FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tezcatlipoca Early Acces]

Huh, quite the promising survival horror game you have here!

For the most part, it feels like the game has good fundamentals: all the stuff you would expect, such as tank controls and fixed camera angles are presented and handled alright (though I'll admit I find it weird that pressing backwards has the character insta-turn instead of backpedaling). The visual style is pretty distinct, reminding me of something like Killer7, and the way it brightly highlighting interactables is rather striking. Atmosphere is alright too with neat lighting and ambient sound. I also thought it had some pretty neat aspects to the gameplay: in particular I liked some of the first-person segments, like the part where you have a maze to get through and you need to use audio cues to find the way out based on the clue given: that was pretty clever and felt like a good puzzle!

In spite of this, though, I had to admit that I had a tough time getting immersed into the game and taking it seriously. My feedback would be thus:

First there were a lot of weird technical issues. For some reason the game defaults the SFX volume to zero which is bizarre as it can make you miss a lot of audio cues, even important ones such as your father screaming. Whenever a tutorial would pop-up to explain controls, the place where an icon is supposed to be wouldn't render properly. I crashed the game when I tried to crouch through the gap in the bus because it involves pressing ctrl+W and that is a shortcut that closes the browser window. The SFX of the game also felt like stock sounds that didn't fit the theme, especially the menu sounds. Finally in general there were just a lot of weird micro-stutters and times were the controls became unresponsive for no reason I could tell: I think it would happen when the game would load those wandering ghosts in?

When it wasn't technical issues, I just felt like the game wasn't appropriately building horror and dread. A lot of stuff just felt really goofy and unthreatening with the way they were presented, especially the dumb enemies which are so easily avoided due to their slow speed and attacks: seriously, I can't see how you would ever be hit by these guys unless you wanted to die. The way events were setup were silly too, like the way the game interrupts you with a blatant 'Flee!' prompt instead of something more subtle, like a musical sting or just letting the enemy appear and scare the player naturally. There's plenty other stuff but it's rather subtle and hard to describe exactly what it was doing wrong: it's just the vibes weren't fitting, I suppose.

As said, I definitely think there is something here, so I hope you keep working on it and I get to see the final version sometime soon!

BecSantus responds:

Thank you very much for the review! I’m still working hard to make this game the best it can be. I'll address as many of the issues as possible, though some are unfortunately tied to the limitations of the HTML version. I recommend playing the executable file available on itch.io for a better experience.

As for the crouch feature, it’s a toggle that automatically deactivates when you start running, so there's no need to keep holding Ctrl. I'll try to upload a fix for the SFX issue soon, as I'm currently working on finishing the rest of the town.

[A Quiet Winter Walk Home]

Pretty cute and chill game you got here! I'll admit I'm not always much for chill, low-stakes games like this, being an action junkie, but I do enjoy examining and interacting with everything I can in my point-n-click adventures or survival horrors, so likewise I very much enjoyed finding all of the amusing gags, dialogue and references that were strewn about this little town! It was a nice little adventure and I was impressed at the cute and stylish presentation!

In terms of feedback:

*Maybe it's against the spirit of the game, but I do wish the game had some sort of tasks or quests you could get involved in. For example, maybe you help a family out with, say, clearing the snow out of their shop, upon which they reward you with a leftover carrot as a snack, which you instead take to a snowman you met earlier who has lost their nose, and so on and so forth. I know the game is giving you points for interacting with stuff, but I just wish there was something more that required a little bit of brainwork or involvement.

*Found it a bit odd that when you are given a few options to select in a dialogue, you aren't able to use WASD to select options but instead need to utilize the arrow keys. I constantly kept getting confused when the options weren't responding, only to remember to switch to the arrows, over and over.

*Would be nice if you could press a button when text is filling out to have it fast-forward to immediately fill out completely.

*For some reason when you move diagonally into a wall, you move much quicker than if you were to just move straight forward. Perhaps it's some sort of hidden tech for speedrunners to take advantage of?

sysl responds:

Hey, this was my first port to godot so the movement was a result of not adjusting for that.

Thank you for playing!

[The South Park Collab 2]

Decent art collab you got here: it presents everything stylishly, has a grid gallery view to complement its slideshow view, has links to the artist profiles, and of course, has some nice art to view! It's not necessarily blowing me away or anything, but it does the job and is not too shabby at all!

In terms of feedback:

*While it does have a 'select' grid view as a different way of seeing the art and that's nice, it's kind of half-assed because when you click on an art piece in the grid, it will take you to its slide, but then you're no longer in the 'select' context and locked into the standard 'gallery' view, if that makes sense. When you click on a art piece within the 'select' grid, it should let you go back to the 'select' grid immediately by clicking the back arrow or X to select another one, instead of having to back out to the main menu and then click 'select' again to get there.

*I do wish the art was displayed a bit more creatively instead of within the rather common and standard slideshow presentation. I'm not even asking you to do anything crazy, just maybe take the fact that everyone has drawn characters and make a big collage of them, like a Where's Waldo drawing where all the characters are placed together in a big crowd like they are standing around in South Park and you can hover over them for a detailed view of the art and artist.

A-Ovelha responds:

Thanks!

[Loot Loot Goblin]

Cute little arcade game! Love the concept of being a little goblin desperately scrambling for loot, and overall I was impressed at the construction of the game in nearly all facets: cute graphics, nice feedback, simple yet deep and varied mechanics and obstacles. Just some good ol' simple hi-score fun!

In terms of feedback:

*Wish the tutorial wasn't just text and would actually let you try out the mechanics it is teaching you in the safe area.

*Sometimes the game would be a bit too confusing with what type of actions you could take. For example, there would be a lot of times where I was charging to pull in coins but a bomb would fall down within the radius, but when I did the pull-in, only the coins would come but the bomb didn't move. I guess the game was being overly-forgiving or something? I also thought it was weird when I would try to catch a flying coin in my charge circle but it wouldn't work: feels silly to have to wait for it to completely stop. Basically I was never quite sure what exactly would be pushed or pulled by my actions.

*Many of my initial runs when I was still learning the game ended in me dying but not realizing why. I'm not exactly sure what was happening, but I don't think it was because I took damage because I think there's decent damage feedback, so I assume my torch ran out but it was so easy to lose track of that. Maybe there could be some sort of greater alert or warning when you're about to die?

*Some other little oddities, like if you try and charge up and pull-in multiple coins during the arrow portal stage, you'll only get 10 points each instead of the 100 points you get for walking over them. Feels like a bit of a bummer considering I was making a risky move by standing still and charging!

[Politics. USA]

I feel the same way about this one as the previous version, in that it is a very solid, stylish and enjoyable rhythm game for the most part, with my feedback being that 1) I feel like the political theme is merely set-dressing, being a one-note fart joke that doesn't integrate into the gameplay as much as I'd like (it'd be great if the songs were political story sequences like you see in Rhythm Heaven, Parappa, or Elite Beat Agents) and 2) I feel like the note charts get easily repetitive due to a general sameness and lack of mechanics such as hold notes, double notes, etc. Basically it's good, but I can't help but wish it had a bit more depth to it!

[Bullet Dodger]

You know, I wasn't sure what to think about this at first since it seemed rather simplistic in terms of gameplay and presentation, but I'm glad I gave it a try because it's a pretty neat little arcade game! I was impressed at the escalation of difficulty as the game goes on and had a lot of fun trying to dodge the patterns however I could, even using wall-jumps and such, and the game has a neat sense of style and energy to it. Simple but fun!

However, while it is a rather promising game, I didn't stick with it for too long as I found it a bit janky and odd with some of its design decisions. In terms of feedback:

*I feel like the damage feedback is too muted as I could barely tell when I was taking damage. The only way to tell is to see your health bar go red, and that only lasts so long because when you're low on health it stays red all the time. I would very much like if a sound effect played when you took damage and maybe your character reacts by flashing red or blinking or whatever.

*I didn't like how when you're riding a platform, you don't ride along with it naturally, instead needing to keep shuffling to the side to stay on. It's especially frustrating and finicky to stay on the tiny platforms because of this, and my hands quickly got tired from this repetition.

*I felt like the shield was an unnecessary inclusion and hurts the game. The way the levels are built feels like a direct response to trying to work around your inclusion of the shield: the early levels are too easy where you can just stay in one place and use the shield to block everything, while the later levels bombard you with way too many bullets that you're forced into using the shield as it's impossible to dodge otherwise. I would much prefer if the game kept its purity by just having the player dodging the bullets: it's called 'bullet dodger' after all, not 'bullet absorber'!

errorerratum responds:

Thank you for your review!
1) The damage being too muted was a stylistic decision to not bother the player with too much information during the gameplay, but I realize now that with the health bar turning red at low health would be misleading for a player. I was worried that adding noise for every bullet strike would be too annoying for a player.
2) Not being able to ride with the platform seems to be a pretty common critique of this game. I did it because I felt that the player character moving with the platform made the game far too easy, but I can see why people don't like that feature.
3) Interesting view of the shield mechanic - everyone else seems to like the shield. Trying to make the early game reasonably easy and the end game hard was always a challenge, and I did want to make playing the game for a very long time to be very difficult. I felt that shield helped with balancing the game as much as I could while still making the late stages very difficult.

[Trivial Trivia: Flags of the World]

Nice trivia game you got here! I must admit, I've never been a fan of geography or anything like that, so this game didn't appeal to me that much, but I still had a pretty good time when I gave it a go, mostly thanks to its good presentation and helpful hint system which actually led to me picking up enough tidbits to get some following questions correct. Good stuff, and I liked seeing the improvements to the interface that have been made from the previous entry!

For the most part it's solid, but in terms of feedback:

*While it has a lot of nice things like slick transitions, chill music and animated backgrounds, I do wish that it had just a bit more pep to its presentation. If I were to point at anything, I'd love if the buttons were more animated and responded to hover, but I understand if this isn't a big priority due to the rise of mobile interfaces which don't have hover in the first place. (Looking at it, it actually seems like there is hover, but its so subtle to the point of barely being noticeable)

*I'm ok with it, but I do feel like not giving the answer after getting a question wrong, except if you have tokens, is a bit needlessly convoluted, especially when I don't even know how tokens are awarded (I got some after finishing a set, but how is the quantity determined? is it a set amount, or do I get more when I score better?) It's also kinda goofy that when viewing the questions list, even though it doesn't give the answer when you didn't get it right, you can clearly infer what the answer is by viewing the source URL.

[DYNAMITEHEAD TNTSON (The Toxic Demo)]

Yowza, what a cool beat-em-up you got here! It's seriously impressive how absolutely bursting with style and energy this game is: love all the crazy animations, transitions, and juicy touches that this game has not only to the main gameplay, but to other elements like the menus and title screen! I'm a big fan of beat-em-ups and this game provided a nice bit of button-mashy punchy fun and demonstrated some pretty solid fundamentals to make the hits feel satisfying, vary the enemies, and have a cool boss fight to top it off. Solid work!

That being said, by being a huge fan of beat-em-ups, I am also very critical of them, so if you wouldn't mind, here is some potential feedback you can use (or not):

*It did feel like the play area could easily get overcrowded and cramped, leading to messy and confusing gameplay: perhaps you could stand to zoom-out the camera and increase the arena size to assist with this. I think it would also have a knock-on effect of allowing for more room to fight and maneuver, bringing more strategic designs from that.

*While the feedback of hitting opponents was pretty solid thanks to factors like screenshake and so on, I do think the game could stand to have a bit more to it, specifically some hitstop/freeze. I love it when your punches get that extra bit of slowness when hitting people to differentiate just swinging in the air!

*I found it really odd that you can't use the mash move when you have full TNT meter: you'd think that as long as you press instead of hold you could still use it instead of going for the explosion, but for some reason it is not allowed.

*Wish there was a bit more clarity on what the power-ups do: couldn't tell whether power-ups were giving me health, TNT meter, or both.

*While the moveset has a lot of moves to utilize such as an uppercut, slide, sweep, jump slam, and so on, they don't seem to have clearly defined purposes for any of them: they pretty much all are just some flavor of quick knockdown. Wish they each had something special to them to allow for more strategic play. For example, maybe the uppercut could juggle enemies and allow you to get bigger combos at the cost of higher commitment leaving you open to interruption, while the sweep can hit grounded enemies instead of having to wait for them to get back up, and maybe the slide can get under enemy blocks, and so on.

*As alluded to above, the game feels overly simplistic at the moment and feels like a brainless button-masher: while this can be fun in the short-term, it's lacking depth to allow for skillful and strategic play and this hurts long-term satisfaction. Not only was I really disappointed I couldn't juggle combo enemies launched from a uppercut or jump slam among other things, but also I felt like the enemies are too simplistic in their AI patterns, both in the way they attack and in the way they never attempt to surround the player or juke them out.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling: there's some serious potential in this and I look forward to seeing how it develops!

swackyGCF responds:

This is a REALLY good review. You've provided some great points here. Things like being able to mash through enemies at full blast and having a better moveset are considered! After all this is my first attempt at making a beat-em-up, like, ever. It'll get better in later demos!

[Adventure Kitty drill Buster: Light's Out]

I'm a fan of this game so it's great to see another new chapter come out! For the most part, I love it just as much as the other chapters due to its cute story, great presentation and fun gameplay, and I was surprised to see this chapter differentiate itself from the first with a whole new theme and set of mechanics to boot!

*As much as this is a standalone game and it introduces new mechanics, it is still technically the second chapter and thus I would prefer if it would be treated as such in terms of challenge progression: this game feels like it's the first game all over again in terms of difficulty, starting from zero instead of where we left off.

*The goggles mechanic felt a bit gimmicky and unnecessary, especially with the whole cooldown attached to it. In the best case, such as the escape sequence where you have a time limit and a sniper breathing down your neck, it can be a sort of dramatic tension that forces you to make a choice. In any other case, though, it's just boring tedium as you sit there waiting for the cooldown to recharge. At the very least, it'd be nice if the googles immediately recharged when you go through a checkpoint.

*Scoring system can still be really confusing in how it determines a high score, especially when sometimes I would get all C's yet still have a final grade of A somehow? I just don't know how scores like 'tiles preserved' are supposed to work, and for time, I wish it would give me more information on the nearest time I'd need for a higher rank, for example. I don't know whether coins or time are more important too, especially since it seems like you'd need to sacrifice a lot of time to collect all the coins since it could involve restarting runs.

*A lot of my previous feedback is still present, most notably being the fact that levels seem to be designed to make you not be able to collect all of the coins in a single run unless you intentionally fail at a checkpoint to force a restart, whereupon you keep the coins you got from the first attempt instead of being restarted back to zero like you'd expect: just seems really illogical.

[Stumble Duel]

Hmm, I certainly like the concept behind this game, being a very simple fighting game that still allows for some tricky mindgames, similar to Divekick, Footsies, Nidhogg and so on. I also find the general presentation and construction of the game to be impressive because of how juicy and lively it is, even more so with it being a game jam game. And indeed, I did have a bit of fun battling the AI.

But while it has the right ideas, the execution left me a bit underwhelmed. Just something about the way you've setup the physics for the characters made it feel really unsatisfying: the way the characters leaned back and forth felt so awkward and weirdly delayed/unresponsive. I can't put my finger on exactly what it was, but it just didn't feel good to me. Also, while I do like how simple it was, I couldn't help but wish there was something else to the gameplay, like maybe an extra set of buttons to manage upper-body leaning, or maybe special moves like a dash forward or feint backward to add some high-commitment gambles.

Something to note is that I did play it from a single-player perspective, so I'll admit that maybe I didn't see the game in its top form, so to speak, since I'm sure a human opponent would offer more interesting strategies to contend with.