MinatoArisato's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[CRAB JUICE]

That was fun, love all the speed and lack of bullshit. Very hype music and satisfying sounds.
The crab is free

[Mr. Stretch and the Stolen Fortune DEMO]

So visually I think this game and concept is super cute, you're a little ghost recovering riches in your mansion, I like the gem collecting, the secrets and extra collectables by making par and such, (Not that I have yet). But I have a couple of glaring issues that are getting in the way of me just bingeing the whole thing, we'll start with the obvious one others have mentioned.

[CONTROLS]
The game is in no small part difficult already with timing your jumps with enemies moving around the room or trying to work within the timer, but I find myself constantly fighting with the controls trying to make precise movements. Like I can see where the gems are, and what pattern I'd like to take, but making tight turns consistently is near impossible without tremendous effort. I even tried to use myself as a wall to rest on, but the turning and directional movement feels overly sensitive and fast. Which in itself isn't a bad thing, feeling sluggish while trying to dodge enemies sucks, and the faster you can move in a game like this where levels are already going to take awhile the better, but with so much of the goal tied to ACCURATE movement, we have a problem. I'm unsure of what the best way to fix this would be without understanding how the movement is programmed, but my advice is just take the Nintendo approach of reducing it down to as simple and accurate as possible first, (as in, step by step, block by block movement with infinite wait time before being pulled back) Then seeing what you can do to make it faster from there once accuracy is 100%. You said it's meant to be hard, and I can appreciate that, but their is challenging design, and frustrating controls, and this is the latter which you already know. If you want to be successful with your steam release, finding a way forward with that is a must, experiment a bit with control styles until you arrive at something good. Actually idea just now for short term success: Add a modifier button/key (I played on both KB and Controller) that won't let you get pulled back to your point of origin as long as its held down, or a 'slow down time' modifier for precise intricate movement. You could even add a power meter so you can't just do the whole level with it and have to use it for the tricky parts.

[DIALOGUE]
I like a good story, the extra dialogue both in the intro/certain levels and journal is a nice added touch, but where its fun to read, it goes on a little too long or adds detail that we as players aren't going to care about. Like I ended up skipping some of the intro because it was just textextextextext that could have been summarized a lot quicker.

The Journal is a really cool addition and one of the things I like a lot about the game, having the big gem and collection screen, tutorial and enemy pages etc. But even these entries just go on much too long about things that aren't going to be interesting to the player. Let me give you an example:

Spectral Binoculars:
"The spectral binoculars have special lenses that bring spectral light into focus, revealing certain hidden objects and allowing the user to view distant hazards"

This line in itself is pretty verbose, but if that was the whole entry with a little drawing of "Press Y to activate" that would be more than enough. Instead we have

"Activate the spectral binoculars by pressing the Y button on the controller or spacebar on the keyboard. Press the button again to deactivate the binoculars. "

You don't need to say "The controller" or "The keyboard" because the player already knows what control scheme they're using. You could summarize this with

"Activate/Deactivate the spectral binoculars by pressing Y or the space bar"

There is like a page and a half explaining how they work, so by the time we get to the following blurb

"Spectral lenses are lenses that have been treated with a special spectral solution that permanently alters their crystal structure allowing them to enhance the visibility of spirits. There are four different colours of lenses, each with a corresponding spirit class. Unfortunately, the smaller lenses that can be switched on or off have gone missing. They must be somewhere in the mansion"

I'm not a writer, I suck at writing, but as a player I read this and know that the crystal structure, spirit class, and spectral solution have zero lore implications or interest for me in the stage of the game I'm in. There is no puzzle or relevant information here besides that "These can probably be upgraded later and maybe reveal stuff in earlier levels which could be cool"

With my limited writing I would summarize it kinda like this

"These special lenses enhance the visibility of spirits. There are four different coloured lenses, but some of them seem to have gone missing... They must be somewhere in the mansion."

It may appear too simple, and I do like that you tried to add more personality and lore, without it tying much to the in game context, it will just come across as needless fluff or boring. So consider reducing journal entries down, or even adding more pictures if you'd like to keep explaining the lore. That would make it more interesting for players reading them.

Like I was actually quite interested in picking up journal pages and reading up about all the enemies until I realized most of them read a bit like this.

Those are my main gripes, I don't mean to come off as harsh or too critical or rude, so if any of this ended up personally offensive I apologize, I just like the game and see such nice art and charm that I'd like you to have a better chance of success when you release it in full.

Muketronics responds:

I too find that the controls have issues, specifically with the player falling back when they want to turn. This problem can be fixed by using a controller, as the keyboards issue is related to having to release one key as you press another. Getting these things right is really difficult and I'd like to thank you for your insight.

The Journal entries are still rough drafts so there are all sorts of issues with them. They may feel a little long and drawn out, but they have a low character count. The journal is Mr. Stretches scientific journal from his past life, so it has a lot of commentary about the ghosts, and what makes them unique. The lore is not very connected to the game yet, but neither of them are finished, and we have big plans. Collecting all of the journal pages will have a different reward other than all of the reading material.

[Gooby]

The GOOB.
Loved it, short, fun, great sound effects and style.
Wish there were a few bosses and more upgrades, but whatever, if I feel that way it means you succeded.

[Snaklipse]

A really interesting take on snake. Controlling on a keyboard is obviously still pretty hard at that speed. I like that there's more mechanics than just getting longer. Plus multiple 'lives' and the added incentive to keep going and keep your candle burning, so that all is not after getting hit a couple times.

Also, I've been following your work for a bit, since your dice game I believe. I really like your art style and aesthetics, I'd love to see some kind of roguelike or RPG from you. Maybe you just like focusing on smaller games, but I'm here to let you know I'm a big fan.

[Nyghtmare: The Ninth King]

My childhood was all gameboy and GBC games, as well as a big fan of Castlevania series, so I'm going to play this one in full then give you a proper review when I have time. I'll edit this post later, but I can post to your itch.io too if that's better for you. A couple things I'll mention right now from the little I've played is that the character selection screen had a flickering of the hood that I wondered if it was intentional, but also that your character sprite could be a bit larger, or use more pixels and be shrunk down, since it doesn't convey the detail very well. I'm very intrigued by everything else though.

[Super Chicken TD]

Was extremely buggy for me. Kept having my class menu changed to a bunch of rocket chickens. Also the sound glitched in a horrendous scratchy way where it just became a bunch of static. While I like the concept and the spritework, Defending your fields, having an exchange and defending waves. There isn't really any reason to go through them or sense of progression. The waves all come at you the same way forever, there's no real variety or longterm upgrades. After messing around the first time, I just put 4 wizard chickens in a cross shape with some shield guys in front of some of them and got through 20 waves on fast-forward. It's not really enjoyable. The exchange market is a good idea, but being able to just instant swap all the time rather than a between waves sort of system, just means you're going through the tedium of swapping resources til you get what you need, then swapping again for the next thing until you're down to zero.

I think it's a good concept but its currently too basic and buggy to be considered a full game. I know this all sounds pretty scathing but I've got one more, the music. It's incredibly grating. I grew up with stuff like this: https://youtu.be/XB5zcgIJy0w so It's not like I don't enjoy this sort of music, It's just not a track you can listen to long term without it starting to become painful.

Sorry, It's the end of the night and I'm tired so this might come off as too direct or unfair. You know what, I just read that it's a gamejam submission, so we can forgive most of that since you probably had to rush this along. But if you'd like to go further with it, there's potential.

[Sulka]

Great sound and music much like your other ones. Only a few simple mechanics, but I know this was made in a short time so that's expected. Things of note, despite there being a little trial and error with jumps and hazards at first, death was never really all that frustrating given you respawn very quickly and don't have to reload the levels. That and these chill mellow tunes are the kind of thing I can listen to for hours. I haven't checked if you posted any music yet, but if you have any playlists of your stuff I'd love to listen to them just to chill out.

[Pipe Skull]

That ended up being pretty challenging toward the end. But the trick is just to count your movements and rotate the pipes before placing them to see if they'll be in the right spot when you need them. Really clever game and fun levels that weren't too difficult or too easy either. The relaxing droning space music combined with the matching sound effects made it enjoyable over a long term. I ended up just keeping the tab open and coming back to it a bunch over 2 days before reaching the end. But I DID keep coming back. So that's how you know it's a good concept.

[Dice Catcher]

WHEW.
That ended up being fairy challenging by the end
At first I didn't really care for it because I didn't understand the dice roll mechanic of rolling hostile dies. Like my brain registered I could roll shit, but for some reason I thought it only applied to swords to hearts, or hearts to swords, and more mechanics would be added later.

I liked all the enemies designs and the differences in their attack values etc. I'd say the most frustrating part of the game was spam rolling dice and getting the same result while on a time limit, rather than guaranteed cycling into the next one.

The stun zones were also kinda frustrating, but that's part of the main challenge of the game I guess. I think if there was ever a full version of this format there would be a lot of potential for like, different attacks and defense methods, or support dice. Like you could either have an upgrade or equip system with your favorite styles of attack, or have certain stuff more effective for different enemies. But then instead of the time limit bar on the bottom ending the game, it could just be faster and when the enemy launches their attack.

So you could have dice like the hearts that can just cancel an enemy's attacks entirely, or freeze dice that freeze one of their attack dice for a round but don't remove it, so they could stack up if you don't end the fight quickly or deal with them later. You could have combination attacks that require like, Heart, Sword, Ice that could do special effects or patterns, that were either initiated by the order you pick up the dice, or better yet, Have an area of the screen you click to LAUNCH your attack, so if you pick up a specific combination you can just choose to launch it or cast your ability/magic etc. There's a lot of potential for cool stuff in a fleshed out version.

Like after getting used to cancelling attacks, you'd eventually find an armored enemy with metal or chains around his attack dice, and hearts would just bounce off unable to affect them, or would take a heart combination, or would need to be frozen.

You could also choose to remain simple where enemies just have healthbars like you do, or eventually have special healthbars that depend on their bodies where you'd have to physically aim, done through combinations or by clicking one of 3 spots on the edge of the field where you 'launch' your dice. I just picture like, launching a big Crescent projectile that would either be guaranteed to hit the weak spot, or hit multiple weak spots at once. Better yet, instead of launching dice in a direction, just have 3 spots and healthbars for special monsters being on different planes. could also work for multi monster fights where you have to answer multiple sides at once.

I know this is a lot, and maybe you have no intention of doing anything more with it. But those are my ideas since I see a lot of potential in it. Feel free to use them if you go on to make something more.

[Bad Monday Simulator]

Ugh, It's fucking difficult but i'll do it eventually