FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tower Of Death]

Pretty neat game! The whole grapple mechanic is pretty fun and adds a lot of interesting strategy to the fights: really escalates things in an interesting direction, similar to something like Bionic Commando. Alongside that cool core concept, I loved the goofy story and the large variety of enemies, mechanics, bosses and so on. Basically, the game just did an excellent job at constantly amping things up bit by bit, introducing new enemies, new techniques, new bosses, and so on, which kept me hooked and wanting to play more.

As nice as it was, it definitely does have some clunky aspects to it. For one, I found it very confusing to have to grapple your hand off-screen to proceed: would much prefer if you would just grapple to a point near the exit and then it would transition you (I almost thought it started to do this in the later levels, but instead it just put a grapple point that you'd still need to grapple off-screen anyway). Speaking of grappling, sometimes I wish it was a bit more forgiving at times, and they were some oddities like being able to grapple to points that enemies are sitting on top of, still alive. Some of the ways the game spiced things up, like suddenly introducing a table flip mechanic for a boss, were a mixed blessing at times, as while they did shake things up and keep it fresh, sometimes it was a bit too drastic and out of left field instead of building on core mechanics. And finally, I was really bummed that the game does not have a save/load or continue feature. Obviously a lot of these are understandable given it was a game jam game. but still, would love if some of these could be polished up or added post-game jam.

[Buggy & Snuggy's BIG DIG]

Cute little game! Seems like it could make for some fun 2-player hijinks as you compete to harvest while other getting in the way of others: the multi-use of the tools to both grow/harvest while also building pitfall traps and such is quite interesting. The graphics were especially very cute and I liked the hidden emote/taunt feature: one of those nice little touches that might need be necessary, but adds a little spice to it all.

Unfortunately, I only have myself to play it with (sadge) and while the game does offer a 1-player mode, I almost wish it didn't because it doesn't serve a useful purpose: without at least an AI bot to compete against, it really puts a bad light on the game. I know maybe you were trying to be nice by including it for soloers like me, but if you don't go all the way in its implementation, I feel like it's better left-out as the game definitely seems intended for 2-player: a half-measure pleases no one, prefer you stand strong with the intention.

Moving beyond that, there were also some confusing aspects to it. For having such wonderful sprites, I was surprised that the interaction was limited to just shoveling: you'd think that when they water the plant, they'd use a watering can, and when they harvest they'd just grab with their hands or use a sickle. Not having these different sprites made the gameplay really confusing, especially considering how many clicks you need to get things done (why do you have to dig twice just to get things started? maybe if they dug first and then showed the sprite planting next, it'd make sense to have those extra steps). There were also some minor glitches like the score not resetting on a new game and the movement/interactions feeling stiff and unsatisfying.

[Hadros]

Nice little puzzler! It's not the flashest game or anything like that, being quite minimalist, but I still found myself getting addicted nonetheless. That might just be because this was my first time experiencing '2048', and not necessarily anything the game did, but still, I found that the game was constructed well: it did a good job at intuitively teaching me the rules and making me have fun racking up achievements as I morphed the shapes together. Only got up to 10 so far, but tempted to see how much farther I can go!

[Paramyst: Breach]

Bit of a rough game, but had a little something to it that made me want to keep playing despite it all.

As said, the game was definitely being pretty rough, especially in terms of the interface. The layering was all over the place: the main mouse cursor would go behind the inventory objects I'm trying to use, and everytime I'd use an item on something the object would go behind the thing, adding unnecessary confusion to interactions. There were weird glitches where, if you pull up your tablet and click on a log, you might end up interacting with something in the world that was in the same relative position as the log button. I also suffered a glitch where once I used the crowbar on the power box, the crowbar stayed on screen in the same position for the rest of my game. Basically, just a lot of really unprofessional stuff.

And something about the way the story is presented just made me laugh: all of the logs where people either beat you over the head with the solution to a puzzle you already knew or kept typing despite dying (Monty Python, anyone?) and the weird segment at the end where it just devolves into a bunch of text telling you what happens instead of, you know, gameplay. Definitely a very odd and weird game.

But I gotta admit, despite all of that, I did actually find myself getting a bit addicted to it: perhaps not for the intended reason as I found it more funny than scary, but hey, I beat it in one sitting and had a good time adventuring around and solving the various puzzles (as easy as they were), so a win's a win, haha!

[TRAILVOID]

Hrmm, I really want to like this, but man I had a rough start and there are some serious issues I had with the design.

First and foremost, please, for the love of god, stop adding all these silly flashy filter crap to your game like the curved screen and blurry chromatic aberration whatsit: it doesn't make the game look cool, it makes it look worse by making it actually physically painful to look at and difficult to read any of the text (especially when combined with the tiny screen). Sorry, I just see so many indie game devs overdo it when they get their hands on these snazzy filters or other juicy aspects: the game would look and read way better without them, trust me, the graphics are nice enough by themselves.

Moving on from that, the game really kind of throws you into it without any directions. While it did make it quite interesting to figure everything out, it did make the introduction quite frustrating (especially when coupled with the already mentioned physical discomfort from looking at the game). For putting so much focus on RMB to start, it's odd that it doesn't use RMB for starting actual movement. Anyway, even after I did figure out how the game worked, there still were a lot of silly decision decisions, like how you can see where your ships will spawn but you can't see in what order your ships will spawn (leading to inevitably losing your first run because you can't plan it out beforehand), and also the level order seemed really strange at times with suddenly incredibly easy levels being stuck inbetween hard levels, breaking the smooth escalation of difficulty. Also wish I could have the choice to restart a single ship's run, instead of having to restart the whole thing.

Having said all that though, when you get used to everything the game has, I actually found myself having some good fun. The movement system in particular, with the way it slows down when you're holding down the aim button and then the crisp boost from release: so damn satisfying! And I like the concept of planning out multiple routes to not intersect, and the way new mechanics like collecting keys throws an extra spice into the mix. Definitely a good game in there, it's just a bit hidden until your eyes adjust to it, if you pardon the pun.

[Enoki]

I want to like this game, but I'm not really seeing the appeal.

I do think that the way the character moves around and squishes is very cute and satisfying, and I do think the environments are kind of neat. The gameplay does seem like it could get good: it's got a bit of an addictive nature where you keep pushing down, seeing new environments and obstacles, collecting shiny objects, all while racing away from a consuming darkness.

Unfortunately, it just got really boring really fast for me. The encroaching darkness moves so slowly that it is never a threat, leading to gameplay that has no tension or spice to make quick navigational decisions. The game spent no time in recycling level assets over and over, killing any sense of progression in getting deeper and deeper. Collecting fireflies to break roots made no sense and felt unsatisfying: I'd prefer if maybe fireflies gave you mana to spend on a ground-pound ability to break through roots so the player could have more control and make decisions. Speaking of abilities, the whole 'split apart' ability felt underwhelming: it's got a really lazy animation to it when you reform and all it does is get you past these certain checkpoints and is useless anywhere else. And so on and so forth.

And to top it off, the game has a really boring and unnecessary mobile-game-esque currency to buy skins: I would prefer you make the game itself fun and addicting than relying on number-go-up currency stuff to trick people into getting addicted (sorry, perhaps that's a bit harsh and not the intent, but it's just not my jam).

[Salvager]

Definitely feels like it has a lot of potential. For example, I was really impressed how, instead of having basic button menus and such, all of what would be menu actions are actually interactable objects in the environment. Also the whole aspect of moving around and ordering your bots to build/collect and such using your own health as power/order nodes made for some interesting gameplay. And, of course, I do think the graphics are very nice and well-animated as well. Certainly an A for effort.

Unfortunately the game does feel very underbaked, maybe as a result of overambition. First and foremost the game does a terrible job of explaining things: there are practically no directions and what little directions you do get remain on the screen for 2 seconds before they swoosh away. It does ok in some respects to teach you things, like how you can see the robots get an exclamation mark over their head to indicate that they are moving on your orders, but so much else is confusing and underexplained. Couple that with the gameplay being incredibly basic defense against these boring enemies (with weird recovery times) without me being able to figure out how to progress and the game ended up losing me.

[Prism Indigo]

Pretty decent shooter! It has a bit of a slow start and is a bit overall lowkey, but once you get to the boss fights and the later sections, it becomes a decent bullet-hell game with some fun patterns to contend with. I like how it has a whole story element to it which is even subtly introduced in the tutorial section as a way to hook you in. It's not gonna rock my world or anything as nothing really blows me away, but it's alright and I had a decent time for the most part.

Part of what really hurts it for me is that it is a little dry in terms of pizazz: it's not bad, per se, and the boss fights and interesting patterns do jazz it up considerably, but it is a little underwhelming in terms of special effects, and the bullet-sponge boss fights combined with sometimes too easy to dodge patterns and drab non-boss fight sections enhance the monotony unfortunately. There's also some awkward stuff like the magnetic attraction of pick-ups acts very oddly and causes them to fly past me sometimes instead of homing in properly. Finally, perhaps it may not be a long game, but I was really disappointed there was no continue option: I came back to finish it off after a break and saw I had to start all over: killed my motivation. That being said, I do still want to see if I can come back and finish this in order to see the end of the story!

F1Krazy responds:

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I always try to make sure that my games have that kind of story aspect to them, so I'm especially glad that that appealed to you.

I'm currently working on an update that should spice up some of the earlier levels and smooth out the difficulty of the bosses so that they aren't so easy to cheese. I'd like to address some of the other issues, like the lack of visual punch, but I'm yet to decide whether I'll do that in this game or save it for the sequel.

[Notebook Jam]

Cute and addictive game! Was surprised at how addicted I got to making my way through the puzzles in this game: feel like it's due to the cute graphics and music, intuitive mechanics (love the little targetting icon on the right and how it flashes red if it's a no-go, for example), and the great way it's paced by slowly increasing the complexity with more pages and more wild layouts. If I were to have any complaints, it's probably that the HUD could be polished up a bit more to pop-out (didn't even notice the page indicator at the top at first) and that it can be a bit confusing at the start (you're going back and forth between two pages and yet the animation keeps flipping pages to the left instead of a left-right loop, it works for multiple pages but with two its weird). Great job!

[The Ferryman]

Oh man, this is a really rough one for me.

The game absolutely started out fantastic for me: love the way it builds up a sense of dread and this dreary, gloomy atmosphere through its spooky soundscape, artistic graphics, light-based mechanics, and weird cast of characters. I was so looking forward to how the game escalates and introduces new horrors into this seemingly mundane job.

But then as early as the second level, it threw out everything it built up out the window: all the subtlety and intrigue, gone, as it just blasts you with a horde of never-ending ghouls that munch away at your boat non-stop. You'd think it would tease you with only a single ghoul, or maybe a few ghouls appearing at first, maybe so few that you're not even sure if it was your imagination, the light playing tricks on you, as you repair the holes left behind. I was so scared to carry coal and buckets around since I thought in doing so, the diminished light would open me up to attack from ghouls. But nope! My fears were unwarranted as the ghouls did nothing but constantly munch at the hull with no threat towards me: suddenly what was once scary becomes nothing more than a common pest, a roach I swish away with a broom as I dash madly around patching my boat and bailing out water. A spooky game no more, now just a weird task-juggling game.

Beyond just the annoyance at the spookiness being ruined, I also feel like the difficulty spikes way too hard as early as level two because of the sudden onslaught of ghouls. Although it could be just that the game doesn't communicate its mechanics well. While I can assume that the holes fill up the boat with water, I was never sure if that was the case because the holes did not drip water or anything like that. Likewise, I kept trying to empty the boat of water by picking up the water buckets below deck, carrying them topside and and throwing them overboard, but that never seemed to do anything (only once I ignored bailing water and just focused on patching holes did the water level seem to decrease, which didn't make any sense).

I'm still giving it a good score because despite my gripes, I do find the game's atmosphere, charm, and intrigue very appealing (not to mention you do have a save/load system). I'm hoping I can continue to play and maybe find something to change my mind for the better.

EDIT: Once I did get used to it and accept the game for what it was, I had a pretty good time! It was still a little frustrating and repetitive at times, and I do still feel it missed a trick, but overall, a very cool experience! And yes, it is impressive it was made in such minimal time, haha!

crelish responds:

....made in... 5 days.............