FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Le Chat Foncé: Petite Adventure 3]

Cute little game! Fun wandering around collecting all of the various things and seeing the different zones, and the graphics and aesthetic are quite cute. It didn't take too long for me to get kinda lost and a bit frustrated with what to do, though, haha. I kinda wish there were a bit more instructions on how to proceed: it'd be nice if when you went next to a person, they'd tell you what they need, if anything. I think I'm supposed to give them a color key corresponding to their outline? I'm just guessing though as I didn't figure it out. I liked the cool grass rustling effect: I wish there were more cool effects like that in the other zones to liven things up as they can be a bit dull at times with repeated tiles with a lack of distinct landmarks to help you navigate and memorize the layout. There's a bit of an oddity with ladder control: if you jump at a ladder by holding up, you need to press up again mid-jump to actually latch on, when I feel it should just latch you on if you're holding on to the key. Not too shabby of a game: mainly I think it just needs a bit more instruction, and a bit more graphics polish and variation, not just to make it look prettier, but to help players navigate by introducing more iconic places they can use as landmarks.

[Duck Waddle]

Cool puzzler! Very well put-together with nice graphics and a cute aesthetic, and the levels are designed very well to naturally introduce critical puzzle mechanics bit-by-bit. I like it, but I feel it is lacking a bit of pizazz, polish or excitement to make it really great. The music is a bit too minimalist and one-note, and there aren't many sounds, which when coupled with the lack of any special effects (like maybe a celebration for beating a level or getting par) as well as lack of level graphics variations as you progress makes it a bit dull in the long run. Not too shabby though!

[Graveyard Dates]

Very interesting, but also very frustrating! Feels like it is so close to being something great if it just had some more time in the oven. The whole story of two people working against each other but loving the other while doing so through text messages made for a cool story that I wanted to get through, and I liked the interesting multiple choices and endings. The gameplay, though, was overly hard with spongy, annoying enemies that knock you all over and deaths making you restart the whole level, killing the pace and charm as it just makes you listen to the dialogue over and over, cheapening it. The separate grades for combat and dating are interesting, but I would rather the combat and the dating be tied together better: they kinda as are sometimes knockback can push you too far forward, missing a text, but it's a bit weak. For example, instead of making a death make you restart the level, maybe a death revives you close to where you are, but the time it takes to revive means you waited too long to respond, making it awkward, or maybe it makes you send an involuntary angry message saying you're busy (trying not to get killed again). Basically, I think either the combat should either be easy so the focus is on the story (which kinda works because I think we assume these two are experts in their fields), or the combat should be kept hard but it has an impact on the dating instead of just forcing you to reset and kill the pacing.

EDIT: Being a bit more spammy helped with my subsequent runs, so even though I had difficulty with my first run, maybe others didn't have as much trouble if they were spammy to begin with. Other endings were interesting: cool use of 'not answering' in some of the last parts being a good potential answer. Wish the endings had a bit more fanfare to them with an epilogue or something, especially for the best ending, though seeing at least a little ending screen for each would be great!

adriendittrick responds:

Thanks a lot for the thoughtful review :)

[Junior Juggle]

Not too shabby! A decent game which definitely has a lot of nice polish to its presentation: love the way the title screen seamlessly transitions into the game and how intuitively the controls are introduced. Gameplay is solid too: I like the strategy involved in the assortment of light, medium, and heavy items you need to juggle. Only downsides I would say is that a lot of people probably can't stand baby sounds/death, and the game has limited lasting appeal as the difficulty peaks quite fast without options/skill to get farther/better, and there aren't any additional modes like protecting multiple babies or whatever. Still, it's short and sweet! Well, as sweet as watching a baby die can be...

Miltage responds:

Solid feedback, thanks a lot!

[BBYS]

Very surprising! A bit weird to manage at times what with rocks taking so long to break (really wish more debris would come off as you're breaking them to let you know you're making progress), the bbys being a bit glitchy to move around and items being so random, but it made for some interesting escort-style gameplay! The star of the show is definitely the story: really caught me off-guard as usually a game like this would just be a simple score attack, but the narrative really added a crazy element to it that made me play through it all just to see the insanity. Well done!

[Phantom Behind]

Was a bit glitchy and confusing for me, but it seems to be a decent core to work from for making a stealth game as most of the mechanics worked fairly well. Some of the mechanics were a bit confusing:

*Tutorial was pretty lacking: not apparent at all that walking into someone would kill them. Buttons were all over the place as well: why is it two different buttons to enter and leave a grate instead of the same button?

*Some doors seemed like they could only be opened by guards, so you need to follow them in. Cool, but this wasn't immediately apparent, and you can get yourself stuck in an unwinnable situation if you kill all the guards without realizing it. It'd be helpful if guards kept respawning so you don't get stuck, or if the game tells you you're stuck and resets.

*If you walk into a view cone it freezes you as it slowly fills up with red, but the view cone is already so short I don't know why the red part even exists (though I suppose it provides a bit of forgiveness, which is nice, but the view cones are already incredibly tiny).

*The sound circles worked very oddly for me. They weren't stopped by walls (this is ok, but maybe this could be changed), and they deployed way after the guard died or the whistle blew instead of immediately, creating a weird disconnect. Also, sometimes the circle could grow slowly, and other times it would just pop-up: weird graphical glitch.

*Sound is kinda lacking at the moment: gets annoying to constantly hear the negative errnt sound of guards seeing blood or odor or whatever.

*Unlocking abilities with exp I feel is something that shouldn't be in as it makes the design very weird, but if you do keep it in, it'd be helpful to see how much something costs before spending exp.

Looking forward to seeing where it goes from here!

bluemath responds:

Thanks @FuturecopLGF . Your detailed feedback is very helpful. Some of the issues you mentioned are on my bugfix list already. Stay tuned for future improvements.

[Exotic Tiger Adventure]

Game seems to have a lot of charm, but it was a bit clunky, buggy and ultimately frustrating for me to play through unfortunately. A lot of damage just seemed unavoidable due to the level design and enemy placement, enemies spazzed out constantly with erratic movements, had bullets get stopped in mid-air for unexplained reasons, had bullets get stopped by small boxes which I feel it should shoot over, the boss had a weird enrage state I couldn't beat, the HUD was so tiny making it difficult to track things like health, it was confusing that I feel I had to save tigers but they could hurt me, and so on. I want to like it since the presentation and such seems fairly solid, and it has a lot of cool elements like the interesting multi-phase boss fight at the end, but I had a lot of trouble.

[Unnamed Dodger Test]

This was a surprising one! It really doesn't give a good impression at the start: the title screen is bland with an unorganized info-dump for instructions (consider a bulleted list at least), the art is very simple, and the UI is simplistic and filled with weird decimal numbers. But, the music is bumping, and I gotta say that the game does have an awesome sense of progression as it adds all sorts of crazy obstacles to contend with! Felt like an interesting Undertale boss or something like that with the way it adds cool mechanics bit-by-bit that were all introduced and telegraphed effectively. As long as the art is improved (not just to make it pretty and eye-catching but to make certain mechanics more intuitive) and certain elements like player damage feedback are implemented (you already have enemy damage feedback, dunno why it wasn't mirrored for the player), this game and future games could become really great!

[Gravity Snake]

I think you really succeeded in what you were going for, which is a tricky puzzler that is still fun for all because it is presented in such a charming manner with its interesting movement mechanics. Even when I was getting stumped at some of the harder puzzles, I was still having a good time because it just felt so neat to move around as the snake. I felt like the puzzles were well put-together: had some great ones as early as level 3 which taught a lot of good concepts in a very clever way!

[Forgotten Hill Pico]

Pretty cool point n click adventure! Had a lot of neat puzzles in it, and I liked the art and presentation. There were a few annoying aspects to it: there were some inconsistent design at times where a door that needed a key was drawn with no keyhole for some reason. Also I have no idea how to solve the bookshelf: I hope there is some good logic to that one. Would've also loved if objects would be highlighted if they were interactable: without that, the game can be a bit of an annoying pixel-hunt at times.