Alzter's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Into the Deep Web]

Really fascinating combat system. Took me a second to understand it, but really fun and strategic without feeling too difficult.

[Outta Juice!]

I wasn't expecting to love this as much as I did, but I do. The puzzles are extremely engaging and fun to solve. My only nitpick is, in the levels where you control both yourself and the drone robot, sometimes the drone goes off screen and you just have to guess where it is. It'd be cool if you could zoom out the map or something when it gets far away from you. Otherwise, amazing game.

[Ritz Spinz]

Loved the music. Gameplay was quite fun but the later levels were very difficult and kaizo like, with it being hard to tell where you're supposed to go. Good game either way!!

[TREES' ADVENTURE - Demo]

This is a tremendous effort, amazing work so far.

Graphics are literal god tier, I don't want to know how long it took you guys to make these :)))
If I had one issue with them it'd be that some player animations like the climbing or directional attack / airdash aren't too readable, I reckon you could slow down the attacking animation by a lot and place the afterimage effect behind the player to mitigate this. The climbing kinda looks like the player's telekinetically connected to the wall since their legs don't seem to move.. but fixing that wouldn't be particularly easy since it would require more animation so do as you wish. Overall though the animation, colours and scenery are absolutely stunning!

The gameplay's pretty cool.
I'm not toooooo sure what the dodge ability's sposed to come in handy for just yet, in the tutorial it says it's for dodging enemies but it doesn't show you how to do that and I didn't find it toooo applicable.

The grounded movement feels oddly... speedcapped in a sense? The run speed you can achieve as a player is usually lower than what speed boosters give you and it's difficult to get to that level of speed yourself, I personally wanna be able to go that fast through my own actions without any speed boosters. I found the most powerful way of gaining speed to be airdashing into the ground diagonally then jumping (wavedashing basically), but I still feel like things such as downhill slopes ought to give the player more momentum as well, since currently Trees doesn't seem to accelerate when walking down them. But then again, that may break the current level design so..... do as you wish?

Also, I'm disgustingly biased, but I feel like in lieu of many Sonic ROM hacks, spamming the forward airdash / attack should allow you to continuously gain speed to ludicrous levels.

Nice stuff!

[Louie Loudmouth]

TAKE WITH A GRAIN OF SALT I HAVEN'T BEATEN THE GAME:

The good:
- The player sprites and tilesets are very nice and all pop out, very nice contrast of value! This must have taken you guys a while to make, so great effort doing all this :)

The could be improved:
- The "YER OUTTA HERE" death message is annoying, just respawn me in the level already!!

- The camera should move IN FRONT of where the player is moving, not lag behind, I get that you're going for smooth looking camera movement but you need to make it move towards the player's movement direction as well in some form to offset the slow lerp speed - perhaps look at a tutorial for extended cameras? I'm not too sure

- The level design is really unforgiving. Level 2 almost immediately starts with a cliff jump that spans almost as high as the player character can jump, which makes it annoyingly precise until you get used to the player's jump momentum and walk speed, and on top of this the platform you're trying to reach is occupied by an enemy. I haven't actually been able to conquer the jump after this, my guess is you're supposed to use the enemy knockback to launch you higher than you can jump onto the platform, but again, way too precise.

Overall I reckon this game is pretty good and you guys have put in a great effort! Mainly I'd say the level design needs a fair bit of adjusting. If I had to dig a little deeper into the core concept of the game, I have to ask, why is a walking speech bubble in what seems like a kaizo platformer where he has to dodge spikes and avoid enemies, rather than in a game where his loudmouthed-ness is some sort of gimmick? I think one of the other comments suggested a way to attack enemies, perhaps he could shout at them? Lol I'm not sure. Great job so far! :D

EDIT: I'm literally stupid. I didn't even realize you could right click to shout. Beat the game, much better having this ability. One last nitpick, I reckon you could give Louie more I-frames. Great job

[Wheelbot & Clyde]

Quite cool! If I had any criticism it would mainly be for the controls, they're great but there's things you could do to make them more usable.

One thing I think the game needs is jump buffering, where if you press jump *before* hitting the ground, the game holds onto that input for a bit as long as you're still holding jump, so pressing jump before hitting the ground allows you to jump when you eventually hit the ground, rather than not jumping at all. Currently the game feels like it eats a lot of my jump inputs, especially at high speed.

Two other things I think might help gameplay are coyote time, and to increase the player's initial velocity when moving. Coyote time essentially allows the player to still jump a few frames after walking off a ledge, useful for when moving at high speeds. Increasing the player's initial horizontal velocity when moving would make it easier for the player to traverse from a standstill, as currently I think the initial velocity is a bit slow.

Otherwise great game! I love the effort you put into it.

[Flip Palace]

You've made the level design as much about what *isn't* there as what is there by making negative space a part of the gameplay. Super clever!

[Static Cling]

This is actually genius. Super intuitive mechanics that are easy to grasp but give way to puzzle like elements, the electricity system is really smart how it incorporates programming logic such as AND gates and repeat loops. Also very cool how all the mechanics, such as magnets, movable players, pools of electricity, all work together to create interesting gameplay. One thing that I think could be improved though, it's a little unclear where the turret enemies are going to shoot / what direction they're facing.

Pixel art is also great, lovely colours and style. Amazing job!!

[Floaty Lemon]

Nice game, love the simple to learn controls. I think it's too difficult to change direction in air though, for example if you're moving up and have to go downwards trying to blow the lemon down takes too long.

Cole-Dingo responds:

That's intentional lol. I designed it to be slightly frustrating. I may have overdone it though.