FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Shelled Shinobi]

Pretty neat game! I'm used to most PICO-8 games being slow and puzzle-like, so it was great to see something so fluid and fast-paced as this crazy parkour game! It was a little bit tricky to get used to the speed and controls, but I think it never got overly frustrating and just felt like a good challenge I'd like to go back and see if I can effortlessly speedrun (would be great if the ending had a high score board or a dev's best time to battle against!) I think the only issue I had with the game was I felt some of the elements didn't gel with the speedrun flow nature of it: some of the collectables weren't on the ideal path and would take you out of your natural run it seemed, and I'd much prefer if boxes didn't bounce you back but would just let you crash through them, as it's annoying to have to bounce back and reset a path.

[Musync]

Pretty cool game! I like the unique concept, and it's pretty cool that the levels get more and more complex and have you stay on your toes by having to think fast to handle sudden changes like 'repeat' and 'reverse' to keep yourself from dying. My only problem at the moment is that I feel like the levels are quite overly long, which makes dying on them very punishing. I think the levels might be able to work with the long length of time, but to compensate for that, I think the music would have to be fixed to be more complex and more of a journey, like an actual music track, as right now the simple loops get quite repetitive quickly, even with the 'repeat' and 'reverse' mixing them up slightly.

[Nursery Curse]

Definitely delivers on its intention of introducing people to the absolute chaos that a nursery can be! While the game didn't seem to have much progression to it apart from the one level, and it felt like you could never 'win', I felt like that was the whole point of the experience and it was fun to get in character and try to manage in the face of overwhelming odds. I like the little touches the game has to help you learn the mechanics, such as how the audio has direction to it so you can figure out where problems are happening by the sound of cries, and how your character verbalizes things like 'there, there' to let you know that the grab has a calming effect for sad kids. Now excuse me, I have to get back to breaking up another fight in the bathroom!

[Bunny's Cavern]

I liked this game a lot: really fun and challenging like a bunny version of Super Meat Boy! The levels and obstacles put forward in this game were, in my opinion, very well put-together and challenging in a good way: I like how the game gets hard quickly, and it keeps adding more and more unique obstacles and set-pieces to get through, all while changing the environments you go through slightly to give you a feeling of progression. Controls felt good and smooth for the most part, so there wasn't much issues in navigating the challenging levels.

My only complaint was that there is a slight issue with the way the game handles changing directions: if you're facing right and jump straight up, tapping the left button during the jump will turn the bunny around. However, if you're facing right while jumping forward, tapping the left button during the left not just turn you around, but send you flying left a good distance, which can cause you to die unintentionally, which I did many times. I think it is an issue of the direction change instantly mirroring the momentum/velocity directly, so it shifts from 1 to -1, instead of slowly changing the momentum/velocity, from 1 to .5 to 0 to -.5 to -1 until it is in the opposite direction, if that makes sense. Other than that, the controls felt very smooth.

[[BTNverse] Universal Thief]

Holy mackerel, this mighta been one of my favorite games yet from ya: the concept really surprised me since I was just expecting a more common type of thief game (like Thief, if you can imagine that) but I should've known better than to expect the ordinary from you, haha! It didn't take long for me to absolutely love the whole strategic element of stealing moves for an ideal loadout to deal with challenges in your way, all in a crazy Earthbound-esque environment. Really very impressive design in building all of these sorts of moves that can serve all sorts of purposes! I haven't beaten the whole game yet, but I'm looking forward to: I honestly thought it was gonna end with you stealing the boss ID, and that would've been satisfying, but it just kept going!

EDIT: I am the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end of this game rocks

adriendittrick responds:

thanks for the great review as usual :)
Have fun beating the rest of the game when you have time!

[show]

Solid game! I'm not sure what the theatre theme has to do with creating platforms under your feet, but hey, it was a decent game with an interesting graphical theme/presentation (and cool music, of course), and it had a good escalation of difficulty with some rather clever puzzles that I felt smart figuring out! It took a little bit of getting used to the controls at first, because a lot of the time when I jumped the platform would be placed in a position way off than I was expecting: maybe you fall too fast or the platform should be created at the player's position instead of below them or something, I dunno, it just felt kinda off, but I got used to it, like how you get used to a light gun with a crooked sight, if that makes sense. Glad I got a seat to this show!

[RetroShooti (DemoScene)]

Very cool and crazy shooter! Has a real professional design to it both from a UI perspective and a gameplay perspective: the menus and UI have a ton of great options to them and aren't a slouch in terms of graphical presentation to get you amped up, and the gameplay is crazy with a huge variety of enemies and powerups all in a satisfying chaos of of explosions. Definitely really solid so far, but in terms of feedback that could be worked on:

I though the text for the controls on the 'how to play' screen were way too small and difficult to read: the font makes Xs look like Ks when they're written that small, for example. Would love to see images be used for controls instead of just bland letters, even if it is just an image of a keyboard key with the letter on it.

I wish there was an option to allow the turn around button to be a toggle instead of a hold: for some reason, my natural instinct was to assume it was a toggle and it was difficult to play by holding it down. Might just be me: maybe it works for most people.

My biggest issue, which might not even be an issue, was that the current gameplay, while fun and explosive and crazy, seemed to be a bit lacking in terms of direction? It might be my fault, going in and expecting something like Gradius, where you go from level to level, all showcasing different enemy types assembled in interesting ways in varied planetary terrain. This game did have a lot of enemy variety, and a lot of crazy power-ups, and interesting bosses, but it all just felt so scattershot and random, like a Jackson Pollock painting where enemies were just slapped everywhere on screen with no rhyme or reason. It just felt like I wasn't progressing at all in the game: with no significant change in background or design, I felt like I was just flying in the same bit of space getting nowhere fast, shooting enemies for no purpose. I was facing bosses every now and then, but they were tiny and started to repeat fast and became annoying bullet sponges in their repeat encounters. That's not necessarily a bad thing: it might just not be my cup of tea, and I did still have a lot of fun for what it was. Game definitely is still very well put-together and has bucketloads of potential left, so hopefully my feedback can help in some way!

[Jiminy]

Cool escape room game! I really liked the atmosphere that the game had with the ambient sounds and the gorgeous (in a spooky way) art design. Puzzles felt nice as well for the most part: I felt clever figuring out ones like the door handle turning, but other ones like the mast cutting seemed weird since it didn't seem logically possible. I liked how the items moved around, like how you actually look through the magnifying glass, instead of just clicking a magnifying glass icon on an object like most point n clicks do (though there seems to be a bug when I try to use the stick since it doesn't appear).

[Slime Rider]

Great, professionally designed and charming little puzzler! Game just oozes style everything, even at the very start with its animated intro that shows the basic functionality of the game and the cool transitions between levels. Puzzles were great, with excellent level design that let you practice new mechanics in a safe level, and then escalates it with challenging levels afterwards that have a good variety of 'gotchas' to teach you good habits. I liked the inclusion of a speed-up button (I guess I got lucky by getting to play the updated version, judging by the comments, haha): I nearly forgot it existed since I didn't need it for awhile, but luckily you put the icon in the upper-right as a friendly reminder just when I started to get a little frustrated by having to wait, haha. Top shelf stuff, this!

Criobite responds:

Thank you, it's good to hear you like the game! Been working a lot on learning how to make better games in general and I'm glad it's working out.

[Fields of Sagebrushes]

Pretty neat experience that had a lot of cool atmosphere to it helped by the graphics and sound. Unfortunately the experience for me was killed a lot by the UI design, which when you have a visual novel should be your bread and butter. Events were really confusing at first as it was difficult to tell which choice I had highlighted and what element to click, and I had no idea why I also had to highlight a character to choose them or anything like that. At first I thought the white markers on the status bars indicated what our current level was within the black bar, but then the black bars moved and I realized that they were the actual status indicator themselves. Many times there were interactable elements on the screen that could still be clicked and highlighted despite no longer being interactable, like the town choices when you have no choices left, or the other confirm button on screen when you're traveling. Another thing that hurt the game for me was the lack of event variety (I was already getting repeats very early on before barely even leaving the coast) and the fact that there were long stretches without any actual story tidbits to keep me hooked. It's still a pretty neat game, but I just wish it had a bit more polish to it: would love to see an updated version!

danidre14 responds:

I appreciate your review whole heartedly, and thanks for playing my game again! :D

This was a lot of first times for me, but I'll make no excuses, I understand your critiques on the UI; like we left it there for the user to figure out, seemingly by intuition.

With the encounters, we've nearly 50; it's really odd that you got so many reoccurring, the algorithms weren't in our favour in this one time you took a run through with it.

But definitely, it would've been amazing to polish the story and expand; other than the few we whipped up last minute. I too would love to see an updated version!

Again, thanks for playing, and I appreciate the critiques and feedbacks :)