SamAtlantis's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Just Passing]

Loved the music. Having to get the money over and oer again made me quit though.

[Voltage]

This game is good. Unfortunately, I didn't realize you could kill the machines until the second to last level (I'm retarded I guess), and some of this was written while playing. So forgive me if some of it sounds mean and angry, because It was meant to be, because I was.
GAMEPLAY:
It feels a little unfair that the enemies have a range within which it will hit you, while your attack has a single beam. Because of this, lining up shots, shots which would work for your enemies right in front of you, requires an extra move. The more immediately the player can react, which they gauge based on the game's pacing, the more ownership they take of the wins and the loses, so it feels the game responds slower than it should when you see how fast the enemies are. Shooting, then having the enemy come into the beam's path, then having them survive since it takes a full shot to kill them was why I though shooting them does nothing (low expectations for a indie game I guess).
Since the enemy's line of sight is equal in length to the distance between the player and the floor/ the player and ceiling of the screen, if you are heading down and they are looking up, you will run into them and unequivocally be killed instantly. The same applies, to a lesser degree, to the horizontal directions, where their line of sight is about two thirds that distance, giving the player almost no time to react, considering the player/enemy's speeds. Another, similar issue is that they turn instantly, unpredictably, and move unpredictably. This means there is very little guarantee that any tight moves near them you try to make won't kill you instantly out of no fault of your own. There's a reason in triple A stealth games guards have suspicion meters and chase you rather than kill you immediately after spotting you; to give the player some elbow room to operate. I'm not saying it's too difficult, it's just plain unfair. An easy way to fix this would be to have them turn slower and make their line of sight visible even when they are past the screen's boarders, and to have them stop in place for a moment before moving again.
I do like that their movement is partially random, since it means every time you start up the level something new might happen. And everyone's movements being linked to a grid is also cool, makes things almost tactical when you're trying to slip by someone.
ART:
Artistically, everything feels more pace holder, like textured tiles almost.
Anyway, real good game, even if I didn't enjoy most of it due to unfounded rage.

[These Remains]

I seriously love this game. There's a lot of great design here! The only issue I have with it is the combat system. Since it's a combat based game this unfortunately makes it unplayable.

[Sokoban Dungeon]

Sometimes, after you've solved the puzzle, it asks you to enter the solution multiple times (i.e. push blocks in the same way again without adding anything). Sometimes there isn't a puzzle, and every block is just asking you to go through the motions to push them all into place. A lot of the time, the complication, the switch on expectation which makes any puzzle difficult while easy to understand, isn't introduced until you become aware of it at the last second. This wouldn't be an issue if not for this next part: An inherent issue with the design is that you can't go back on your mistakes: In your system, where you indirectly influence the blocks, if they get into certain corners, you have to restart the level. This is bad for a couple reasons: It punishes experimentation, which is demoralizing in a genre about making the player feel smart, and since the solutions are often unique, you are far more likely to make a mistake and have to start over. This game is no fun.

[Crashlanded]

Not stopping when you let go of the arrow keys is annoying. The dropping platforms drop after you touch them, rather than when you land on them, which is annoying. The time bonus capsules rotating makes their collisions inconsistent. Too hard.

[Labyrneath]

It was really cool and atmospheric! Some things I noticed though:
Gameplay:
The obstacles never fully felt like puzzles: the challenges were divided into the two types, puzzles and platforming sections, but the puzzles always broke down to running through your 3 or so options until you landed on the correct one, instead of trying to imagine a solution.
And the platforming sections were really frustrating, because of some control issues: having to let go of the jump button to jump again, and the camera not moving down automatically when you are falling(the player can literally fall off their screen!); just unnecessary tedium separating my input from the character's actions.
Checkpoints felt waaay too sparse for me. The way I see it, checkpoints are designed to prevent the player from redoing the same content over and over again and to add a sense of progression. The problem is I ended up doing a lot of sections I had already surpassed over and over again, inducing rage (nothing is more annoying than tedium as a punishment), making me fail at the sections I had already technically already passed, starting the whole cycle over again.
The momentum based jumping controls, where the longer you walk the faster you go, does not lend itself to the precision platforming which is often asked of the player. The problem is the it takes an awful lot of the control (when the player does and doesn't move) away from the player, often ending with player's accidentally (always a red flag when a player uses this word to describe one's death) walking too far to the left and into the spike pit or off a ledge (starting the death/rage cycle again).
When it came to the speed challenges, you'd often have to wait for platforms to come to you, which isn't as frustrating as it is unnecessary
Art:
The story telling was cool, but the story itself never seemed to start. The vague narration added to the atmosphere, sure, but I never felt a plot was starting. Not really a critique, it doesn't necessarily need a plot after all. Could've been a cool way to connect the character to the world, with character dialog and interactables. The plot twist at the end was cool though, how it re-contextualized everything which had come before it.
The music's inconsistent styles kinda broke immersion. I get that you got it from a website or something (I thought the accreditation at the beginning of every level was cool) but something made for the game and what was happening, reflective of the atmosphere (color scheme, setting/plot) would definitively have been appreciated.
The boobs man. That's too much power for any one woman. I have no doubt her dad is holding on as long as possible for those.
Glitches/nitpicking:
A lot of the obstacles run in cycles, like the spike walls or the platforms moving back and forth. When ever you would die and return to a checkpoint, they wouldn't return to where they were when you got the check point, they would just keep cycling as if nothing had happened.
Little things, like not being able to walk onto buttons, having to jump onto them, still hearing sound clicks which are immediately/ reactive-ly muted when playing with sound off, seeing the backs of the moving spike walls/ seeing them move through walls, just a lack of over all polish, perhaps inherent to indie web games such as this, permeated the entire experience.
Overall/conclusion:
It made me angry with the gameplay, but it was cool, however limited those elements were, artistically. I don't mean to sound like there was nothing redeemable about it as a game, there are other comments for that, only that it is imperfect and that I enjoy games analysis. Good luck!