FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Blind Hero]

Hmm, it feels like it does get some interesting story built up eventually once you get to the first boss, but for the most part the game felt very bland and empty, and very confusingly constructed.

In terms of game design, the game had tons of weird oddities to it. First and foremost, the hitboxes of the player and the enemy were way too damn big, like three times larger than what it looks like, leading to getting damaged from unreasonable distances. Damage was inconsistent as well, where touching some enemies (even when they are dying!) can end up damaging you, while touching other similar enemies doesn't hurt at all. The game actually does a good job at showing animations for enemy attacks, so I have no idea why you can get hurt by touching them when they're not attacking. Speaking of damage feedback, I also found it odd that things like hitting enemies produce sparks, but hitting the health totems is absolutely silent, which felt so bad in terms of feedback.

In terms of adventure and story, the world felt quite bland and repetitive. I did enjoy the goofy dialogue here and there and some of the setup once you get your first power from the boss and see the note left behind, but in general, traversing the world was just boring. I'd regularly try to avoid combat whenever possible because it was such a slog due to the enemies being damage sponges, and the world never seemed to have enough landmarks, interesting locations, or slick movement to keep my interest.

I think it's a pretty good attempt: had some small hints of nice design like bosses and enemies with attack animations and so on, but right now it just feels way too shallow in terms of the moment-to-moment gameplay.

[FIG]

Hmm, this one started out strong but kind of lost me at the end.

I loved the intrigue and completely absurd yet foreboding story: there was so much mystery to what the hell this fig tree was, who the green haired girl was, where am I, why does everything keep looping, who's the maniac that is chasing me, so on and so forth. The gameplay wasn't much to speak about at its core, but nevertheless I found myself enraptured to find the keys and figure out the mystery behind this strange world.

But then...I escaped, and that was it! It felt like a slap in the face seeing that victory screen: no mystery solved, so many questions left unanswered. It felt like such a let down! I actually thought it must be a joke ending or something and that I needed to do some secret objectives to get the real ending, but no, that really seemed to be it. It really hurt my impression and faith of the game: due to the bad ending, it felt like all of the intrigue and mystery wasn't anything thought-out or planned in the end, but just a mish-mash of random spooky stuff.

Hopefully you can take my disappointment as a compliment that I think you did a good job at creating an enthralling world: just next time create a conclusion that lives up to that initial hype!

[Hen in the Foxhouse 2.1]

Wow, very cool stuff! Was absolutely blown away by the presentation and story in this game: loved the epic intro and loved all of the ways it delivered story like the news station and the chatter from enemies as the situation gets more and more intense: really helped make me get into my role as an avenger. Gameplay was solid as well: felt great to cause so much chaos due to the satisfying feedback, there was interesting systems in place of outrunning the police parade and standing still to reload that made the combat very engaging and intense, and I liked the amount of variation in enemies and the way the city slowly crumbles.

If I had any complaints about the game, it would be that it doesn't teach all of the controls and rules very well (for instance, I was lost on how to create more eggs initially), and that, despite having variation and escalation in enemy design, the game did get a bit repetitive nevertheless, especially in terms of objectives and scenery being recycled. Still, very impressive stuff, and what an improvement from the previous version!

VerilyFine responds:

Glad to hear you liked it! I'll have those things in mind for future updates, thanks for the feedback.

[Jump and Hover]

Another solid action puzzle platformer from Rob1221! As usual, it's pretty solid in most respects, being a decent, fun concept that is improved upon in a nicely paced way so as to keep the player hooked. The only downside for me was the difficulty at times: there were a couple of difficulty spikes here and there where the game needed some really precise inputs due to how fast the character fell and how tight the required elevation you needed to hover at was. Luckily it wasn't too bad and I like a challenge, but still, it would be nice if the game was relaxed a bit, such as if the character was made to fall a little slower to allow for easier timing for hover activations: always a bit frustrating to know what the solution is, but to miss it due to overly strict input requirements.

[The Christmas Hustle]

It's very confusing to grasp what's going on in the first place without any explanation or tutorial (what little tutorial there is vanishes almost immediately), but once I did figure out what the deal was, I had a pretty fun time: though goddamn is this game hard!

Definitely reminds me of those manic order-fulfillment games like Overcooked, Cook, Serve, Delicious and others where you need to manage this conveyor belt of toys and mold/color/package them all simultaneously as they go back. It's definitely a bit frustrating to juggle everything at once, especially since you are so at the whims of the conveyor belt which keeps everything so annoyingly in sync to offer so little room for mistakes (I kept praying to be able to drag objects ahead to stations on the conveyor), but I did find the challenge of the limitations fun to try and get good at its mind-bending nature!

[Leap Peasant]

It's a decent attempt at a jumping ragequit platformer like Jump King, especially considering the short amount of time it was worked on, but it still felt very wonky unfortunately.

I think all of the basics are there and it works alright: there's a lot of clever jumps and setups you need to work through and while the world isn't terribly exciting as it doesn't offer any interesting hooks or environments to traverse, it still is somewhat fun to jump around.

What killed it for me for the most part was the lack of polish (which again, is understandable given the time).

For one, the charge bar is completely out-of-whack and an outright liar: after testing I noticed that you only have to fill it up to about half-way, maybe less, to already achieve the maximum a jump will allow, as filling it up beyond that to max will not change anything. This is not only confusing but also frustrating as it severely limits the amount of wiggle room you have to precisely tune your strength.

Next, I found that there were a lot of times where you had no recourse but to do a leap of faith, which sucks because other games like Jump King will at least allow you to jump straight up as a means of scouting ahead: in this all you can do is jump up into the other screen and fail and try all over again, which isn't fair.

Finally there were also just a lot of glitches, like times where I would charge up and jump while standing in the middle of a platform away from walls...only to not jump at all: only moving myself to the side a bit would fix this for some reason.

AnderssonKev responds:

Thank you for playing and taking your time to write this review. I appreciate the feedback and I agree with your points. The jump bar is strange though, it should work but I might have to look at it and see what's wrong with it.

I hope that you had fun!

[Tonight We Hunt]

Hmm, it certainly seems like a pretty cool game at first glance, but I found it to be a bit underbaked for me on further examination. Definitely has a lot of potential though.

The game definitely does have some nice stuff going for it: the world seems very interesting, the graphics and animation are pretty cool, and the focus on boss fights is a delight. However, there just seemed to be a lot of jank surrounding this, dragging down the game.

First and foremost, the controls were very odd and annoying to get used to: why not have shooting or rolling be its own button instead of this awkward holding S thingy, hanging is so delayed and unresponsive, why does S not put you in a crouching/ready position for rolling/shooting, etc. Second was that the game just seemed to be constructed very awkwardly and have bad bounding boxes, where I would teleport around or get half stuck in walls for doing basic movements and jumps. just a general sense of everything not being as smooth and polished as it should.

A big disappointment was the fear mechanic, which seemed like it was going to be really cool. I thought it was going to be really neat to have to tactically disengage or look away from the boss, lest I be assaulted by all sorts of crazy hallucinations or status ailments. Instead, the fear meter just seemed to build up all the time even if I looked away, and who cares that it built up because all it did was turn the screen slightly purple: woo, so scary. In the end, it was too annoying and tedious to avoid since there weren't effective tells from the boss, and it didn't add anything cool or interesting to the fights.

Finally, while the boss fights has potential, the levels leading up to them seemed very bland and uninspired. I'll give that the bird level was kind of cool in that it build up anticipation for the boss by previewing it as you work your way up, but all the levels did was just pad time out with the same ol' obstacles.

[International PixelArt Gallery 2021]

As always with these type of collaboration galleries, I think the heart is in the right place, and I do think this gallery does a lot right in providing a very cool and informative look at some great art from some great artists.

But I'd be lying if I didn't find a lot of annoyances in terms of navigation and presentation with this gallery that really made the process more confusing than it should've been:

*The Back/Next buttons can be really weird because they don't respect history/context. Tons of times I would hit next, expecting to go to the next artist in the country I initially selected from the map, only to go to some completely different artist in a completely different country. Similarly, sometimes I would hit back to go back to an artist I viewed previously, only to end up on another artists page I've never seen. I believe this is because the buttons work off of the assumption that you're moving from the context of the artist list, not the world map or the user's history. Very confusing.

*I really wish there was a way to view the artist's name and info page more readily instead of having to page through all their artwork to get to it. Yes, you'll usually get to their profile eventually, but I don't know why their name flashes for a nano-second and disappears before I can even parse it: it'd be nice if their name was always in the corner (or appears if I hover near a part of the screen, similar to the bottom toolbar) and I could click on it to go to their info page immediately.

*I don't know why the artist buttons when you select a nation don't highlight when you hover over them: I wasn't even sure if I could select an artist specifically because of this.

*I don't know why, maybe it's on my end, but there were a lot of weird instances of flickering text and graphics.

*It's not a huge issue, but I wish it was more easily apparent which countries have content within them. Yes, they get 'pinged' by the rotating sonar animation every now and then, but why not have that alongside a natural highlighting of all of the countries with content? It can just make it frustrating to have to hunt and check every country manually one-by-one to find where everything is.

*What the heck is up with the ordering of the artist list? It seems to be pure random, making it difficult to find someone. Shouldn't it be organized in alphabetical order, or maybe grouped by country?

*Some of the buttons can be confusing: for example, I hit 'Credits' expecting to see the info of the artist I was viewing, only to have it take me to credits for the entire game. Similarly, I was just trying to go back to the world map to select something else by hitting 'Quit', only to have the entire game shut down. Yes, it seems obvious in hindsight, but I hope you can see the logic of how this can be misinterpreted.

JamesChapp responds:

Ths for the feedback. yo realy help me to improve the galery last year.

the artist list goes in the order in which they entered the gallery.
the back / next buttons follow that order.

I understand that the gallery is difficult to navigate ... somehow I think I do it unconsciously ... like having an art gallery and wanting visitors to get lost in it.

I think there are many things to improve the gallery. I really appreciate the time you took to give me all this valuable feedback.

I'm going to analyze it and see what things can be improved for next year.

For me, one of the biggest challenges of this project was that the gallery does not obscure, distract, draw attention, annoy the artists' drawings ... but at the same time ... it does highlight and help to find the artists.

Already this week I start working on the 2022 gallery.

I thank you again for the help!

Greetings

[Heroes Quest]

Mmm, I appreciate what it was going for with the whole meta-twist and such, but that's literally all the game had, and it was incredibly shallow and didn't evolve or lead to anything interesting. And without the story leading to anything new or interesting, all it had at its core was a very boring and standard platformer. Basically, this was the equivalent of a disguising a pig with lipstick to look like a hot girl: you jangled this shiny meta stuff in front of our face to distract from a very boring game.

Don't get me wrong, the game did have some nice things to it: I liked the goofy death animation ragdoll effect and will admit that the story was intriguing enough to make me want to play until the end to see what it would build up to. But I found that what it lead up to was...nothing interesting, so that made the disappointment even more palpable. Again, I understand if you feel this could be a bit unfair: back in the day a metanarrative twist like this, as simple as it is, would have been applauded for being so unique, but nowadays this is really old and well-worn territory and has been done way better.

I just felt so disappointed that it didn't do something like have the glitches form new platforms for a different route or introduce new glitched enemies or have you battle against the author more or something like that: instead all of the levels are just exactly the same boring levels as before except dipped in a really painful to look at chromatic aberration filter. You can't even choose to kill someone different to make your own choice for potential multiple endings: you can only do what you've written out for us.

Also as a further nail in its coffin, the game was very glitchy (in a non-intentional way, that is). For example, I had times where my corpse got punted too far to the right that it ended up spawning me farther ahead than I had gotten without any music playing anymore.

To quote Yahtzee on SuperHot: "Metanarrative-style fuckabouts is like the backstroke: if you start doing it before we're immersed, you just look like a twat."

[Get in Santa's Pants]

What a cute little game (well, in so much as a game about committing adultery can be cute, haha)!

There were definitely some small annoyances with the game at first, such as how the weird way the interact system was made can easily get you stuck in loops where you keep repeating dialogue when you're hitting the button just trying to get to the end of whatever they're saying and close out, and how you can't interact with people across the table they're sitting at and you have to go all-around, and other nitpicks like that. But once you get used that, I found it was a rather fun collecting/trading game with some light puzzle elements (like figuring out how to lock Ms Claus in the closet, haha). I did wish it had some more niceties like a better inventory stuff and such to keep track of it all, but I loved all the charming characters, dialogues, and wacky concept behind this.