qwerty741's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Super 3D Island]

i see this game is the "speedrun" kind of game so i'm definitely not the target audience for it, but i gotta say the wall jump mechanic is super aggravating.

i'm not sure if it's because the camera moves as you're performing jumps, or adding directional influence mid-jump changes your trajectory, or because it takes a while for the wall slide to register, but i can't count how many times i had to climb the mountain in the middle of the map over and over again, because either i didn't climb on the right surface, or i landed on the wall to the side instead of the one opposite of where i'm jumping from, or i simply didn't stick to the wall and just slid off.
eventually i simply stopped inputting anything else and just kept mashing spacebar between walls, hoping the auto-camera was designed to make those jumps as easy as possible to land, and somehow made it to the top.

minor annoyance is also how diving from mid-air has immense endlag and covers extra distance as you land, with seemingly no control until the entire dive animation ends.
i kept trying to dive after accidentally missing a jump to hopefully recover, and instead ended up throwing myself off cliffs, resulting in a worse position than i would have been in, had i done nothing at all.
though i suppose this part is intended.

tl;dr sticky wall jump is rough. everything else seems fine? to an extent;
though i'm not sure if it works for speedrunning purposes.

EDIT: i don't know what you changed specifically but it feels so much better to play already.
i definitely noticed the change with the dive end animation because i could actually use it to platform instead of a hailmerry.

i didn't realize how much i needed mouse controls for the camera until i had it; it makes walking around so much better because turning the camera as i'm walking now feels seamless, instead of doing hard turns which would mess around with my character orientation.
as i keep holding the same key while moving, turning around the camera at a sharp angle with keys tends to make the character spin around in place instead of going in the same direction, so it's definitely a welcome change.

i don't think there's necessarily been a change with the wall climbing/jumping (which was my personal bane) but for some reason it doesn't feel as unwieldy as before, so it must have been a combination of the camera control change, plus being able to dive with purpose.
even manage to get past the mountain in less than 10 minutes this time, so that's a result.
i wouldn't say it's "good", but it's definitely better than before.
i mean the wall-jump, specifically. the game is good

also, idk if this is just me being bad, but sometimes the jump height feels just a bit too low compared to the platforms?
basically, you can do a full hop to get on top of a platform, but more often than not i end up barely sliding onto its surface just below the top rim of the platform, so i end up stuck in a wall-jumping loop trying to simply jump and land on top of a platform more times than i would like to admit

FCPXAV responds:

I tried to make the slide similar to Mario 64 but i guess that just ended up frustrating people more than being helpful, I'll make it easier to control in the next update thanks! For now you can still jump out of a dive early!

Edit: update pushed!

[Dream Punk]

adding a review for this while i'm here because it's downright criminal how this went completely under the radar.
figured i'd leave a few tips for people that want to play this later using what i discovered on my own so far:

the game has a lot of interesting mechanics and movement options; it's also fairly challenging.
i can think of at least two challenges that require extreme knowledge of how the "ness" ability works, and both of them reward a chime so they're pretty much mandatory for completion.
(the balloon challenge in the top left of the map, where the timing is very strict, and the entire room in the middle of the map, which is already quite difficult to find and is basically a ness skill check, since you can't traverse it in any other way).

for starters, i recommend going to the right of the starting screen where you'll be able to unlock the hookshot ability. this will help immensely with getting some tapes to upgrade yourself early on.
i made the mistake of going to the left first on my first playthrough and that made it much more difficult to make significant progress. once you get the hookshot, you can start going left where you'll be able to get glide.

between bounce and glide, it's possible to adjust yourself indefinitely while bouncing on balloons, and the hookshot will allow for quick recovery and air mobility, which would otherwise result in constantly falling in water and being stuck in the same restricted area for a while.

my one gripe with the game is how the various abilities (besides how to perform them) are mostly left unexplained, along with their upgrades. there's also some controls that aren't explicitly started, and knowing about them makes a massive difference.

for example, you can perform ness using C instead of Ctrl. this will prevent you from accidentally closing the game window with Ctrl+W if you accidentally press them in combination while messing around with the ability.
incidentally, you can only direct the ness ability using left or right, so ctrl up is not even a proper combination, but it's still easy to accidentally input by mistake if you're controlling the character at the same time.
while you can use A and D to control the ability, you can also use the left and right arrow keys (while the playable character itself can only move with WASD)

in regards to upgrades, bounce and glide are the most useful to upgrade, since they increase how high you can bounce and your maximum air time.
investing a bit into hookshot may be useful for increased range, although i never figured out if that's what it actually does once upgraded.
movement speed is self-explanatory, but i personally never upgraded it more than once because i was worried it may mess with my control over precise platforming.

upgrading ness increases distance covered when launched, and at max level it also increases your speed (reduces time necessary to cover that distance).
however, sometimes covering more distance is detrimental (specifically for the dedicated room in the middle of the map, which is designed with a specific distance covered by the ability in mind).

in regards to the grind ability, it may be because it's unlocked way later when you've already gotten used to your other abilities, but i never found any real use for it.
it was also difficult to figure out where you can use it or not; you need to be holding shift while overlapping "wires", which are specifically the ones that usually lead to buttons. (one example is freefalling on the starting screen while holding shift. you'll automatically grab onto the wire that passes through the whole screen).

above all, fully upgrading recall is a boon. aside from allowing you to teleport back to the starting area, when maxed out it allows to freely fast-travel between any area.
you need to hold E until only the map is shown, and while holding E you can use arrow keys to change the highlighted area on the map where you want to fast travel to, then release E.

back when i played to completion, i managed to amass a total of 22 upgrade points, so there should be at least 22 tapes you can collect, for those interested in upgrading their abilities.
in any case, you can always re-spec if you talk to the npc in the starting area (you can view your current upgrades at any point by pressing TAB, but you can only re-allocate them by talking to said npc).

additionally, the last time i played there was a bug which unlocked chime medals even without collecting all of them.
i never figured out how it works specifically, but my guess is that chimes collected over multiple playthroughs count towards the "overall amount" in regards to medals.
that is to say (unless it's been patched since), it's likely possible to get the medal for "collecting all 9 chimes" by collecting the first one repeatedly over multiple new games.
it's still possible to collect all 9 chimes legitimately in a single playthrough (as i've done it before), but as mentioned the last 2 or 3 are extremely difficult to get

bokononyossarian responds:

Thank you! We are happy that some folks have enjoyed it!!!

[BETON]

is ascend timer-related? the best i can do is barely above 2 minutes so if it's sub 2 that's real rough.

i was thinking it may be related to the platform at the top, but the problem with that is the platform already starts at "ground level", and it begins rising as soon as you collect the last collectible.
even if you were already near the platform it would be difficult to make up the height difference considering the jump height, so there's no way to make it up there in time even if you leave the highest collectible for last.

additionally, the game could really use a proper reset button. something that doesn't force to refresh the page if you want to restart from scratch

EDIT: i've circled the border of the entire map way more times than necessary, and moved the camera to look through walls hoping to find something hidden.
after throwing myself off the map an innumerable amount of times, i've concluded there's absolutely no hint whatsoever in-game anywhere.
aside from the itch.io page for the game itself and soundtrack, there's also no other resource related to this game anywhere on the internet. so i got nothing

EDIT 2: ended up having to get help to "figure it out" (and by that i mean they pretty much spelled out how to) and now that i see it, i kind of hate it?

for one, it feels very gimmicky: there is absolutely no indication anywhere if you're looking for it "normally".
in fact, the only way to see it feels completely unintended, rather than part of the game.
moreover, once you do get it, it completely invalidates the entire core of the game, which is platforming.
i'm not sure how that affects timed runs, but i reckon it must be very frustrating for someone playing the game normally, then realizing the best way to approach the game is basically cheating

Fe26 responds:

I can tell you it is not timer related. And it has something to do with the platform at the top but there is something you are missing. Perhaps you could start looking "outside of the game itself".

But if is it speed what you want, there is a speedrun.com page that might help you.

[TrashKitty]

found the pole on level 4 of 6 (ignoring the tutorial), the one where timers are first introduced.

might help someone else, considering i spent an ungodly amount of time trying to climb the left edge of level 2 only to be met with a solid wall.
in hindsight i'm glad it wasn't there because of how difficult it was to get up there in the first place

[Epic Boss Battle]

honestly, i think this is fun.
my only complaint is that i'm having trouble understanding what's killing me half the time.

specifically, aside from the "blasters" lasers which instantly kill you, everything else seems to deal damage at random.
sometime i'd take 3 and some other time i'd take 20 from the same attack.

the exact pointer hitbox is also somewhat unclear, as sometimes i get hit even though it feels like i shouldn't. though that must be a visual problem and not the game's fault.

another minor issue i have is the "green floor" at the bottom of the screen.
it's a perfectly serviceable play area, so you can move there normally, but due to the color of the bullets being yellow it's difficult to use, and it also adds nothing to the gameplay.
personally, i'd be fine with it not being there at all and only having a solid blue background

tbh i think most of the "difficulty" comes from the fact that you can basically hit the boss only during its blasters attacks (when it's completely still), while every other attack pattern either doesn't have a hitbox to attack, or the movement tracking makes it so it's impossible to stay in line with the boss without getting hit in the process.
considering the patterns are picked randomly, it all comes down to how many blasters attacks in a row you can get before all the other patterns kill you

my most hated pattern is the bullet circle because it triggers instantly regardless of the previous pattern and each bullet deals about 20 damage, so if you're locked in the middle from the previous pattern for whatever reason, you're pretty much dead.
the bullets themselves are really big, and staying near the border also kills you, so it's really difficult to dodge as well (for me)

edit: i hate bullet circle so much it does so much damage and when i die to it i'm told i died "due to touching the screen" regardless. it's like it's mocking me

[The Munchers]

a few notes for anyone playing this game:

each mode has 4 main stages: breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert
each level has 3 bonus items; if you collect all items in a stage, you'll play a bonus stage.
the bonus stages are, respectively: brunch, quick snack 1, quick snack 2, after midnight.
each bonus stage also has bonus items, but they're only relevant for your score.
this means each game has 4 stages, with potentially up to 4 additional bonus stages, for a total of 8 stages overall

you can press spacebar to attack, and have a limited number of attacks.
you can easily play a full game without ever using the attack button, but while rare it is possible to encounter a set where all 4 lanes are blocked by jawbreakers/mooncheese.
however, the attack only works on mooncheese and nothing else, so keep that in mind.

the "iron fist" and "vanishing" achievements are possible, but only on your first ever attempt:
for some reason, once you've eaten a jawbreaker or mooncheese, the game permanently saves as "having eaten one", so the only way to get the achievements if you can't do it in your first sitting is to entirely erase all your save-data before attempting it.
this is easily accessible if you're playing the game using newgrounds player, which saves your data locally on your pc.

for iron fist, either hard or expert mode probably work, but i can confirm it works on hard mode.
for vanishing, the order in which the 3 modes are played seems irrelevant (i've played hard, then easy, then expert); you also only need to clear the main 4 stages, so aside from dodging mooncheese (and additionally jawbreakers), it's also recommended to avoid bonus items if possible so you need to play as few total stages as possible.

in regards to bonus items:
every level has 3 unique bonus items. they're different between levels, but each specific level has its own fixed items;
for example, breakfast's bonus items are always apple, grape, bacon.
they will appear during the level in a random order (so having an empty space while collecting them doesn't necessarily mean one was missed yet)

however, there's a few bugs in regards to these:
- brunch's bonus items are apple, grape, bag. however, in level you'll get apple, pinapple, box. this is the only level with different bonus items than the ones listed.

- the brunch and after midnight bonus levels are unavailable in easy mode; even if you collect all bonus items, those levels will be skipped.

- on expert mode, the second bonus item (pineapple) during bonus 2 (quick snack 1) will never appear in-game. thus, the "bonus muncher" achievement (and consequently its respective medal) is impossible to obtain.

since it requires to get "every bonus item in-game", i'm not sure if it's only because of the missing item in expert mode, or also because of the two unavailable stages in easy mode. either way, it's unachievable

[Rolling Lee 2.0]

while there's certainly an element of randomness which would normally make the game "unfair", it's balanced out by infinite continues, very generous checkpoints and more than one hitpoint per stage.

if you ignore how the bosses movements basically make or break a run (and how they can clip through walls lol) the difficulty is challenging without requiring pixel perfect movement or similar gimmicks.
(basing this on hard mode, which is the only difficulty i played, under the assumptions that easier difficulties are easier)

if i had to bring up a few complaints, one would be how "close" the player character is to the bosses attacks.
while this works fine for endless mode and the dodging sections, it becomes a problem against the very first boss' attacks, which have a spread that makes it impossible to avoid damage unless you're at opposite sides of the screen, making the first boss one of the "hardest" ones to get past due to rng.

there's also some kind of glitch with the 3rd boss (stage 2 phase 2), which seems to freeze/crash the game randomly.
have yet to figure out the actual trigger, but it seems to be unrelated to time elapsed, browser used, or remaining boss hp.
i'd say i managed to get past the frozen screen only about 1 every 7 attempts, assuming it's entirely random;
my only other guess is that it happens when you "miss your attack window", as in, when there's a gap in the planets that fall mid-screen, but you can't hit the boss even once before they start falling again.
this is purely conjecture and i don't really see how that would be possible, but that's about when it felt like the game froze up, imo.

4th (and last) boss is extremely difficult. unlike the first boss you can somewhat predict its movement, and there's a few safe spots that allow to get past its first phase without much effort if you know what you're doing.
at about half hp, you're thrown into another dodging section, and then the real aggravating part begins.
when it ends, you're immediately thrown back into the action. sometimes, you'll be overlapping the boss attack and die immediately, which is mildly upsetting.
the second phase is almost identical to the first one, except for the addition of an extra set of bullets that spawn diagonally from the bottom of the screen.
while these don't overlap with the "safe spots" from phase one, they make it nigh impossible to move OUT of the safe spots and get an attack in without dying.
there's still some random aspects to the boss' attacks timing, so it took a significant amount of attempts to clear even though i had an idea of how to hit the boss without immediately dying, somewhat.

tl;dr challenging game, fairly decent execution, somewhat reliant on rng which is detrimental for skill-based games such as bullet hells.
can't really say how difficult it is overall, because it's more lenient than expected for its genre when it comes to dying, but this is also necessary due to its randomized nature.
i suppose it balances out

hopefully the third boss crash is just an isolated issue on my side, otherwise it should probably be addressed at some point

[Disguise and Conquer]

nothing particularly elaborate, but i had fun mixing and matching.
the end screen dialogue is pretty funny.

been trying to figure out the values and i gotta say some of the items i thought were "obvious" for each disguise ended up actually giving less points than others.
either they were really well thought out specifically to make it difficult to get S rank, or the exact opposite of that lol.

also for some reason i can't see the buttons for story mode and free play on the main menu; it's just 2 black boxes.
it's at worst a visual glitch so it doesn't really affect gameplay, but i wanted to mention it in case it's only a problem on my side

currently making a guide but there's a lot of trial and error involved so it may take a while

EDIT: fixed
https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/1614bc47bb5aa5fa6703ab78254cd824

AhWham responds:

Thanks for the review! On the topic of the scores and getting S rank, they were specifically thought out but I should've done more to help players understand that better. I tested a bit with the main menu and I haven't encountered the black boxes glitch you mention, could be a issue with the file path to the texture sprites.

Also, if you need help with the guide: I can provide the specific numbers for each costume if you'd like!

[Madness: The Battering]

making an updated review because 1.0.2 plays much different than 1.0.0

for starters, having 3 energy instead of 2 per turn makes the game much more bearable, since you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to play something at least once per turn.
it also makes the game faster overall so that's nice. the timeout timer being reduced also helps with that.

i think rebalancing the characters to be much weaker than before was a good choice.
having x2 attack on legendaries specifically was straight up broken, which was exacerbated by other uncommon characters having lower defense as a trade-off for higher attack.

the only issue with the rebalancing is that now pretty much every character has 1 defense, with a few outliers having slightly better defense. this pretty much defeats the purpose of defense cards, which although not completely useless don't add much to the table in terms of survivability i reckon.
still, it's probably not a good idea to address characters stats for a while, if not at all at this current stage, because that would open a whole bunch of other problems with the balancing imo.

cards overall feel ok due to the increase to the energy base.
cards that were previously a waste of energy don't feel completely useless anymore, since you're likely to be able to still use something afterwards and it's still 1 damage versus none at all.
cards that previously felt overly expensive like the hook (3 cost, 8 damage), now feel ok to use since you don't need to skip an entire turn just to be able to play them, and dealing 8 in a turn is still respectable damage.
grav apple is still broken, especially in comparison to the aforementioned hook; 1 cost for 10 damage is insane. though i'm guessing the reason it doesn't feel as polarizing as before is likely due to the change in the number of cards within the deck mentioned in the patch notes.
although i have no idea how many of those were there before, i can definitely tell it changed for the better.

i have one gripe with the gacha because i've been constantly rolling the 500 one and somehow still got most of the commons even though they're supposedly 1%. not really an issue with that per-se, but since i'm trying for all the characters and still missing a fair number of legendaries, i figured my luck is surprisingly good, in the worst way possible lol.
i think i'm missing about 10 characters overall but i keep rolling dupes orz.
ok rant over

so yeah, probably not a good idea to change the balancing for a while as long as it's still somewhat fair.
i reckon if both cards effects and character stats were to be addressed properly, it would take a lot of time and testing, meaning it's not something that can be patched in a matter of a few days

the minigames are fun, and also award extra money which helps in the long run.
you have no idea how many hot dogs i've eaten lol.
turns out the head hunting minigame is the best way to farm money; if you know what you're doing, you can easily make a thousand coins in a matter of minutes.

if there's one change that can probably be done in a reasonable amount of time, it would be improving the tutorial.
i've been matched with a few people already who either keep using multiple defense cards on the same character, hoping to increase their defense further, or straight up on a character with already good defense, to no effect

i understand it's part of the theme, but red text on dark background is also quite difficult to see.

edit: minor report
there's a mismatch for some of the unlocked medals. unfortunately i don't recall exactly which one is which, but i think at least the requirements for mermad had been swapped with another character.
the medkit card (3 cost, 10 group heal) displays 15 heal to all. the current effect is already strong enough imo so if it gets corrected it should probably be the picture and not the effect.

[Hell Runner Part 4]

1. HOTEL ROOM 666 - pick up the camera. get invitation
2. FLESH PITS - dialogue. get matchbox
3. DEMON HUNTER - use matchbox. get photo
4. DAILY DEMON - dialogue. get money
5. URIEL'S WARES - dialogue. get card
6. MYSTERY ROOM - dialogue. get donut
7. HOTEL ROOM 666 - dialogue. get Jikininki
8. DEMON HUNTER - dialogue. get blood coin
9. BLOOD OF BLASPHEMY - use blood coin. dialogue to get key
10. LABORATORY - use key. get energy rune
11. TIME PORTAL - use rune. get smoking pipe
12. STRAWBERRY FIELDS - dialogue. get strawberry
13. FELIX'S HIDEOUT - dialogue. get harp
14. WEED SHOP - dialogue. get card
15. MYSTERY ROOM - dialogue. get frozen treat
16. HEAVEN'S GATE - dialogue. get song
17. FELIX'S HIDEOUT - dialogue. get Enko
(Purple Haze) STRAWBERRY FIELDS - dialogue
18. DEMON HUNTER - dialogue. get blood coin
19. BLOOD OF BLASPHEMY - use blood coin
20. WEED SHOP - dialogue. get photo
21. DAILY DEMON - dialogue. get money
22. URIEL'S WARES - dialogue. get horus coin
23. TIME PORTAL - enter portal, then dialogue. get stone of anubis
(Archangels) FELIX'S HIDEOUT - dialogue
24. LABORATORY - dialogue. get beer
25. FLESH PITS - dialogue. get George
(Cruel Fortune) HOTEL ROOM 666 - interact with the crystal ball
26. BLOOD OF BLASPHEMY - dialogue. get photo
(Spank Bank) LABORATORY - dialogue
27. DAILY DEMON - dialogue. get money
(Bravo) MYSTERY ROOM - dialogue. win the quiz
28. URIEL'S WARES - dialogue. get control chip
(Skin Face) DEMON HUNTER - dialogue
(Hell's King of Metal) HOTEL ROOM 666 - dialogue
29. TIME PORTAL - dialogue. get Excalibur
(Eternal Damnation) chose to spare god

i'm biased because i played all the other ones, though if i were to pick one thing that's mildly annoying, it's the one minigame where you just need to click the same spot until the bar fills up, which you need to do like 4 different times with no change whatsoever