FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Little Maddie Dear]

I found this pretty dang impressive! I'm not one for these RPG Maker games typically, but this one seemed so custom-built that you could barely tell it was built from it initially, so kudos on that! Really cool and intriguing presentation and theme: I got really hooked into it and wanted to see where it went! Love the weird little dialogues with the characters as well that had a real Darkwood feeling to them. Some aspects of the game were a little confusing, like how despite every other item, like the drawing, having a descriptive label, the candies don't. Would help also to be able to see/know what items were interactable or not: some items like the meal were shining, but I was surprised to see I could interact with the inconvenient tree and pushing boxes. Also, I felt like the inclusion of some meme stuff, like the yaranaika pumpkin, for me, wasn't good since it took me out of the spooky experience: I can understand wanting to get some jokes in to lighten the mood or what-have-you, but I thought you did a good job building up the horror so it kinda shot itself in the foot with that. Also, I wasn't sure if keeping the lantern on was a good or bad thing? You can turn it on or off, but I wasn't sure if there was a reason, like if it helps not let enemies detect you or something.

Marckel responds:

Hi Futurecop! Thanks for the review! I'm so glad the Darkwood inspiration shows through, I really love that game. Sorry for the memes all over the place, that was partially stress relief due to all the rushing we had to do to finish the game in a month. The lantern is incredibly vital in stages 4 and 5! The mechanics for the two new monsters in those areas are heavily reliant on it.

[The ring of happiness]

Pretty cute game! I dunno if I got all of the symbolism or what-have-you, but at least the whole presentation with the voxel graphic dioramas was very endearing. The adventure was neat, though a bit short-lived and rather shallow: was expecting to see more branches when I went back to try again but there were just a lot of immediate dead-ends (no pun intended, and maybe limited branches is the point? again, I could've missed the point, mayhaps). There was an issue with the text where it overlapped with the graphics and needed a dark outline to make it more readable. I also wasn't sure if it was just bad grammar or intentional when it stated "try to have little empathy", haha. Fun little experience!

[LAWN MOWING DISCS]

Neat little game! Seemed like an interesting take on the whole theme where you kinda have to play cross-eyed: one eye on the grass, one eye on the saw blades, and one eye on dead dad (er, wait)! Quite challenging too: lots of little changes to the speed and size kept things exciting. Some elements of the game were a little confusing at times, such as the game not having a 'next level' prompt immediately selected when you finish a level, necessitating you to quit out to the main menu to proceed. Also, some of the final levels were a bit too fast at times, as it's to such an extreme point where you don't even have good control anymore, turning it from wacky into annoying. Still, fun times with dad!

[QUETZALCOATL - The Aztec Ride]

It's interesting, quite the unique concept! I love the whole physics aspect of it where your characters fly out of the cars and you can catch them: everything about it felt very intuitive, like how if you don't go fast enough on a loop they'll fall out at the top, and so on, so great work on the simulation with that. However, it was kinda short-lived with only one level to go through, and maybe it's just me being stupid, but I was super confused initially. I thought at first that the whole challenge was ensuring as many customers stay alive as possible at the end, which you can do by driving safely or by catching them, but instead it was rating you on distance, which didn't seem logical to me since it always ran out: basically, the whole aspect of catching customers giving you fuel back wasn't immediately apparent in gameplay or logical to me. Perhaps it would help if there was a little blurb at the beginning to describe the rules/objective to let you know that people flying out of their seats is a good thing (because it usually isn't haha), or if, when you catch a person, you'd see their 'excitement' as a particle that flies over to the fuel gauge and fills it up. Also there were some slight annoyances like sometimes if you just have a slight bump, they'll fly up a bit and then fall straight through the cart, possibly due to some fighting over their seat priorities, not sure. Anyway, very interesting game!

[Roll, Turn, Repeat]

Took forever for the game to load in for some reason, but once it did, I had a lot of fun and wish it went on even longer! I loved working backwards from the end to find the ideal path and then, upon setting everything up, watching the little guy go! Good escalation of mechanics as well: would've loved to see it go even further, especially if it made my backwards strategy not work so easily! Had a few bits of confusion though: one, I thought the whole dark-grey path initially marked was a bit confusing since it makes you think the light-grey areas are walls, but I guess maybe that's the whole 'gotcha' moment of the game when you realize that's not the case. Another bit was that, when I solved the puzzle for one level, my character got blocked by a arrow block that wasn't in their path, but off to the side: maybe weird collision issues? Anyway, a solid, cute little puzzler!

[Hour of the Wolf]

Solid little castlevania-esque game! Felt really neat all-around: good amount of levels with varied design, good amount of variation in enemies and some neat boss battles. Fun presentation as well with the funny story and cool 'fade-in' for the graphics. There were a few confusing aspects I found: one, I thought that the art assets kinda worked against themselves sometimes as you've got so many themes going, you've got the 3d parallax backgrounds, you've got the basic 2d gameboy-esque sprites, and then you've got these weird particle-effecty rotoscoped smoke effects for stuff like the dash and slash, it just kinda looked a bit odd (though pretty neat). Another thing was the hit feedback: when I initially slashed at an enemy I thought I was getting hit because the screen shook and the enemy didn't flash or react in any way; then when I got hit I was surprised because the screen didn't react in any way: I dunno, just felt the player/enemy feedback was reversed? Finally, I really wish the main character had more animation to it for the slash: would love to see a frame of animation for winding up and another frame for leaning forward to slash. Anyway, still, solid game!

[Blue Bayou]

Holy mackerel, this was a hell of a surprise hit for me! I'm obviously a little bias since I love hard boss rush type games like Cuphead and all that (which I assume this was inspired by due to the many similarities) but the combat in this game was so much fun and had a really unique style with the way you have to angle your weapons and catch them, all while dodging projectiles. Boss patterns were very inventive and showed a lot of charm both in their graphics/presentation and the variety of AI/moves. Clarence was real cool too. Hats off!

[Monster Manor]

Overall a really solid experience with a great presentation in all aspects and a cool variety of mechanics, but a little odd in terms of execution. It's like, I had a good time, but I also felt confused and a little empty at the end? It felt kind of odd that the game didn't really build up to the boss fight: during my journey through the house, each time I turned on a light it didn't seem to do jack-diddily-squat to anything so I wasn't sure if I was making any progress at all. But then, suddenly, you get to a boss room which I didn't even realize was a boss room at first which has you start exorcising things by turning on lights? Why did the game not have you exorcising anything before that, like little ghosts, to build up anticipation for the big ghost? Anyway, despite that, the game reached a satisfying emotional climax with the defeat of the big ghost and then...the game doesn't end? The game keeps going and now there is a whole new mechanic out of nowhere where you lead these demons onto buttons? And then the game kinda....ends? Like I say, in a vacuum, you could say that the game has a large variety of cool puzzles and mechanics. But the way they were paced were so haphazard and odd that it just made me feel so confused and unsatisfied at the end, despite me having so much fun, haha! Definitely a weird one for me, but like I say, still technically good.

Oh yeah, other little nitpicks: usually games let you perch at the top of ladders when you reach the top, but this game didn't allow that. Also the jumping was a little bleh at times, but nothing too bad.

[ISLANDER]

It's a little bit repetitive at times, especially at the start with the amount of stone you have to get and how slow it comes, but nevertheless it is still rather addictive and a pretty impressive/intuitive implementation of the crafting gameplay in pico! Was very impressed with the controls: usually I feel pico games struggle to have solid controls for complex games like this, but I found everything in the game to be very intuitive from the mining to the crafting, with little to no confusion. Felt like the game had a good sense of progression with the goals as well: would love to see the goals appear on the main game screen instead of just the menu, but it's all good. Overall nicely done (kinda sucks about the same system though, very unintuitive and a bit of an odd blemish on the game)!