Bcadren's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Diro da Blob]

86 xtra spikes, 0 uwu's ? , 45 deaths. Tried to maximize extra spikes. idk. Guess there's no real scoreboard. Guess uwu is a clear with no deaths, probably easy in earlier levels without extra spikes, but otherwise, lol. Only major gripe is you need to write actual instructions and not memed BS (No offense).

[Culpa]

Is the monster in the basement it? . . . awfully short game, leaves more of a feeling of being unfinished than anything else if that's the case.

Meiallu responds:

Yeah, but we're still adding more stuff to the game.

[Garden Of The Crow]

Twist ending was nice, though I'd've hoped for a harder to get good ending. My one major gripe is the precise backtracking timing on the hidden achievements, especially What am I?, which at least has a hint to come back later, but too early, still says come back later and too late and the frog goes back to his dialog from before the fishing pole and What Big Teeth You Have, which has no hint at all and requires backtracking all the way at the very end.

[Gappy 3]

World 1: Easy Basics.
World 2: Ok, a little challenging and the gravity flip is disorienting.
World 3: A bit easier than two with a cute bouncy gimmick.
World 4: AUGH. WTF, Damned hard and the theme went to weird.

[Slim Wall Reslimed]

A bit too long for lack of level select, pause and save I think. Didn't finish was getting too bad of browser lag after a bit. Pretty fun though.

[Sausage Game]

Got the "eww" achievement trying to stab the dog in the balls with the sword to not leave the bacon out to dry . . . jussayin'

Jacob responds:

Your helpful attitude disgusts me.

[Decadungeon]

Great game in general has some major balance issues with the different possible player classes.

https://imgur.com/a/E6t2AMx

Played through it until near the end enough times to review the classes a bit. Only time I finished it, well...you can see from those stats what the biggest issue is. (X/5 where 5 is ideal balance, over 5 is too strong and less than 5 is too weak).

Monk (8/5) - This class is alright to slightly weak until it gets Phase Shift; at which point it becomes overpowered, doing around five attack turns in a row is likely to end an encounter once cast with full 3 charges.

Druid (5/5) - Early on has some MP issues and it can have a bit of frailty issues, though the summons more than make up for the frailty and the summons have some real action economy help (effectively extra party member once cast). Feenix proved to be key towards the end, with a combo of auto-reraise and effect like Knight's Rally for the last floor's encounters.

Lich (5/5) - Drain/Draintu really helps their survivability and they have an ideal balance of magic with HP/bulk. Icetu guarantees a defense debuff. Great spellsword.

Knight (4/5) - Rally is great and its stats are decently bulky. Whirlwind is marginally better than attack in theory, but the randomness isn't worth it except when only one enemy.

Cleric (4/5) - Better choice for Brick than the default Terra as the high strength makes him a defacto paladin who can heal or banish when necessary, but whose attack action doesn't suck. Only class that gets Revive without finding a Revive Ring, which combined with Barrier/BarrierAll strongly helps with survivability.

Rogue (3/5) - Caltrops debuffing all foe's speed is nice. Spy is the only way to see weaknesses and resistances, though it's usually not worth the turn to use it. The rest of its set is better done by another class.

Mimic (3/5) - Once you've learned the spells they are fairly decent; the early "Trick Treat" functioning as a CureAll and stampede debuffing all foe's defense are nice; but, learning the spells is a liability and they feel weaker than more normal casters overall. Warp (increase turn rate of target ally) is their best unique spell. Bit of a fun factor and help in future runs by more clearly exploring enemy spells, as well. (Would be 4/5 if it wasn't for the liability of wasting turns to learn spells).

Mage (2/5) - Too frail to live. Needs a knight that uses their protect ability and/or a cleric using barrier to keep it up. High DPS/frail, given the nature of this game the frailty just isn't worth it. Unique spells in Firetu and Arcane are neat, but ultimately the hybrid lich is far better.

Enchanter (1/5) - Extreme action economy issues. Enchanting buffs the attack of itself or another unit, but it falls into the same issue as True Strike in D&D, attacking now to gang up on one of the four enemies and reduce their numbers is better than maybe doing more damage later AND it's one enchant at a time

Other notes:

Bosses are a pushover compared to normal encounters, combination of having a full heal right before them so you can use all available buff/debuffs that cost MP to help and action economy (four enemies can gang up on one of your four party members and KO it in a turn if you're unlucky while a boss can't do that.)

No idea what the Lucky Doubloon does, but it seemed to help . . . Crit Rate? More stats on levelup? Really should say something a bit more clear.

Similarly I equipped the rusty pitchfork for awhile but ended up trashing it, couldn't figure out what its secret is if any. A greater hint than hidden power would be nice.

RNG is a little too heavy, just as likely to get the best weapons/badges in the game on the first floor as any other treasure encounter and may finish the game without seeing them at all. (No Aegis or Platinum sword at all in my win, previous run had two Platinum Swords on the first floor).

[T.O.F.U]

Decent but I've some criticisms:

Super Meat Boy is slippery and uses it to its advantage; these physics are floaty and it's often a disadvantage.

Due to their status as physics objects standing on corpses is very awkward. Seppukuties from the period you mentioned did this better. Sometimes even two corpses can shove you in an awkward manner; they really need to be static platforms when the player isn't intentionally picking them up to move.

There's a bug where you just die while standing in certain areas in the last chapter, I think it lines up to where the skewers retract? (like you made them not draw but they still have physics?

The "using corpses to continue" mechanic is dropped too much, like it's an afterthought; more of the level designs should use it or it should be dropped completely; most the later levels can be finished without engaging with this gimmick and in some the "corpse litter" can make it impossible to complete WELL before you reach the death cap.

You can't reset the level during the hopping onto the stage animation; minor, but it's a bother when the last complaint is true (need to clean up corpse litter in order to make the level go back to its original difficulty).

Positive:

I can see what you're doing, inheriting from Meat Boy, the PETA parody of Meat Boy (Tofu Boy), as well as I Wanna Be the Guy and (maybe) Seppukuties (Unless you came up with the gimmick seperately) and it's a solid effort, but it could us a lot of refining.

YewTM responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I never actually heard of Seppukuties before, but I played a bit since you mentioned it and I can see what you're getting at.

In the near future I'll probably integrate corpses more into the levels, the corpses thing was sorta an afterthought as "they can be used to reduce the difficulty of levels, but aren't required."

I believe I have solved the skewers issue, along with enabling restarting during the hopping onto the stage thingy. I will have them out in todays patch!

[Neon Souls Demo]

Cute. But I honestly don't want more; the core gimmick of "can't see the ground until you've splattered on it" already started to wear thin and I can't imagine a longer game of this being fun.

[Cursed Travels: Flame of the Banshee]

Found 11 total ghosts, are there more?

1. Church Basement
2. First Graveyard scene, make the cat run far enough.
3. Second Graveyard scene, attract the moth to a specific grave.
4. The Crypt in the Graveyard (first graveyard scene).
5. The strange grave (first graveyard scene).
6. The house with no door.
7. The fish statue.
8. The MacJohnson house.
9. The barn
10. The town wall (tall structure in the scene with the woodcutter's house).
11. The Cave to the West.