qwerty741's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pizza Tower Defense]

spent way more time than i'd like to admit trying to figure out an optimal setup on the second level (thinking having walls already placed at the start gave me an advantage on the early levels) only to be absolutely demolished by the last wave due to sheer lack of DPS.

then i realized everyone else had cleared the first map instead:
https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/d5aea8500da6b4c93d4ddbd446c7a536
ahah pizza tower go boom.
even this can probably be optimized if you upgrade some of the towers in the middle instead of adding the top layer (though you still need to place at least one near the spawn so they don't just hug the top wall)

my only gripe with this is the weird balancing issue (you never want the jalapeno tower because you need the money to set a path first, and on later levels more range = better damage overall), and the difficulty curve caused by not having a set path to follow.
personally it's the first time i've seen something like that, but with no in-game explanation for it i would have never figured out why the enemies seemingly picked a path at random every time i started a new game. gotta thank other reviews for that.

P.S. i'm assuming the scores are the highest wave reached.
honestly i have no idea why i got 40, since i only cleared wave 20 with this setup and then submitted score there

clarkiagames responds:

Jalapeno tower is good if you couple it with slow tower to optimize splash damage. Yes that’s the point it’s hard to optimize difficulty with creating your own winding path but that’s what make you want to go back to the game and try to find the BEST optimized path i think. The best path i think for the first map is creating a spirale. For the score i fixed it on the api side. Thanks for your feedbacks, much appreciated.

[SQUADADDLE]

did anyone even playtest the "harder" levels at all?
i understand that the game is supposed to be difficult, but i had trouble even with the early levels tbh; the difficulty seems to be all over the place. (this was on easy mode)
i figured i'm just that bad at it, so since i wouldn't stop dying i went with training mode to see if i couldn't figure something out.

i went all the way up to 25k points, until i could not clear a single level anymore.
i've been stuck on the same 10 levels loop for at least half an hour, and went all the way back to -1500 (yes negative points) before i just gave up.

for starters, there is simply not enough time to figure out which level you're on, and then execute everything flawlessly just to barely make it to the goal. even if the timer was double the current one it would be difficult, but the way it is now makes it almost impossible.
the air mobility and hitboxes seem to be all over the place, especially with the long jump.
i understand it's supposed to follow your side directional inputs, but it's way too sensitive considering how little room for error there is, plus the insanely short timer.
given this, having to hold down and a direction at the same time to perform it is also a bad idea, because you will be holding a direction while performing a jump when most of the time it's going to get you killed. having to hold down doesn't help either since you'll probably have to climb upwards right after a jump not to fall into spikes right below.

i've had my fair share of controls accidentally "not working as intended", but i reckon that's probably just the combination of game mechanics clashing against each other so i can't really say it's due to "unresponsive controls". might just be that the gameplay loop itself is too demanding to even realize if you're making a mistake or it's the controls not responding.

i would honestly like to see someone clear every level at least once with this time constraint. this would be even ignoring the bonus fruit on each level, since i personally wouldn't even try bothering with those considering how difficult the base game already is.
i liked the previous games so i feel like this one just happened to be a miss, or i'm simply not the intended audience for these types of games, though that's how i felt about it.
even then i probably ended up rating it lower than i would have normally due to the frustation i just went through. i'll see if i feel differently about it after taking a break; sorry about that

kaiakairos responds:

review is completely fair, my other games have been much slower paced but this one is a hard 180 in the other direction. every level is possible, yes, but it was definitely made for an audience that prefers a brutal challenge. Another reviewer said a “free play” mode to try any level at any time would be nice, I think i’d agree.

[Faces Of 2022 Collab]

https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/19262f1fcac48ba2750de11dfb2d6859
made this around the time the game came out but i forgot to share it so i'm using this chance to do it now before i forget again.
dunno if the game has been updated since, otherwise it should still be accurate

Intrapath responds:

qwerty741 out here doing God's work! Great stuff!

[Maple's Maid Service]

i finally got my hands on a pc that doesn't run like internet explorer, so i managed to see how the game's actually supposed to be played. this time it only took me about 20 minutes instead of 200 to finish the game lol.
maple's even squishier than i thought she looked at first, really lovely character design.

decided to scrap my previous review entirely because fishing seems to have been reworked multiple times since.
i'll see if i can try to go for that fabled fish eventually

EDIT: the new "accessible mode" makes grinding so much easier and faster; you can also use the amount of fish caught (ignoring garbage) as an indicator instead of rough time estimate, which is a welcome change considering i used to not even bother catching fish with classic mode to save on time.

also i got blessed. about 30 minutes into fishing grind with the new mechanic and i got my shiny lol. my counter says 68 fish caught, although there was some garbage in-between
https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/7ce3440cc7a4c0f3058ac649e9ac10a2

Bleak-Creep responds:

Peti made the original concepts for Maple, with notes like "a friend" in the margins. I made a bunch of different faces for Maple when I was drawing her for myself, but Peti ended up choosing the one that looked most like the original. Hugability always came first. :)

[Pixel Mania!]

it's interesting because it's a "front game" that hides the real game.
i do enjoy the gimmick, but unless you figure it out early you're basically locked out on most of the game.

it does take a bit to get used to the "instant defeat" where the game immediately ends if you lose the chase or get hit 3 times in proto-world, but with how short the overall objective is i can see why that's the case. you could say it's perfectly balanced on that front.

however, i do have some gripes on the last boss fight.
although getting only one shot at it is consistent with the rest of the game, you need at least 10 diamonds just to get an attempt at it, which involves scouring the entire game regarless.
not an issue if it wasn't due to the fight being somehow harder than it seems?
i don't know if it's because the patterns having really narrow dodge windows, or because you have no idea how much health you still need to go through as it's not shown, which give you no indication of progress.

another minor problem i have is being unabled to skip the introductory dialogue, coupled with the really slow text speed. i'd recommend making some changes there if at all possible.

all in all the game's solid and original enough imo, so it's really good work nonetheless

edit: my bad, i keep forgetting these are contest games so they're on a time schedule.

i can understand the need to know the plot;
i was thinking you could make it so it shows all text with a button press so you can manually go through it faster, but i realize only now it's an entire cutscene so idk if that's a thing.

there could be an option that allows you to entirely skip cutscenes after a first playthough? though if you don't make it to proto-world at all that might also not work.
honestly i'm not sure

blit-blat responds:

Thanks for the review, this is really helpful! I was actually thinking to myself last night that the number of gems for the ship should probably be 5 not 10, so you’re 100% right on that front. And probably with the “real” game being too hard find - I wanted it feel amazing and fun when you found it, but it probably could have been sign posted a bit more, and the base game could probably be a bit more engaging!



As for the intro being slow, it’s difficult balance as people have different reading speeds. I also put purposely avoided a skip button as I wanted to people to know about the spaceship and what exactly was going on.

In terms of the boss fight there’s 3 attack patterns - lines of numbers, numbers that are aimed toward the player and numbers that are aimed randomly. For the lines there should always be gaps, the aimed you basically want to move up and down and for the random you’re in the hands of RNGesus! In hindsight, again you’re probably right that an enemy health bar and a continue screen would probably be needed. Truth be told, I was running a bit tight on time to release on Pixel Day, so these features fell by the wayside! Next year I’ll start development earlier! Thanks for playing and for the review! :)

[Gappy]

i prefer the second game but this one's fairly solid too considering there's no wall jumping mechanic.

my only real gripe is that side A is unnecessarily "difficult" due to the boss having a random pattern.
clearing side A is somewhat difficult already because there's two near pixel perfect jumps on 3-3 and 3-7 that are necessary to avoid fireballs;
all things considered that's still fine because the game rewards learning each level to make it through with zero deaths.
however when you get to the boss second's phase and suddenly you're stuck between having to jump to dodge a coin you couldn't delete due to being too high, and not being able to jump because you'd face-plant into a spike ball arch, it kind of feels unfair after putting up with all the previous levels.

i'm probably just mad cause i lost twice to that lol. but yeah glad the next iteration didn't feature any rng, game's great otherwise

[DEAD PETALS]

reading reviews i feel like i'm alone in this, but i absolutely hate the controls.

dashing and especially hyper, which seem to be very much needed, feel extremely out of the way compared to the keys meant for movement.
every time i need to quickly get to them, i get hit a whole bunch and have trouble getting back to moving because of it;
it's vexing enough where i gave up on using either of them altogether, making the whole game significantly more difficult imo.

i don't consider myself that great at bullet hells, but i do enjoy them and i think i'm decent enough to clear a game that's supposedly expected to be beaten 10 times in a row.
i may have simply missed the menu to rebind keys somehow, but if it's not there i'd recommend adding one because it's absolutely needed.

on an unrelated note, while the controls are explained in-game, there's no mention of how "chain multipliers" work.
i'd expect it to increase when killing enemies quickly, but i only managed to get a x10 combo accidentally while i was in hyper mode.
i didn't quite pay attention on how it works because getting into hyper mode in the first place took all my focus, but i'm guessing chains only work while in hyper mode?

edit: i didn't realize i had dodge on right click. still gotta make due with shift for hyper but at least i have movement options now.
turns out it's not the controls and i'm just that bad at the game lol. even with dodge i can't seem to be able to dodge for shit.
skill issue; my bad

sorry i missed the first edit.
yeah i'm moving my hands off WASD to use shift and space.
it's not that i can't physically reach them, i just find it unintuitive to move my other fingers while handling WASD at the same time. it may have something to do with wasd being somewhat higher than shift and space on my keyboard, so they feel like they're "out of the way" and not that easy to reach.

that's why i mentioned keybindings. i'm assuming a controller would definitely be much easier to handle

bandaloo responds:

thanks for playing. yeah, there's no explanation of the scoring in the game; it was a late addition and i wasn't sure how many people would be interested in playing for score. i wrote a bit about the scoring system here if you're interested: https://bandaloo.newgrounds.com/news/post/1332342

i chose shift+space because you can reach them while your fingers are on wasd, but if i didn't hack this together during a jam there would be real keybinding options; sorry if this is preventing you from enjoying the game. if playing with a mouse for aim, you can use the mouse buttons to activate hyper and dash. you might be more comfortable with a controller? that's how i prefer to play.

the 10-streak achievement is just there as a fun thing for people who want to go for it; i was anxious about adding it because i didn't want it to seem like it's necessary to prove you are "good" or anything so i might make it a secret achievement

edit: just to clarify, when you say "every time i need to quickly get to them i get hit a whole bunch and have trouble getting back to to moving because of it" are you moving your fingers off of WASD to hit shift and space?

edit 2: i read your edit; thanks for clarifying! again, apologies there aren't more control settings

[Harvestigator: An IRS Tax Auditing Game]

is the reaction of each farmer to the audit random?
i'm trying to figure out what makes them "pass the audit" but i get a positive or negative response to the audit seemingly at random, regardless of what i'm doing.

for example, i've tried both working properly and purposely failing at my job, but i keep getting different answers even when i do the same thing.
honestly i'm not sure what determines the outcome

edit: i tried simply ignoring everything and it seems to have worked, though i had already done that before while trying to get fired, so i'm not sure what changed.
i must have accidentally clicked something before without noticing.

crow-seeds responds:

Highlighting anything (meaning that there was something wrong with their tax return) fails their audit

[Trivial Trivia: Impossible]

100% is currently impossible to get due to a bug with question 5.
if you answer A or C, it counts as both correct and incorrect, and it skips question 6.
if you answer B or D, it counts as incorrect, and it lets you answer question 6.

basically it forces you to either get question 5 wrong to answer question 6, or it counts question 6 automatically wrong if you answer question 5 correctly.

answer sheet for future reference in case this gets fixed:
0. D
1. B
2. C
3. D
4. C
5. A or C (either count as both correct and incorrect)
6. B (is skipped if the previous question answer was A or C)
7. D
8. A
9. B
10. B
11. B
12. A
13. B
14. B
15. D
16. D
17. A
18. C
19. C
20. B

[Idle Game Maker]

soft-fix for anyone having trouble with medals:
there seems to be a bug related to the turnover timer, which stops the game from awarding medals to your profile even if unlocked in-game. once this bug has been triggered, the only fix is to close the game and start over, as the current game is permanently locked from unlocking medals to your profile.

this bug seems to happen when the turnover time is too short, or gets "past" the saving point (which seems to happen around the 1 second mark). this could be triggered by either squashing bugs when you're close to getting paid, or if your timer is too short in the first place.

the easy way to prevent this from happening is to increase your timer and prevent it from getting it close to 0 in an unnatural way. this is necessary especially when trying to get the 1000 bug squashed medal. the only upgrades that do this are the android and ios ones (mac and windows also decrease your timer, unlike what's written in-game).

basic tips to unlock all medals:
- when starting out, make sure to get to the upgrades screen without squashing any bugs accidentally, just in case.
- upgrade actionscript whenever you're just waiting and not doing anything else, as it's free and it increases the money you get after each cycle.
- avoid upgrading unity, python, mac or windows unless you're going for their respective medals. when doing so, make sure you have enough money to get to level 50 in one go, or have a long enough timer as buffer to stay above the 10/20 second turnover time.
- to get the medals for squashing bugs, the "safest" way is to get javascript to 50, then put all the money you get into ios levels to increase your timer as much as possible, then use that time to squash bugs without going under the "saving point" trigger.
it's recommended to stop squashing bugs around the 30 second mark and go back to the upgrades screen to wait it out.