Sodoj's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[JERRY TOWER 2!!!!!!!!!!!]

immaculate level design and a worthy successor of the first jeri tower. the shooting mechanics are simple, yet smooth and extremely responsive, it feels great to blast eldrtich abomination lvl? death's heads, the juicy particle technique you went for pushes the pico-8 to its absolute limits and i cannot believe you made it work in 60 frames per second, incredible technical achievement, seriously, hats off! i'm sorry i went on a tangent over particles and shooting, but it just felt so good. as i'm writing this, i'm wondering how long this review is going to be in the end because if i spent a good solid paragraph complimenting you on the shooting and seriously technically impressive pico-8 particle systems of guts realistically splattering over the floor in 3d space, how much space will the rest of the game take? okay, lets get back on track i guess. the shooting is one thing, the guts are another, however, the movement???? the movement is its own different beast. im sorry for the spoilers dear viewer (and not so much sorry for spoilers succojones since you made the game), but i mentioned earlier that this game has a simulated movement in 3d space, yeah i shouldve waited until now to bring it up, i'm so sorry, i'll be careful to structure my sentecnes more carefully in the future. anyway, yeah, the movement kicks so much ass like holy shit this would even make freds72 blush, ive played so many of his games and read all of his devlogs, but the movement in his games always felt clunky and restricted by the pico-8 console limitations like limited colors and slow text speed, but however this game managed to break all of that and actually offer a seamless type of movement where every object feels like a proper 3d object and not some bullshit billboard baggins sprite rotating and being constrained by underpowered 2d console. seriously, hats off to you! it is seamless just as dark souls 3 seamless coop mod is seamless, i cant see any seams, the culling is flawless, no need for painters alghorythm bullshit i dont care about this this simulates 3d polygons so well its amazing it makes you think pico-8 was always a quirky 3d retro game engine to begin with like the movement is so good holy shit, its not rigid and static, it has momentum, its like mario brothers the arcade game or red alert on virtual boy god damn it feels so good, seriously hats off to you! and dont even get me started on the level design, its so. freaking. good! ! ! you constantly need to think where you move, what type of bullets you shoot and how every decision will affect your

succojones responds:

not reading all that but thanks :)

[Arc Breaker]

ay yo, welcome to newgrounds

LionYawn responds:

hey! Good to see you here

[FAIR AND FACTUAL FREE PRESS AGENCY]

papir

crow-seeds responds:

true

[Solar Complex!]

This game was a blast to play! It's a great blend of pacman and qix, polished to perfection. The music is bouncy and upbeat and the visuals have just enough life to make everything vibrant and pleasant. Well done!

Aside from this blatantly copy pasted review from your bigmode submission, I'll add that it's very easy to farm score infinitely in the NG version once those solar panel muncher bats are introduced. Maybe it would be a good idea to reduce player's score for every tile they munch to remedy that.

Edit: While the time limit is a very cool idea, there are two issues with it in its current state, the first one being that you can get <1000pts max from the time limit, while making a simple full combo row grants you 550pts, which you can form in seconds, it's way more optimal to use 4-5 seconds to farm two fc rows. That brings me to the second issue, the game doesnt end when the time runs out, which technically allows for infinite farming. In earlier levels I managed to farm a life in like 2-3 minutes and i'm sure even more optimal ways of farming could be discovered, it's even worth losing a life or two over it because it's pretty easy to obtain a new one

There are thousands of ways to remedy this, but I'll leave that to you :p

succojones responds:

Thank you for the kind words! You can't farm them infinitely because of the timer, so if people really try optimizing score they'll have to balance farming score from them and time bonus / keeping lives for the extra points at the end. I think...

[Scrap Your Pants]

samo furaj samo guraj

QualityStuff499 responds:

Opa! Balkanac! Kako si prepozno?

[Home 45 Min Experience!]

hey this has been awesome so far, here are some things you could consider for the final release

- after the first cutscene the player gets to control the magical sphere thing, but it took me some time to realize that because i assumed i was supposed to control the girl, but something broke so i could only control the camera. that is mostly my bad, but you should consider adding some kind of indication that player is controlling the sphere (or let player know when they are in control after the cutscene in general) or maybe just swing particles in an opposite direction of where player is going, that should reduce the confusion
- the interactable object prompt being located at the bottom left corner is kind of strange and it may be unintuitive for some players, having an option to have it above the interacable object or above the player would be neat
- gamepad uses face buttons to perform in combat while the tutorial told me to use arrows, you may wanna have that patched up as early as possible to avoid confusing players
- the timing felt way too strict for me, during the tutorial i felt like i was playing a late game encounter and i couldnt string more than 6 notes together. it may be because the ui is throwing me off, i could rarely tell for sure when i'll be able to land a note. the "hit line" in the ui was too thin, i feel like if it was a couple of pixels wider and the timer a "couple of pixels" more generous, the game would feel much much better to play. see what other people have to say about it, id test the crap out of that.
- must stress again,even with the more generous timing, the encounters overall seem a little too hard for a baby beginning area. since my health hadnt reset after tutorial, i had very little health to deal with the mushroom that was outside and it kicked my ass twice. i consider myself to be relatively alright at rhythm games, so unless you are reaching a hardcore crowd, you may want to tone it down
- there are multiple instances of missing punctuation and non capitalized letters when they should be in some lines, id actually consider keeping some of it in personal documents like frinkies letters after proper proofreading, it could be a subtle, yet neat character trait
- speaking of character traits, it seems a little out of character from abby to learn a move from a book, the crotch crater mentions magazine so maybe have it be some sort of magazine instead
- i'd really appreciate to have an option to choose how much of the consumables id like to use when using a quantifiable consumable, the "use menu" closing after using an item could also get in the way of player enjoyment

um thats all i have to say, as i mentioned the mushroom dude got in my way and i couldnt progress that much further. i hope this will be of use to you and your team and i wish you the best of luck with your game!

SquishY-Bottom responds:

This is the best criticism I have ever got, every single one of these ideas we are actually either working on or should be doing. I will be adding literally all these ideas. Thank you for taking the time to write this. These are amazing notes.

[theSWARM_]

yo whaddup

0x0961h responds:

Heya! 👋

[Newgrounds Wii Art Collab]

wii

AlexToolStudio responds:

U!!

[DEMI DAGGERS]

no freaking way dude, this is amazing! i'm a huge devil daggers fan and 100s into this demake its almost as good as it gets on pico-8. it goes without saying that this is beyond technically impressive, even though the lack of directional sound kind of makes grinding gems in the early game a pain in the ass. but hey, what can you do!i also miss the shotgun jump, but i can live without it. love your work, cant wait to see what you'll come up with next!

freds72 responds:

thanks - we tried to make the best out of the audio, but yes, not spatial.