ProsciuttoMan's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Waha's Circuit Break]

The softlocks are a huge problem: you can press R to reset areas, I know, but this is explained far later than it should be: you can softlock yourself on the first screen if you don't know what you're doing. It isn't stated in the game that resetting rooms is possible until about 10 minutes in!
Speaking of this, balancing is really odd. Techniques are explained after the player has already done them, making it jarring as to why these tutorials were included in the first place.
The Wario's Woods influence is palpable, but little is done to really evolve on that formula other than adding overworld exploration. I would have liked to see some more unique mechanics added or maybe making overworld progression more essential to gameplay or something like that. The collapsing ceiling isn't clear enough: I think it would have made more sense to make it more apparent because I didn't even know what the yellow bar on the bottom of the screen was for until like 4 battles in. Combat also becomes stale quickly: after the third or fourth fight, they got extremely mundane and uninteresting.
Art is solid, but it doesn't make up for the gameplay not being that great. I'm sure for people who just want to look at cute characters and nice art this is a good time, but as a game it needs a lot of work.

TharosTheDragon responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I just want to clear up a few things.

Failing a puzzle and needing to reset is not a softlock! It's a common game mechanic. While you're right that it is possible to get stuck in the tutorial, we were hoping it wouldn't be a common experience. And resetting is explained in the controls menu for inquiring minds, so hopefully people who need it can figure out how to do it even before they reach the NPC who explains it.

If the player reads the inscriptions on all the statues in the tutorial room, all the techniques should be explained before you need them.

I haven't played Wario's Woods but my understanding is that there are quite a lot of mechanics that set Waha's Circuit Break apart from it, such as the hostile bots and the omniballs and the components they can power.

The "danger time" bar is a pretty obscured game mechanic that's difficult to pick up on, so we're not really expecting anyone to. It's just there in case you want to try and guess how the game is working behind the scenes. You're supposed to be able to play normally while ignoring it, and that's okay!

Anyway, thanks again for the review!

[Twigi's Twisted Costumes]

It’s a decent little dressup project that isn’t very well optimized: I encountered multiple bugs (for example randomly grabbing objects when scrolling) without trying too hard and it didn’t load for me the first few times.
The best games like this do something unique with the idea, but this is just painfully average and brings nothing new to the table.
EDIT: The game should justify itself by being entertaining, it shouldn’t be justified by you feeling the need to explain to me the context of its existence.

Nebulate responds:

Yeah we are aware that having 100+ uncompressed assets issnt that optimised. We were fully aware of that along side the object-scroll grab thing. It is a gamejam game so its not supposed to be the next Elden Ring or somthing. But i do apreciate some constructive critisism

EDIT: This game was made for a jam about making dressup games. What the fuck did you expect?

[Portal Re:/ Flashed]

I usually enjoy unconventional control schemes, but there's a point where it's just added after-the-fact to make your game seem more interesting than it actually is.
I get that it's meant to be a remake/reimagining, but I feel like part of that is modernizing the game for a new audience: here, I don't really see any reason to recommend this over the original other than for the novelty. It adds nothing, and in almost every aspect is a downgrade.

ThePixelDud responds:

The control scheme was reworked a few times throughout development, but we only had a d-pad, a, b, start , and select button to work with, as this was made for a game jam and that was a requirement. It will be fixed in a later update, along with any other issues that have been found.

[NewGrounds must DIE (Demo beta)]

Controls feel overly-slippery, art is extremely unpolished and assets rarely feel cohesive with one another...
Overall, it's palpable just how rushed this game was. While it's cool to see a game that uses characters other than the FNF cast, I'm really struggling to find any positives to this one.

Oxim responds:

Is for the "platformer object" extention, I fix this mecanic in clickteam fusion with the values active code so you can feel more fast tha mechanics of the player, I restart the game in this moments.
So thanks for your positive coment, we stay restart the game for a fine optimization

[Meaty Mayhem (DEMO)]

Pretty fun little precision platformer! Can't wait to see more.

BakethedBean responds:

and more there shall be!

[THE NINTENDO 64 COLLAB GALLERY]

You have a handful of genuinely talented people on this (GMN, Chdonga, KittyhawkMontrose, etc...), but to be blunt: most of it just sucks or is in an extremely shitty resolution. Maybe there could be some music in the background, but even then I don't think that would solve the collab being overly-bloated and uninteresting.
Dogpiling on every negative review is retarded as well.
EDIT: You are literally proving my point with the replies, they’re funny to read because the coping is real, but looking at this as objectively as I can: this deserves maybe a 3.5 at most, and I don't think this should be on the frontpage at all.
Reading through reviews and responses, it seems like the primary author only did this for clout, which sucks.

Creeperforce24 responds:

At least you have a right to say that, your art is decent

[Cat Bros]

It's a decent first attempt at an I Wanna Be The Guy-styled rage game, but there's a lot of design choices that I find to be downright horrible.
For example, I don't think there should be a 5 second break between dying and respawning. IWBTG and Meat Boy typically have very short respawn times, which makes death a more fun mechanic.

tecnologiaplaitec responds:

voy a corregirlo gracias

[Newgrounds Rushdown Rivals]

This might be a bit of a controversial take, but I found this game to just be kind of ok? IDK, I played the downloadable version but I don't imagine that's too different from the web browser build.
I'd say my biggest fault with the game is that it's too much reward without enough risk:
Enemies and bosses tend to be very slow and heavy. I think allowing bosses to get knocked around more, or at least try a lot more often to attack the player would help with this, and really sell your characters' strength.
The levels are mundane and largely uninteresting to traverse. I understand this is to make sure that enemies can be spawned and defeated often, but I think having level-specific enemy spawning or behavior would help to alleviate this issue and present more of a challenge to players.
Weirdly, I found the voice acting a little too intrusive: maybe some way of limiting its frequency would be helpful.
The crossover angle is done in a commendable, yet slightly disappointing way:
I feel that the playable roster played things way too safe by focusing almost exclusively on characters from FNF and Newgrounds Rumble: the kid from Dad n Me was a good start, but I feel like crossover games like this are at their best when they're breaking new ground with their character rosters (especially on Newgrounds, where we've seen Pico and co, Madness, and FNF crossovers out the ass for the past few years). I understand that this is done so that a more casual audience understands that its a Newgrounds crossover game, but it still makes for a roster that feels very "been there done that".
I did enjoy seeing a lot of games by some friends of mine get representation though: a lot of newer NG submissions tend to struggle for visibility, and it was cool. I hope more stuff like this is done with the game going forwards.

KeithGarces responds:

I appreciate the constructive feedback as we definitely take it into consideration! You can chalk the simplicity directly to me as I wanted to make sure we had a nice accessible platform to work off of! I personally underestimated how deep people were willing to go mechanically, but I've been thankfully proven wrong from the fan feedback and videos.
Trying to expand the scope of who is represented is important (though I'll need help from the community on that personally since I've mainly been an early 2000s NG lurker.) We have ENA rolling in at some point as well as other plans if the interest is still around! Thanks again!

[Catatattack!]

Not quite horrible, but not quite great either.
Art-wise, it's OK. A bit too derivative off Funkin' or something for my liking, but I suppose some people like it.

The crux of my issues come with the gameplay though:
The player's attacks keep him in constant motion but when combined with having to constantly jump between narrow platforms, it leads to a lot of cheap deaths. Not helping with this is that the motion path seems to be fixed, which leads to even more cheap-feeling deaths.
I'd work on giving the player a greater sense of control, or at least changing the level layout to give the player more room to take advantage of the moveset you've given.
There isn't really any kind of a tangible progression system either: I get it's meant to be an arcade-style game, but I don't feel like I'm growing or progressing in any meaningful way as I rack up kills: something that's very important in these kinds of games.

JalenBrah responds:

Thanks for the notes!

Making the movement more controllable and adding an incentive beyond just a high score would definitely be a benefit to the game as a whole.

I’ll try and add to the player’s moveset and improve what’s already there to give more control

[Protect your Waifu - Jam Version]

A decent little tower defense game.
Unlike a lot of the other jam entries so far, it doesn't get repetitive too quickly, but a few issues like the transitions are a bit jarring and sudden, the lack of any impact or "punch" to anything you do, etc... makes things feel a bit unsatisfying.

onebitpudding responds:

True, I think about improving over time because I liked the idea, and thanks for the feedback, I will think of things to make it more satisfying