DELTARUNE: A Different Snowgrave

: Spoilers :

This game has very good presentation. It's a cool concept, it's what people want to see, and the cutscene and story works wonders. But when it comes to the moment to moment gameplay it feels like there's a bunch of balancing issues.

A lot of this is built on the Sans Battle Factor of dying, restarting, dying, restarting and learning from that, which today isn't a lot of fun.

Some patterns give you more TP than others, and some give you none at all. A lot of the new mechanics are explained poorly and are only understood once you've died enough times in that pattern.

I feel like the damage should have been reduced on Noelle since there is only one party member here, since it's so high you can easily have all your HP knocked out in one turn.

There is a lot of punishment for not doing perfect shots, as if you miss the main target once you'll take damage by something (Not in all patterns some works better). Some patterns also make very little to none use out of shooting. And some patterns have plainly unfair aspects.

Nit-pick, but when you die you shouldn't have to re-watch a small cutscene every time, in fangames when you die you want to get right back into trying again. Forcing the player to wait and watch stuff they already know about becomes tedious and boring. Coupled with the fact that players don't like dying cause this to make the player angry.

There might be more but, these are the issues that sparked to life.

It's a solid game though, It's by no far means lazy; this is an impressive game. There are a lot of new and cool ideas here, it's fun and engaging, I had fun playing it, but it can be better.

https://youtu.be/kl4j4lUKBi4 Gamejolt keeps hiding my comments so I guess I'll just show screenshots of it.

I love this fangame, and the prologue is worthy of the original Deltarune.

However, there are some clear problems with the balancing, and I hope this helps make this even better

• Attack 1 - Flying Heads 1
  For the first attack, the heads come too fast; I'm not saying "make them come one at a time," but you have to choose, multiple at the same time, or light speed.

• Attack 2 - Wall 1
  Make the heads' hitbox bigger. There are multiple instances where you shoot the head, but you were just a bit off, so it doesn't count

• Attack 3 - Pipis Cannon 1
  No problems specific to this one

• Attack 4 - Spamcycle 1
  The Mini-Spamtons can jump at the top left of the box when you are trying to avoid the explosion. I'm not saying they shouldn't jump there, because that would create a blind spot, but making them stop jumping when the explosion is about to happen is definitely a good option

• Attack 5 - Flying Heads 2
  Again, make the heads slower, and maybe having 2 longer waves instead of the 3 short fast paced ones would be better

• Attack 6 - Eye Laser

  • Make it so the shields can be flipped with regular shots (maybe 3, like everything else?), since their hitbox is small enough to be easy to miss, and there's not enough time to charge another Big Shot.

  • Make it so the smaller lasers are also blocked by the shield

• Attack 7 - Flamethrower
  Oh boy, this one

  • Make it so there is no lingering fire.

    That. Is. No. Good.

  • Improve the timing, the Arm falling and the Flamethrower firing don't seem to happen in the same intervals, which makes them desync very fast, throwing the player off.

• Attack 8 - Phone Call
  This one is nice. Nothing else to say :)

• Attack 9 - Spinning Shields 1

  • Make the heads killable with one normal shot, the first wave is easy-ish, but the others have way to big of a shield to charge enough Big Shots

  • Separate the last wave more, and maybe have two instead of three heads. They are way too close to be properly avoidable

• Attack 10 - Spamcycle 2
  This one was nice too, no problems with it.

• Attack 11 - Eye Laser 2
  This one is pretty much the same as the other one, so the same fixes.

• Attack 12 - Wall 2
  Same as the first version.

• Attack 13 - Flamethrower

• Attack 14 - Phone Call

• Attack 15 - Pipis Cannon 2
  It doesn't change much, so naturally it's as good as 1

• Attack 16 - Spinning Shields 2

  • (The same as before)

  • (Maybe) Make the first wave the normal heads

  • Make it so the heads don't leave the circular explosion after exploding. The cross is enough

• Attack 17 - Core Heads 1
  They go way too fast, from both sides. There's too much [[SALE]] going on there.

• Attack 18 - Bomb Cannon 1
  Nothing wrong. It looks great. Maybe making it more obvious when the bombs become shootable

• Attack 19 - Core Heart 1

  • Make the bouncing slower, it's basically shooting in the dark with how much it moves

  • Male the bullets it creates smaller. It's supposed to be a punishment, but making them unavoidable isn't good either.

  • Make it react to regular shots, kind of like the "Phones for Hands" attack works in the original Spamton NEO fight

• Attack 20 - Two Sides
  This one is fine, but there's apparently no hurt sound, which can throw you off Nevermind.

• Attack 21 - But nobody came...
  Dude, how did you even come up with such an attack? It's barely possible to avoid, and then there's the unavoidable part. 0/10

• Attack 22 - Core Heart 2
  This one is fine in speed, but still, the regular shots should do something and the bullets are way too big. Also, Is the Core blocking my shots? What the F[[ifty percent off]]?

• Attack 23 - Bomb Cannon 2
  Nothing to say apart from, again, make it clearer when the bombs are shootable

• Attack 24 - Two Sides... 2?
  Is there a difference? Maybe more heads... doesn't matter, it's fine.

• Attack 25 - Core Heads 2
  The same as the first, waay too fast. The gas at the end was nice.

• Attack 26 - Spamgels
  It's fine.

• Attack 27 - Specil Attack
  The only problem I have (apart from that damned lingering fire) is that you can't see your health bar. Sure, you can't see it in Spamton NEO's either, but that's a 15 second cutscene, this... is not. lol

Now finally, there's some other things I'd like to say

• Make the "Frozen" state something else than a flag. Make it so some attacks go slower or are nerfed when the related part is frozen. The game already does this by removing the attacks from the queue when defeated

• Make it so the Death screen doesn't take so much to load. It's frustrating dying and having to wait 5 seconds for the Death Screen and then 5 more for the cutscene

• Credits inside the game would be nice

• I don't know if the engine would make this possible, but the Save Code feature is just... dumb. And also, what's the point of the "Click to start" on the executable?

And that's it. Those are all my problems with this. Again, overall it's amazing and this was only to see it become better and better.

Kaktus out.

It really pains me to make this review, but I'm afraid to say this is bad in terms of gameplay.

The art, design and setup looks great, but it's such a shame all of those bonus points are nullified for the unbalanced attacks. Only two of them are reasonable, which are the swinging phone attacks... and that's it.

When you combine RNG with pixel-perfect precision (the pillar bomb attack), that's not okay. It also doesn't help that the double-heart attack requires you to hit EVERY SINGLE SHOT on the hearts, otherwise you're forced into a lose-lose situation where you'll die just a couple of hits, with no way to recover.

All attacks (except for the phone swinging ones) give you no time to react to the random bullets that are thrown at you, especially in later attacks where GIGA Spamton moves the bullet board and you only have a small rectangular space. Since it's random, you have to take a gamble by shooting just as soon as they appear, which could lead to you taking an unavoidable hit from the bomb blast.

I've tried beating this game for hours, and hours, and hours... I never beat it ONCE on Normal Mode. Sure, there's Practice Mode, but... how is that "practice" when you freeze the head and arms in one turn when opposed to two turns? And why doesn't it give you the option to practice certain attacks, like an ACTUAL practice mode would. Sure, Bad Time Trio didn't have attack selection in Practice, it only gave you 150 HP. But here, it's more of a Baby Mode than an actual Practice Mode.

I honestly find it very sad that despite there being two no-hits of this fight (one of them without final attack where you can't even see your HP), trying to learn strategies for each attack just wasn't happening. You cannot miss a single Big Shot, otherwise you will be forced to heal EVERY. FREAKING. TURN.

Like I said, the design is great. It's just too bad that the attacks make this almost unbeatable, even for challenge players...

This game is Amazing and all but there are some things that makes this fangame kinda impossible.
for example:

The Flamethrower
this move is very difficult because, after the flamethrower fires (pun intended) it leaves some leftover flames which can completely ruin someones rhythm (Solution: Freeze the arms first so that you do no have to deal with the flamethrower. you only get one chance to heal though)

The Spamton unicycle parade

Theres 2 versions of this attack the normal (slow) one and the pipis (fast) one. i feel like the Spamton's should have something indicating that they are about to jump because even if you stay in the top left corner they can jump up towards you at the last second.

The Dual heart attack
after some attempts this move can be easily beaten but when the core flips you around theres a chance it might mess you up and flip u when one of them is about to attack. you. so you have no choice but to sit there and die because after one hits you it flips you around not giving you enough time to hit the soul.

this game is amazing, great concept, great music, and even achievements. i just hope that they can fix some of these.