Zerpha's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Quick Sand]

Break Brittle Bricks Briskly really doesn't work.

Before i'm going to rant about the game itself, i first of allwanted to point out that apparently the medal "Break Brittle Bricks Briskly" does in fact not work - anymore!

Yes, i can see that you got that medal. And various users that wrote a review own that medal as well.
Yet those reviews i found were submittet bewteen 13.-16. of June.

According to the order of your medals, you added the "Cave half full" and Brickbreaker one after the other two for completion.
I also can remember those two initially having a medal score of 0 and therefore not being displayed on this game's page in the medals section.

Therefore i suppose you involuntarly made the Brickbreaker medal unachievable in some later ipdate.
I already broke 12 and more bricks several times without releasing the Down-button, and twice even with pressing it for each jump (which is notably harder) - yet the medal didn't pop up for me once.

So i'd really appreciate if you'd take a look at your game again and fix that ;)

The game itself was alright overall.
The music was alright.
I liked that it used an introduction and en ending scene. Yet it was somewhat weird for me that the girl had a face in the very last image, it didn't suit the style of the scenes (and the charactermodel) imo.
The character's hair was inspired by Dixie Kong i guess?

It didn't get boring since it introduced some new elements every once in a while - keys, curved walls, bricks to break, spiked traps or "doors".

You have to get used to the controls since they're very sensitive, but once you got a feeling for it the levels are not too hard.
For example wall jumping has some tricks that are worth knowing: narrow walls can be jumped up pretty quickly by simply pushing of from the same wall and jumping at the same time; while broad walls should be jumped up by changing the side each time (spacebar + left, spacebar + right, etc).
And aside from breaking blocks, you can make use of the down button to avoid sliding on a wall if you don't want to.

Yet some later levels were far easier than earlier ones, and vice versa: The difficulty of the levels seems not to have any particular order.
Already the second level for instance it pretty hard. You are barely used to the movement, and especially since you don't know that you can use the down button to avoid sliding on the wall makes it harder.
I am aware, though, that some of these levels were just easier because the sand can sometimes be used as help whereas in other modes you don't have the possiblity to do so.

Now about the bugs:
I don't know whether it's intended that last set of levels with the "doors" is skipped when playing through the game for the first time.

Talking about doors, here's a certain bug i encountered: When you enterwhen the sand is exactly on the door's height. In this case you won't die and the complete level will fill itself even over the border.
Then there is another bug encountered while breaking the blocks. It might happen that you are squished when hitting the block from a weird angle.

Regarding the Speed Run mode, i think it's far too hard. You can barely afford to even fail more than two levels half way.
This really asks you to play each level various times to ensure that you make things flawless and to be prepared which level is up next.
Nothing against challenges, but at some point it isn't fun anymore.

I guess most people cheated that medal by simply abusing the fact that you can fast-forward the entire game.
I think you should make the timer less brutal and then find away to stop the skipping thing.

Compared to Speed Run, Lava Mode was pretty easy. Currently it would even be easier if players had twice the time for Speed Run.
Nonetheless i liked it, although not all levels changed since you sometimes just had to place sand on top in order to do it. (I would only have placed sand on the top on various spots, yet that would possibly afford some tricky programming)
But this mode really needs to get a medal!
I think if a game has medals and various modes, it doesn't make sense not to let each mode have one :o

I-smel responds:

I read all of this!

[{Survival Pong}]

Quite challenging

The darkened background (including the extremely dark one at the end) or green coloring was a bit distracting at the beginning, but the main threat was the censorship which later got bigger and even spinned around. The hardest part was the faster moving ball which started after about a minute, but i finally somehow managed to survive.
Nice work overall :)
Btw, the score doesn't reset once you die. I finished with a score of 11, but it seems like you get greater score from surviving, meaning that you'll actually always get the same score when managing to finish the game without this bug^^

**SPOILER WARNING**

But now i'd like to eat that cookie D:

CrazyVS responds:

Yeah, I've uploaded the game and 20 min later my friend told me:
"lol at the gameover score bug" and then i was like "Holy shit I've missed that one!".
Thanks for the review.

[Da Pink Knight]

Tips for the players and advice to the author

A short and simple, yet a nice game.

The medals were integrated smoothly since they also encourage dynamic gameplay, yet none of them is too hard to acquire, therefore no joy will be lost to frustrating hours in vain.

Yet the author said the knight is a dude... I'm not homophobic or something, but imo "he" just doesn't look like a tranny^^

Another thing that could use a change is the ambiguous description of the "Juicey Kisses"-medal. Sure, it's name indicates what you have to do, yet the concise description lets one think that magic jumps / "farts" work as well. The wording was maybe used to paraphrase the medal title, but i prefered something like "Finish the boss off with a kiss of death".
Therefore, all players which are reading this part: keep in mind that you'll have to jump and spread kisses rather than jumping magic for the final blow.

Now the tips:
If anybody is wondering what this ground spin is about:
No, it doesn't require any level, quite similar to the air spin you just have to mash the attack button, but in this case simply stay on the ground - and hit the robot, which is the reason why most players don't notice this type of attack.
Yet the boss won't allow you to simply do this combo. If you are going for the "Dreidelpower"-medal, i advice to level up to level 2 until he starts firing bullets, and then deflect three bullets to him to get him dizzy at first. (This will also grant you the "TKO"-medal. and remember, "deflect" means correct timing for the block, if you just keep the S button pressed the bullets will fly above the robot)

If you want the "Time Attack"-medal, here's an easy method for beating him quickly:
Use the air spin most of the time, and approach the boss from a slight angular in order to evade his punches.
Then, after you've finished your air spin, turn towards the boss and immediately hit the block button. You'll be slightly pushed away, but now you can savely walk straight towards him and start a second air spin. Rinse and repeat for great justice, and this medal will soon be yours.
There are some other things you have to take care of later, though. The saw can be blocked like the punches, and you can widely ignore his robot spawns. It's adviceable to take them out while he is doing his spin attack, though.
Oh yeah, about that one: get away from him as soon as you notice that he starts, but don't move to far away, while he is at this state you should damage him with kisses.Although they only give 5 points, these do a lot of damage.

I didn't make "Tilt" and "Time Attack" in one, but you should be able to get both in one run despite making use of the "sweet damage" if you do everything correctly (For example evade fainting, since this does not only take a lot of time and your chance for the medal, but a large amount of points as well)

MindChamber responds:

thanks for the review and tips, and I agree, Kiss of death would probably have been a better description.