FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sonic RPG Episode 10 - The Final Chapter]

Haha, quite the nostalgia blast for me! Unfortunately, I haven't played any of the previous Sonic RPGs for it to be nostalgic in that way, but still, this game speaks to my inner child: very much reminds me of Super Mario Bros Z and all that jazz. Animations, cutscenes and general presentation is very nice and cool. It can be a little confusing at first since it kinda just dumps you into it with tons of options at your fingertips and the text is hard to read since it's so small, but I enjoyed the challenge of figuring out everything on the fly. Combat is neat and has a good variety of special moves to gawk at, but unfortunately it did feel like it got a bit repetitive over time as you're constantly seeing and doing the same moves and animations over and over and over to whittle down the absolutely absurd HP bars: was hoping the combat system would have something fresh and new to make it unique, but it's still serviceable. But anyway, it's nevertheless very impressive to bring back something like this from so long!

[Detective GUI]

Really trippy and interesting game! Started off a bit awkwardly with the first level being the hardest, since my natural instincts are to not mess with the options/music and not ask for help, haha. Was funny that the level after that was way more on the nose about what you need to do with all sorts of in-your-face hints: maybe rearrange the level ordering for a better tutorial process? Anyway, once it got going I did enjoy all the crazy sorts of stuff this game offers: using a speech bubble as a platform, switching out the level number with my score number to skip, examining recorded footage, oh my! This games got a lot of crazy stuff going for it and I'm very interested to get back into it!

[Ola! Tannenbaum]

Cool little fun arcade game! I like how there is a bit of a double-game going on, where one game is just you focusing on getting a high score by hitting the targets, but another game is looking for opportunities to best decorate the tree in a good way (like looking for targets where you can criss-cross big lines of tinsel and such). Wish I could save/print my final tree image and score and compare it with others to see who's the best decorator along with the highest score, haha! Also, I kind of wish it would automatically opt-out of the tutorials on a retry, but it's not necessarily, fine as-is. (Also, this is probably silly, but the flashing tutorial text is already enough for emphasis, having the circle targeting for the flashing text made me actually think I needed to aim the bauble there at first, lol)

Extar responds:

Really glad you enjoyed it! Pico-8 usually lets you take screenshots from the game with the F6 key but that doesn't seem to work when playing it through HTML5 in-browser. I'll see if there's another way I can get a screenshot into the game.

[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.