ProsciuttoMan's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cat Bros]

It's a decent first attempt at an I Wanna Be The Guy-styled rage game, but there's a lot of design choices that I find to be downright horrible.
For example, I don't think there should be a 5 second break between dying and respawning. IWBTG and Meat Boy typically have very short respawn times, which makes death a more fun mechanic.

tecnologiaplaitec responds:

voy a corregirlo gracias

[Rushdown Rivals]

This might be a bit of a controversial take, but I found this game to just be kind of ok? IDK, I played the downloadable version but I don't imagine that's too different from the web browser build.
I'd say my biggest fault with the game is that it's too much reward without enough risk:
Enemies and bosses tend to be very slow and heavy. I think allowing bosses to get knocked around more, or at least try a lot more often to attack the player would help with this, and really sell your characters' strength.
The levels are mundane and largely uninteresting to traverse. I understand this is to make sure that enemies can be spawned and defeated often, but I think having level-specific enemy spawning or behavior would help to alleviate this issue and present more of a challenge to players.
Weirdly, I found the voice acting a little too intrusive: maybe some way of limiting its frequency would be helpful.
The crossover angle is done in a commendable, yet slightly disappointing way:
I feel that the playable roster played things way too safe by focusing almost exclusively on characters from FNF and Newgrounds Rumble: the kid from Dad n Me was a good start, but I feel like crossover games like this are at their best when they're breaking new ground with their character rosters (especially on Newgrounds, where we've seen Pico and co, Madness, and FNF crossovers out the ass for the past few years). I understand that this is done so that a more casual audience understands that its a Newgrounds crossover game, but it still makes for a roster that feels very "been there done that".
I did enjoy seeing a lot of games by some friends of mine get representation though: a lot of newer NG submissions tend to struggle for visibility, and it was cool. I hope more stuff like this is done with the game going forwards.

KeithGarces responds:

I appreciate the constructive feedback as we definitely take it into consideration! You can chalk the simplicity directly to me as I wanted to make sure we had a nice accessible platform to work off of! I personally underestimated how deep people were willing to go mechanically, but I've been thankfully proven wrong from the fan feedback and videos.
Trying to expand the scope of who is represented is important (though I'll need help from the community on that personally since I've mainly been an early 2000s NG lurker.) We have ENA rolling in at some point as well as other plans if the interest is still around! Thanks again!

[Cumslingers]

This is brilliant. It brings a whole new meaning to the term "art game", and provides deep and insightful commentary into the world of toxic masculinity.

[Kiwiman X-TREME]

REALLY cool bird.

[Portal Defenders: Fast Break!]

It's probably the most fun I've had with a sports game, but I'm otherwise pretty conflicted about this one.
The gameplay is pretty fun. I'm not a basketball fan or anything, but I could moreorless follow what was going on during most of the game, although I feel like the "combat mechanics" (ie shoving other characters over, slapping the shit out of enemies) might've benefitted from being more of a central focus. The stage hazards are pretty good, but I feel having hazards stem from both opponents and playing fields would be pretty fun.

As usual, PostElvis and Dry bring some killer tracks that give the soundscape a really awesome vibe.
Sometimes it feels a bit weird to just hear the same slap sound effect for every collision though, I feel like having like 3 or 4 effects that play interchangeably would help with this a lot. Corey's voice acting is solid, but I feel like there should be some sort of option to limit how often the announcer speaks since it can tend to feel like too much at times.

Since it's a crossover, I guess it's necessary to critique the roster as well. It's incredibly generic. You essentially have a mashup of characters from Friday Night Funkin, and Newgrounds Rumble: since these have already been done to death, there's like no surprise to seeing them together at this point and it feels lame.
Why not add characters from more recent submissions like Rolus or Gappy? Sure, you'd confuse some of the people who only come on NG to make/discuss FNF mods, but IMO the uniqueness of the roster and support you'd be giving to up-and-comers would more than make up for it. Sublo, Tangy Mustard, and Dead Estate are a good start, but it really feels like you just gave up on showing people new stuff halfway.
This is especially frustrating considering one of the characters is literally just a palette swap of Pico.

I also seemed to encounter a bug where sometimes I'd just get booted out of a level. IDK why lol.

[FulpWare CLICKER]

Fuck Tappyware

[Vizzy & The Lost Cat]

Ain't bad.
Kinda reminds me of Leap Day or something like that.
I think the game might benefit from having the characters contrast the backdrops a bit more, since readability can sometimes be an issue: a palette that's largely brown and black doesn't really contrast well with mostly black and dark red backgrounds. The cop jockeys do this pretty well actually: they're pretty brightly coloured, so I can always see them against the darker backdrops.
The art itself is pretty good don't get me wrong, it just doesn't really contrast environments where it needs to. Maybe the protagonist having a bright purple jumper or changing the backdrop to be closer to a greyish blue would help?
Music is hella good though, and I could for sure see myself paying for this if it was polished up and put on the App Store.

[Catatattack!]

Not quite horrible, but not quite great either.
Art-wise, it's OK. A bit too derivative off Funkin' or something for my liking, but I suppose some people like it.

The crux of my issues come with the gameplay though:
The player's attacks keep him in constant motion but when combined with having to constantly jump between narrow platforms, it leads to a lot of cheap deaths. Not helping with this is that the motion path seems to be fixed, which leads to even more cheap-feeling deaths.
I'd work on giving the player a greater sense of control, or at least changing the level layout to give the player more room to take advantage of the moveset you've given.
There isn't really any kind of a tangible progression system either: I get it's meant to be an arcade-style game, but I don't feel like I'm growing or progressing in any meaningful way as I rack up kills: something that's very important in these kinds of games.

JalenBrah responds:

Thanks for the notes!

Making the movement more controllable and adding an incentive beyond just a high score would definitely be a benefit to the game as a whole.

I’ll try and add to the player’s moveset and improve what’s already there to give more control

[Protect your Waifu - Jam Version]

A decent little tower defense game.
Unlike a lot of the other jam entries so far, it doesn't get repetitive too quickly, but a few issues like the transitions are a bit jarring and sudden, the lack of any impact or "punch" to anything you do, etc... makes things feel a bit unsatisfying.

onebitpudding responds:

True, I think about improving over time because I liked the idea, and thanks for the feedback, I will think of things to make it more satisfying

[Lose Your Money!]

Interesting premise, but starts feeling insanely repetitive pretty quickly.
As it stands right now, this is just RNG: the game. I don't feel like I'm actually doing anything, rather I'm just sitting around clicking for a random chance to progress. RNG can be good fun sometimes for minor features like level generation and items drops, but centering a whole game around it just makes for an often frustrating experience.
As a result, there isn't any sort of meaningful progression system leaving the player feeling unsatisfied more often than not. Maybe there's some safer bets? Maybe there's some skill-based ways to loose money?
I dunno, but making a game where literally all of your progress is based on random chance feels cheap and frustrating.