FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ozzy's Rockin' Diner!]

This one was a bit of a rollercoaster for me, never being quite sure how to feel about it!

First impressions were pretty positive: I liked the whole appeal of this Atari-demake of Five Nights at Freddy, and I was impressed that it was all being done through RPG Maker as it really doesn't look like it from a cursory glance. It was starting out a bit slow, but I had hope for the story it was building up.

As it went on, though, I was getting quite bored. Every day was just mindlessly following very boring orders and I was confused on what this game was even supposed to be. Will I ever have to do something interesting, make choices, improvise, and so on? Yes, the game was delivering little tidbits of intrigue, but I've seen so many of these Five Nights at Freddy's parodies that all try to add some elaborate twist that I've grown tired with it all. Maybe that's on me.

I stuck through because of sunk cost fallacy and was finally rewarded with a chase sequence! I was excited...but then let down by how many times I needed to reload my save to finally find the stupid way you're supposed to get through it. Why in the world do those cones move like that? It doesn't make any sense! It's a miracle I didn't quit!

I pushed on, and as silly as it was, I did like the whole twist ending with the fake "new game" screen and getting revenge and all that. And with that it was over! On one hand, I do think it was somewhat memorable and I enjoyed it, but on the other hand, I felt like it was a bit boring and could've used a bit more work to make it fun. Definitely had a lot of potential, and it was interesting enough to keep me going despite my reservations, so that's something!

Azeleon responds:

Thanks for the review! I appreciate all the feedback, and I'll definitely be taking notes for future games or updates. I've never written a horror story before, so I didn't expect this one to be super interesting, but glad to see it was still enjoyable in some parts regardless.

[Driftmania]

Wow, this is a great little top-down racing game! It's simple, but lord have mercy, it just feels so bloody smooth, and nothing beats the satisfaction of pulling off a perfect turn or cut corner! I got really addicted to optimizing my routes to get more medals to unlock more courses, and I was glad to see that the courses kept introducing new elements like puddles, boosts, jumps, and so on!

Yes, the environments can be a bit bland and it can be a bit of a bummer that there are no other drivers to race against, but not only do I understand the limitations of working in Pico-8, but I was surprised to see that the game has cool car customization and ghost cars, so I think the right choices to focus on were made in development. I was also really impressed at some of the special effects for stuff like the puddles: it looked fantastic!

At first, I was a little aghast at how difficult the medals were in this game. I mean jeez, I was cutting corners like crazy and pulling off perfect drifts, but I still haven't even gotten a gold medal on the first level! The first level! But then again, I do feel like games give out gold medals and SSS's way too easy nowadays, so it's nice to have a game make you really earn it. It's not even that bad either because you can unlock levels just through bronze and silvers, which feels fair.

Frenchie14 responds:

Really looking forward to watching your Newgrounds Monthly playthrough!

[Time Warp Infinite]

Wow, this was pretty cool! Overall it feels like the game has been very lovingly constructed, absolutely brimming with energy and pizazz in every single element: even the menus, which devs typically leave as bland boring afterthoughts, are a joy to navigate! Gameplay is a very addictive affair where I enjoyed busting my ass and minimizing my movements to efficiently gather all of the cogs and make it to the finish line, all while using whatever power-ups I was granted to access new avenues of movement. Neat stuff!

Having said that, there were some elements here and there that I felt I could give some feedback on:

*I had some minor issues with the controls where it felt like movements I was attempting to pull off weren't being executed properly as I expected, like it didn't have enough input buffering to parse my early jump inputs or something akin to that. For the most part it still worked fine and I just needed to get used to it, but these little awkward input moments, which could maybe be forgiven in other games, felt incredibly frustrating since every little movement counts in this challenging race.

*I was a bit confused on how the score was being calculated: why points? Shouldn't it just say how many cogs we got out of the possible total? If we can get more points beyond collecting cogs, then how, and why is that not explained anywhere?

*There were times when I would arrive at the temple with all cogs collected and, as short of a time as it was, I was annoyed that I needed to just sit and wait for the timer to run out. Perhaps there could be a way to manually move forward to the next level when you're ready, or just move forward immediately when you arrive at the temple if all cogs are collected, with maybe bonus points being awarded based on the leftover time if you do such a thing?

*As fun as the upgrade powers could be, I didn't like the upgrade system since it felt like it made certain runs only possible depending on whether you get lucky enough to get the right powers to make things easier: I would prefer that the game is equalized and purely skill-based to keep scores fair and consistent. Also some of the powers just felt silly, like 'better traction': shouldn't the game just have better traction in general?

*While I am a little intrigued to see what the campaign mode could be, and I am still overall pretty positive on the experience of this game, I can't see myself forking out 10 bux for the full version: there just wasn't enough to go on in this demo and I don't get the feeling that there is enough meat on its bones for that kinda money. Perhaps I could be wrong if it were to let me sample the beginning of the campaign to whet my appetite, but with only a very small arcade mode, I wasn't hooked. Also, for some reason the steam link goes to itch.io instead.

[Blinded Sieve]

Quite the odd game! I found it really strange how comedic and silly the game was considering it was trying to be horror, but I really tried my best to give it the benefit of the doubt that the juxtaposition of horror and comedy might've been done intentionally to let my guard down or something to that effect. Alas, despite my best efforts, the game just ending up feeling incredibly dumb, retreading tired-out horror cliches with no sense of impact or style. Whether it was intentional or not aside, at least it was good for a few chuckles: ain't nothing funnier than blasting your son and being told you got the bad ending, like no shit I did!

By the way, how in the world do you screw up a title screen so badly? In what world is the highlighted option not the selected option? Was quite the awkward first impression to try and start the game, only to find out I just quit it, haha!

RaidenKramata responds:

HELLO!! i really appreciate the feedback! thanks for playing! so yeah, since this is my first horror game ever i'm not really used to making games like these, and yeah you're pretty much right with the horror cliches, i use em to save time to finish a short game for a game jam lol. I promise that i'll do better next time! thank you very much for playing!

also the highlighted options is my bad lol, not really good when it comes to ui design like these xp

[PLOMO]

This one was a bit of a odd duck! On one hand, it was a very pretty and cinematic experience, and I enjoyed the adventure of figuring out what the game was even about and how it operated. For example, I felt overjoyed that I was able to intuit exactly how to handle the first duel without any overt instructions. On the other hand, though, the game was just pretty repetitive, I didn't like how the duels were hard-coded in terms of timing as I would prefer an actual reflexive challenge ala Samurai Kirby, and I have no idea what the twist at the end was or what the point of the story was, amusing and baffling as it was to experience. Memorable in a way, but not entirely in a positive sense, haha!

TheGorondorf responds:

Thanks for the feedback! Never really expected to gather attention at all with PLOMO, but if it lingers on people's mind I'll be happy no matter the reasons for it (next game I'm working on will be more traditional in terms of everything, so I guess that one will be more enjoyable).

[Leap of Life: Alone]

Wow, another great, chill, cinematically-beautiful puzzle platformer to see here! I enjoyed my time with Leap of Life and this one hits very similar beats along with some new, welcome mechanical twists. Overall, similar to the previous entry, it feels very well-constructed and polished in nearly all aspects: really professional stuff!

If I were to have any complaints, it'd be that I was surprised at how much dexterity the game required! Most of the time puzzle platformers only challenge you with finding the appropriate solution, with execution of said solution mostly being a foregone conclusion: mere busywork. This, however, would sometimes get quite frustrating as I knew what I had to do, but just failed at some almost overbearingly tight pixel-perfect jumps. The level was over in my mind, so I wanted it over already!

It's not bad to require dexterity, after all, the game does have physics and so on, so why wouldn't you challenge the player with them, but it also had the effect of adding a bit of confusion: I would constantly question myself, thinking "there's no way the solution can be this hard to pull off, can it? it must be easier! am I accidently breaking the rules or exploiting something?" and so on. I dunno, there's just a bit of an unwritten rule for puzzle platformers where the execution shouldn't be part of the challenge, but perhaps I'm being silly: I still had fun nevertheless!

Also, there were a few times the physics would bug out on me, like I'd kiss the edge of a platform when landing on it and it'd count as two hits: luckily these instances were pretty rare.

[Fish Tank]

Holy mackerel, what an adventure! This game really delivered a great fumblecore experience where you go from barely being able to control the tank at all, to eventually fighting off an entire army, navy and air force as you move with precision to each lever and button. The fact that you pulled this all off without any overt tutorials or non-diegetic controls either was a thing of beauty. Hell yeah!

The sensations this game gave were fantastic! The sense of progression and evolution of obstacles was incredibly addictive, and I always got giddy when I saw the camera start to zoom out as to introduce whatever new challenge awaited. The physicality of moving the levers by bumping into them was sublime and I couldn't get over how good it felt, to hear how they'd click and snap into positions. I just kept going and going as far as I could, really getting into it and shouting commands out-loud as if I was on the bridge of a ship, haha!

I will admit, though, that there were some points that bothered me. For example, there were plenty of times where I shot at a rock or chopper that was just slightly outside the screen and it wouldn't count it as hitting, which felt really unfair considering the very cramped camera. Also, as much as I was addicted, there did come a few points where I felt like I was satisfied and had gotten the gist, and wasn't sure if there was point in continuing: I fought as hard as I could but wasn't sure whether there was an ending waiting for me.

[N Step Steve: Part 1]

Wow, this puzzler really surprised me! The graphics might not be much to look at first glance, but the game actually has a really funny and goofy charm to it with its presentation, especially the music. The puzzle mechanics too were fantastic and mind-bending: every level seemed to be another eureka moment as I learned some new tech or expanded my mind to incorporate restarting the puzzle as part of the intended toolkit. Definitely had a great set of tutorial levels that allowed me to intuitively learn these unexpected twists, like how dots don't add up, rocks reset but your flag position is saved, flags can be moved with rocks, and so on. I dunno if I'll be able to make it to the end, especially where the bonus stars are considered, but this felt great and very memorable overall!

[Your turn to Disembark]

Pretty cool story game you got here! Definitely reminded me a lot of those other 'death game'-esque stories like the Nonary Games, you know, where it's some motley crew of characters stuck in some mysterious place they're trying to escape, solving puzzles while their personalities clash and they get picked off one-by-one and so on and so forth. In that regard, this story was pretty cliche and not breaking any new ground, but hey, I was still very intrigued and wanted to figure out what the heck was going on, so you got me there! It also helped that the game has a solid sense of presentation too, and everything felt pretty smooth.

While the initial impression was solid and I was enjoying watching events play out, I have to admit that the game started to lose me. I could forgive a lot of things, such as the cliche setting and Deviant Art Fanfic OC characters as explained before, but the thing that ultimately ruined the game for me was the pacing: the story just moved way too fast that all of the deep emotional beats that the game tried to hit just came off as very shallow!

Don't get me wrong, I think writers should try to be concise, but it really didn't do this any favors and I couldn't take these deaths, redemptions, betrayals and twists seriously when they happen at such a lightning pace. Take Bree for example: even though I could see the whole 'jackass with a hidden heart of gold' coming from a mile away, it would've been fine if it played out slowly, but seeing Bree go from enemy to changing heart and gushing her whole back story at me in just two interactions just felt silly. It's impossible to take things like the hard-to-remember character's death seriously when we've known him for just a few minutes: it actually makes total sense that we'd barely remember them!

Now, credit where its due, I still was compelled to get through the rest of the game despite these pacing issues because the whole setting still intrigued me. But that's where another issue raised its head: the ending felt incredibly unsatisfying in that it didn't explain anything nor provide a believable emotional conclusion. Maybe it's just my bad luck for making the wrong choices or something, and I understand that the game implies that we should play it multiple times, but with no way to easily skip/fast-forward dialogue, I can't see myself retreading all of that ground just to see if a game that already let me down might not do it again.

Apart from all this, I do wish the game also had a bit of quality-of-life, such as allowing you to pause and save at any point, though it's not too bad as the game does a decent job at providing breaks. Also I wish the gameplay was a bit more involved beyond just talking to people: would've been nice to have some puzzles and other interactions.

I was also curious about the whole possibility to skip interacting with characters in the break periods: I wonder if that is supposed to be some sort of fast-forward to let you continue if you've already done them before, like a convenience feature, or if it's just a weird decision because you wouldn't be earning points to influence the ending.

SquidoodleDev responds:

Hiya, I’m not going to lie this was incredibly hard to read but I understand your point and agree.
I’m now going to go back through the game and see how I can improve the narrative and story so that I can hopefully make it better and more enjoyable.
- SquidoodleDev

[SUPERSLAP2444]

Whoa, this boss-rush SHMUP was pretty dang cool! Not only does the game have a great set of challenging bosses to defeat with a very unique 'reflection' slap mechanic, but the game is also very charmingly goofy and bursting with energy with a lot of wacky dialogue, crunchy sound, doodle-y art, and over-the-top animations. Even though it throws you straight in and can be a bit confusing and the difficulty can be a bit wack with some later bosses being easier than early bosses, I really enjoyed myself, and liked how the bosses pushed the mechanic in interesting ways, like how the second boss needs you to be more aggressive in your reflections so as to hit him before he dodges away.

Having said that, while the very goofy art is its appeal, it can certainly be a bit too much at times in creating visual noise that leads to unfair, cheap deaths. For example, when you block a hail of bullets, it's very easy to lose track of some stragglers because they get hidden by the 'pow' effects. Furthermore, I was dying for the game to include some quality-of-life mechanics like an auto-fire to save my hands from having to mash the fire button, as well as a button to hold down to move more slowly to dodge these tight bullet spreads. I also kept getting caught off-guard by how little respawn invincibility there is.