FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[NextDoor]

I'm not familiar with the story myself (only Junji story I know off-hand is Amigara Fault) but I had a nice time experiencing it the first time through this! Felt like a cool adventure that had a lot of good effective spooks (especially the time where it creeped up during the talk at the soda machine, jeez louise), very neat art and animations, and immersive, atmospheric sound.

The sound was a little hit and miss at times. On one hand, it did do a good job at having really spooky music and sound effects that immersed me into the experience and got me all tense, and if you wear headphones, you can get spooked as the sounds change direction based on your position. On the other hand, the way the sound transitioned from ear to ear based on position was too sudden instead of gradual, and I felt like there were times where, when approaching the loud room for example, there should've been a gradual increase in volume as you get closer and closer. I feel like it kind of ruined the last bit where you hear it stomping away, wasn't sure what was happening since the sound was a bit confusing in the way it was trying to communicate. (I'd admit my headphones aren't that great so it could be an issue on my end, perhaps).

Ending was a bit bleh, in my opinion, though perhaps that's no fault of the game but rather the source material: I wonder if it would be better if I was caught? Wonder if that's what happened in the actual story. Maybe I'll go back and get caught intentionally just to see what happens...

Sijbren responds:

Hey thank you for the kind words and the feedback. A lot of problems with the sound came from a lack of control over Game Maker's 3D sound in combination with html5. We are working on our own sound system to improve the last part a bit.

[GuraQuest(Old)]

Wow, this really impressed me! I'm gonna sound like a jerk for saying this, but based off of the rather plain first impression with no title screen, no fanfare, just basic instructions given with boring flat text, I thought this was just gonna be a really generic and bad platformer using a vtuber to disguise it, to make it seem better than it is.

But boy, was I proven wrong: I loved so much of this! Once I started moving, I loved even the basic movement, especially the jumps with their satisfying shockwaves and bounce sounds. The animations in general were very cute and bouncy, with the standout being how Gura looks like she is being dragged by the trident when dashing. Speaking of, I liked the dash move and it's multi-purpose utility in that it not only carries you a long distance, but it also sticks into walls and lets you spring upwards (and I like the way you can tell if you can still dash by whether the trident is floating nearby). I specially love how challenging the levels got and how fast they did so: it really forces you to be creative and get good quickly at using the various moves effectively (and challenges you to collect the secrets as well)! I also love all of the hidden tech like momentum slingshotting by dashing into springs and gripholds, and how the levels are intentionally designed to force you into learning them in subtle ways. Only complaint I could really think is that it might be good if there was a save system, but nonetheless, well done, well done!

[Autumn Hike]

Cute little adventure! Reminds me a lot of games like Minit where you go on a little scavengers hunt for items, except with an interesting twist as you go deeper and deeper into worlds within worlds! I found this very short and sweet: it's not the most complex game in terms of challenge as it is rather tiny in scope and the items very simple to puzzle out, but I liked my time spent since it was so charming that I found it very endearing, so kudos on a job well done!

I won the first time by giving the cracked nut to the rat, but was curious if the gem would've worked to appease him as well without killing him (as it did seem like you could give some times to different people than intended). So I tried again, and nope, he just takes it. So you have chosen death, rat!

[Pico's School: Love Conquers All]

Oh no! Where's all the cool boss fights? The violence? The edginess? I'm drowning under a flood of sugary wholesomeness, nooooooo! I'm melting, melting! Oh, what a world, what a world, what a world!

[Afraid of the Dark]

Pretty neat game! Felt like a kind of Cuphead-esque game where you go through some side-scrolling levels to get to the bosses which have some cool patterns to deal with. Had some good fun, but I do have some feedback:

I felt like the bosses were the highlight here with them being very interesting and fleshed out in terms of patterns. However, not all of them worked well for me. The first boss was quite nice with both the rush attack and the laser attack having good telegraphs that I could strategize around. However, the next boss being the worm felt like a let down: I got hit a lot of times I felt I shouldn't have as it was difficult to determine when it was safe to jump on him, and I felt there wasn't an effective telegraph to determine what the worm would do when emerging out of the ground, leading to annoyingly unavoidable damage from having to take a gamble.

On the other side, the levels were a bit repetitive. While they do certainly put a token effort into changing as you proceed further, through tweaking the background art and introducing new enemies and obstacles, it still kinda felt like I was going through the same motions in each of them. I appreciated the sentiment, but maybe there had to be more to those sections to make em worthwhile.

This might be a weird complaint since perhaps it's not the intention, but it felt like while the game was trying to push this horror aspect, it was only superficially horror-like: while the game is dark in terms of lighting, the characters moves so zippy, the art is so pixel-y and cartoony, and the sound effects are so chippy, it kinda kills any sort of potential horror mood, haha.

Anyway, despite my complaints I still felt like the game was alright: just a little clunky here and there, but fun for the most part.

[Deeper Devils]

Pretty cool game! Loved the concept and the whole first-person Downwell-esque strategic nature of shooting to either kill or propel yourself up, as well as reloading being handled by bouncing or touching a floor: made for some very interesting split-second reactions and scrambles! Although it was short, the levels had a large variety of interesting traps and obstacles to maneuver around, which were quite impressive. A little bit clunky in some respects: no music, meh sounds and meh feedback in some cases, deceptive hitboxes, and so on, but understandable due to the game jam nature. Visual style was, while quite striking, maybe a bit too striking at times, haha. Would love to see this expanded on: as it is now, it felt like it was over so soon and I'd love to play through even more challenging levels!

[Tooth Toss]

Really cool game, with a really neat concept! Felt like you did a pretty decent job at putting the sword mechanic through its paces with some cool bosses to fight against: just wish there was even more bosses and obstacles to fight against as I was just starting to get so stylish when it was all over! I was expecting the sword throw to be able to be controlled with the mouse for more precision, but the keyboard controls still worked alright.

Having said that, I did encounter a lot of issues. First, I was totally lost on the initial level with no way to proceed as I had no idea I had to kill everything to open up the way: I figured it out eventually and maybe I'm just dumb, but maybe some more direction, or some sort of kill counter on the door would help to guide. Second, there were a lot of times where the sword worked against me, like getting stuck in a wall or ground that's right next to me despite me throwing it away from it, or getting stuck in an unreachable spot to reclaim it, leading me to have to just kill myself to restart (maybe there should be a way to recall the sword to you that takes time to do as a last resort?) Finally, the game did seem a bit glitchy at times, with physics and animations just wonking out in weird ways, enemies getting stuck in the air and such, and some crashes.

Despite those complaints and frustrations above that I experienced, the game was charming and fun enough that I stuck with it and enjoyed it a whole bunch in the end, so kudos!

[Underblood]

A rather simple game, but that doesn't make it any less fun or addicting! There's something real trance-like about this game as I just found myself having a blast getting in the zone, struggling for a high score as the game just gets faster and faster and more complex with its pathing. It was tricky to get used to at first, with recovery from a mistake seeming impossible, but I got gud, as they say, haha. I also liked not only the cool horror/gothic aesthetic this game had going for it, but the little touches this game had as well, such as the blood splashing out on a game over. Well done!

As a side note, for some reason, it doesn't look like medals are working? No skin off my nose, just a bit odd that despite getting entered into the high score table, the medal for that score never got unlocked. Ah well, maybe by the time I get good enough to come back and get a really high score it'll be fixed, haha. EDIT: Actually, maybe the medals are working, but it's just still showing as locked on my screen despite me being listed as unlocking it? Strange, and seems to be site-wide, so not an issue with this game...

[Gravisquare]

Really cool puzzle concept, and great execution! Loved playing through this and not only making my way through the levels, but learning how to utilize the gravity mechanic to its fullest. Speaking of that, though, and maybe you think I'm an idiot for this, but man did I get stuck on level 6 for an embarrassingly long time, haha! I felt like this level should be moved to much later on, as the gravity slingshot technique it teaches you felt way too challenging and unnecessary to learn at the time, considering the much simpler levels that followed it with more standard box stacking mechanics and such. Speaking of that, it's kind of a double-edged thing: I thought the gravity slingshot level was a bit too complex and early, but that's only because the majority of the levels didn't rely on tricks like that and instead were more basic, but perhaps that's just a sign that the levels should've used gravity in more interesting ways instead to spice it up? Felt like it did have a good variety of mechanics though, just maybe the difficulty curve was a bit wonky at times.

In terms of controls, maybe it's just me, but I felt like the alternative control scheme (always left/right and up is always jump) made a lot more sense than the default controls. I feel like the controls should be switched, with the alternate being the default. Maybe you think that's silly, since both are available options, so why does it matter which is default, but I do feel like a dev needs to set forward a good default control scheme for a first impression and intended experience, as many players in my experience will not bother trying to try other controls schemes than the default: they'll just complain and move on to another game.

Anyway, glad to see another cool puzzler from you!

Rob1221 responds:

An older game I made called Gravity Arrows had the second control scheme as the only one and that had a bunch of complaints about the controls, so I'm not sure which control scheme is the overall preferred one for games like this.