FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Reincarnation: ADDO Remastered]

Wow, this is a fantastic little point-n-click adventure game, and I'm saying that as someone who never played the originals (sorry) so there's no nostalgia blinding me! Seriously, the overall presentation and feel of the game is very high-quality and would fit right alongside any of the classic greats! I got right into playing this and seriously enjoyed not only the puzzles, but all of the goofy dialogue and extra interactions you can do: always love it when you can interact with stuff in nonsensical ways and get back a funny response!

If I were to have any feedback, it would be:

*I wish the way that interactable objects would get highlighted was more clear: the way the cursor reacts by rotating is quite subtle and can easily lead to you missing objects as you're scanning the environment. I'd love a more prominent glow, for example, for either the cursor or the object.

*I found the usage of directional audio a bit strange: sure, it makes a bit of sense for people on the left/right sides of the screen to have their audio come from the left/right ears, but in a way it feels very unnecessary.

*The introduction scene was pretty awkward since it not only had the audio desync, but it cut-off into gameplay before it completed, at least as far as I could tell.

*There's no save/load functionality? I got pretty far into the game and, wanting to take a break, went into the options to try and save, but upon not seeing any options, I figured it would have some sort of autosave, but oh, the disappointment when I tried to load my game on a new session and found I'd have to start all over! I really don't want to have to redo everything, even if I can try and skip the dialogue to make it go faster.

[Wizard Brew]

Hey, this is a pretty neat game! I'm always down for a little job-sim like potion brewing, and to combine that into a crazy and chaotic competitive battle royale was quite the interesting fusion! Having to collect ingredients and brew potions while dodging bullets and screwing over the competition by messing with their pots or just outright killing them was wild, and overall I felt like the game was a very polished and intuitive experience with both a well laid-out tutorial and all sorts of tooltips and feedback within the game itself to help you along. I even liked all of the goofy extra touches it had, like how the 1st place wizard scorches the runner-ups, haha! Well done!

Having said that, I did have a few things come up in terms of feedback:

*It felt quite frustrating with the way the screen is setup, as the camera is so zoomed in and unable to see forward that you just can't get a good handle on the environment or see threats coming, so it felt impossible to dodge attacks or keep track of anything.

*I was very reluctant to deal with other wizards and found myself wishing I could just collect ingredients and brew and that's it. Don't get me wrong, I understand why the competitive aspect is there and I think the game is better for it since it would be too simple without it, but I just found it annoying and pointless to try and deal with other wizards. It's kinda like how a lot of people enjoy Dark Souls but don't want to engage in PVP. If I had my way, I'd make it so that you have to journey into a separate area, some sort of dangerous forest with monsters to collect ingredients, instead of cramming everything into a single area filled with absolute chaos, but that's just me spitballing.

*There were some minor sound errors with some music only playing out of my left ear for some odd reason.

Definitely a cool game, but it might be something I technically love in theory more than actually playing it, if that makes sense, haha! It's cool enough though that I want to revisit it at some point, hopefully embracing the chaos on that second try!

Sjhillustration responds:

Thanks for the feedback! It was my first game, so it was difficult to get a balance without making the game either too hard and complicated, or too easy and not fun.

The one thing I had hoped for is that it was chaotic, as it was supposed to be a game jam, knowing I had a limited time (I didn't even come close to finishing it in time lol) that having it be a hard, almost multiplayer style game would give it a bit of a challange so people might play it more than once if they liked it, as it only lasts 3 and a half minutes.

I'll check out the music/sound issue. I hadn't noticed but there might be some audio that's spatial by accident.

I honestly thought only 10 people would play this, so I'm grateful for everyone that did!

Thanks for playing!

[Help Me Clean My Kitchen!]

Hey, it's nice to see this game come back again in a new form! It's a rather short and simplistic puzzle game, but its cute and goofy vibes as well as weird and experimental design make it quite the unique experience, and I couldn't help but get addicted to playing it over and over till I got the best ending! Still haven't gotten the secret ending yet, but I'm sure to be back to get it when I have some time: so fun to play around with the various choices and watch how everything turns out after all, like some sort of ant farm or fish bowl!

Even though the game is technically quite simple in that you're just figuring out the order to hit the buttons in, and you could technically just brute force that without paying attention to anything, I like the way the game lets you slowly intuit how the order should work out by paying attention to the various interactions that play out, like how you can't introduce water too early because you need the sink to flood to clean the floor, but at the same time you need to be careful with fire and ice during that waiting period since they can mess with the water/oil to create messy situations, and so on. There's something so magical about how it roped me into paying attention to the animated interactions, the way it becomes much larger than what it technically is, if that makes sense.

I enjoyed my time with this and my only real complaint would be that I wish there were even more goofy scenarios/levels to play through, as I just can't get enough!

[Ritual Bound]

Yowza, this was an awesome horror experience!

I'm always a big fan of these job sim games like TIS-100, Papers Please, and so on where you need to read through copious amounts of manuals of rules and lore to figure out how to pull something off correctly, and this delivered that very well! The atmosphere and vibes of the game were top-notch too: I'm not sure if I was actually under a time limit, but the tension was palpable as I hurried to figure out the steps while being assaulted on both sides from a creepy monster and an angry mob pounding on the door. So damn cool!

It's certainly a bit of an intimidating game, so much so that I feel bad since I was reluctant to wait and listen to the monster's speech (voice acting would help so much here), but I was very surprised at how friendly it could be in offering feedback when you blow it: I was expecting to have no idea how I messed it up and wouldn't blame the game in doing so, but having feedback made it an incredibly easy decision to replay, and I'm glad I did because the climatic ending sequence and the choice you need to make was awesome(ly depressing)!

If I were to have any feedback, it would be that the game can be rather unclear as to what the heck is going on, in a way that goes beyond the intended sense of confusion. For example, I thought the whole point of sealing the beast was to put him under our thrall and attack the villagers so we'd be saved, so I was a bit confused when that turned out to be the obvious 'wrong' choice. Another aspect that I'd change is to make it so that the one book which sticks out from the pack would be the main sealing ritual book, not the monster encyclopedia: the player is naturally guided towards that separate book and would help inroad them much easier into what's going on.

[• Dread Chess ✣]

Hrmm, this is a rough one for me!

On one hand, I find the game rather fascinating in how opaque and unorthodox it is: I feel like an explorer who unearthed an alien device and I'm trying to figure out how it operates. It's like not only is there a game to play and win, but there's an extra puzzle game on top of figuring out the game itself, and I enjoy that sort of meta stuff. The game also adds to the sense of mystique with its cool, horror-themed presentation, hardcore no-second-chances rules, and weird usage of both chess and visual novel elements. I really wanted to get into it!

On the other hand, though, I was hopelessly lost in what the heck I was even doing, and my faith in the game was under attack by the constant, never-ending typos and just altogether badly-written and confusing script. Perhaps this was written in another language and you had google auto-translate it? But that wouldn't explain why there was a typo in practically every single sentence. I don't want to be a grammar nazi or anything, but when you've got a game that's all about words and it doesn't get that right, it makes me less inclined to give the rest of the game the benefit of the doubt, since it's a natural assumption that the rest is probably just as shoddy.

So yeah, I tried to get into this, but the script issues and lack of direction wore down my faith and made me feel like this game is just a buncha style-over-substance. Shame because it definitely looks like it has potential, but yeah, needs some proofreading!

[Luck of the Draw]

Pretty neat board game with some rather unique twists, such as the dice being a physical object that can be used to attack: certainly some clever stuff that makes for a cool game jam experiment!

I'll admit that I'm not the best person to review this game, as I'm not much of a fan of board games. In my experience, they typically result in a lot of tedium where people are just slowly making their way around with low rolls and resets, and also a lot of RNG that just screws you over. And unfortunately, I was still experiencing those same elements in this as well, so it definitely wasn't my cup of tea.

Trying to look past my preferences though, I do think this has a lot going for it. As stated before, the dice being a physical element makes for a lot of interesting strategies, especially when you add on ricochet shots and the various types of dice you can get from crates, which is yet another thing that adds a layer of whether it's worth it to risk going off the beaten path for. You can also use classic CTF strategies where you decide to keep one of your people behind as a defender, or risk going all in on offense to grab that flag. All this strategy, and the game has a nice sense of presentation and polish too (though I'll admit that the backgrounds are quite bland).

So yeah, it's not for me, but I can see why people would find this rather impressive and interesting. If I were to have any feedback, it'd be that I wish I could move the camera around to survey the battlefield freely instead of always being locked-in to looking at what is currently under control.

[Soup Time]

Whoa, quite the interesting game, being some sort of fusion of a roguelike deckbuilder and one of those rules-heavy job sims! It definitely tickled my fancy with its unique concept, and I found the presentation to be rather cute and charming as well: I found it amusing that it ran with the concept to an extreme degree, even making health represented by physical documents when it could've just used a non-diegetic HUD for that.

For the most part, I had a good time playing the game and trying to strategize the best way to approach the fights, balancing what cards will ensure that I don't violate any rules not just for the enemy I'm fighting, but for the remaining enemies as well until my deck gets to draw again. There were some subtle tricks to consider here and there, like how as long as it's a killing blow, you can use any card you like, allowing you to save some critical colors for another opponent.

It could certainly be me just being bad, but in spite of my best attempts and how much fun it could be, it felt rather inevitable and frustrating that you could just get screwed over by bad RNG. Compounding this is when I swear I'd used the appropriate card but I'd get counter-attacked: wish when that happens that the rule I violated would be highlighted or something to give me feedback. Sometimes I also feel that the rules just weren't written in a clear manner, both in terms of wording and as to whether they have preference of order, and that could be leading to my failures as well.

While I had a rough time, I'd still consider this a nice game jam result as the experimental concept hooked me and had me very intrigued at all the different ways it could be iterated upon, so well done!

[good (Demo)]

Huh, pretty neat stuff! Reminds me a lot of games like Night in the Woods, what with the youthful vibes, amusingly paced dialogue, and general adventure game structure with minigames, though this game goes hard on the minigames which was rather unique.

Overall I find the game rather charming in many ways, but I will admit that, as a demo, I'm not quite sure if it did enough to interest me in the full game, as I still don't feel like I have a good grasp on what exactly the game is, nor what the story is: it just felt like we were goofing around and while that's nice in a sense, it's like, why should I care?

Going back to Night in the Woods as a comparison: sure, that game is similar in that you're farting around town, hanging out with friends and shooting the breeze, but there is also significant intrigue introduced early on to keep the player hooked, around why May is back home and why there was a severed arm outside the diner and so on. I feel like I needed something like that to be introduced in this demo as well. If it's not that type of game and this demo is representative of what the game is, though, well, fair enough.

[Sally's House]

Pretty neat horror adventure! Certainly throws a lot at the player to keep things interesting, what with all sorts of strange changes to the house popping up that you swear weren't there before, various minigames like leading the candles or dodging the spiders, and so on. The presentation felt polished as well, and I liked the inclusion of multiple endings. I wish the game didn't lay it on quite as thick with hints since I'd like if there were a bit more of a challenge to the puzzles, but it was still fine for a straightforward trip. Definitely impressive stuff for a game jam entry!

If I were to be critical, I'd say that I don't feel like the game has a cohesive vision or story. Once I got to the end, I felt rather unsatisfied and unsure of what even happened, with the preceding events being just a random, disconnected assortment of minigames and cliche horror setpieces that were neat and fast-paced enough to keep my attention but didn't lead anywhere. Since this is a game jam game, perhaps the idea was just to experiment with a lot of concepts for funsies, and that's fine, but it is what it is. This could be on me too: mayhaps I missed some critical info somewhere by getting the good ending first?

[Mouse Mouse]

Pretty cute speedrun game! I wasn't aware of what the goal was at first, and the controls took a bit of getting used to, but it didn't take long for me to get really into trying to master the controls and replaying for higher ranks! I consider this a great game jam result, as while it doesn't have much content at the moment, it was still charming enough with its presentation and unique controls that it left me hungry for more: it's short but stacked with potential, much like the mouse character is!