qwerty741's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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! :)

[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

[Kate's Date]

having trouble figuring out hidden values.
it seems if you pick the 3rd option during the scene with the patient (regardless of your other choices), you completely skip the last scene where you're asked to go home, and get locked into the drunk ending.

leaving this here for future reference:
it seems to get the "secret ending", you need to ignore the patient (second option) and try to go for the good ending.
if done correctly, an extra scene comes up that branches into the secret ending path right before the good ending epilogue.

again, i'm not sure how each choice actually affects the final values, but i managed to get it by picking choices 2-2-1, then all 1 on the date.

also kinda funny, but if you trigger the secret path, pick it, but on the last choice don't commit to it, the dialogue says 0_drunk_ending.json, and then the game freezes on that last scene instead of booting you back to the main menu

BobbertOC responds:

Hey!

The way the choices work in the game isn't very obvious. Although you might be on the same scene you were on for a previous run, because you made different decisions earlier, you might have something different happen to you. E.g. You will never get the phone call during the date if you listened to the patient explain their dream earlier in the day.

Thanks a lot for playing (and finding a bug)! I'm glad you explored it to such a great extent! :)

[Cookie Match]

really like this one when comparing it with the previous games, because it addresses pretty much all the issues that came with those:

- it's not entirely reliant on luck to clear (see fruits match, especially levels 124 onward);
- it's challenging enough where you can't just mindlessly move around until you clear it, but there's also not so many levels that it overstays its welcome (see pipe match and its 1000+ levels);
- it's not exactly the same as other types of puzzles that already exist (see pill escape, and stuff like rush hour. there's even an online solver if you look for it);

all in all it's a good puzzle game, mechanics work as intended, it can be cleared with some effort if you're going for a regular clear, and even if going for all perfect there's not that many levels where it's more trouble than it's worth;
though some of the levels are pure evil if you're going for perfect, so i'm glad the requirements for the 3-star medal got lowered lol.

EDIT: full guide here; sorry for the text format:
https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/da7aeff41b807be1fed94a325c639473
thanks to the creator for filling me in on the solution for the last level i was missing (level 28 was a real problem).

sublevelgames responds:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts that made me more forward to create better games. I really appreciate it. I was just amazed by your hard work as well as your enthusiasm. I got lucky having a player like you. Very inspiring!

[Aurora]

having some starting instructions makes this so much better already.
i could never have imagined that you can only move one side at a time, but somehow when moving to the output it colors the entire thing.

though if i have to say, the best change that was made was adding a description of the current active command/number/modifier by hovering over an instruction.

i can't remember if that was there already, because if it was all my criticism on the instruction manual being hard to read goes completely out of the window and i'm actually the dumbest person alive.
it's such a good idea since you also don't need to constantly go back to the manual just to check if you've mispelled a command or not. definitely can't blame the mechanics for not being clear at this point.

edit: a couple of other things that are still confusing:
- levels aren't unlocked in order;
i figured you'd have to clear them in order, because they would get increasingly more difficult. meanwhile i had to clear most of the other ones just to get to level 3, and i'm not sure why.

- what does adding a breakpoint do? i guess it probably stops the code's execution and sends you back to the first instruction, but i don't remember seeing it mentioned anywhere in the manual, so i never used it.
i just made up for it by adding a "jump to instruction 0" command when i needed something like that, which would do the same thing and thus doesn't explain why it would be a thing (assuming it works like that)

- the descriptions for level 9 and 10 are confusing. i think the problem with level 9 is simply that i didn't read it properly so i might have to give it another couple reads, but for 10 i honestly have no idea what it wants me to do when it says i have to "shift the hue of the input".

bug reports:
- the prompt, variable names and level set-up for level 3 give discordant information (although it works as intended):
prompt says to move greens to 7 and blues to 8, expected values are greens to 7 and blues in 8, but the output variables' names are reversed (blue.7 , green.8).
for inputs, prompt mentions input.6, variable name is input.6, but the actual input on the board is hexagon 5.

- something weird with the "jump if color" commands:
let's say you execute instruction 5, and you "jump if color, by skipping 3 instructions". you would expect it to skip 6,7 and 8, and then execute instruction 9.
what it actually does is jump to instruction 8 and execute it.
basically it's adding 3 to the current instruction number (the one you're using to jump ahead) so if you want it to actually "skip N instructions" as advertised, you need to add 1 more to the amount of instructions skipped.
honestly it's easier this way since you can exactly tell which line you're going to execute after a jump by simply adding the number of "lines skipped" to the one with the jump instruction, but if the idea was for it to "skip a specific number of instructions", then it's not working as intended

-------
decided to add a much needed walkthrough for the medal levels.
the solutions are in no way optimized, just the first working solutions i managed to put together
(had to pick up pen and paper to plan ahead for level 9. pain):

level 1: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/114f3e396ea80014061c40198dad5373
level 2: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/abfe2d6684860e49d57ef933b171cd9c
level 3: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/5a088fec7a76fe592f1eb9b385ad0d1c
level 4: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/af22a4d2c190f88ae222606559991bd8
level 5: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/fd41718c3ecf293bf5c744c4a3f89a7f
level 6: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/f98592b4613b4f3e1afe10a892b79006
level 7: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/d47b0d364127ae2d85709a143e1654c6
level 8: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/c09c1523a99e9363934ebff161cc4c38
level 9: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/98a7ba1f0a19c550ec10f53cdbf3cdd3
level 10: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/a087f77a29510ecedd3416bb24ad6b49

crow-seeds responds:

Just updated the game to fix all of your problems! Glad you came back and gave it another go!

Jump if color works as you would think now. It was originally <current instruction> + <amount> because that's what I wrote in the drawn manual, and I couldn't find a better word than "skip" for the tooltip and translation. Seems a bit silly to have them different haha, should now be <current instruction> + <amount> + 1. There's not really a point of going <current instruction> + 0 instructions (infinite loop), so might as well add the plus 1.

Levels unlocked downward, so if you beat a level all the hexagons below it on the level select screen would be unlocked. Levels futher down are "harder" and generally dependent on mechanics introduced in the levels above it in the level select. The reason for the randomish numbering of them was because they were numbered in the order I made the levels and I reordered them based on difficulty on the level select. Realize it's a bit silly, so I renumberd all the levels by difficulty, so they should "unlocked in order".

Breakpoint is a computer science term, I shouldn't have assumed everyone knew the term haha. It doesn't really do anything for the program, it just pauses the program on that instruction for debugging purposes (If you know one part of the program works but another doesn't, you would put a breakpoint right before the part that doesn't work and step through it).

On confusing descriptions of level 9 and 10, I've added a button to see a longer more detailed description. Variable names for level 3 are changed, that was a typo!

Also working on a post-game that includes user-made levels, you got any ideas for future levels?

Edit: Oh man, I didn't read your comment about how jump if color was easier before, might revert the change back.

[Escape From Monster Tower]

this is actually very good for what it is, and not overly long either.

just wanted to leave a review to explain that monsters' patterns aren't random; each one of them moves in a fixed direction when you move in a specific direction.
so some of them move the same as you, some of them go down when you move right etc..
it's only a matter of figuring out where they move when you move in which direction.

blit-blat responds:

Thank you! And yeah, maybe I should have explained the mechanics in the description a bit more, but I though it would be obvious after a few turns playing! It's hard to see the wood for the trees sometimes when you're developing stuff!

[Pumpkin WIng]

i could really use an health indicator so i know how much hp i can actually work with.
also for some reason the parry doesn't work half the time.

anyway, how come the first two bosses are unironically the hardest ones?
especially the last phases of the two:
for the first one, i can never figure out the actual trajectory of the axes so i end up bashing into them way more often than i would like to.
for the second one, the lasers are unforgiving. on top of having to dodge everything else, you have to figure out which direction they're gonna turn towards cause it's random, and multiple badly placed lasers in a row can trap you against the sides of the screen.

EDIT: for the parry, i should have been more specific.
basically, since the parry hitbox is only the red slash in front of you, sometimes you fail to parry projectiles that are too close because outside of the parry range, especially from the sides.
it's obviously working as intended because the hitbox is the slash and it's clearly shown, so i'm just venting because i've lost a few of my nightmare attempts due to not parrying projectiles coming from the right side specifically. my bad lol

also i'm glad the parry has an actual damaging hitbox. i hate the 3rd phase of the last boss (the one with the spinning stars) so spamming parry to deal extra damage has proved very useful in that instance

Frosty responds:

1. hp indicator is the orbs around your character, i probably should have displayed them on the ui too

2. not sure about the parry but it only works on certain purple projectiles

3. probably because i got very burnt out when designing the last 2 haha

Edit: ahh ic, regardless ty for the review!

[Psycho Spoon]

dunno if it's a bug, but i can't find any sponges on level 3-6. the one with the large spike pit in the middle. stuck on 57/60.
tried resetting data and encountered the same situation a couple more times so it's likely not a glitch on my part i guess?

ShackoCheese responds:

Yeah, we were thinking about what could have happened, since with our build there is no such issue. We do think of one thing that may cause this. Maybe we'll find the solution, but if not, then we will implement something else that works around the bug. Like a button that resets all sponges and the counter or something like that.
Thanks for the bug report!