FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sense of Unity]

Pretty neat game! I enjoy the gradual increase in difficulty and the way the levels teach the mechanics in a very subtle and intuitive way, such as forcing you to walk past some example plankable areas with a carpenter so the player sees how they work, and how levels have good 'gotchas' areas where you'd get stuck if you bring everyone there too soon in the wrong order. Definitely pretty good, though there are some annoyances. The art is a bit too dark, gray and drab (I know, it's intentional, plague-times and all that, but still, it shouldn't hurt the gameplay) and it makes it difficult to tell puzzle elements apart in the environment. Also, it is a bit annoying that the game doesn't seem to have a restart button, nor a save feature: I got stuck and had to reload the page, only to lose all my progress, which was a bummer since I was having fun!

MonoFlauta responds:

Thank you a lot for playing it and featuring it on a video.
The restart button is pressing escape if someone find themselves stuck. Sorry about that!
About the game, we are planning to make a new version keeping the mechanics. As this one was made for a game jam, there are a tons of things to be poolished.
From what you meantioned, we are planning to make things more clear for the player. The levels will be more lighter and the models will have bigger differences. Hopefully, these changes will help.
Thank you once again for your review and for playing it!

[Quarantino]

Very nice example of edutainment! Learning can be done as you've deftly shown with the game, which is not only educational but very fun to play. The game doesn't just tell you how to feel, it illustrates the points perfectly through game play elements. The unfair struggle of dealing with incubation periods, the difficulty of lockdown and reacting fast over an uncaring populace, the tenseness of waiting it out: the feelings you feel during the game reflect the feelings people have dealing with this. Had a lot of fun with this and could see it having even more levels, but perhaps it is best as it is: short and sweet.

[Swingin' 3]

An alright game, but too frustrating for me to get anywhere. While the game has a goofy, fun premise and comical ragdolls and such, the controls remain very confusing and frustrating to get used to, particularily when it comes to the pull strength, though grappling is also odd as well. I did have a bit more fun with this over Swingin' 2 because of the vertical layout, which seemed to be a bit more intuitive and easier to grapple with. I really want to like this game as I like grapplers and other challenging games like Getting Over It, but I just don't gel with the controls.

[Mother Hen]

Cool game that makes you want to ROOST the hell outta that nest! This game felt very charming with it's goofy premise, bouncy animations, funny visuals like turning into a roast when you get flamed, and so on. A real delight to play. My only complaint is that there wasn't more to this! I would've loved to see more levels and mechanics, like, maybe a level with a bunch of walls so you ping-pong an egg to the end like a game of mini-golf, or maybe you battle other hens with your power-squawk to get them away from your egg as you bring it back. As it is, it was nice, however.

[stasis: an interactive haiku of isolation]

I don't really know about this one: I got kinda bored of it all. I know that's maybe the 'point' or something but it didn't really have any neat interactivity or compelling hook or...something. Like, for example, it talks about becoming friends with the food dispenser: that would be good if the food dispenser actually talked and we could actually conceivably have that reaction on our own in gameplay instead of just being told how to feel with nothing to back it up. I played until I started getting blank journal entries. There was a severe lack of haikus.

[Suenio Prototype]

It's an interesting game, and certainly has a nice presentation along with a cool premise that reminds me of other escort games like Gyromite. However, as it is, the game is very confusing and frustrating to play. My initial thought of bewitching things is that they would change right when I bewitch them: however, for some reason, you need to rewind for the bewitching to go through. Rewinding is something that is usually reserved for undoing a mistake or restarting a level in other games, and this game even says you are punished for rewinding too much, so learning that I was supposed to rewind after bewitching was very, very confusing. Not only that, but the fact that I need to slowly scroll the wand over, instead of just moving my mouse to move the wand, made it annoying when you miss something because the cursor moves too slow. I think this game has a lot of promise and seems to be well put-together, and I did have fun once I got the hang of it, but right now it is just way too confusing and might need a rework or a better tutorial process to teach.

[MELT]

Really cool game! Had a lot of fun with this and thought the mechanics were really fun to play with. I enjoyed the puzzle element of optimizing your movement and making the most of everything, such as moving while the generated flame is chasing you to not waste any. The start was a bit confusing: the game didn't teach the controls at all so I wasn't sure how the heck to proceed when my guy just flopped down dead. I figured it out eventually and it was a neat event, but having the key pop-up when you've been dead for a bit might be nice, though I can understand if you don't want to beat the player over the head with the mechanics. My only real complaint is that I want even more: this one felt way too short, probably because of how fun it is!

[Vigtafl]

It's an interesting game, and the presentation is nice, but it's kinda lacking. There are no instructions built in the game, so I was really lost. To further compound that, the game doesn't do a good job at teaching the rules in any other way. For example, you might've been able to make it so that when a unit does kill another unit by flanking it on both sides, a little animation plays out that shows the flankers ram the unit on both sides to squish it: that would be a way for the player to see how the game works, but instead the game just insta-poofs the unit away on death, leaving me not knowing how the heck just happened. While the game looks nice, the game doesn't do enough with neat animations and interactivity to justify its existence over just playing the board game, I think. I might be a bit unfair in my judgment because these type of games just aren't my bag, so feel free to disregard.

[My First Game]

Very cool game! I like the idea of jumbling together a bunch of simple mini-games based off of common 'first game' themes you see in tutorial videos on youtube and such and creating a rapid-fire Warioware-esque reaction game where you cycle through all of them. I had a lot of fun playing them, with some of them being better than others. I felt like the tutorial section wasn't even needed: the thought is nice, but it took way too long, and all of the games did an already good job at leaving a second or two for the player to react and realize what game you were playing and the controls to it (except for flappy disk, that can kill you instantly, screw that game haha). I'm unsure if I'm missing some sort of ending or something: I played the games and got a high score but I was kinda waiting for some sort of twist ending or event to happen. I tried hitting publish but nothing: maybe I need a higher score?

HealliesGames responds:

Actually the main game is a score attack, but yes there's a little bonus secret!
The publish button is just for Newgrounds, to let players share their high-score.

For the secret you need to enter the BIOS of the virtual machine, as the readme suggests.
Thanks for the feedback!

[Convergence]

Pretty nice game! Everything seemed to be pretty solidly put together: neat dialogue boxes, good movement, shooting and animations, and nice level design that introduces the mechanics bit-by-bit in a natural way. Kinda wish the dialogue boxes could be controlled manually so you can read at your own pace, but the pace you set at it wasn't too bad for me, so no biggie. Only real problem I had was that I feel like it...lacked something. There was a lot of built-up intrigue and mystery at the start, it escalated bit-by-bit, and then we suddenly had this huge battle at the end. It felt strange because, while the end battle was cool, it kinda came out of nowhere and didn't answer any questions and just threw together some sort of jumbled-up moral. Take it as a compliment, I suppose, that I felt like it was so well put-together and intriguing that I wanted more out of it in the end in terms of plot and story and scale!

VascoF responds:

Many have said that the ending seemed forced, and with your description I think I finally understand why. Thank you for the great review!