FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Street Hugger]

This is clearly a Double Dragon parody, not a Street Fighter parody! And what about social distancing!?

Haha, but jokes aside, while I was ready to just write this game off as a one-note gag game, it actually did have some complexities to it that made it fun to play strategically as a beat em up (or hug em up, more accurately)! You can't just go up and hug anybody: you need to make sure to watch for their telegraphs to dodge their attacks first and ensure nobody sneaks up behind you while giving a hug. And move over Doom glory kills, now we have hugs that give back health, which encourages us to not run away, but keep loving to keep going! And of course, the references to various old-school games (Street Fighter, Double Dragon, TMNT, etc) were numerous and all done very well.

I do think the game is a little wonky in execution in some respects. I didn't like that you could get hit by an enemy projectile being charged up, as I felt you should only be hit if they've actually fired it off. The way enemies attack with awkward timing could also lead to annoying sunlocks at times. The voiced audio was difficult to parse, and it'd be helpful if some subtitles or a speech bubble would pop up to read. And there was also some weird times where I'd have someone in a hug with nobody else around, and I'd get hit for some reason: not sure if it was a glitch or maybe the enemy needed to be hugged twice. Anyway, once I got used to the jank, I had a cute, fun time with this game!

[AshBelt]

Oh god, I really want to love this game, I really, really do! The look and feel of this game is amazing: the animation is so smooth and fluid, the combat is so stylish and impactful with great feedback, the enemies are varied in interesting and challenging ways, and the presentation is so adrenaline pumping. I also like the mechanics that force you to switch between ranged and melee combat, giving it an even more stylish and strategic feel. I found myself getting addicting playing this over and over!

But god, the controls were so frustrating to deal with. I don't think I had a single actual fair death in all of my gameplay: it always came down to the game screwing me over. The number one cause of death was lost inputs: so many times I'd be set up for a sick combo, like to turn around, jump, slash, double jump, slash, and then arrow, only for the jump input to be lost and I get killed. It didn't matter whether I entered it fast or tried to be slow and deliberate with my inputs: no matter what, an input would inevitably be lost and screw me over. The second cause of death was hitboxes acting odd: I'd have a bunch of times where I'd slash an enemy and I'd see my sword slash overlap with them, only to have the enemy ignore it and kill me.

I will still say that, despite my frustrations, I felt like I had a lot of fun and got addicted to playing it. But that's also why I'm giving such harsh feedback: it deserves better, this game could be incredible and I want it to be incredible! A game as stylish and fast as this needs controls solid enough to allow for consistency of player expression.

[Pixel Detective]

Cool game! Starts on a bit of a downer with the initial tutorial case, but once you get into your first actual case, it's fun to go around gathering everything up and piecing it together! I especially liked how the game was good at throwing in a lot of red herrings that could lead you astray: cases would bounce between different witnesses constantly as you uncover more and more and it was very exciting!

It did have some frustrating aspects, though. I wish the game would give you an error if you try to 'check' without actually selecting a suspect and enough evidence, instead of just failing you. Clues were a bit confusing in how they were logged: some clues count as evidence which is good to look at since it is listed out front and center with a picture and description, but some clues just get written down in the log which is both tucked away in a small button. Furthermore, the clue log is annoying since sometimes a clue might involve a picture that you can't see unless you go back and find it in the world. I felt like cases could actually use different sets of evidence to logically solve it, but the game would only accept a certain set. Also, in a different vein, I thought it was silly that the game didn't use a pixel font for text: really clashed with the rest of the pixel-based graphics.

Even though that is a lot of annoyances written up there, I did have a good time and felt like the cases were very interesting. Nice job on their design and I'd love to see more of them!

[Diaphanous 0]

I want to like this game: the weird potentially capitalist commentary weaved into platformer mechanics is a unique concept, and the presentation and aesthetic of the game has an interesting charm to it. On the other hand, however, the game's difficulty curve is absolutely ridiculous. Maybe the difficulty is intentional as part of some sort of subtle message? Maybe it's supposed to frustrate you to make you behave more callously to the men you trod on as springboards? I can understand if it's all intentional and just not for me, but I dunno, if this was football, I think this game would get called for unnecessary roughness.

I've played a lot of difficult games in my time and had a blast. Doom Eternal, Super Meat Boy, Celeste, etc, all of them great experiences. The difference with this game is that it just throws you in the deep end immediately and expects you to make crazy pixel-perfect maneuvers that the controls are not built well enough to achieve reliably. Without all of the subtle touches that other games provide to enhance controls like hitbox forgiveness, input buffering, coyote time, and so on, this game just became so frustrating. So many lost jump inputs! I'm sure someone out there can beat it, and I'm sure I could too in time, but it would not be fun at all in my opinion: it wouldn't involve getting skilled at the game, it would involve getting used to the jank. Couple that with having to play on a tiny screen and yeah, I don't need both eye and hand strain from one game.

I was tempted to go all the way with this game in spite of it all, just because of the weird concept, the actually clever (though sadistic) level and obstacle design, and desire to see how it ends, but unfortunately, it lost my save file after I finally beat V and quit to take a break, and I didn't want to go through all that again. I suppose it's fine anyway: feels like the game was just building up to guilt trip me in the end, so I'll just claim a moral victory by opting out.

HapPie responds:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, if you don't ever find the will to come back to it you still got the gist of what I was trying to accomplish and that's what matters to me, so thanks! And also you're not wrong about the ending.

[Sticky Slimes]

Quite the impressive puzzle game! I really like the mechanic of sticking slimes together to make shapes, and dealing with both the positives and negatives consequences of that. I felt the level design was very impressive here: not only did it introduce mechanics and teach the player some tips in a subtle clever way, it also had genuinely challenging and fun levels that escalated in a good difficulty curve! It was a little lacking in some respects: would love some little touches added here and there, like a little sticky sound effect to play when you attach yourself to another slime. Also, while it did tell the user the input for undo, it never told the user the input for restart, and I think that's even more important to let the player know exists. Overall, I felt this was a fantastic puzzler with a great concept: nice work here!

[Ruffle:Another Mission]

It's a little bit clunky in some respects, but I gotta admit, I actually had a lot of fun with this! I liked the animation of the character and general movement mechanics: gave me some Prince of Persia vibes with how he traverses jumps and such. While it was a bit awkward to only be able to see lasers through the snipe scope, I felt it did lead to some cool gameplay where you have to be cautious and scout ahead, memorizing patterns, and then execute your plan quickly in between patrol gaps.

My only real frustrations with the game was that there were some stupid death traps and unfair enemy placement in a few locations. Also, the animations for some of the ways the enemy lasers travelled the level were really awkward: most of them did a smooth trail you could memorize, but some of them would just suddenly appear and disappear as they move up and down for no reason. Created some annoying trial and error situations.

In the end, despite the little frustrations here and there, it hooked me and I made it all the way through. To me, this was like a cool fusion of Silent Scope and Mark of the Ninja: well done! I hope we do see another chapter of this with some further improvements and features!

[Pack a Block]

This one was a weird one for me! In the end, I think I liked it, but boy, did it take quite a while to understand the rules!

I think the biggest cause for my confusion was that I was led a bit astray at the start: the story alluded to the boat sinking under the weight or something to that effect, so I was under the impression the game was gonna to be more physics-based, something akin to stacking blocks for points, but balancing the load of blocks on the ship so it doesn't sink or tip over.

Once I grasped that I was wrong about that, then came the confusion over the usage of the hammer: it was just a bit too confusing on how easily it could undo everything. The tutorial made it seem like the game was about trying to make efficient use of space in regards to successful combos creating blank blocks, which would be permanent obstacles you'd have to try and work around. But then comes the hammer with it's ability to reduce everything to zero and even be rewarded with time by doing so. I get that smashing blank blocks does work against you since it reduces score, but it felt like the game might've worked better if maybe the hammer could only destroy colored blocks: having the blank blocks be permanent might create more scenarios where you need to improvise by building around them or moving the boat around to create more space, and so on. Maybe there shouldn't even be a way to get time back: might be more exciting that way and create a more strict timeline to work for score comparisons.

I dunno, I'm probably being unfair and judging a game on what I think it could be instead of what it was. But, I thought it would be interesting to go over what my mind process was in trying to learn the game. Again, once I grasped it, it was fun, but I couldn't help thinking that maybe it could've worked better another way.

[I'm Outta Here (Game Jam Edition)]

Funny little adventure! Concept is very amusing and the animation is very impressive. I especially loved all of the crazy objects you can click on, and the funny character reaction flavor text that comes with it. Speaking of that, though, it was a little bit confusing at times on what gets to be a clickable object. Felt like you can have one hallway filled with stuff to click on, then go to another hallway filled with objects, yet with nothing to click. Feels bad: I love to click on things and read the flavor text, so why are you trying to stiff me, haha!

The interface was a bit annoying at times: for example, when I tried to use an item on another item, it wasn't even sure if I actually made a valid attempt, since I can't be sure whether I had appropriately targetted the item I wanted to use it on since the hover text doesn't appear, and there is no speech from the character or error sound to let me know the attempt failed.

The game is challenging, and since I haven't beaten it yet, I'm not 100% sure if it's a valid challenge or if it's just crazy cat mustache logic, but I'ma try to beat this game one of these days, so just you wait!

[The lost night]

Pretty neat game! I was a little lost in what the heck was going on and what my character was even doing: as far as I could tell, maybe I needed to go to the pumpkin house, but wasn't sure. However, while I think it would help to establish the objective a bit more, the game was charming enough with all sorts of funny interactions with the people around that I nevertheless was hooked and wanted to explore around nonetheless. Game felt like it had a lot of polish and neat touches to it's presentation that made it feel very smooth, such as the combat transitions. Speaking of, combat itself being an Undertale-esque bullet hell game was very cool and fun to play (though maybe a bit too easy at first and without enough variation in the way different enemies attack). Nice work on this fun little adventure!

Also, what the heck, it clearly says "My House" at the beginning, so why are they all shoving me out like I don't live there! Unless, did someone else literally write "My House"? This mystery might never be solved...

[Distraught Ground]

Very short game, but I felt it had enough decent elements to it that I'd like to see more added to it! Highlights for me were the animations (both sprites and background), enemy variations, neat overall aesthetic and the feedback for hits: the explosive effect and seeing the enemies get knocked back was quite satisfying. Also, I felt like the boss was pretty good for a first boss: decent pattern that is balanced quite well to be a little tricky, but not overly complex to start out, with some cool little touches like being able to reflect its shots with your whip (note that until I realized I could reflect shots, though, I was having a frustrating time fighting it in melee range, so perhaps something should teach the player they can do this in the first place). Gameplay as it stands right now is a little repetitive, but I think a lot could be added to this, and the gorgeous background with all sorts of little touches in it does help to elevate it. It takes a lot to make me play a game that dares to utilize the incredibly heinous jumping physics from Castlevania (no air control), so kudos on that, haha!