FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[SNEK: The Game]

Decent game! An interesting take on an old concept: it was fun to race to get pickups in time as you get faster and faster and get longer and longer! I think my only real gripe with the game, as superficial as it sounds, is with its presentation and polish, or rather the lack thereof. It feels like the game has a solid core to it, but doesn't have any pizazz or juice to make it exciting. I feel like it could really stand to have some more special effects not only to amp up certain elements but also help the player learn important mechanics. For example, you could make it so that when you get a potion, you don't just shrink instantly, but a piece of your tail sheds off or explodes or fades away: looks good and shows the player how potions work without even needing text instructions. You could make a cauldron spawn more exciting by announcing it with an explosion and then having a clock tick down sound so the player knows they should get to it quickly, where then you would reward the player with a cool slow-mo blur effect and power-up sound when they do collect it. Again, I know a lot of this might sound superficial, and graphics aren't everything, but I think this game could really benefit from some juice: watch 'Juice It or Lose It' for a more visual example of what I'm talking about! Nonetheless, I felt this game was pretty decent!

Aprime responds:

Thanks! I'll bear those in mind for a future game. Was just trying to keep this one simple given the pixelated graphics.

[Princess Squirrel]

Hmm, not too shabby, but for me, it might be a bit too chill for its own good, haha! Game definitely has a lot going for it: seems to have pretty good controls, very nice graphics and animations, decent presentation and variety of obstacles and so on. But, the lack of music, bog-standard run-n-jump mechanics, and levels that pretty much feel like they are repeating themselves really made it start to lose my interest. It didn't help either that there didn't seem to be any story or motive or impetus to the game: I don't even know why the whole 'pay bill' mechanic exists, nor what the heck it does to enhance the game in any way. Maybe it's just me being an adrenaline junky, but while I think the game has a decent core to it, I feel like it could introduce some more story direction to it and increase the pacing to ramp up the challenge and level variety faster. Also, it could really use a save/load system as well. Still, nice job so far with it.

[STOP and MOVE]

Pretty fun! Not too shabby of an idea and it feels very addictive and fun to go through all of the levels. It can get a little annoying when you have to retry: many of the levels have such a slow start that I wished I could have a fast-forward button to complement the stop button so I could get back to where I left off quicker. It's not too much of a problem as the levels are kept small and bite-size, but still, could help keep the pacing up. Also, some of the levels did feel a little out-of-order in terms of escalation, or seem to just be clones of already existing levels with minor things added on, so there could be some improvement there. Anyway, its a simple game, but the sense of speed and timing were really fun to play through, and I really liked the touch to turrets where it shows a bar to indicate when they are going to attack (I think that really helps reduce player frustration as they can know better how to time their stops and starts).

[Dungeon and Puzzles Final Demo]

Didn't have the best start with the intro, which was riddled with text problems (grammar, spelling, etc), but once I got into the game, I found it to be very fun! Something about the game and how smooth it transitions between each level, watching your map slowly complete itself with crowns: it's like eating a bag of popcorn, I just couldn't stop once I got going! It helped that the levels seemed to be escalating bit-by-bit with new mechanics, getting a little bit harder each time, so nice work on that. I was pleasantly surprised: despite the game looking a bit generic and similar to other puzzlers made, it nevertheless just had a sense of smoothness and professionalism to its presentation, especially with the HUD and UI, that escalated it for me.

[Save the Princess Gayme!]

I actually really enjoyed myself with this one! It's a real bummer that the game doesn't seem to have a save/load system so I could continue: hopefully one can be included for future games of this nature. I loved the sheer amount of interactivity this game offered: so many objects to interact with, tons of fun little games and puzzles to work through, and so much amusing flavor text and dialogue. Game just felt so charming and addicting: loved going around the world and seeing what I could do next. I haven't gotten too far in the game to see everything, but so far the dialogue and jokes seem to be the right amount of funny without overdoing it, so nice job on the balance (well ok, tree-son might be taking it too far haha). There are a couple issues with the controls but nothing major: while most objects display a title when you walk up to them to let you know you can interact with them, doors didn't (I know its probably obvious you can interact with doors, but still, consistency would be nice) and also it'd be nice if the sentence 'use object with...' would fill with whatever you're trying to use it on when you hover it over something. Still, all in all very nice job!

[Discwheel]

Simple but fun! There's something so nice about the game having analog controls: scrolling to control has a really smooth and slick feel to it, and the overall presentation, especially the graphics and animations, are so polished that they make the game feel even smoother on top of that. Game doesn't have much to it in terms of variety and long-term progression, but it escalates nicely and just feels so good with so many little touches to it that I couldn't help but try again and again. Only potential balancing niggle I could see is that, due to the widescreen resolution, discs coming at you from directly above or below don't allow equal reaction time which can feel frustrating. Nonetheless, nice work!

Thank god a gold medal is for getting above a minute: I could barely get above 30 seconds and was questioning whether I was good at games anymore, haha! I swear some of those discs were cheating by curving! I'm not crazy!