First!

It was a fun project! We somehow managed to reduce Newgrounds' IQ by 20 points with this collab. Nice job boyzzz <3 <3 8=====D

Edit: fuk u BaconFromBrooklyn xoxoxo ^.^

Katse ligo. Einai stin Thessaloniki? Den pistevo na einai o lefkos pirgos ekei random lol. Gamaei afto to animation, sinexise :)

That was some OG Newgrounds quality content. INB4 this gets review crew picked as it obviously should. I miss this type of effort from things on the site

This is an old childhood classic that I remember playing 11 years ago now. I'm playing it now again after over a decade, I finished the whole thing and I've got some critique to make that's going to be as unbiased as I can make it, unaffected by nostalgia.

TL;DR: The game has lots of issues with its controls, its combat and progression but it's still really fun to play to this day.

Music is really good, even if it's compressed to high hell, it's a flash game so obviously it's gonna be like that. Decent story, good animations, good backgrounds, nice enemy designs etc. I don't wanna talk about this stuff because it's mostly subjective and it speaks for itself. You got eyes and ears, you can judge for yourself.

The combat... oh boy the fucking combat. I didn't know as a kid what good combat and bad combat looked in a game but I had an intuitive feel for it. Now coming back to this with a mind that analyses the shit out of game strategies, optimization, balance and user experience, I can say this game's combat is all over the place in its quality.

Main points:

1. The beginning in the pit levels is slow and not challenging. I get that it's because the game is still lacking in enemy variety as they slowly get introduced as you progress. But that shows that the difficulty hinges heavily on the synergy of enemies' attack types and their numbers. Honestly, you can just get through the pits without even having to use any items cause of how easy going the start is.

2. On a mixed note, the game does get harder and that's a good thing, otherwise, it would have been too boring to keep going if it weren't challenging as it progressed. I like the fact that it gets harder, it actually grabbed my attention and kept me engaged as soon as I started losing fights and had to restart a few times. The reason I feel mixed about this is one of the main issues I had with the game, the enemies' combat uses cheapshots to level the playing field with you. It's kind of like Age of Empires 2 giving extra resources to the AI if you increase the difficulty because it can't really make a smarter opponent, instead it just gives it any advantage over you.

3. Later arenas are going to have you dogpiled by enemies and being swarmed easily. So then the game becomes more about crowd control, positioning and maneuvering through projectiles. You start thinking about who to pick off first and prioritizing your targets, when to use your ultimate and your items. I love that. That's actually really good! The problem with that is the game's controls. They fucking suck. Ok they're not that bad but I really don't like the button mapping. And no, they don't suck just because I don't like them, they really are bad. Forcing people to use your preset key bindings for your game without allowing them to switch to other configs is annoying. You use arrow keys to move and Z, X, C, V for combat actions which is stupid. It's stupid because you're delegating combat action buttons to the left hand while you use your right hand for movement (which is too basic to waste your dominant hand). It might sound pedantic, especially considering that this might fit some people who are left handed but... most people are right handed... and I'm most people. I could play the game, sure, but it was uncomfortable.

4. More on the point about controls. It's not just the button mapping being unintuitive, it's the movement and the combat. Really briefly I'll explain the gripes I have which could have easily been avoided. Each of the 3 weapon types you've got have their own attack pattern. The attack patterns have no depth to them, you're going to be spamming quick attack most of the time except for dual weapons which you'll want to use the heavy attack once you're near the side of an enemy you're attacking so you can jump back and reset your position...

5. This, this right here is the thing I want to talk about. Attacking moves you forward at the end of a light/heavy combo. What does this mean? It means if you wanna sit still and attack an enemy right in front of you till he's dead, you need to take into account the fact your dumbass gladiator will move out of attack range as you clip through him and the enemy ends up behind your back and you get flanked by multiple enemies. This will make you have to plan your initial attacking position before you start going ham and spamming light attacks on an enemy so you don't phase right through him while he's still breathing. It could have easily been avoided if attacks didn't clip you right through an enemy and you just stood still. OR IF you could move forward or backwards whilst attacking BASED ON the direction of where you're currently pressing to move. It adds a challenge to the game but in a bad way. You're fighting your character's movement mechanics.

6a. The variety in gear choices is nice but most choices are impractical so the variety is ar0tificial. You're not gonna use a shield weapon because they do much less damage than the other 2 weapon types and the defense isn't worth the trade off. They kill enemies much slower and since your main concern is crowd control and killing enemies fast, it technically ends up hurting your defense. Heavy and Dual weapons do have a specific use but overall, heavy is better in the end because of its armor penetration AND it's reach which is something I can't stress enough. You need that reach to attack first and from further away.

6b. Magic is shit, only one out of the three choices you have that's viable is without a doubt earthquake; mainly because it's the only way in the game you can interrupt enemies' attacks and stun them (this is a really big fucking problem but I'll get to it later). I don't think I even need to talk about the items... you have the choice between using javelins (throwing spears), random crowd affection potions and of course health potions. You will never spend money on any other item but health potions because you can only carry one item type with you into battle and you as sure as shit won't bring tridents (which cost a lot, are unreliable to hit and don't do much damage when they do actually hit something).

6c. Only thing I can praise about the variety is a little bit about the starts for armors. You get the choice to specialize a TINY bit (I need to emphasize tiny) into either spell power, your ultimate's buildup and armor. The progression of armor's stats is random so you don't know if the next level of unlocked gear is better than the stuff you got on now. Like for example, all obsidian armor are worse than the previous armors you get because their special stats are at 0% so you get no extra spell power or cooldown, or ultimate buildup... wtf? The obsidian cape gives -7% crowd excitement when the imperial cape gives +30%!!!!! Who made these numbers up? I guarantee you that this shit had no thought put into it.

7. Last thing I wanna say and this was the worst offender for me. I hate your options for defense in combat. That's to say... there's none. You have a shield but that's just a flat armor stat bonus. You can't block or dodge or move fast out of the way, or sprint or stop attacks mid way. There's this enemy types that scale with you and who will take advantage of that weakness. They are the assassins, and they're the biggest pieces of shit you'll fight. Their attacks are instantaneous so most often they'll hit first and if you interrupt them by stunning them, they can still attack you again if you aren't stunlocking them by spamming light attack. That alone isn't the issue, the issue is that all enemies attack after a set amount of time idling around in the arena, but for whatever reason, if you get hit by an assassin, every melee enemy will get a bloodlust and start running in to attack you simultaneously. The cherry on top is you have the same move speed as the enemy so you can't outrun them, this will get you into situations where an assassin is running after you and you can't reposition, turn around and hit him to interrupt him. You will get hit no matter what and maybe dogpiled and stunlocked... all because you can't run faster than the enemy, because you can't stun some enemies even if you hit them, and because there's no dodge or block.

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Look this is still a really fun game, and you can't be too hard on it because it's a flash game and it came out during the 2010s era when game design principles and user experience wasn't heavily focused on. The people that used to make good flash games moved on to Steam or GOG so they can make some money for their work... you need to appreciate the fact that this game comes from another era that's long gone, when people used to make games for fun, for brownie points. Even though this game was sponsored by NotDoppler (meaning the devs got paid for their work), it was made with love, even if it's flawed. I see the good times I had and I just can't get those good times from games of today. The game's got so many flaws, fundamental ones too! However, it'd be a crime to rate this lower than 4 stars because it's actually fun and has more effort than other shit that shows up on the game portal

To XwaynecoltX below me, I genuinely am sick of looking at your slop quality level of reviews on everything on the site. You pride yourself in having the most reviews on newgrounds but nearly every review from you that I read is just generic, shallow criticism disguising itself as intelligent criticism. You use "game journalist" vocabulary and speech to make your reviws sound legitimate but it falls short because most of your sentences are grammatically incorrect. Not spelling but grammar (there's a difference). Either you don't fully understand what you're typing half the time because your English is weak or you're using AI to type reviews for you (which would be too pathetic so I'm assuming you're not a native english speaker). This wouldn't bother me so much if your vote didn't hold so much weight because your profile reached max level from writing so many reviews... which means your vote holds ALOT more weight than the average voter.

This is a genuinely good game, like actually good. You should judge it for its scope: a narrative game with minimal gameplay. It's innovative for a flash game by having a non linear story with multiple endings, decent writing, the good voice acting by Egoraptor and how each scene is well animated. It's short but it's perfect for its bite size. I'd say it's 5 stars easily for the interactive narrative genre it's in AND for a game being developed in 2 months. Bonus points for having no known bugs or audio issues during gameplay.

I see nothing wrong with this game. Tell me why this ChatGPT moron below me voted 3.5 stars?

I'm here moments before it breaks the 10 million views record. 3 Cheers for Friday Night Funkin. May it become #1 <3

It's been a long time since I found a gem on newgrounds like this. I remember as a kid I loved it when playing games on the site opened up my perspective and showed me awesome content creators. I miss that cause I don't get that anymore. That personal feeling when I play a game and I'm in the zone, you know? Newgrounds really fell off these past few years...

Replaying Alice is Dead I found this awesome song in the club part and I experienced an old familiar feeling that I got when playing special games. It's sad cause this used to be a ubiquitous feeling in my childhood around the time I found the site and now I can count the times I feel these feelings on my fingers. It depresses me now that I found this song and this game because it's reminiscent of a healthier life and mindset I know is long gone.

Just wanted to give my 2 cents on this song and how it affected me on an emotional level. I feel it wouldn't be a review if I gave you just 7 words. It made me nostalgic though I never heard this before. Hope I can find another awesome and well done game with an equally awesome narrative whilst having an amazing soundtrack in the background from flash games that come out in the future though that's wishful thinking, you know?

Hania, your voice is enchanting. Thank you for making this song... It took me back and that really means a lot to me.

I love it! I'm playing NetHack with this song on repeat and it's so fitting with the atmosphere. This is really well done

alas, it has been 5,5 years and this is what you left us before you disappeared... i stopped believing in santa when i was 8 but i never stopped believing in you, san7a. Come back, we need you! ;(

Booooo, the original design was better. #CancelChristina

This is literally the ONLY piece of art related to this game on Newgrounds. How coincidental is it that this piece gets posted here less than 2 months after I beat the series? The digital version came out in 2016. I started it in 30th April this year too no less! It amazes me how small the timeframe is between me getting into this series and this getting posted.

Haven't tried any other choose your own adventure books but this. It's surreal how much more reactivity it has compared to a proper video game but it's still impressive for any form of media to be this reactive to player choice. Shame there's no more fan pieces made for sorcery, it's a real underdog

This is actual king shit! I'm going to be straight with you, I didn't think this was going to look that good or going to be high quality. I see this now and the way you've combined every single one of the pieces together and it looks dope. I wonder how many people appreciate the detail of each sonic drawing that was facing right was placed on the right side and each sonic drawing that was facing left is placed on the left side. It's not just the mashup of different artists' styles, it's also the collage's placement of each sonic to contrast each character even though they're all the same color of blue that's impressive. This is actually really really good.

There's lots of lazy collabs, especially collages. This isn't one