FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[‎ BUGGED‎‎‎]

A pretty cool idea, and decent execution, but a little rough for me at the moment! I quite like the idea of being stealthy and taking control of other people's bodies for their powers as a means of compensating for your weak body, and I did feel like it led to some interesting puzzle-esque combat scenarios in my experience where I could improvise in interesting ways.

However, there were plenty of issues I had. The controls were initially a bit confusing to learn: wasn't sure why I have to repeatedly enter and exit a host to kill them, when I felt it might be more straightforward to just kill them when you exit once (and you can even make the infection process take longer to compensate for it only taking one time). Was quite frustrating in the later levels that there was no way to get back from making a mistake: once you get seen, it didn't seem like there was any way to reset back to zero by, for example, outrunning the enemies and hiding from them, or maybe by infecting someone and fooling everyone, and that made me just quit too easily, leading to boring repetition. Also was a bit disappointing that the only power to get from infection is a gun: no other interesting elements to work with.

Also, it's a small complaint, but the kinda weird curved screen, odd moving camera and blurry chromatic aberration or whatever you got going on kinda hurt my eyes and just made the game more difficult to play and aim: maybe lessen those effects and just deliver the game in a more plain manner (or have a toggle to turn those off in options).

Basically, it's a little bare-bones at the moment without much to work with, but I still thought it was an interesting experience!

Frogrammer responds:

Hey, thanks for your feedback. I do agree that all the issues you mentioned could have been done in a better way and that infect/exit process was quite annoying. However killing enemy on exit once may have ruined some strategies where you would especially disable an enemy and then run to others, but idk there def is a way to make this mechanic work more properly. Also yeah the CRT effect is kinda toxic, could have been an option, so thanks again, i'll keep this stuff in mind

[Castle Crashing the Beard HD]

Heckin' sweet game! This game is all that and a bag of chips, well-polished in all aspects. Great art and presentation, charming concept, satisfying beat-em-up combat, bosses with tons of cool patterns and phases, and so on and so on: it's a smash hit to me!

But of course, there were some aspects I'll give some feedback on nonetheless (though they are minor nitpicks considering how well-constructed the game is already and how much fun I had):

The controls were a bit wonky to learn: no tutorial or anything as it just dumps you in combat, and a bit odd that you don't switch the menu prompts from gamepad key icons to keyboard key icons to reflect whatever is used at the moment, and also I feel like Z/X is used more nowadays for actions than A/S for keyboard (and why use A/S for combat but not A/S for menu navigation, instead making it A/B?).

The bosses did feel a bit frustrating at times in many respects. Many times they did not have good enough telegraphs: sure, the big moves like the laser had telegraphs, but moves like the beard poke and skull fireball just come up whenever they feel like it. Speaking of the laser, moves like that and the cat felt way too punishing: once you get hit, there is no recovery from it I could find, you just get your entire health bar destroyed with no way to get out of the combo. Also, a lot of the bosses had weird periods of invincibility which didn't make sense: felt like it was annoying that not only were they invincible when attacking, they were invincible when preparing to attack too. I realize many of these things might be on purpose to capture the old-school beat-em-up feel, which was very mashy and damage was largely unavoidable as to get kids to spend quarters upon quarters. It's just a little strange and unfair to get used to, since a lot of beat-em-ups nowadays highly favor big enemy telegraphs and such to allow for more skillful no-damage runs (though I think it's still possible to beat this game without getting hit, so it's not that unfair or anything).

Again, thank you very much for this wonderful game!

EDIT: Have been able to beat it now without even dying: bosses are definitely a bit more fair than my initial impression of them, just gotta get used to it. Again, well done, and love the classic Ryu 'uah uah uah' defeat scream echo, haha!

[Third Party]

I think it's a pretty cool concept, but the execution felt a bit too wonky for me at the moment. Obviously, it's to be expected for a game jam game, but after all that's more the reason for me to give feedback so the game can become better in a final version.

Again, I do really like the concept: reminds me of games like Hitman, or Hotline Miami where you throw on disguises and such to work your way through these puzzles, utilizing your limited resources and making fight or flight choices. However, in my case, it felt very confusing to play at times. There were so many awkward moments when it seemed like people would see through my disguise despite me pointing it at them: I guess maybe they got a slight peek at the edge of the cone, but there's no suspicion meter or exclamation to let me know they noticed until it's too late. Bumping into someone with a disguise and losing it makes sense, but it happens so instantly with no animation that it just looks bad and made me confused on why I lost my disguise. Controls were annoying at times, especially with the whole swinging your mouse to throw a corpse which never worked consistently for me and would usually end with me swinging my mouse out of the screen and losing focus. Also, in general the graphics were strange with illogically overlapping elements like signs, characters clipping into weird areas, and so on. Many of the puzzles were strange and I couldn't find the ideal solution to them: most of the time I'd just brute force them in weird ways and get a win I didn't feel was intended. I dunno what the point of the elevator waiting sections were: felt like they weren't necessary and the game could've just went straight from level to level to keep the pace up.

Bit of a tangent, and I'm not sure if I'm articulating this properly, but I feel like the game was just so inconsistently designed that I didn't have confidence in playing it. For example, in a strange way, I felt like the way the graphics and music were so good, it almost created too strong a dissonance when you compared them to the illogical layering, programming wonkiness and lack of sound/feedback: if all elements were more equal maybe it wouldn't have felt as disjointed? I dunno, just a weird thought.

Hoping to see more of this game in an improved state as I feel it does have a lot of potential: the grim nature of using corpses as disguises and tools to solve these stealth puzzles is something worthy of exploring!

[Night of the Pigeon Dead]

I quite liked this! I loved how challenging this game was and how fun it felt to get better and better at getting in tune with the controls to deal with the pigeons. At the beginning I could barely make it past one wave, but eventually I was playing like a mad man, whacking pigeons and their crap outta the air, cancelling moves, mop-dashing efficiently, and so on! And to make it through how hard it was in the beginning, I give all the credit to how charming the game was in terms of presentation (graphics, music and the fun little touches like smacking things to interact with them) and the crazy concept: it kept me hooked! I also love the whole 'annoyance' health bar, and thought the 'last chance' moment where you can save yourself led to some great scrambles. While I did have some minor complaints, such as how I wish the inputs for a mop-dash were a bit more lenient, and I wish the game introduced even more enemy types and such to contend with (though maybe it does and I'm just not good enough to see them yet haha), I had a great time overall!