate?

null256 responds:

Update 1: There should be an ending now, reworked the levels and some other minor things

First of all, my friend, thanks for the awesome feedback.

- Yes I still don't implement a end screen
- Yes I too suspected those asteroids where a bit of a hassle to destroy
- Yes the bosses need more "spice"
- Yes, I'm still thinking of how to cap the velocity, I'm starting programming

Thanks and thanks again.

[Monkey DU DU – Pre-Alpha Tech Test]

Some notes/feedback:

1. The attack control scheme is... odd, to say the least, and would probably work better if all the attack buttons were next to each other. Perhaps the control scheme could be something like a for basic bunch, s for kick, w for uppercut, d for flurry of punches? I know that d is currently dodge, but since the dodge seems to basically just be a duck, it could be moved to the down arrow.

2. The gorilla statues health bar is rather confusing; it seems like each node represents 3 health? It would be nice if the nodes went from green to yellow to red to empty as you took damage. Also, you currently don't seem to die upon losing all your health.

3. The up and down arrow keys currently scroll the Newgrounds page when you press them; I think that you might need a main menu screen where the player clicks on a play button to fix that?

I feel bad giving this game only two stars, and I quite like the pixel art (though the monkey's resolution doesn't match that of the background), but I can't rate the game much higher in its current state. I look forward to seeing the future builds of this game, though!

Luka-Art responds:

Thank you for the honest and constructive feedback!
We published Monkey DU DU at this early stage on purpose, hoping for fresh perspectives and concrete suggestions from players like you to help us improve the project.

Your comment hits the mark on several things we're already working on (like the health bar and controls), and others – such as the unintuitive key layout and the resolution mismatch between the character and the background – are now being added to our priority list thanks to you.

We truly appreciate that, despite the rough edges, you see potential in the game. Feedback like yours gives Monkey DU DU a real chance to level up.
Thanks again – and feel free to check back with us here on Newgrounds, because DU DU keeps evolving and growing!

Kristof
Luka Art. Studio

P.S. If you know anyone who enjoys pixel-art games or testing early builds, feel free to share Monkey DU DU with them. We'd love to hear more feedback – every comment helps us make the game better!

[Helmet Hood Hat]

A short but really fun game! Nice music, simple but cute graphics, simple but fun gameplay. Generally pretty simple, but that's not a bad thing (and there's definitely complexity hidden under the surface; the final boss's gimmicks show as much).

I'm too scared to try the challenge mode :(

[Nilvreth Sagas]

"And then you left and never looked back. -The End."

To do my best to avoid spoilers (besides starting this review with the end line, but then again, what context could you even derive from that on its own?), this was a short but charming game with a couple frustrating flaws. Those flaws are:

A) A fairly slow movement speed in a game with quite a bit of backtracking. None of the areas are super long, thankfully (except the corridor before the final pyre; that could have been probably half the length it ended up being), so it isn't THAT big of a problem.

B) The encounter rate. There was one point where I got into a battle one step after I had just finished a previous fight. The fact that potions only heal health, not mana, and your character is primarily a magic user means that you generally want to avoid fights (unless you're directly outside a rest area, in which case healing between fights to grind is easy), which means that you hope to successfully run away, which means that the random encounters are just annoyances that you'll want to run away from instead of actually confronting.

For all the space the above criticisms take up, though, there was still a lot to appreciate, and I was driven the whole game to see it through to the end. The story, though fairly simple, was really cool, and the sprite art was amazing. The music got a bit repetitive (primarily the battle theme), but it definitely helped set the tone, especially the theme for the penultimate scene. Plus, games where you play as bugs are always great.

7/10 I wish I could figure out how to open the password chest in the penultimate area.

Kiloru responds:

Thank you for playing and for your feedback!

You know, this is kinda funny that you have brought the Unnecesarily Long Corridor™ being twice long as it needed to be
Because during development I initially thought that it is too short and then doubled the length by copypasting the map twice xD

And yeah, all criticizm about random encounters is valid, they work kinda wokny in general. Though I intended flee option to be regularly used, I guess I went a bit overboard with it.

(SPOILER one of the corpses have password on it)

[SquidVenture]

Wow, I can't believe that the answer to why we journeyed so far down was that we were looking to awaken Cthulhu to destroy the world!

[Update! Lost Signal]

This is definitely an interesting game, with some really catchy music and an interesting story hook to invest the player, but I do have some critiques. The screen is zoomed in much too far, making traps super hard to see coming, and the control scheme is vague, considering how you have to left click to jump. There is a frustrating amount of both invisible walls and fake walls, making it frustrating at times figuring out where to go. Some of the background tiles are sometimes solid as well, making it even more confusing. There is no way to reset if you fall in a hole as far as I can tell, and seemingly no checkpoints if you do die. Lastly, the music, though really catchy, doesn't loop unless you die.

Anyway 2.5/5 I enjoyed it

Clashnewbme responds:

Sorry, however there are reasons for the screen, the game file was originaly too big for NewGround so we heavily messed with the game and got it down for you so it could be put on NewGrounds if you want too play the origanal game https://clashnewbme.itch.io/lost-signal

OH YEA ALSO JUMP IS SPACE... AND MOUSE.