johnsoma's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Disc Us]

The game itself is really snappy and fun to play. Most rooms I played seem to favor goofing off and making up their own games and rules rather than completing objectives most of the time. That's fine, but it's good to be aware of.

keybol responds:

That's part of the fun for me hehe

[Medieval Merchant]

I'll start by acknowledging that making a game in a week is really impressive, no matter what. With that said, this game needs more work before it's ready to go live.

Nothing is explained in this game. Why should I use sword swing instead of sword throw? I don't know, because I can't see enemy health. What is with this weird mix of clicking buttons with the mouse and typing commands? They really don't mix well, literally, since the game breaks if you click a button while the type prompt is onscreen. What does investing do? I didn't see any results, even with a high interest.

SpectrisGames responds:

1. The game isn't supposed to tell you a lot, you must experiment
2. The mix of clicking and typing was the most intuitive way for me to create the game
3. Investing will give you money back after a certain amount of battles.

[Codeine Cowboys [v2]]

Having never played Hotline Miami, it took a minute to get used to how the camera/aiming worked, but once I got it, I had a lot of fun!

MoeAnguish responds:

Great!
You should definitely try Hotline Miami if you enjoyed this then.

[Countdown Royale]

Simple enough, with an interesting twist. No single thing majorly wrong, but it could be a little more refined all around. Not bad!

adriendittrick responds:

thanks for the honest review!

[The Titan's grave]

Interesting concept, and you do actually need to dodge instead of damage racing, so it's well balanced there. 1st phase is annoying because you don't get much time to react to the fist actually dropping, but it gets much better after that. Not bad overall.

badpiggy responds:

Thanks for playing :)

[Winter Falling: Price of Life]

I...don't think my brain is big enough to handle this game. It's so easy for me to spend too many resources early and be stuck in an unwinnable position lategame.

(Although, looking at the review from @blurrymadness tells me I was spending too much time trying to play the game legitimately and that spamming AOEs is the way to go)

Rarykos responds:

Oh yeah it's all about saving! The hint is in the name! There are, I think, 3 viable playstyles. Spamming AOE is more of a cheesy fun and high risk. But it's a fun way to play!
Thanks for playing! Glad you tried!

[Frantic Fighter]

(Updated 11/14 due to significant updates)

Let's get the good out of the way first. The main menu UI has been updated and is now much cleaner. The art and music are also still solid. The new pattern maps are also significantly better and do a better job at giving each monster a unique feel.

Now for the bad. The controls are not intuitive at all. Instead of using a set of buttons that are set up in a row or using the arrow keys, this seems to have just used random buttons on the keyboard. This wasn't a problem in the last version, because of how simple everything was, but now it's a big problem when put alongside the increased difficulty.

Some lesser problems
- Losing to a monster will move you on to the next monster in the list, as if you won. There doesn't seem to be any penalty for losing, or incentive to win, as money doesn't have any purpose
- By contrast, making a single mistake in battle will send you all the way back to the beginning of the monster's pattern, which is extremely punishing.
- You can use the mouse to click buttons, and the tutorial even tells you to do this, but later monsters require multiple buttons pressed at the same time, which isn't possible with a mouse, so why bother having mouse controls in the game?
- Help screen still describes the old UI, and is useless as a result.

Basically, this game needs serious help, but at the same time, I'm starting to see some potential to be more than a simple time waster.

Icekiller33 responds:

I just updated the game so you get to see all the monsters quicker and also updated the patterns to make them more fun! I also did a reside for the main menu, I hope it's clearer now. Thanks for playing and leaving feedback :)

[The Legend of RPGenia v0.3 (alpha)]

Alright, as agreed, I'm back to review the new build. Now that you actually start in the right place, I can say that I'm intrigued by the story here. Lot more potential for shenanigans between our world and the fantasy world than most isekai stories. Not bad for a self-advertised meme game.

That said, I still had some issues:
- There still aren't any exit triggers back to the world map from the beach house, so you still get softlocked if you go there when you're not supposed to
- There still isn't a visible marker for the desert from the world map. I knew where it was this time, but still.
- I'm perhaps a bit more forgiving than most about using RPGMaker default assets, being a lousy artist myself. But heed me when I say that people will complain about that.
- Generic NPCs blocking areas on the world map. I'm pretty sure those are just placeholders for the alpha build, but I bet you could come up with more creative blockades if you thought about it
- I'm not sure whether to complain about the constant going back and forth to talk to people that this game is built around. On the one hand, that's the joke, and it helps introduce story bits. On the other, I still feel like there could be a way to make it more convenient.

So my complaints are less harsh than before, but I'm also aware the game has a ways to go. Keep up the good work!

Saeko-Chan responds:

Thank you very much! All noted!

[THE ONLY ONE]

The game itself is pretty, but basic, and easy to cheat by circling around the arena. The problem is that this game took my laptop from roughly 25% battery to nothing in less than a minute. I can only guess that is being caused by some sort of physics calculation error that eats all the processing power of the computer. Needless to say, this game is not fit to go online until whatever is causing that problem gets fixed.

Minecrafter441 responds:

I apologize for the problem I have caused, It was my first game and I have not taken things like that into consideration. I made it calculate the rotation of the sun and stuff. Please play my other game, it is way better. I hope I can meet your expectations. - GS-Games