FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Frog to the moon]

I like the idea behind it and I think its a pretty neat precision platformer, but it felt a bit too frustrating and unintuitive at times. Certainly game me flashbacks to games like Celeste with being able to replenish your jumps, and I enjoyed puzzling out the best way to go through a stage and then getting good enough to execute. However, it was a bit frustrating. With the controls, I'm not sure why you chose to make it so pressing left or right executes a jump instead of requiring to press up along while holding left or right: making it jump on just left or right means you can't fine tune your jump by wiggling around slightly because this can make you waste a cherry, which means that you have to be way too committed to your initial jump arc, making it a bit too unforgiving. Also, there were tons of times that I felt like I got a cherry but it didn't count: maybe make the hitboxes a bit more forgiving if it doesn't damage the puzzles. Having said that, I do want to go back and try this game again to get all the way through since it was quite fun: just a bit too overly challenging since it requires such precision. I can understand the design decision of making your character have to commit to a jump arc, like how Castlevania NES does it, but it might not go down well with most players since it just feels bad and unfair at times (most players prefer Super Castlevania SNES haha). Oh yeah, as another note, I wish there was something close to our player that could tell us how many jumps we have left: like a bar with segments or dots below the frog, or maybe Celeste style where our frog changes color to indiciate how many jumps we have, so it's easier to track.

HenrySanchezNG responds:

I get that frustration reaction allot, guess I have a high tolerance for these kind of games, I'm a getting over it fan after all hahaha. But I understand it's not everybody's cup of tea.
The control decision was to restrict the player, that was before the game was published and I had no idea about the average player's skill level. I made a rebalance patch after people sending me messages telling me if it was even possible to pass level 4. So I changed and added cherries to the entire game, guess that wasn't enough.

That jump indicator is a good idea, besides there was gonna be light trail so it could help the player visualize their trajectory.

The whole point of restricting the controls was to make it less about maneuvering and more about initial positioning and calculating trajectories. I thought people would figure things about but now I know that I could've made a better job in teaching the player how to play.

If a sequel ever exists MAYBE I will change the controls hahaha.
Edit: Just kidding, those controls have to go I will change them I promise :P
Thanks for the review

[Rusty Wind Blows]

Hmm, tricky one for me. On one hand, the game is certainly quite interesting with its cool art style and very unique mechanics, where you are in a constant state of juggling resources and momentum and enemies all in a whirlwind of chaos. I felt good in that I started to get better and better at making quicker decisions as I practiced a few runs. On the other hand, it did feel quite overly frustrating at times: so many times I would get pissed at me wanting to shoot an enemy but the musket lagging behind where I'm aiming, or the recoil causing me to be pushed to the edges or into a rain cloud and so on. And when the screen would go pitch black: god I hated those segments, haha! It also was not very satisfying to play: shooting enemies, replenishing energy and so on didn't have any satisfying sounds or explosions or good feel to them, leading to an overwhelming sense of dullness and emptiness (maybe appropriate, but...). Still, I made it all the way despite my complaints, so I think this game won me over in the end.

[Medieval Chronicles 10]

Pretty interesting game: certainly grabs you at the start with a lot of interesting concepts while then lightening the mood with some humor, some crazy characters and a little mystery. Might've overdone it on the humor initially what with all the overabudance of puns, jokes and fourth-wall breaks, but it's understandable, haha.

[Becloudead - Christmas Special]

Hmm, it's certainly an interesting game with a lot of stuff to it, but at the moment, I'm not sure if it's gelling together as much as it should. I really like the whole Price of Persia-esque movement with momentum and such, but its a bit frustrating to deal with for combat (especially since its quite glitchy, in that, for example, you can instantly cancel your run with an attack, but if you stop your run and then try to attack, you can't as you have to wait for your slide animation to complete). Combat was a bit frustrating as well in that it felt like you just couldn't avoid damage at times: crouch swiping at dogs or swinging at zombies sometimes wouldn't knock them back enough to stop their approach, causing me to just eat damage. Don't get me wrong, it did feel kinda good to try and get better at fighting, distancing myself appropriately, using rolls, strategizing and so on, but I just wasn't sure if maybe such a movement system should remain for a more slower, puzzle-based game instead of trying to fit in this action game. Also, I wasn't sure how to proceed sometimes with these fog gates blocking the way: I think it required to kill all the zombies, but I wasn't sure if or why wolves and other enemies were exempt from this. It's definitely pretty rough at the moment with some systems causing frustration, but I am intrigued and want to see more as this develops: hope you can iron everything out to get something nice going!

[Bauble Buster]

Certainly a chaotic game: fun to watch everything explode. It's got my favorite old-school game thingy that I love: where the game gets so wild it actually tanks the frame rate and slows everything down. I gotta say, I was super confused at first: I didn't even notice I could control the gnomes at the bottom and thought it was just down to luck and where you dropped the gnomes from the plane as to whether you'd win. To be fair, though, that got me through like 10 levels no problem, and even when I did learn I could control the gnomes at the bottom, it didn't help because either the balls bounce around too fast, or they glitch out on the ribbons and I can't bounce them back up into play anyway, haha!

Also, there was like a weird glitch at the start where a bunch of medals popped up? I don't think it actually gave me them, but still, odd. Also, speaking of that, some stages require more than 90% or so to win, so having a medal for 90% struck me as a bit redundant as it didn't make sense for those ones.

[Escape The Factory]

Hmmm, pretty decent game with an alright idea, but was a little too frustrating for me to play. There is a pretty neat strategy to the game where you have to switch between slow movement but powerful shots, and fast, evasive movement but weak shots and it did make the simple combat a bit exciting. But at the end of the day, it just felt like everything moved so fast and jerky, and everything was so tiny, it was annoying to keep track of everything. Feedback didn't help either: enemies and shots just blink out of existence instead of a satisfying explosion, I couldn't tell when I was being damaged because my slow blue color would override the damage color, and when I died, which I did a lot, it would just immediately punt me to the menu instead of having a death animation. Feels like it has the core of a kinda decent shooter, but it could use some more polish to help everything flow and feel better. But, I am an old man now, so maybe it's just my reflexes dulling, haha.

[Hanukkah Runner]

Pretty neat game! Especially love the gorgeous presentation: the animation of the character and the background with its parallax and day/night transitions are very mesmerizing. Gameplay is simple, but fun to get through: felt good to get better at movement and learning little tricks. Interesting use of outlines around obstacles to help visibility (I wonder if this should always be on for easy/medium but not hard, or maybe graphics changed so obstacles stand out without them, or whatever). Only thing that hurts it for me at the moment was 1) it seems like the world is not randomized, which I feel hurts replayability a bit, and 2) there's no score tracking or anything when I wish there was so I can try and save Hanukkah even faster than last time.

KJScott responds:

Yup, the randomised layout reconsidered but I didn't have enough time to develop and put it in, I fully agree with you there. The same goes for score/time tracking. That one though should be relatively easy to implement, so i might take another look at this soon and see if i can't throw a best time in for each difficulty.

[Arm Of Revenge Trial]

Definitely seems to be pretty solid and has a lot going for it, presentation-wise, and I do love a good beat-em-up, but at the moment it just felt a bit awkward to play. The character just felt incredibly stiff, slow, and frustrating to control: usually a punch comes out immediately when you press a button in these beat-em-ups, but here, it takes a long time. Air control was a bit weird as well where it felt like you were too committed to your initial arc or something. There's a parry system which seems cool, but enemies barely give telegraphs of when they are about to attack, so you end up just having to guess pretty much. There's a neat combo system, but I had no way of knowing what my combos were except for memorizing them, and when I bought combo extensions I didn't know what combos they affected and how. I really wanting to get some cool juggle combos going, or some cool defensive counters, but there's so much lag and recovery on my character, I couldn't cancel anything and it just left me feeling so slow, stifling my creativity. Levels were a bit drab as well, with them being incredibly short scenarios and enemies just lining up to get punched. Gameplay can end up feeling a bit tedious from this as well as other things, like the fact you can't hit enemies on the ground, instead having to wait for them to get up. Items are upgrades were weird as well: I unlocked blade mode, but it turned out I have to buy it again if I want to have it for another level? I think this game does have a lot of heart, though, and could end up being cool: hope you get a lot of feedback and I'd love to see more from this!

MagicWing responds:

thanks for feedback.
i will try my best to improve the game.
notice:you can hit enemies on ground after unlocked corresponding skills

[OOO]

Pretty neat arcade game: reminded me of games like Gyruss, Super Hexagon or Tempest 2000! Love the sleek minimalist presentation that still had a lot of cool and powerful feedback for good gamefeel. Was a little confusing to get used to the controls at first (and I still kept messing up left/right constantly) but it felt good to get skilled at everything. Game seemed to have some good design to it as well: for example, I liked how the spiky block enemies do not damage you when they spawn, with there being a grace period before they do so to avoid spawning on top of you for unfair insta-damage. I loved the music/color transitions between levels: always made it exciting to get farther and farther, especially to fight a boss!

[Cats on Mars]

Bloody charming game! The world was so fun to wander around in and interact with everything: I love a game where you can examine and talk with so many people and get so much flavor text, and this game had it by the truckload. There was just so many little things, from the psuedo Windows interface, the cool dance sessions, the text variety for showing emphasis (I gotta say the torn-up couch text is hard to read though, avoid that), all sorts of crazy characters to talk with, and cat puns, woo! Would love to see even more from this world.

Gotta say, though, having dance moves where you have to hit all 4 arrows at the same time is an odd design decision: it might not even be possible on some keyboards, so I would think it would be best removed.