CrudeWax's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Die for the Lich [v0.3.3]]

I highly enjoyed the game, it's been pretty fun.

The stylistic/thematic choices are very odd but nonetheless appealing. The drawings are gothic, dark with thick black outlines, and tend to kinda blur across in bold strokes, I can't tell if that's an issue of improper texture scaling or a stylistic choice that they don't look as sharp as they seem to be drawn, but it works nonetheless. The music is very smooth and nice on the ears, It's rather epic and orchestral, with very good use of naturalistic samples of instruments which don't seem to give off a synthesized vibe. The gameplay and balancing seem to be in a pretty solid place and I already can see quite a lot of potential for buildcrafting, best one I got so far is probably the 2-3 hit dagger being combo'd well with coins, which fed into the idea of having a rouge/brigand archetype, loved it. On the whole the game made want to play through it several times over, which is the primary thing which rougelikes can be regarded by.

I have two major complaints, one is pratical and another more philosophical. The game is very un-polished in some areas, which could be chalked up to it being a demo (default godot particles, fonts, menu bars, music just turns off after the first fight for me), and also the fact that, personally, I really don't think this game would be something I'd be willing to pay a premium for and dedicate a lot of time to, I'm sorry. The reason is that the gameplay just isn't very advanced or strategic to warrant having full undivided attention to it. Trinkets and ways to alter the outcome of a dice roll are fun, but in certian combinations of builds or dumb luck you can end up with a lot of turns where you don't get a whole lot of leeway to make use of these. You only get so many special dies, and you can only draw so many from your bag. I think the way this could be remedied is by making the drawing pseudorandom, thus ensuring that you draw at least 1-2 things which aren't a basic white die each turn, because when you get a board full of white dies (and that heavily depends on luck of your meta-progression through the map and the individual turn) the game's strategy just evaporates entirely and the experience turns into pure RNG.

P.S- you should consider porting your game to mobile as the format is very suited for it, and there isn't really a good premium-price mobile contender for rougelikes.

[Jim Brimstone: Devil Advocate]

Great game, I especially love the part where I lost 5 consecutive times to random shell selection in case 2

[Darkwood]

It's rather cute and spry.

The gameplay loop is rather solid. Going around the map and seeking stuff to upgrade your equipment, fight enemies and overall level up before a fight you choose to engage with yourself keeps the game quick and lively. I also like the variety of items with effects and meaningful, palpable stat changes. The vector-based artstyle while generic is executed decently well in the sense of the environment feeling rich and enemies moving about rather naturally, albeit some attacks could use extra animations. The bosses were decent and varied.
I also want to pat you on the back for realizing how the game wouldn't be fun if you could draw aggro of several enemy squads at once so they relent rather easily.

There is quite a lot you could improve upon through. The autoattack system is a bit of a snore overall but is compounded by the fact it seems to be rather janky. The enemy priority is unorthodox and it can be frustrating to have something up in your face and only have the melee attack to handle it, when most enemies outrange you or shoot projectiles. The balancing is odd, where at later stages even after investing all my levels into my HP a generic slime cleanly snapped my head off with a single projectile with no room for me to react because of..

The camera is not great. It had a nasty habit of heavily lagging behind the character, where it would take about 10-15 seconds for it to "catch up" and adjust. This is the most obtrusive issue and I am not entirely sure why it happens.

ErikSwahn responds:

Appreciate the detailed feedback. Seems people are not hype about the auto attack system that much and I have been struggling to get the right feel for the camera too. I am thinking on how to change these mechanics, and I am new to balancing. However I am glad you like the art style!

[Cockup Cascade]

Unreasonably solid execution.

I really like it! I think it captures the feeling of flunking up a stealth mission and having to desperately escape the pursuit pretty well. I like how the game despite being more akin to a top-down shooter uses stealth mechanics, with enemies quickly forgetting where you were, being able to avoid their line of sight, it took a while for me to get past the aesthetics and understand that this is still a stealth game.

Speaking of the aesthetics, the styalisation is really solid! I like the simplistic red-and-white clean sprites with blood splatters, I think it has a lot of character and appeal due to the amount of well-detailed animation frames.

Now for the sparse criticisms:

The game isn't as easy to "get" as you assumed. It took me a solid 3 minutes to understand that the black.. papers? Folders? Rocks? Are the objectives. Bullets are tiny and WHITE, on WHITE FLOORS, they blend in! Vests are slightly better but still quite hard to notice in a hectic game. I suggest you either add a simple info screen at the start or make them pop out more by animating them slightly or making them outline in red if you desperately need them.

the game is also somewhat buggy. I had clipped through walls, had enemies do so, had the machine gun dude stick his gun through a wall to shoot me once alerted, and sometimes the bullet pickups seemingly did not register.

UPDATE: Most of my criticisms have been addressed by the developer!

AlkalinePineapples responds:

Noted! I should be able to fix these issues pretty soon.

[Pocket Killers]

I would definitely say the game is.. ambitious, in the best sense of the word?
I can imagine the game is better suited on mobile, from what I can tell from the name.

I have my mixed impressions of your project. I would say there is definitely a palpable amount of effort on display here, from the variety of mechanics to load outs to themed chapters. But I feel like the ambition makes the resources spread a bit too thin.

I did not find the core loop very enjoyable or stimulating. No matter how you slice it (ha-ha) you can't really make a game play of essentially a stripped-down beat-em-up that enjoyable or in-depth. The enemies lack variety, the core mechanics underpinning what you do on a second-by-second basis of just running around and attacking are not that interesting, and also don't really fit the fantasy you are trying to create in my opinion.

The game also has an equally mixed bag when it comes to assets. Despite the simplicity of the gameplay I did not find any bugs or performance problems, so I can tell the game was either robustly coded or rigorously play-tested, which is surprising given just the sheer amount of stress points. The music is also just.. superb, and there is a huge amount of variety in it. However the voice lines.. kinda ruin the entire atmosphere the game is going for. Same could be said for the drawings. I think you could use a more robust style as puppet-like motion and sharp pixels come off as very goofy in a game about serial killers which opts to utilize 3 colors to make the atmosphere super gloomy. It's not that I think you can't make a game with simple sprite graphics but you need it to be consistent with all your stylistic choices.

Overall I'd advice you focus on a more robust core gameplay loop before branching into more mechanics and content additions, as that what carries your game second-to-second. You need a more stable foundation to build upon.

anothergamedev responds:

Hello and thank you for the feedback (really helps the game grow). The core mechanic on its own does appear lackluster. Do note that the Newground version is discontinued (Working on Mobile version and since the Mobile version will cost $) I will change the voiceline forsure and I do plan on potentially giving the AI a makeover, etc.

Your feedback we value, kinda replied late due to personal issues.

[Escape Pong!]

Why anime references/10

[Exhibit of Sorrows]

It feels a bit incomplete.

This is a horror game. A well-done one in fact. The art is crisp and styleised, the mechanics are well-made and varied, the format is not overstaying it's welcome, and it's not too mechanically intensive for a browser game.

What's the point though? I feel like it's lacking.. a punchilne. You can interact with exibits, you are forced to eventually harm them to progress. There are ducks and flowers.. but I kinda fail to see any real point to it? You can't do things differently to influence how the game ends, you see a lot of pointless creepy imagery and some jumpscares.. but why? Is there a larger story? Is there a small detail you can note to affect something?
It's rather hollow. It's A HORROR GAME. If that was what you wanted to do- you did it in flying colors. But it feels uninspired and has a lot of needless violence I'd rather not do.

EDIT: okay the random trivia was funny.

[Deal with Putin]

Honestly? Good shitpost game.
Just edgy enough, without going overboard, with crude humor (he-he) and is about the current political situation. It lets me live out [ИНФОРМАЦИЯ РЕДАКТИРОВАНА]

-russian boi dissapointed with the lack of democracy in his country

Little-Radiodemon responds:

Thanks! Although there is one crude option, but that's because it felt like it fit with him being in a little box!

Anyway, thank you, and stay safe!

[Next Room]

Neat concept, sloppy execution.

I really liked your idea of spawning randomized trap rooms with a rapid switch mechanic. It's pretty neat. Also the style of the game is quite charming with the synth-y music and crude human basic shapes. Very endearing.

The design is quite bad. The game is brutally hard and unfair. Most "Alive" enemies can fuck right off, specifically the lime charger and the zombie. Zombies do not have a predictable pattern to their movement, making them nigh-impossible to avoid and a very cheap death. Lime chargers are just unbalanced, and you can't play around them due to their speed.

The random trap placement is also just.. bad. It's sloppy and doesn't have a difficulty curve. You could have a deadzone room with a challenge of standing still or ZombieCharger combo on the second one.

Anyway I suggest you polish this and you'll have a decent game.

TheDrawingMan responds:

I can't promise that I'll fix everything since this was just a little passion project me and my friend made for fun, but I really do appreciate your review.