Scorchle's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Drop Cannon]

Extremely fun and polished! The gameplay was simple, but it felt very satisfying--really nice for a fun work break. Everything felt tight and the art was fantastic!
Though they didn't completely tank my experience (haha), I did notice a few bugs; I'm not sure if these have been brought up before, but I figure yall would want to know about them, so I'll list what I noticed:

MOBILE
I tried to give the game a run on my iPhone XR on the mobile NG site. At certain points in the game the performance took major hits, both in the factory and the battle segments. Most of the time it was pretty minor, just a lag spike before a car came onscreen, but I was actually unable to finish my first 2 playthroughs because at a certain point in the game, it completely froze--twice during the factory portion in Santa Fe and once during the factory portion of Tulsa.
I tried to play in two different browsers and the same thing happened, so I'm pretty sure it's not just a Safari issue (or etc.)
Like I said, this didn't ruin my experience--I was able to play through the entire game without any issues on the web client, and it was very enjoyable!

WEB
This is relatively minor, but I did notice it occurring multiple times, so I thought I should mention it--in the factory portions, if two vehicles are close together and an invasion happens, the robots can target a vehicle that is off-screen and it still counts them as doing damage. I can recall at least twice that I lost my perfect loadout because I couldn't shoot the robots and that caused the car I was working on to be destroyed. I doubt this is a feature, but in case it is, I would recommend changing it--again, nothing major, but it did cause a bit of frustration.

Anyway, those are all the bugs I noticed! Thank you for reading through this review, and thank you for the positive player experience--I thoroughly enjoyed this game!

[Dead Estate CLASSIC]

This is so fun to play!! The controls are really smooth and every kill feels satisfying. The weapons and items make each playthrough fresh.
One thing that disappointed me was the lack of rewards for beating the game. This game has extreme replay value, so giving people something like an extra character (maybe Chunks or the witch) with different stats, or maybe a special item/weapon, seems fitting. Maybe a nightmare mode, too? Those are just my suggestions, and they don’t have any effect on my score whatsoever.

The only technical issues I noticed were with some mobility bugs and crashing. I love the pseudo 3-D style, but sometimes it is a bit hard to tell where things are or where you’re firing. Additionally, it’s easy to get stuck on wall decorations, which isn’t much fun. And as for the crashing, there were several points in the game where it completely froze as I was entering a room or opening a chest (usually on a later floor, which was devastating). It didn’t ruin my experience, but it was definitely a letdown, so I hope those get patched soon!

Overall, this was absolutely fantastic! I’d love to see this team get behind a full-length game. That would make my year!

[Bass Master Online]

I've been wanting to say something about this since it came out, but I kept on getting busy and forgetting, so as long as I'm here again, I guess I'll put it out there--
I love bass fishing online!
It's very simple, but still impressive, in the worlds of both gamedev and fishing.
maybe I'm just a sucker or fishing games, but if you made a full online fishing game with more features, I'd have no choice but to make it the only game I play
thank you for enriching my life with bass fishing online!

austineast responds:

well that settles it, i have to make a full version! thanks for the review, fellow bass enthusiast <3

[Gladio's Adventure]

This is a decent prototype, but you've still got a LOT to work on until it becomes playable. There's a lot of fine-tuning that would make this much better, so I'll try to go through everything I noticed:

CAMERA: The camera is too small and the movement is a bit too sporadic. There were multiple points where I was taking leaps of faith and landed face-first into a spike because I had no idea what was coming next. In platformers like Super Meat Boy, the character is usually made very small and visible so you can have full control over your movement, and the screen. Even in side-scrollers, it's not a good idea to restrict your player's FOV so they can barely see a second ahead. If you want to keep the close camera for combat sequences, then you could have the camera zoom out when you get to platforming zones--just something to make this more enjoyable and fair!

PLATFORMING: There were multiple points where I got softlocked because, when the player is on slanted ground, it just stops completely and jumping becomes impossible. Please refine your ground detection or jumping!
Additionally, those moving platforms were INCREDIBLY slow. Waiting for them was torturous, and the fact that there were places where I would be punished for jumping on them early and ended up spiked... it made me hate those buggers more than I can reasonably express.

DAMAGE: This was by far the most frustrating part of this game. There is one thing this game is lacking that I can wholeheartedly say it needs: INVINCIBILITY FRAMES! There were too many times to count that I was punished for moving a single frame too far by having all of my hearts depleted before I could even react. You want to punish your players for not being precise, but don't deprive them of the chance to fix their mistakes! Invincibility frames would get rid of the rapid drainage and make this game a LOT more fun.
But on the note of damage...

BOSSES: There is a lot that could be improved here. For one, I could never tell which parts of the bosses would do damage and when. Kronos' damage animation seemed to start whenever, so you barely got the chance to hit him when he was open. Necator King was awful, in that the distance between the sword and my hitbox was only a few pixels, so I couldn't get close enough to him to land a hit without taking damage. Gnat Monarch was REALLY annoying because she kept moving around pretty quickly when she was lodged in the ground, and since I couldn't jump over her, I always took damage. This could be fixed if she got stuck in the ground once she plunged. I ended up having to cheese this fight to win. Null was probably the best designed boss, but the instakill issue REALLY shined here--I'd get caught on his little scythes, pulled in, and immediately depleted of my health constantly. Additionally, his windup animation was way too ambiguous. I never knew when he was going to start his attack, and the animation would frequently lag so I'd get hit unexpectedly.

I know that's a lot of specific criticism, but overall, I think this is a solid foundation--there's just a lot of tweaking to do before it becomes a good game! I would love to see this refined, playtested, and turned into something substantial!

[Heartship]

Bitchin hard, but once you get used to the controls, the learning curve shapes up really well!
I keep finding myself coming back to this. Fantastic work!

HealliesGames responds:

Glad you enjoyed the game.
Thank you for your feedback, Scorchle!

[Reboot Resume Restore]

I really like the controls and vibe for this! My only issue is the slowness--it seems like a lot of people are having this problem, but what surprised me was that I'm using Chrome and everyone else seems to be experiencing it on Firefox. Granted it's not as bad, I'm hitting around 23-28 frames per second consistently, but it's still quite noticeable
just wanted to let you know!! I hope this helps for figuring out the issue :)

HartfordGames responds:

Thanks.

Sorry about the lag.

[SPACEWYRMS]

Really enjoyable!! I love the movement mechanics and I'd love to see more of this. Would totally subscribe to a Patreon for a full game with these mechanics.
My only real gripe is with the RNG elements. The level generation is usually very solid, but there are a couple points where I've had trouble with what it comes up with. For example, in Ruins 1 (the level that gave me the most grief personally in my playthrough), the first time I managed to get past all of the orange dots unscathed, it turned out that the goal spot had generated inside of a solid asteroid, which was admittedly pretty funny. It also caused certain playings of levels to be unequal--in my first few attempts at Hell, the level was fittingly long, but then in my fourth playing, the goal spawned much closer to the start, which kind of nullified the challenge a little bit. Otherwise, this is a great concept piece! Thank you for sharing!!

[Shamaniac]

This game is stunning! The puzzles are challenging, but not ridiculously so, and the art is all wonderful. The idea for the prophecy and the magic eyeball were both really intuitive, and as somebody who uses construct3 myself it was really fun to see those elements in action and wonder how you got them to work. Very well done!
The one criticism I have is in the technical aspect, although this wouldn't have bothered me if I hadn't needed to momentarily shut down my computer and then restart it to continue my game. The save states/JSON don't seem to have been programmed correctly, because when I sat back down to play again, some events which I hadn't unlocked yet were available and some puzzles which I had already finished had been reset. The only explanation for this I can think of is either that you may have accidentally programmed the save states to happen in a linear progression, as in each event is saved in the order they were programmed to happen chronologically instead of when they are triggered, or that this was just some sort of one off bug. Either way, it's something to look out for in the future.
Otherwise, everything about this game is incredibly well made and I have no major complaints. Great job! I can definitely agree that you guys deserved that Construct3 subscription. Keep up the good work!

CrounchyBrothers responds:

Thanks Scorchle :-)
Yes the save states/JSON were only on some achievments (like : burn a leaf or put a bark, or find a spirit). But it's fixed. The game is saved at any time now :-)
Your feedbacks were helpful ! :-)

[Realm of Befuddlement]

Everything about this game is so surreal. The sounds, the graphics - I don't know what to say. I really love this. I don't know why, but I do.

wizardescape responds:

Thank you! We put in a lot of effort to make it!

[SUB]

This game has a very nice environment and aesthetic! The pixel art designs are charming (the axolotl pictures were a bit strange, but not too distracting) and you really did make the most of the construct 3 map limit. Beepbox/retro music loops can tend to get a bit grating but I the music for this game is enjoyable. The only real issue I found was that you can beat the game without finding all 5 relics if you don't locate them in sequential order. I beat the game with 4/5 by accident because I found the final relic before the rest (at least, I assume that I beat it since I found the "victory" area and the music started playing). That should probably be revamped. Additionally (this is more of a nitpick), I think an interesting gameplay feature you could have added would be a float/fall delay to make it seem more like you're underwater, but that would probably require some alteration to the level design and the game works fine without it. Either way, overall an enjoyable little game!

Glennimation responds:

What a wonderful review. and thank you for all the tips! Indeed the whole ''gather the relics'' should perhaps be a bit more obvious so that the victory area cannot be entered without there having all the collectibles. Perhaps make level so that you can go back and revisit the area for the ones you missed.

If I revisit the game I will certainly use your review as feedback.

Ow and there was a bit of an odd graphic bug near the start of the level. But no matter what it keeps showing up. So maybe I'll just build it from the ground up once more.