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Reviews for "Marelza's Cauldron"

Hey, this is a pretty cute game: reminds me a little bit of Bubble Bobble and Balloon Fight!

It's not the longest game as it does unfortunately seem to plateau around wave 5 where it doesn't seem to get any harder or introduce any new challenges, but in general the game feels very well-crafted and polished and delivers some solid arcade fun: I got very addicted to trying to get max combos with a full train of ghosts while dodging through the chaos.

I also appreciated some of the subtle quality-of-life touches, like how enemies entering from the side of the screen (bats/ravens) have a brief second where they are dulled-out and won't collide with the player: this is great as it prevents those cheap deaths from getting hit by something you have no chance of reacting to.

I don't have any major complaints beyond, as mentioned before, that I wish the game had a bit more meat on its bones like more levels, extra modes, etc: the game is so good yet so fleeting! If I were to be a bit nitpicky, I'd also love some slight touches like having a bit more of encouraging juice to push you towards getting combos: for example, it'd be great if the point sounds would get pitched-up in sequence the more ghosts you put in as a combo, and it'd be great if there was a little fanfare if you get a max combo, stuff like that! I do also feel like certain things like lightning and fire shouldn't be able to be destroyed by your bullets, and skeletons shouldn't be able to be collected after being shattered, as it can make the game a bit easy, but maybe that's just me being too hardcore, haha!

LuckyDingoStudios responds:

When I was tuning the difficulty for this game, I initially had in mind a steady increase in difficulty that, if you were able to survive for long enough, you would eventually reach bullet hell-like waves that would provide more challenge for players of higher skill levels. But in my playtesting, I found that there was a certain threshold at which having too many obstacles on the screen broke the core gameplay loop. It could very quickly get to a point where it was not worthwhile to go for bubbling ghosts to bring in a full chain, and you would end up just staying in one corner trying to stay alive. So that is the reason why it plateaus at wave 7, after hanging at the difficulty I personally found most fair and enjoyable from around wave 4-6. Maybe not the perfect solution, but it was the best I could come up with.

Oh damn... It's actually addicting.

good job

Nice gameplay mechanic

So cute