darklinksmaster's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Laser Piguin Spring Break]

Can't get past the "Click anywhere to start" screen using Chrome without addons.

Dezue responds:

Heyho, darklinksmaster!
Sorry for that - your browser probably blocks cookies (which I need to save the game data).
Maybe another browser can help?
Stay funky,
Dez

[Flow Runner]

There's a really solid foundation here, nice!

Some notes:
+ I really like the fisheye effect allowing me to see further ahead while retaining the speed and feel of 2d platforming!
- The shop should perhaps not be completely randomized as getting 2 copies of the same item can feel very unfair.
+ Buying health hurts your progress towards gaining levels and is a great way to force risk-reward type decisions on players.
- Some level pieces lure the player into unavoidable deaths. Although maybe you don't want to remove this from ever happening, it feels a little too frequent now. Perhaps pits can respawn players safely at their end at the cost of 1 life instead of instantly killing.
- The slime's crouch takes a long time making it so that when I run up to it (almost) crouched I can't really tell when it's going to jump.
+ Aesthetically pleasing game! Music and visuals don't stand out too much but communicate clearly and serve the gameplay well.

Amni3D responds:

Yeah, a checkpoint or lives system could've worked pretty well, I feel.
I think a lot of the "unavoidable deaths" are the cause of a camera that needed a little more work, however :v A lot of deaths could've been prevented if the camera jeered after hitting a dash hoop, for example. Would've probably looked cooler too.

But hey, I'd like to think this game helped me be more competent all around. As flawed as I acknowledge it is, I'm glad you peeps found fun from it!

[Power Up!]

Very nice result for a jam! Its shooting mechanic leaves a lot of potential for expansion and you've done a great job of setting a nice atmosphere through the visuals. The shader seems quite simple but does a really nice job. Great entry overal!

[SPACE GUARDIAN]

The art style and assets look great and the addition of screenshake and visual effects makes the game look very polished. The random spawning of enemies and near guarantee that they'll fire at you makes the game very short and lack in interesting moments. I've had brown ships spawn on top of my turret, very outside of the scope of the camera causing them to fire before I've had a chance to see them and I've yet been able to even destroy a green ship before it destroys me. Either I'm missing a large portion of the controls or the game is quite unfair.

[Crystals]

Not sure if it's a bug or not but it's possible to swap a gem to an empty space in the grid, might have to check that out.

I found it weird in a design sense that it's primarily a very random game but all power-up rewards in the game have a very set circumstance for appearing. Line clear only appears when you match 4, bombs when you match 5 and all the goals of course are all based on matching on specific tiles in the grid. To make the feel of the game more consistent it might be cool to add a chance for power-ups to appear randomly in some form or way. Maybe spawning at the top of the screen, revealing when you break a purple block or having a chance to appear when you match 3.

I just read about the cross-clear in the description now, you have a nice variety in power-ups although they also seem to have the same effect of clearing gems. I remember in an old match-3 game called Collapse that there was a power-up which changed gems on the board to another colour, could be interesting to explore more types of powers.

turtlesf responds:

Not a bug. Moving crystals into blank spaces lets you position them to make matches, destroy the quartz (rock) obstacles, or help move spike ball obstacles downward. Blank spaces should only appear when there is a quartz obstacle blocking crystals from falling.

Matching games have an element of randomness, but this makes the game less fair. A goal for this game was to limit randomness to encourage competition. The color of the gems that fall is not totally random, it is picked from a randomized list, this ensures there is not too many of one color falling down. I like the idea of having powerups fall down if the game was not geared toward competition.

I really like the color switching powerup idea. The color switching one may be overpowered for the size of the board, but I will have to think about it more.

[Astral Crashers]

So far hotkey groups are limited in functionality and buggy. If I hotkey a nexus to 4 and select it using the 4 key the option to build a probe doesn't show and does not respond to its shortcut (E). Functionalities I'd like to see added to hotkeys are the ability to focus the camera on a selected group/unit/building by double tapping the hotkey and I'd like to be able to add units to an existing hotkey group instead of having to create a new group every time.

moligames responds:

Thanks!
I will fix what hotkey bug.
Right-click the squad button, it will focus the camera on a selected units.

[Intruder CT 2X]

2d CoD with less features... very uninspired game, wonky controls. You're wasting talent boys :/

[Sentry Knight]

This EpicMooCow guy is kidding right?... "I haven't played half of the game but I'll complain about these things I have no clue about anyway."... kthx.

Bug report though. When the High Elf uses his/her(?) shield and you use the arctic gust to move her the shield effect wears off instantly even though the animation of it is still active, I imagine this is unintended. Besides that the suicide runners are extremely unforgiving when trying to 3-star missions but I guess that's intended x.x

Besides that, after every mission you get asked to visit the blacksmith in a separate pop-up and the blacksmith icon itself becomes unclickable, this seems extremely redundant. If I'd want to visit the blacksmith I'd click on the blacksmith, right? It'd also be useful to have gold count shown in the mission-select screen to see if it's any use to go to the blacksmith or not.

Variety is good, pacing is good, graphical design is good, enemy and skilltree design is good, balancing is good, atmosphere is consistent and good, you lose a point for the advertisements but times are hard so I'll forgive you. Great game, keep it up.

[Cursed Treasure 2]

Played CT and the expansion quite a bit, maxed them both out completely. This one I'm disappointed with. Towers have an additional upgrade, skilltree has new skills, new enemies have been added, flavourtexts are done very nicely and cut-out now has a secondary function of capturing buildings with variable effects.

Very nice additions however, I feel that the map designs do them no justice. Especially when you get further into the game you've attempted to increase the difficulty of the game by making places to build towers more scarce. This results in the player using cut-out to clear spawners/buffers as soon as possible while sitting on 6-8 towers, then clear out the map and build another 3-6 towers in order to fill the entire map. By the time you've upgraded all your towers to their maximum level you still have 10-15 waves to go, which simply turns into a game of holding the spacebar and pressing T a couple of times. This makes the end-game very unrewarding and boring, "badges" do not fix that (against popular belief).

From a mechanical standpoint I find the click-to-interact function kind of iffy. It doesn't always respond properly for me and when there are enemies nearby there's a chance of clicking them instead of the scroll or potion that is trapped underneath them. This makes the final boss especially unfair at times.

It's a solid game, great concepts. I do think it needs polishing though, I hope you agree and make this gem shine like it should.