tonyfinale's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Olivia The Demon Slayer]

The art style gave me a generic sort of vibe and I thought it was all overly kinda muted colored looking buuuut once I hopped onto the hard mode difficulty I was pretty engaged and thought it controlled and felt quite nice. notbad

[SHOOT!]

An actually engaging and proactive feeling 'survivors' - like??? I CAN'T believe it...
DAMN satisfying and easy to learn. The way the music kicks on with your first kill was so damn sweet.

Only limp/lame feeling things I can think to note woould be that dying is a little abrupt and anticlimactic with how it doesn't have like a sound effect to fanfare your screw-up. The menus and buttons and those kinds of thing are a little UNdetailed too but whatever.
OH and I don't really get a lot of what the aesthetics are meant to even BE or the significance of that one cutscene that seemed to play either, but it all certainly LOOKS cool. Sick game

[Jac LaPlume: Private Interrogator DEMO]

did NOT read the tags going into this so gotta say the 'combat' sections were quite the surprise. funny enough amateurish voice acting kinda thing to behold. fun for a lark

LustPotato13 responds:

Lol, thanks <3

[Shinobi: Invasion]

It's CERTAINLY a vampiresurvivors clone! Not bad in that yeah ya sure got the fundamentals down, but it obviously ain't too exciting with no real 'originality sauce' to it or even sound effects to help in the satisfaction of things. Not a bad base tho. Like yal could surely churn out something cooler after using this format to learn some gamedev ropes.

I got too many shuriken upgrades and the output of my guy throwing so many of them seemingly forbid enemies from spawning ever again. oops!

[Inn & Out]

HOTEL MARIO INSPIRED GAME??? Sign me up.......

I want to like it WAAAAAAAAAY MORE, but there's a couple IRKING little wrinkles killing my vibe...

Like how you seemingly can't change directions on stairs, the at times awkward jumping, the 'hiding in door invincibility' not kicking in until you're fully inside a door, etc... Oh! I WISH you could use doors while running... Or is the idea that that would be too easy? I was really confused why I couldn't go in the elevators at first... Having to come to a dead stop first asks you to be careful but I dunno... I'd kinda just like to be able to SNAP inside of them <3

And I know part of the challenge is keeping track of who's in those elevators, but maybe them FLASHING or something to indicate when they were already being used by the enemies would be nice? Sometimes I'd just be mashing UP - desperately trying to get into one; not realizing they were sending a guy my way and POOF - guy appears on top of me and I'm dead. Just needs a TOUCH of a liittle more 'PLAYER FRIENDLINESS' I think... OTHERWISE IT'S MARVELOUS! Tho one more pedantic thing - I wonder the point of the border display information when it's soooo small I can't reasonably read it as a genuine source of information. Kind of ends up just coming off decorative.

Notakin responds:

Those are also great suggestions, Of course i should've added more indicators of when the elevators are usable, I could also tweak the rules a little bit sometime. Thanks for the feedback!

And yes maybe I will bump up the screen resolution, but for now you can just zoom it until I change that, K?

[spinny hexagon game]

It certainly WORKS!!!!!!!!! <3

[Homecoming]

With how simple an interactive experience this is, I kinda wish I could click ANYWHERE on the screen to advance the text! Not a big fan of NEEDING to hover my mouse over the bottom box but bahh itsa minor lil preference kinda thing...

The mom came off suRPRISINGLY reasonable sounding when the mc decided to blow up at em all spontaneous-like that at their reunion. Is that the point? Are they supposed to come off sorta in the wrong sounding? I mean I can ASSUME things about their relationship and why the mc would read the worst in anything their mom said and why they'd immediately go into that yell-y mode with the intro putting the usual CARTOONISHLY EVIL, TRANSHATING expectations in my brain wit all the '''PATRIOTISM''' signage. But idunno - I felt we didn't hang out long enough to really solidify their relationship and justify that better with more information to read and ponder. iiiiii thought that drama came out a lil unprompted sounding and unsatisfying to read a bit as result, but 'EMOTIONAL CONTRADICTIONS' are realistic so hey~

solid enough buuuuut yea I suppose I would have just wanted MOAR. Abrupt endings can be cool and dramatic but with not too much 'MEAT' to rly ruminate on idk it felt kinda over and done too soon.

Bleak-Creep responds:

When I first started the project, my intention was to have a bit more interactivity to the art/some of the text itself so that you could potentially uncover more details about the situation if you wanted. I'm thinking I might still add that in, so I probably won't edit the hit box there unless I decide I'm officially done.

The mom coming across as fairly reasonable is also a conscious choice. I didn't want anything in this to be painted in a stark black and white, and all points of view were aimed to be presented fairly. It's very difficult to hate the people who raised you, no matter how betrayed you might feel later on, but there's a lot going on beneath the surface, and it's eventually admitted to be an overreaction.

[Pop the Lock]

Needs more 'SAUCE'....... If you get me~
LIKE... The visuals, the font, the general feedback you receive for 'popping the lock' correctly - it's all too SIMPLE and generic. Not as satisfying as it could be wit how limp and abrupt things come off looking and feeling! But it COULD be! It's a nice enough foundation. I liked it a little :)

I really liked the realization you could tap space more than once over a circle if your timing was good enough to score more points than you normally would off a single pass. But!!!! That cool gameplay technique feels a little OFF to do because the visuals end up looking sorta janky following your actions! The next circle kinda FLICKERS from one position to another if you do this; making it feel like a glitch! Needs some work!

A less IMMEDIATE and abrupt a failstate would be nice too! It feels WEAK messing up because there's no fanfare, no nothing. You just sorta miss the timing and go: "oh. alright".

YOU GOTTA BUST OUT THE CLOWN HORNS and BOUNCE the game over text onto the screen or something, man!!! Make me REVEL in my failure!!! The text jus kinda quickly fading onto the screen leaves me feeling nothing................

Maybe you could also have a few lives and if you flub all of em THEM you gameover? THAT would also be nice~

It's hella SIMPLE, but if you waaanted - you could really trick this out into something neato wit some polish. Happy gamedeving :)

SubsolarGames responds:

Thanks for your great advice!
For my next game I will definitely keep in mind game feel!

[☕ game]

youre weird as ever naming and describing the game all EMPTY like but it was a damn satisfying powertrip; i loved it. weird as hell obviously like what's with the debug room in the beginning but idk I figured it out. it was COOL and I liked eating beans and bulldozing monster dudes

adriendittrick responds:

glad you had fun on your powertrip :)

[Word Wizard]

I ended up sampling the game mostly through the level select because after I randomly hit ESC during the gameplay to try and pause, it crashed! And you can't skip the opening??? Might wanna tweak that...

Anyway! Pretty cute 'MIXED BAG' sort of game. It looked visually quite polished and the animations to go along with actions felt satisfying enough, but the sound design was a little lacking. A lot of actions just felt sporadic as for whether or not they'd have a sound to go along with them. Or maybe they were just too quiet... Eitherway- I thought the lack of EMPHASIS with the way sounds were used made clicking and inputting things feel less TACTILE than it could have been; if you get me.

AS FOR THE GAMEPLAY well because it's basically a collection of spelling themed mini games, I'll just go and prattle out my thoughts on each:

The WORM fight was fine but prob my least fav. I'm not too big on word scramble games, and once you learned the few words this one has to ask that's kind of it. The worm attacking you also feels a little uninvolving once you go into SPELLING MODE and basically just acts as timer. I wonder if it woulda been more interesting in a multi-tasking kind of way if you actually had to still dodge while trying to figure out the words... Not bad though! From the perspective and controls, I thought it was gonna be some VAMPIRE SURVIVORS WITH SPELLING kinda game at first.

ALSOOO - if you try to enter a word with Caps Lock toggled, it won't accept it because it only wants lowercases! D:

The KRAKEN game was easily my MOST fav despite how simple it was. I kinda wish the path to the goal was randomized so potentially on replays the thing could remain as interesting. I can see an endless version of this because pretty fun too... I was worried you would be able to just repeat the same word over and over, but I was pleased when you couldn't!! yay!!! gameplay!!!!!

The DRAGON was weird being the most conventional of the 3 at the end of the game, but yeah also pretty enjoyable! Ya know - itsa classic 'SPELL THE WORDS QUICKLY' kinda thing; hard not to find a lil fun. Extra weird that this guy got a unskippable intro cutscene even when played from level select, but I guess he was the final guy so its gotta be EPIC. I get it.

Game crashed a few times during this one too either because I got hit by multiple fireballs at once or???? Yeah I'm just not sure... I DID end up beating him but I missed out on seeing the ending because of the crash and didn't wanna replay the whole thing. Ouch.

I liked it!! Overall I think my takeaway is yeah that lack of TACTILE-ness because of the weaker sounds and the kind of tacky/abrupt feeling you get from the opening tutorial blurbs for each mini game are the things holding the game back a bit and lessening the satisfaction. But solid for what it is!!

sidvenkatayogi responds:

ty 4 the review! We kinda made this game for fun and didn't bother fixing the hard bugs lol but anyways I really appreciate the chance you gave our game!!