TheGibusGuy's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[sillinder's somewhat uneventful tuesday noon]

This game just oozes with personality, and controls quite nicely too! Timing your getup after a dive to maintain speed is satisfying, sort of like timing consecutive long jumps in a Mario game.

It is sometimes unclear where to go, and even with the drop shadow, depth perception can be an issue, but I was able to adjust and traverse rather confidently by the end of the demo. The changes in scenery, music and controls made each level a joy to run through.

I am curious as to how levels are made, are they constructed in Godot's 3D editor for collisions, and then have 2D tiles placed to match?

sillylittlepyro responds:

ever since i first started learning gamedev, i always had a disdain for the pre-packaged physics engine.
it seemed like such a waste of resources for just collisions, it made me spend around a year just learning how to do collisions myself, once i moved to godot i realized how easy it would be to make my self-made system 3d inside the 2d mode of the engine.
each collision cube is defined by 3 Vector2s, and each scene has a list of cubes in a script. i made an improvised level editor to place and stretch these cubes and copypaste them into the script, as well as a node that draws the cubes for me to place tiles over, it all runs on the 2d engine!!!

[Heroes of Pico's School]

I finally beat this without a walkthrough! Some of the best puzzles I played in a while, every mechanic and character had ramifications you needed to consider, combine and use to their fullest.

I also adore the soundtrack, "Ladies and Gentlemen" was especially great background while studying a puzzle.

I love the presentation too, the little sounds and animations for moving around really tie it together.

I do have a minor gripe with the menus, although this could just be personal taste. In RPG Maker 'Z' is to select and 'X' goes back, so having it reversed felt weird. I did have an odd amount of fun holding back on the credits screen though. Going for as long as possible without returning to the main menu sounded like revving a motorbike.

Eydi responds:

Whoa, that's so great hear. It's cool that some people put in the time and effort to make walkthroughs, but I love that you went in without having the solutions spoiled. Thanks for the feedback. I should make swapping Z and X optional in an update.

[Sentient Cleaning Device]

Short and sweet, loved it. There are so many little touches that make this great.

With just a camera and a compass, navigation was an interesting challenge.

Photos getting distorted while turning due the camera's slow shutter speed was very impressive.

Really effective use of sound. The first few times I thumped into a wall; the sound was enough to scare me. I was attuned to every little thing I heard.

The way it started off was unnerving, and the reveal to what was wrong was awesome. In a completely static environment, seeing something move shocked me.

Once I was past the horror aspect of the game though, trying to finish was a little tedious. After the game was out of surprises, I spent a while wandering trying to find my way back to base, killing the mood a bit.

Y'know how real Roomba's build a digital map of their surroundings? Perhaps each photo could have added to a sparse 3d scan that you could see after a photo was taken. If you took a photo of something moving, you'd have a distorted image frozen in time until you took another photo in the same spot. Mapping out the house would be another sense of progress, besides cleaning debris, and would make the endgame swifter.

Don't let me backseat dev you too much though, this was a great concept and great execution.

[Commission Hell]

I loved this! It was really funny listening to commissioners rattle off their requirements while I try to finish in time.

Francine in the corner adds a lot of character to this. In a future update I think it'd be fun to have her react to more things, like having her jolt forward with force every time you use a stamp, getting shakier if you start spamming it, that'd add some nice feedback to the action, and be funny during the Aliens and Cats commission where I've seen incredibly dense masses of cats.

Music was really catchy, I enjoyed listening to the title screen song while writing this.

[Descent (2021)]

I've beaten the game as of writing this.

It's very difficult as advertised, in a kind of frustrating way, but satisfying to conquer.

It looks and sounds quite nice, if a bit generic.

It controls well for the most part, but I wish that the jump physics were modified a bit so that I don't drop like a rock the second I let go of space, and instead have my jump smoothly arc downwards, so that I hang in the air a bit around the peak of my jump. This is because it can be rather irritating to make jumps with a roof over your head, especially when dealing with those snails who throw their shells at you. If you jump too high enough you'll just bonk your head on the ceiling, but if you let go too early you'll lose an extreme amount lot of airtime, making it annoyingly precise to find that sweet spot and jump over their shells.

A quick reset button would be nice, for when you take a hit too early and wanted to save that health for later.

[Kity Builder (Prototype)]

I've always loved the low res 3d look, nice job nailing it. Building is quite fun and relaxing but I felt like the controls are a little cumbersome in that department. It would be nice if I could select what specific building I wanted faster, with some big list or table I could browse through where I could see everything at once.