JonBro's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Naya's Quest]

A unique, mind-bending concept done very well. It eases you into the mechanics, it doesn't overstay its welcome, and the later stages utilize an impressive abundance of fresh ideas.

I personally disagree with every "fatal flaw" mentioned in LadyZexion's review, as I actually consider all those "cons" to be pros.
1. I love the fact that the New Game+ is an easier, clearer vision of the game. It gives you a better perspective of everything you went through the first time and is rewarding in its own way.
2. The ambient soundtrack contributed a lot to the atmosphere of the game, and I didn't grow tired of it, as it never got in the way of the puzzles.
3. The triangular jumping arc may look slightly odd, but it suits the mechanics and I always had the right feel for how high and how far I was jumping. It would not have worked as well any if it had been designed any other way.
4. I found the ending satisfying, because it was appropriately simple and thought provoking, a sound reflection of the game as a whole. It created the illusion that the world within the game was of a much more tremendous scale than it is, and it caused me to question my own life perspective. Sometimes the most fulfilling conclusion is something that goes against what you hope it will be.

I will say I didn't understand the inclusion of lives. My best guess is that they were incorporated to discourage the player from solving each puzzle with trial and error, forcing them to carefully consider their every move, but it took away some of the game's immersion for me, and it irked me when I would misjudge a single jump or step on my last life and the game would force me to replay the previous room. It seemed unnecessary and I think the game would have benefited from not having a lives system.

I feel privileged to have experienced Naya's Quest. Upon reaching the end, it's beyond me how anyone could even pull something like this off in Flash.

[XCVB]

The controls are great. The hard part is figuring out how to use them.

My only real gripe is that the one-block-wide pathways required a little too much precision. I felt as though the point of the game was fighting disorientation, and the unforgiving collision detection in narrow spaces conflicted with that point. I can't imagine that mastering the X.C.V.B. unique mechanic would have made timing those tight turns any easier.

I had fun and felt obligated to play the game until I beat it. Now that that's done, I'm going to see if I can make an acronym out of the name.
"X-ecuting Controls in Variegated Bemusement" ...I don't know.

[Ripple Dot Zero]

My feelings are... mixed. I have some great things, some mediocre things, and one especially unhappy thing to say about this game.

First off, I seriously admire how much detail there is. From beginning to end, the artwork is solid and beautiful to look at, and nothing ever feels out of place. The parallax-scrolling title logo in the first stage was a really cool way to introduce the game, and the controls are easy enough to figure out by the time you get to Level 2. Everything runs very smoothly, and you certainly caught the feel of old 16-bit classics like Sonic the Hedgehog with the catchy music and level design--except here, the controls are more manageable and the fast pace of the gameplay is very infrequently interrupted. The difficulty curve is also pretty respectable, and I can tell the game is just designed to feel rather satisfying to play through.

Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the background and foreground, or which platforms you can jump through and which ones you can't, which can be pretty disconcerting at times. Occasionally, I found it unclear which direction I was supposed to be going to reach the end of a stage, starting with the first maze-like "Oxygen Plants" level. And when I finally met the requirements to enter one of the bonus stages to save one of the other Ripple subjects, I found the penalty for not collecting quite enough vials within the time limit to be really unforgiving, so completing the game 100% sounds like it would be more frustrating than fun.

I also found it irritating that the protagonist has a maximum health meter of four hearts most of the time, but he always starts out with two hearts upon entering a level or respawning, and if he gets hit even once, all you hear until you either die or find another heart is *blip-blip-blip-blip*... From what I've been able to tell, there is no way to turn this alert sound off without turning off all the sound in the game, and this saddens me because I enjoy the music and sound effects.

Now, for my biggest complaint, and the main reason I have mixed feelings about this game: If I'm being completely honest here, even with all of its beauty, I feel like this is almost as generic of a hop-and-bop game as they come. From a gameplay perspective, there's not much about this experience that makes it stand out. You run, jump, and swing a beam-sword, and meanwhile there are a bunch of small objects to collect. I was intrigued when that hover suit and boomerang disc were introduced, only to be disappointed when I found how rarely they were utilized throughout the game. As I played on, I kept hoping for more unique mechanics--new ideas that built upon past levels to create new experiences. Instead, every level felt basically the same, just laid out a little differently, save for the boss battle and mini-chase sequence at the end.

If I had to summarize my thoughts, I'd say Ripple Dot Zero does everything that it does very well, but some areas could have been improved, and the overall experience had a depressing amount of missed potential.

[Uirdz]

After playing up to the last level and finding myself too annoyed to complete it, I have mixed feelings, and unfortunately most of them are negative.

The concept of the game is original and well utilized. The dialogue and the captions are clever, the puzzles and level design were very carefully made. The music was catchy enough, and there was a lot of content.

But those controls... Goodness gracious. They're far too slippery and sensitive for a game with as many precise jumps as this one does. The game is clearly meant to be pretty fast-paced (or else you wouldn't have had all those practically impossible 'target times'), yet the character takes an unnaturally long time to turn around both in the air and on the ground. The three-tile-high jump is capable of avoiding the spikes thrown by the boss, but only by about a pixel or less. Speaking of jumping, it's also not easy to jump, then jump again as soon as you land on the ground, which I think is a serious oversight.

Those were all cases of when the game does too little, but there are plenty of times when it does too much, as well. The character would always move farther than I wanted it to and jump higher than I asked it to anytime I lightly tapped the keys to do either of those things. There were even a number of times where the controls glitched and I kept moving one direction even if I wasn't pressing anything.

While I'm on the subject of glitches, I might as well also point out that there were multiple times when I was using the word "FLIP" while jumping past some platforms, and everything froze. Only the Esc key was still working. Also, if you die while the boss is roaring, the sound of the roar persists forever until you go back to the level select, enter the last level again, and watch the entire pre-boss cutscene again.

The reason I've brought up the boss so many times is that while nearly all of this game's issues are present throughout most of the levels, they really shine when you reach the end of the game and suddenly ALL of the difficulty is comprised of these awful design flaws. Was this game just meant to be challenging by any means necessary, even if it meant bad functionality? That's the kind of vibe I get from the insane medals attached to this game, none of which are even as simple as "Beat the game for 100 points." I haven't even bothered bringing up the dragging-the-text mechanic, but as many people will probably tell you, exact-placement mouse controls and fast-paced gameplay don't really go well together if you're trying to make a game that isn't frustrating for all the wrong reasons.

This whole game just feels unresponsive, which wouldn't have been as irritating if this was entirely a puzzle-based game without any ludicrous jumps or near-exact timing, but it almost feels like you pieced all the levels together and then programmed the character at the last minute. The game starts out being enjoyable as the mechanics are introduced to you, and then it became overly difficult in a way that's not actually satisfying, because the only challenge the player is really dealing with is the artificial challenge of flimsy maneuverability... which is sad. There was so much potential here.

[A Bit of Fun]

I actually found this to be quite a 'bit of fun' once I got used to the controls, and I found the art style charming. Although, as others have pointed out, the enemy's hitboxes do feel larger than they ought to be, and I found myself dying a number of times just because I thought I was going to jump past an enemy and I exploded into red blocks instead. (You may have updated the game since these complaints, but even still, the hitboxes felt a tad wide.) I also found I was getting most frustrated and having the least amount of fun when I encountered a super-precise jump, which this game doesn't have an abundance of, but the few it does have are pretty big speed bumps. Level 4 in particular seemed badly designed for that reason, especially since it was a precise jump you have to make so close to the beginning of the game. It's also worth mentioning that the game lagged a little for me on every level containing falling snow, but this is more of a minor detail in my eyes and didn't affect the gameplay too much.

All in all, this is an enjoyable little experience which mainly suffered from occasional random difficulty spikes and unnatural collision detection. And I'm one of the people who actually liked collecting all the bits.

[SkullFace]

I played this on your site before I discovered it was on Newgrounds, too, and it makes me a little sad to see that it might not get all the appreciation it deserves.

It's obvious that this screams Super Meat Boy and N+, seeing as those were your two primary inspirations, there are a couple of levels named after them, and even the character's design is somewhere between Meat Boy and N because he's a stickfigure with no apparent skin. But total originality isn't necessary to create a truly satisfying gaming experience, and there was a vast array of unique elements in this game that constantly kept it fresh and interesting. Those elements really added up and were used well, too--by the time I was done playing, SkullFace felt like no game I'd ever played before. The variety is amazing.

Heck, there are even a couple of things I prefer about this game over Super Meat Boy (like how the boss battle was handled, and how 'acrobatic' the main character is). This is really a well-designed game; I managed to beat each level with an A+ rank, and though it was difficult, it never felt unreasonable or downright cheap.

However, here's a list of my minor gripes:

I had a few issues with the wall jump right away, which stayed with me throughout the remainder of the game. I always longed for a bit more maneuverability upon leaping from a wall--as in, if I were to hold "down", SkullFace shouldn't jump as high, and if I were to hold "right" while on the left side of a wall, he shouldn't launch himself as far away from said wall.

I also think it feels 'off' that SkullFace slides down walls so sluggishly. It disrupts the fast pace of the game a little to be darting through sets of obstacles one moment and inching down a wall the next. Maybe the rate at which you slide down walls could have been based on momentum so the pace remained intact.

I found World 2 to be the hardest of all three worlds because I was still adapting to the way the game was meant to be played at that point, and certain levels (like 20 and 25) felt like sharp out-of-place spikes in difficulty. I felt a sense of accomplishment beating most of the levels, but those, not quite as much.

Also, the jellyfish-looking enemies in World 3 have what I consider a slightly over-sensitive hitbox. I would sometimes fall onto the edge of a jellyfish enemy's head expecting to bounce forward to a new part of the stage, only to instead explode into black squares. I soon "learned" the size of their weak point and had no problems utilizing it to progress through the game, but it was still a two-minute nuisance for an otherwise surprisingly 'non-frustrating' experience.

I was also kinda expecting a reward for getting an A+ on every stage. Even a "Congrats! You got all A's! What a great report card!" message on the main menu would have sufficed.

As mentioned, these are not significant complaints. They somewhat detract from the general polish and slickness of the game, but regardless, SkullFace is a highly enjoyable platforming game with (I'd say) more going for it than most Flash games that currently exist. The music is fitting and catchy, the artwork is crisp. the characters are memorable, the sound effects were entertaining and gave the atmosphere a special sort of 'kick', and it's just really darn cool sometimes (namely Level 28, 33, and some others I can't think of right away).

Simply put, even with its imperfections, SkullFace is a project you have every right to feel super proud of.

Greg-Anims responds:

Awesome review, i really appreciate it!

[RED: A Demo]

To the other reviewers, when he says this game will never be finished, I'm sure he means that this game will never be finished. It's his choice to let it go, so let's not bother him about it.

To AwkwardSilenceGames, I played until the end and was pleased by what I saw. The graphics greatly reminded me of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery, although they could conceivably been inspired by something else I'm not familiar with. The sound felt unbalanced--the beeps when you cycle through conversations were noticeably louder than the first sound effects you encounter in the game, but I'm really fond of the atmosphere set by the absence of music.

As for gameplay, the point-and-click was well-utilized, although it was incredibly disconcerting to discover that you can't always go back to a previous screen, yet sometimes it's required to advance the plot. I also was bothered by the inconsistent interactivity with other townsfolk and objects; you can only talk to a few people who look just like everyone else, there are many buttons you can click on that don't do anything, and you can't enter most of the doors.
I thought the battle system seemed out of place, since the beginning of the plot never put me under the impression that this game was an RPG, and neither the turn-based battles nor the healing mushrooms were given a proper, timely introduction. (I also thought it was pretty strange that the spiders were more powerful than the snakes.) Though I did get used to them, and I'm sure the battles were intended to get more complicated as you progressed.
Overall, the game is also pretty slow-paced--not to a frustrating extent for this demo's purposes, but it had potential to be irritating if it went on for too long. I'd have really hoped for a double-click-to-run option if this was completed.

The story is the main appeal of this game, and that aspect of it is superb. Just by the short bursts of dialogue and the desolate setting of the game, I could tell this was meant to flesh out into a significant message of sorts. The attention to detail accentuates the tone of the setting, too, like the faded roads and the smashed television in the dirt. I particularly loved the concept of the Hole in the World, for some reason.

It's entirely understandable to me why you didn't pursue this project to completion, because it's admittedly full of little flaws that sort of take away from the experience, but you crafted Red's world masterfully, so even though you're never going to finish this particular project, I'd love to see what other engaging works of art you hold for the future.

[Death Count]

It's a decent game. Polished better than many of its type. Although I feel like a lot was missing from it.

With the name "Death Count", I was expecting an actual death counter to be logically utilized in some way that changed the levels or the character's abilities, especially with the second level's message that says "Touch the spikes to score extra points." I realized quickly the game mechanics were not as clever as the dialogue and that this is just your typical platformer.

The volume of the individual sound effects is surprisingly unbalanced. Some sounds, like the tone when you click on a button in the menu and the sound when the protagonist dies, are very quiet, as is the ambient music. Other sounds, like the metallic clanking of the moving spiked blocks and the cracking noise that the walls make when they start moving, are irritatingly loud. There's almost nothing inbetween, either.

The controls can be a little awkward at times. I noticed that if you hold down the jump key, you jump in the air, which makes sense, but if you let go of the jump key when you're back on the ground again, you jump back up in the air. I don't see why both pressing and releasing a key have the same function in slightly different instances, so I found that sometimes I didn't jump when I wanted to.

I was really annoyed with the overly sensitive collision detection of the main character. Even when he's just standing in place, he's not touching the ground. It wasn't always the challenging nature of the levels that led to constant death, but the mere fact that the main character can get killed by spikes that aren't even touching him. That's faulty design for a game that's based around avoiding obstacles and making precise jumps.

But I can't even tell if that's what this game was about. It felt like this game didn't know what it wanted to be. Some of the early levels were misleading jokes, and a few scattered levels were about strategic puzzle-solving. Paired with the eerie song selection, it seemed like this was supposed to be something haunting and deep, but then the game turned into pixel-perfect agility trials after the inclusion of the spiked wall. I also don't get what the physics engine was for. That seemed sort of flimsy and unnecessary for a tile-based game of this build, and it didn't match up with the rest of the retro atmosphere.

I will say that the game kept my interest long enough to play through all the levels. In actuality, that might not be saying much, since this is game is a very short-lived experience (in more ways than one). It's generic, inconsistent, and frustrating for the wrong reasons, but it is certainly a step up from unfair platformers that have no sense of skill or difficulty progression.

[Maximum Frustration 2]

I don't think titling a game "Maximum Frustration" justifies the needless irritation made by the game's design. The whole premise is mindless trial-and-error, no skill involved, no logic involved. It's like a memory-matching game, where a hundred cards are all turned upside-down, and every time you pick a wrong card, you have to start over. Even the notorious I Wanna Be The Guy gives you a fairly clear indication of what objects will and won't lead to instant death, most of the time.

Perhaps if more of the game consisted of mildly humorous elements like the flying cow in an early level, there might be some reason to enjoy it and incentive to play through it. As it stands right now, however, it's designed around being an irritating, repetitive waste of time, which is a terrible purpose for any game.

Zapxo responds:

Aren't you frustrated?

[Hexagon]

I thought this game was impossible to play the first time I tried it. Yet, for whatever reason, I felt compelled to play it again the next day, and the day after that, and now I just love it for its challenge and simplicity. I wouldn't think arrow key controls would work well for a game like this, but they do, because the collision detection is rather forgiving and the gameplay just takes a bit of getting used to. Hexagon has made me realize some games don't need a gradual difficulty curve to have a learning curve.