zinzilar's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Move Snake]

This game looks good. The UI looks nice and clearly wasn't just cobbled together like some UIs I've seen. Also, the snake was satisfying to watch when it shifted to a new horizontal position :) There's progression incentive and a nice variety of skins to choose from.

However, I wasn't able to get very far, it seems like the handling doesn't work well with the spacing between the barriers. I was both turning too fast and too slow and would almost always hit either the close or far side within the first 4 or 5 hurdles. Maybe I just need to git good but I might suggest spacing them out at least a little bit more.

Do note I'm playing on desktop and the screen ratio suggests that it's designed for mobile, so take my feedback as you will.

I don't know how long you've been coding, but for a first submission to the site it's pretty good. I get the feeling this isn't your first game, it's too polished for that :)

[Anvil Dodger]

As far as dodger games go it's not bad. Handles well, hitboxes felt right, includes collectables. The difficulty doesn't ramp up over time as far as I could tell which I actually preferred to the alternative. While there's not much that's groundbreaking about the game, if someone wanted a simple dodge game this would be a reasonable choice

The game seems like good progress for someone with only a few games on the site. Keep the momentum :)

[Adventure man]

Visuals are nice with that retro vibe. movement is pretty slow, wish it were a little faster. also is it possible to get up the chains without getting hit? I couldn't manage it even once. Couple of things that I noticed that you might be aware of: the life counter doesn't reset to x2 after you restart from title menu, but I know that doesn't matter since there's no checkpoints in this version. Also when you get to the end and continue into the game again, you are reset with -1 lives. Overall not a bad little game. Movement and jump handles well if a little slow and the level props (is that the right term for the spear things and stuff?) are intuitive: none of them confused me before I interacted with them so it never seemed unfair. If you plan on continuing to work on this I can see it having potential. Good work!

[Radiance Hearts]

I'm not usually big on platformers but holy smokes this one nailed it. Loved the mechanic of the two independent characters that would combine: would love to see more puzzles like that. Lovely art and set design. I found it perfectly suited to my skill level in platformers: the boss fight took me about 4 tries (before I finally figured out you don't have to dodge around the spinning one with the high jump like I was trying to do)

Delightful little game that I will absolutely revisit at some point. I can't think of a single complaint except nitpicks. Will be looking for more content from you in the future!

Yword responds:

Thank you very much! I'm glad you liked it. :)

[Frog Jump]

The jumping feels pretty good in terms of control, but the game is pretty clearly incomplete since there's no win/loss mechanic, and I can't quite tell if that's a score at the top right: it's cut off on my screen. The pixel art is decent although the mushroom creatures are pretty simplistic compared to everything else. Props for placing the tongue behind the player character when he's facing to the left and the tongue flowing around is a neat touch. The sounds are ok, they're pretty standard but they fit the game well. Works well enough as a simple head bouncer game even if there isn't an end. Could use some polish, but the functionality is there. It's pretty minimalist in terms of content though

Sandvich12 responds:

Thx it was made for a game jam and I was having problems with the camera so I didn’t get much time to polish it

[Deck Adventurers - Chapter 2]

The tweaks to the combat were interesting. formalizing the turn length to one attack, and/or 1-2 defend cards was definitely better than the last game where the enemies might attack out of sync and it was hard to coordinate your cards sometimes. or just hard to keep track of it. The introduction of allies was good for the NPCs, and summons works exactly like I'd think it should. I noticed someone else saying it's hard to see who's hitting who and while it's usually all good, I have two thoughts: 1) if I want to see if the heavy-hitting enemy is going to attack a constant ally or just a summon, I have to click on it to find it. I found myself doing this a lot at times. A UI for this would be really helpful. Maybe just an arrow instead of the flashing hit icons? Or even a player icon next to their target. 2) when say an ally is doing a sweeping attack to hit all enemies and then a summon will attack "wolf A" the visual indication for which wolf A is lost. This isn't a common issue though and it was usually pretty easy to keep track of things for the most part.

I was surprised by the change where fire attacks no longer leave ice residue and vice versa to be used as the shield. I really liked the idea and it made a lot of sense to me. I'm assuming it just didn't work for the combat mechanic you were going for though. I would personally love to see it again, but I'm sure that there was a lot of design I can't see that was behind the decision.

Is there a goal to have both characters as playable with cards within a single battle in the future? I can understand why this would be difficult to implement compared to these single and supported battles. If that is the goal, then I'd be excited to see what kinds of support cards would be usable; the fire shield applying to any unit you select and the herb doing likewise came in handy more than once. It'd be interesting if there could be a flaming weapon buff given from Berem to Tasha, or maybe Tasha warcries and all enemies switch to targeting her, leaving the more fragile wizard safe for that turn? In either case, if that's the trajectory you have in mind I can't wait to see it.

I'm really enjoying the series, I'm excited to see how this project continues. Keep up the excellent work!

Junjo responds:

I'm glad you found the changes interesting. And yes, some things still have to be improved, I take note of your suggestions.

On the ice-fire dichotomy in magic, it actually didn't quite work the way I wanted, so I changed it, but I still keep it in mind, maybe for another character (entropy wizard, maybe?) If I find the way to balance it well.

And yes, I am getting closer to being able to handle both characters with cards, but there are still some things that I would have to change. In the next chapter it will not be possible yet, but there will be more control over the allies.

Thanks, and I hope you like the next Deck Adventurers.

[Ring Wizardry]

Excellent variation in symbols and styles. The symbols are easy enough to learn (though they can be a little finnicky at times, the yellow one that has a 45 degree angle draw and the yellow boomerang were always difficult to try to pull off). I also liked how simple the drawings were despite how it's clearly designed so a player can't stumble upon a really solid spell. Personally, I'd like that experimentation, but I can see why it wouldn't fit in a game like this. I'll be keeping an eye on if there's ever an update for this if you decide to keep going!

also here's my hot take: blue and red had the best spells

[Deck Adventurers - Chapter 1]

This game was everything I'd want from a card combat game. Excellent strategy, customizability, and combat system. The variety of card effects was great and I'd love to see them developed. The concept of elemental effects was really cool and well implemented.

Can't wait to see more!

[Hexplore]

The puzzles are just at that sweet spot of difficulty where you can figure it out eventually. nice work! The art and tone are just the right kind of whimsical without getting too bizarre which is a common pitfall.

However, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get the teddy bear. I'm pretty sure I know where the coin needs to go once I have it, but I can't figure out how to actually get it. Does it have to do with the butter in the kitchen or the snake's plate? I'm not sure why they highlight but I can't do anything with them. All I have now the cup or candle and a parking fee to pay.

ThePeterson responds:

Try reading the yellow sign in the kitchen and then do the opposite :)

[Sorter]

Fun game! The stage with a box in a closed space (stage 4 I guess) was really tricky since the game mechanics aren't all that intuitive right away. What might help is to make the box sizes in stage 3 more distinct? They're about the same size, so if it were possible to rescale one step to be smaller and the other quite large, that could help? It's a tricky mechanic to understand, so I can understand it would be hard to have non-tutorial levels teach the player. Looking back, the mechanic makes a lot of sense, but first starting out it wasn't entirely clear why the boxes would sometimes move and sometimes not and the character always looking at the mouse actually confused that a little bit. But again, it was a fun puzzle! If you were thinking about making more levels, I'd be interested in playing them