FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Decadungeon]

Hmm, I'm a bit split on this one.

On one hand, I think the game is pretty well put-together and very polished: graphics are charming and animated, lots of variety in enemy sprites, menus and navigation are very intuitive in design with great pop-ups for more details to help learn the game. All in all it is very cute in its presentation and smooth to both understand and play. I also like how it offers multiple classes and the ability to customize your party for replayability. Nice touches as well in how it displays equipment on the characters during combat.

On the other hand, though, I found myself getting bored quite quickly. I found the combat incredibly monotonous as it is old-school to the core, in that all you do for the most part is wait, wait, wait, to attack, attack, attack, over and over: no interesting enemy weaknesses to exploit, no need for defense or status ailments or positioning or turn order or anything like that. There were a lot of enemy sprites, sure, but they were all functionality identical dumb hp sponges due to the lack of strategy needed.

Beyond combat, the map screen didn't offer any meaningful choices to make as it was very linear: I expected the map to have a bit of risk-reward to it, like deciding whether to take a road with lots of encounters but treasure at the end, or taking a road with fewer encounters to just get to the boss, for example. Maybe the game gets a lot more complex later on, but I didn't have the patience to get through however many worlds that takes. Also the lack of music and more powerful effects makes the game very dull in mood as well.

Furthermore, I was a bit annoyed that the characters have stats that they excel at, because it feels like it pigeonholes you into only going for roles that fit their excelled stat lest you shoot yourself in the foot. I want to explore more wacky and interesting party combinations, but it pushes you into always going for the same ones because of the excelling defaults. Could also use a codex in game where you can read the effects of stats and such.

Overall, I'd say it's very nice and something to be proud of, but this old-school design is just outdated and not for me, I suppose, as I like a lot more complexity and strategy that you get from modern RPGs.

[Love Me Newgrounds!!!]

Not too shabby! While I did have some issues with the game such as:

*Confusion over the premise/introduction of the game: why does taking other student's projects count as getting a white day gift for Pico and Steve? Maybe make it more obvious that it's for an collage in the first place as the wording of 'project' could mean anything, or just scrap the whole 'project' idea and just focus on gathering art scraps for a collage right from the bat, I dunno. (Not to mention we never get to see the collage and it never comes up in the end anyway, so why bother haha)
*Lack of choice and meaningful interactions does make the game a bit monotonous and repetitive as you just go from person to person doing the same thing (yes there is a nice choice at the end but still, it's just one)
*Minor glitches and bugs with sound where they sounded corrupted (maybe intentionally?) or were missing altogether

it was still nevertheless fun and compelling to get through due to the variety of encounters, the goofy and comedic dialogue (which was voiced well) and the colorful avatars. Also I liked that it had some little touches like being able to skip the end credits on repeat playthrus. A fun little jaunt that introduced me to a lot of cool newgrounders!

[A Toad's Trip]

Hmm, seems like it could be a fun and charming little romp, but it just seemed like the game was barely held together with chewing gum and toilet paper, and that feeling of jank ruined the experience for me.

As said, I did think the core of the game was decent. Felt fun to go on a little scavenger hunt, searching for things hidden around and solving little mini puzzles like the soccer game. The tongue was fun to use both as a movement tool and a tool for carrying/pushing objects. I liked the animations of the frog and found it cute how they transitioned between normal mode and mouthful mode. And the story, while confusing, was very goofy to experience.

But there was just so much wrong with the game that killed it for me. I didn't like the weird physics for objects like trash: they could just slide away from you and disappear behind a tree and you'd never find them (please make it so that going behind a tree turns it transparent). The graphics, as charming as they were, felt like they got ruined because of the improper scaling and zoomed-out nature of the game, including the text on the chores screen which is artifacted and hard to read. The tongue was confusing in that I was never sure whether I'd gobble up an object I tongued or whether I'd fly to it and such. I didn't like how when I clicked on the settings menu it would activate the tongue at the same time, and it didn't pause the game. And speaking of that, tons of HUD and menu elements were really badly put-together, like the old man's text clipping out of the text window and the options menu not properly aligned and disappearing off the screen. And so on and so forth: just so much weird, glitchy, unpolished stuff going on.

Definitely very rough, which is understandable due to the game jam nature of it, but a bit of a shame since I feel like it really could've shined with a bit more polish and time.

[Al Dente]

Wow, what an experience! Game definitely has some rough bits here and there, such as not highlighting objects or buttons that can be interacted with, and some of the logic can be a little twisted or strange, but I found this game overall very enrapturing. The not-highlighting objects was never too bad as it felt like the environments were built to naturally let you know what can be interacted with. The game kept me hooked constantly to see what new crazy puzzle or disturbing sequence would come up next, with the, I dunno, Dali-esque graphics making everything a treat to examine and investigate further. Nice work!

[Lovestar DEMO]

Quite the wacky game, though maybe it's a bit too wacky for me, haha!

It definitely was quite the experience: game certainly went to a lot of strange places with some very charming art, characters and scenarios. While a lot of the humor and dialogue were very non-sequitor, fourth-wall breaking and just total nonsense at times, part of me took it in stride and just enjoyed the crazy ride. Indeed, I found if you just turn off your brain and embrace these nutjobs, you can have a good ol' time.

But the other side of me felt like the game was just being a little TOO wacky to the point of just being confusing, inconsistent, and dumb. During my Eva run, the characters would flip-flop their personalities constantly, going from showing dominance to suddenly being nice or scared or whatever, and it made it so I could never get a read on them or treat it seriously. For example, my character would suddenly act like they know Eva even though it's their first time meeting, and suddenly Eva would be scared when I ask about her wings despite her being in charge for the whole time. Also there was a severe limitation of choices: in the Eva run you only get one choice for your job, with one leading to a bad end with no real reason for it and completely out of your control in an unsatisfying way. I was also annoyed that the game, when I was trying to read the text for the Pizza Ending, proceeded without my consent to the next screen before I was done. Finally, I don't think it's necessarily to have so many *emotional cue* text when you could just do that by changing the character art/portraits instead (which you already did most of the time).

Apart from that, the game also has clunkiness in other respects: the main menu, for example, has the main options remain even when you click on About or Help, leading to those same options blocking the text from being read. The text in those About/Help menus also gets cut-off in many places, and the scroll bar requires you to click next to it instead of on it to operate it.

Looking forward to seeing the full version!

[KAT GAME]

It doesn't have much to it in terms of long-lasting appeal, but it's pretty decent, in a kind of 'my first score attack' kind of game!

Kind of got a mixed impression for most of it, both good and bad. The gameplay, for example, does make a solid first impression with its dynamic 3d tilted camera, and its got a good assortment of obstacles, what with the saw blades and the bouncing balls. With the way the obstacles keep increasing and there's so much to keep track of, it makes for some manic dodging fun!

However, I also found that the tilted camera not only forces you to stay in the back corner so you can see the whole board, but it made the task of determining where obstacles were very wonky and vague, especially since the bouncing balls don't leave a shadow on the ground, leading to a lot of 'that hit me?' deaths. Also the obstacles would act very strangely at times: saw blades wouldn't bounce off of each other, but balls could bounce off of saws and even get wonky to the point of changing from bouncing balls to balls that just roll on the ground.

Graphics were also a mixed bag where I liked the goofy title screen and cat sprite, but other parts of the game such as the HUD/fonts were very bland and basic. I think the game does have a decent concept and core to it: would just love to see this polished up and improved upon for an even better version with more levels, more obstacles, etc (would also be cool to see a bit more story or narrative progression: I wanna know what the big red guy has against this cat!)

[Chthonic Brilliance]

Pretty solid puzzler! Definitely puts its best foot forward in terms of presentation: I found the overall graphics, animations, sounds and so on very charming to see and play, and I especially like the touch of the cute map screen that shows your progress, among other things.

Puzzles were pretty good as well...at least eventually. My main gripe with the game is that it felt like it took way too long to get to puzzles that actually made me think and plan: a huge portion of the early levels were braindead easy, but nevertheless also involved a lot of busy work as the movement speed can be quite slow with no way to speed it up, making it a slog that I could see making some players drop off. However, thanks to the good presentation as stated before giving me a solid first impression, I stuck with it and found that the later levels picked things up nicely with more brainteasers. So while it does get good eventually, I would've loved if maybe the game would get to the later puzzles faster, and maybe change up the speed somehow to pick up the pace. Still, solid work!

[A Viking's Tale 2]

Pretty decent point-n-click adventure! It definitely had some rough edges that I didn't like too much, such as the inconsistency with determining what is interactable or not: the game goes back and forth on whether items pop-up/highlight or not when you hover over them, and that can make it unnecessarily confusing to let you know whether you can click on them. Also, I do wish the environments were a bit more lively: I'd love to see the snow actually falling or the trees shaking back and forth, and it'd also be nice if the people you can talk to could be seen in the environment itself so it isn't so abrupt to see them only appear in the 'dialogue zone'. Having said that, though, it was still a nice adventure with some cool puzzles to solve: though those sliding puzzles will always be the death of me, haha!

[Undergrave]

Certainly puts its best foot forward: this felt like a pretty solid game! I enjoyed the slick presentation it has to it from the very start with the cool title screen and opening cinematic, and that presentation continued into the gameplay with the slick in-game HUD, satisfying animations for attacks and intriguing world design. Game had a lot of nice subtle touches to it as well such as being very good with informative and intuitive pop-ups/symbols, smart auto-targetting for abilities. Gameplay was solid as well with a simple assortment of abilities with many ways to apply them strategically: felt cool to combine some like jumping to where you left your sword behind with a throw. All in all, feels very professionally done.

In terms of minor feedback, there are some weird graphical glitches, like the jump crater decal overlapping objects that should be in front of it, like jumping behind a table/gravestone has the crate spawn on top of the table/gravestone. Also I found it odd and lazy-looking how each level starts with a bunch of warps in sequence, but the enemies all spawn at once when all the warps are done, instead of spawning in sync with the warps. Also sometimes the controls can be a little unresponsive if you try to move or act too quickly in sequence.

In terms of more major feedback, I found the game getting pretty repetitive: a bit of a case where it feels like the game was stretched a bit too thin for the content it offers. A huge portion of the early levels are just the same fight over and over against basic zombies, and I was getting sick of them, especially on replays. It took way too many levels for something as simple as a new enemy being introduced to happen: I think either the amount of levels should be reduced to match the content on offer, or the amount of variety in enemy types and level layouts to be increased to match the amount of levels you want. Also some of the rules were confusing or illogical to get used to, like how attacking a zombie by walking into them doesn't count as a move, or how a zombie that moves next to you is able to attack you on the same turn (I understand why this was made for difficulties' sake, but usually these types of games only allow moving or attacking in a turn, not both, so its weird when it happens). Also there's a weird glitch where if you mash the movement buttons at the start of an arena fast enough, you can get a free move turn that doesn't allow the enemies to have a move next.

[Abstract Dasher]

Decent little game! While it does have a very 'my first game' vibe to it due to the overly simplistic graphics, system default fonts/buttons and janky game feel (such as the collision glitches) to it all, I did feel like it was a good core concept where you need to play effectively in order to outrun the dark and that there were some cool touches to the game, especially the way the music would amp up as you get closer and closer to hitting your boost threshold until it finally starts blasting!

My main problem with it is that the speed is supposed to be the part of the game that you're supposed to get excited about and is required to win, but I absolutely hated it since it made the game way too bloody fast and the combination of the warped camera and obstacles that are colored the same as the ground made it way too annoying to dodge effectively. Controls felt very unresponsive as well considering the speed it wants you to react for dodges.

It's definitely kinda ho-hum and not anything too great as it is, but I feel like the little touches such as the dynamic music give me hope to see bigger and better future projects!

By the way, not that it's bad or anything, but might this have been made from just making the 'my first game in unity' tutorial game from Brackeys and just making some minor adjustments to it? Just curious: I made a simple game from that tutorial as well and its very similar to this.

Steventus responds:

Actually, this was coded from the bottom up.
It goes without saying that there was a lot of touch-ups absolutely neccesary from the design end.

Much of what I think the problem lies in, is that the controls are too slippery, and as you additionally mentioned: obstacles and things are too bloody fast.

I tried alleviating that by adding a large particle effect on object spawn but it goes without saying that there needs to be more work to be done.

I'm not continuing work on the project though, but this is something for me to take to other projects!

Big thanks for your words and it's great to have your feedback on this!