FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Upstream]

Game seems to have a lot of potential and charm, but at the moment I found it a bit lacking and got bored quickly. I'm sure a lot of people will appreciate the big world and all the people you can talk to and the quests they give out, but for me, it felt a bit too overwhelming and directionless. I just wasn't sure if there was some sort of bigger goal I was supposed to be going for, or some sort of trick to help figure out where to go or where you can catch certain fish. Without that, it just felt like all I could do was wander around and hope I randomly catch the fish someone wants. At the very least, It'd be nice if, say, I found a quest to catch an angelfish, if I could look into the almanac and figure out where angelfish like to roam, or say like whether its a freshwater or saltwater fish, and then maybe cross-reference with a map to try and find a spot to fish for it. Unfortunately, without anything like that, the chillness of the game didn't last long and I ended up losing interest. Still, a good attempt.

[Nightstalkers]

Decent game, but a bit awkward to get used to! At its core, it's very nice: going through levels, punching the crap out of enemies, jumping over obstacles, and fighting interesting bosses. I did have a lot of fun with this, but there was a lot of confusion. For example, I found it really confusing that the knife/axe/torch weapons were used by punching, instead of having their own dedicated button, and that you need to select the fist in order not to waste ammo. As good as the punch animation looked, it was a bit annoying to get used to the fact that the punch doesn't come out instantly, as the delay meant I found up taking a lot of unnecessary damage. Level geometry was really awkward at times as well, and the fact that you can't even punch the first boss was a real let-down (luckily you can punch the second boss, that was a lot better)! Anyway, all of these complaints are nothing compared to my final complaint: you didn't give the player a manly victory pose when he beats a boss! C'mon man, rip that shirt off, you already had the sprite in the intro cutscene! But in all seriousness, it's a decent game, albeit a little clunky in my impression.

Harlemblack responds:

Thank you for the thorough review. I keep it simple to include only three action buttons. On the odd levels, it is not a boss actually, more like an avoidance challenge. Haha yea good idea about the victory pose. For the next project, I guess. Cheers!

[Ugby Mumba 3]

Pretty nice game! Definitely has that milkbar professionalism to it with an overall great presentation through graphics, music, sound and gameplay, and a general sense of polish with tons of little touches like a health bar that animates with different expressions to represent your status. Didn't have too many issues, other than occasionally the controls acting a bit odd: there were times where I could turn despite holding down the shoot button, and also times where I tried to turn and shoot and the game kept me facing the way I was first instead of where I turned to. If I were to have some big complaints, it might be that the game wasn't necessarily anything crazy or unique: it was certainly polished and well-done, but it did feel very basic (if possible, take this as a compliment that I think you can do so much more!) The overwhelming ho-hum feeling wasn't helped by the fact that it felt like the levels dragged on a bit too long at times: felt like they could've easily been chopped in half to keep the pace up. Some enemies were a bit annoying as well, such as the clam which you can to wait to be able to attack and the guys throwing tiny pitchforks that blend into the dark background. I think it's a pretty decent game, but for me it feels like maybe you took a good game and unnecessarily stretched it thin to artificially inflate the game time, resulting in a worse experience that overstays its welcome: I'd prefer a more short and sweet experience! Still, good job nonetheless.

[Catfishing Cuties <3]

Nice little chill game! Not much for me to say, personally, as I'm not the intended audience (more of an action game guy), but nevertheless it was a charming game due to the interesting concept and very cool graphical design! While it does make a great first impression and it is fun to see what profiles you can get and laugh at the little jokes, it still felt rather shallow and lost its appeal quickly for me: could stand to have more interesting fishing mechanics or maybe some sort of story direction to go for to create more incentive to continue.

[Ritz on a Roll]

Challenging, but fun! A bit of a mixed bag for me though. On one hand, I really liked the frantic gameplay and the design of the bosses, especially with how they had multiple phases that they transition through as you damage them, all with some very interesting mechanics! Definitely had a lot of fun making my way through. On the other hand, it did feel like the bosses were a bit overly frustrating and not completely perfect in their design. I did beat it, so it is winnable, but something in the back of my head just felt like I got lucky. I dunno, it's like the bosses did have logic to them, but some of the boss patterns like the cat bouncing around with the orbs just felt like you could get stuck with no way out and forced to take damage. It's like, even with the first boss, once he starts his last frenzy phase it just seems impossible to avoid taking damage from how wild he gets, even when I try to perfectly jump and dodge over him, he's just too volatile. Basically, it felt less like I actually won and more like I shot them faster than they could kill me, if that makes sense, which doesn't work as well for me. Perhaps I'm being unfair and it is totally possible to beat the bosses without getting hit at all (or maybe that's just not intended from you), but...well, the game is fun enough that maybe I'll go back in and play more to see if it's possible, haha! Oh yeah, could also be nice to have a button to freeze movement or freeze aiming like the contra games do.

Chdonga responds:

Thanks for the review!

[Out Twogether]

Once it gets going, I think the game is pretty interesting! I like the dynamic of switching back-and-forth between the two players: hitting pause in one players world to hack in and toggle obstacles felt really cool, and the puzzles to hack were very challenging. Game is a bit boring before that, however: the game spends a long time on this very bland jumping levels with no challenge except the very clunky jumping controls, and I found the story to be a bit nonsensical and difficult to parse between the weird grainy font choice and confusing word choice. Game isn't also that intuitive: I couldn't even tell that you could preview what hacking does because the preview for the platforms were in a color that easily blends in and doesn't stick out at all at first glance. Again, once it gets going, it's neat, but could use a lot of work for the introduction, I think.

[Comic Reader- Art Forum Battle Royale Volume 1]

Hmm, an interesting application, but I found it to be a bit overly clunky and glitchy, unfortunately. It did have some cool moments: for example, I really like how the app handled the panel of the character stepping on the lips, where instead of showing the entire panel, it shows it in two separate moments, one being the character lording over, and the second being the lips trampled underfoot. Very cool, and I'd love it if there were lots more instances like that. However, for a lot of other panels, it just didn't work: it'd separate them into two moments but it would just cut-off text or pictures 50-50 and make it difficult to read or parse. Furthermore, don't know why the controls were split between mouse and keyboard instead of just using one: I kept expecting to flip to the next page by pressing the right arrow key, but instead I need to switch to the mouse just to click a button. If you're going to involve the mouse, I'd love if it I could use it for other elements, like clicking on certain panels, or maybe zooming in with the scroll-wheels on certain parts so I could read and examine at my own pace. Flipping a page didn't look as elegant as it could've been either: the animation plays, but the page doesn't actually skip until way later, and it still plays the animation even if you go back a page on the very first page which shouldn't be possible. Checkpointing for panels was weird as well: if I go back a page, I expect to hit right and have me start at the beginning, but it still treats it as if I'm at the last panel, despite me wanting to go back (also, sometimes the app would just stop working with the arrow keys altogether and freeze). There are many other issues I could point out but I think you get the gist. Again, hearts in the right place and it's a neat attempt for an app, but at the moment it is lacking in usability in many ways.

Mabelma responds:

Thanks for your feedback. Greatly appreciated.

[Type Help]

Decent text adventure! Pretty fun making my way around and figuring out what to do, and it was impressive the amount of commands that were recognized by the system as valid (for example, I had a good "cry" after spilling the pot on me). There were a lot of confusing elements to it, however. One, I don't feel like it did a good job setting up a plot or goal or anything like that: without that, once it came to the difficult puzzles, I didn't really have anything to push me forward through the difficulty to keep playing. Two, the interface is weird: why do you even display a keyboard if you can't even click on it with your mouse to interact with it? Clicking on any key just sends me to some sort of website. (EDIT: ok, you can click keys on a fresh start, but once you click on the typehelp, for some reason I can no longer click on anything anymore without it sending me to the site). Three, a lot of the logic felt really weird and, well, illogical to get used to (though I can understand if this was intentional, as a lot of adventures worked like this back in the day).

BoMToons responds:

Yeah, perhaps I relied too much on "mystery" as a plot driver, a good story might have added more motivation to stick with the more difficult puzzles (as you pointed out).

The "click a link and you can't click anything else" is a Ruffle bug that I've reported and hopefully they'll fix soon!

Thanks for playing and leaving a review!

[MAD SISTERS' WEEK OFF!!!]

Very charming and unique game! Usually I don't like it when a game spends too long on cutscenes and not enough on game, but I loved how charming and animated the characters were during the dialogue scenes: feels like there is so much polish in making this game so crazily detailed with all sorts of quirky art that it brings it to life! Enjoyed the various immersive elements like hand-drawn journals for the tutorial and manuals: so many things like this just add so much to it. Though I will say, as much as I love it, sometimes it would get to the point where the game was a bit too overloaded with color and graphics that it would just end up confusing me: I don't know what the heck all the gauges are on the main HUD, I'd easily lose track of my character in all the chaos, and so on. Gameplay was pretty fun, though tricky at times: was difficult for me to handle all the different mechanics of jumping and shooting and vacuuming and whacking (I think the instruction should just say SHIFT, I didn't know what the arrow meant for whacking), maybe it would help to reduce overdesign, like getting rid of the vacuum. Levels were a bit haphazard as well, sometimes you've got a level like the bank where it's really hard to get things going, and then you've got levels like the sewer where you can just infinite combo with no challenge at all. Anyway, I still had a ball, and it does feel like a cool game where you can practice to get better and better at building up combos!

[Advent NEON DEMO [Web Version]]

Hyperactive is right for this game: once you get going and get used to how fast the game moves, it feels incredible! I loved both the battle sections and the platforming sections and how they seamlessly worked together: the feeling of flow and speed was incredible. Battles were awesome: I loved how chunky the hits felt and the great way enemies flew and bounced around, and I like the way you could just mash attacks and directions all over the place for great combos, but you can always instantly cancel with a dash to dodge an attack. Just has a great sense of freedom to it!

I do have a few critiques though (minor things, haha, overall it was great!) When wall-running, sometimes I would find myself hitting jump near the top of the wall, hoping it would jump me upwards onto the ledge to finish my run up it, but instead it always jumps me backwards away off the wall: it's ok, but it might be neat if you could influence how you wall jump with directional keys for better control and flow. Pressing a button to rapidly finish a line of dialogue would cause you to need to press two more times to go to the next line of dialogue, instead of just pressing once more. Freezing the camera for slow-mo after a dodge can be a neat effect, but it can end up confusing with me losing my character by running off-screen. Animations for some of the player attacks felt a bit slow with too many frames of blur: could stand for less blur frames or just reducing the amount of time between frames. There were some weird graphical glitches at times, like some weird screenshake and lines appearing at the top of the screen. Also in general, sometimes the game just felt a bit too loose and zippy for its own good and it made it tricky to control or tell where hitboxes were and such, but I think I got used to it.

All in all, looking forward to more from this!

CryoGX responds:

Really appreciate the feedback, and thanks for playing! I'll be taking these things into account. Judging from some of these points, this may be due to some quirks with the porting itself, and I recommend trying the downloaded version (if possible!) to see if those issues persist, as the game's speed partially relies on its framerate.