FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Colored Moth]

Hmm, it's a decent little short story trying to tell a good message. I think its heart is in the right place so I don't want to be too harsh, but the execution...was a bit rough for me. Overall it felt rather cheesy like some after school special, bludgeoning the player over the head with a paper-thin analogy and strawman characters without an ounce of subtlety. There were also a lot of awkward and confusing graphical choices like how the colored individuals are all drawn white: are they colored or not?

That being said, I wouldn't have minded it so much, if it weren't for the ending, which I found childishly and disturbingly dissonant. Despite the last words telling the player to stand strong and proud and live free, it ends with a grim red screen and the player being ostracized for trying to live free, told that even with laws to protect them that they are not safe. How can you tell someone to stand strong when they can get screwed over like this? If anything, this should be a cautionary tale on how you should lay low and not come out to your parents until you are financially independent and thus able to avoid retribution! I suppose that isn't as catchy of a soundbite, but still, more realistic and more in-line with your messaging.

[There's just something about u]

GooseStranger, don't take this the wrong way, but I want to throttle you like Homer does to Bart after playing this game.

Ok, that's a bit harsh. Let's take a step back and I'll try and explain my thoughts.

*Ahem*

Everything starts off great with this game! Really gorgeous and high-quality presentation, unorthodox story delivery through a fake Instant Messenger interface, a platforming minigame that slowly evolves as it turns the letters into obstacles, and a story that slowly devolves into drama, oh boy, drama! With so much promise, I was hooked and highly anticipating where this would go.

However, as things went on, I just got really bored, disappointed and miserable.

First off, the platforming:

Unfortunately, I felt like the platforming was just very tedious, unnecessary, and never really went anywhere. Despite all of the letters having all sorts of different mechanics in the way they move and act, it takes absolutely forever for them to be sloooooowly introduced one-by-one, and even when they are, 99% of the time you can just jump over them, completely ignoring them and negating their purpose. It's just so braindead and begs for more interesting puzzles to be made from them. For example, you could make it so that there is a big gap between the word 'wanted' and the next word, and what you need to do is intentionally make the d disappear so you can free the e and ride it across. Maybe there could be a level where the exit is far upwards and you need to jump up lines by using l's, and maybe as a bonus, by reading it in this new upwards order the text is parsed in an interesting new perspective that changes the meaning. So much wasted potential!

In addition to this, I rarely felt like the displacement of text was ever used in some sort of poetic way to enhance the emotional reading of the text. Sometimes it does, but a lot of other times the placement doesn't, so it just ends up feeling random and purposeless. Again, there are a lot of interesting tricks you could be doing here but nothing happens. Maybe the player needs to do something to a sentence in order to reach the exit like getting rid of letters that ends up changing the sentence to something bad and that makes them conflicted. I dunno, it's not my job to think this up, I already gave you some freebies!

Part of me really wishes I could just read the words in a text file...but maybe you could argue that the platforming serves some sort of subtle pacing purpose, like by dragging things out but not being too difficult it somehow makes you pay more attention to the words or really feel the turmoil which you could skip over if you were just reading a text file...but I dunno. I almost feel like it was put in to be the equivalent of jangling keys, something to try and keep people interested in the text, and I guess that works, but feels like such a waste.

But even if the platforming is bad, there's always the story to pick up the slack!

Indeed, I did find myself continuing in spite of it all because I wanted to see if the story would finally lead to something. It does it slowly (too slowly) but the game does intensify the relationship drama in a rather authentic youthful way, and because of how high-quality the game was presented initially, I had faith that it would lead up to something big, like a twist where it flips the script and suddenly the character you were rooting for is now the jerk or whatever.

And then I found myself groaning. Inadvertently. Not even realizing I was at first, but unable to help myself even after noticing. And then came the screams. End. End! END! END ALREADY! FOR GODS SAKE, FREE ME FROM THIS TORMENT!

Now to be fair, about 25% of those screams are what you would expect, being investment in the story: in that I want them to just goddamn put their foot down, end the toxic relationship already and move on. But the rest of those screams are from desperately hoping and praying for the game to end before I shoot myself from boredom due to the absolute mountain of text and aforementioned tedious unengaging platforming, from the sunk-cost of being in so deep and knowing in my heart that there is no save function so I can't stop now because what if it finally gets good and heaven forbid, I miss out and seem like such a fool?

In the end, through sheer force of will, I finally wrestled myself away from the game, leaving it uncompleted. Some would argue that I lost by giving up before the end, but I'd argue that not giving up would be the path of least resistance and I would be losing by doing so.

Now I will admit, part of me is conflicted. Part of me wants to be all like, oh, you pulled off the master plan, my emotional turmoil was exactly what you intended as it mirrors the turmoil of the decaying relationship! But another part of me is like yeah no, don't try to play this off, I was super disappointed and couldn't bring myself to finish the game not because it was good but because all this was just a bunch of style-over-substance will-they-won't-they blue-balling rage-baiting crap like a Rumiko Takahashi manga (does anyone get that reference?) I guess it's a bit of both. Such is art! Anyway, you win just by making something that made me write this essay: that's an emotional reaction no matter how you slice it, in a 'any news is good news' way. And I win by making you read this?

GooseStranger responds:

Woah, what a response!

Again, I am very thankful for you're huge amount of feedback. You're are absolutely right, I missed some really good puzzle opportunities. That "wanted" puzzle idea is genius!

Even if you didn't finish the game, or even liked the parts you played, I appreciate you playing and leaving a review! Thanks FutureCopLGF!

[Stones of Medusa]

Huh, this is a pretty interesting arcade puzzler you got here!

I haven't quite seen a set of mechanics like it before, and I really enjoyed learning how to play the game and marveled at the depth of strategic elements to it: not only dealing with enemies on your current board by smashing them into each other with basic moves or abilities, but also using your abilities to offset your position to gain an advantage, or moving frozen statues into place to make them land on enemies in the next board, and so much more!

I don't know if I would play it for as long as some others (I have no idea how people have the patience to get up to 3-digit scores) but all things considered I did find myself surprisingly addicted and losing track of time playing, so well done!

If I were to have any complaints, it'd be nice if there were some text descriptions for the abilities you pick up as it wasn't always obvious what they do by pictures alone. Also I wish there was some sort of way the game would let you know for sure you're in an unwinnable situation. I know it's usually obvious, but it'd be nice to know for sure whether I'm missing some sort of trick that I could do to get out of a jam, and that would only be obvious if I think I'm stuck but the game doesn't declare it for me. Maybe it's too difficult to compute when you factor in abilities and such.

[Driven Wild]

A great recreation of the classic arcade driving experience in the vein of games like Outrun and Crusin' USA! It's not exactly blowing me away with anything new, but it feels very smooth and fun nonetheless, so well done in that regard!

If I had any complaints, it's that it felt a bit too easy: the time limit was very generous, turns never get sharp enough to force you to brake, and there are no punishing crashes for making big mistakes. I'm not saying you need to be as hard as Outrun (that game was brutal!) but I easily beat this on my first try and would've appreciated more of a challenge for that authentic arcade experience. Other than that, I would've loved more interesting tracks like the slippery snow roads and the rock-filled roads as the vast majority were all the same and rather repetitive, only differing in visuals.

[Deep in the Lab - Chapter 1]

Hmm, I like that it's trying to go for a 2D Resident Evil experience: there are some fun references to catch, and it shows decent promise with some cool aspects like the cinematic angles when you examine stuff. However, the game just felt very clunky and amateurish overall and I couldn't get into it, unfortunately.

The biggest issue I had with it was treatment of enemies. Usually survival horror games have a lot of strategy with enemies that creates interesting decisions based on your limited resources. For example: do you risk running past them to save ammo at the cost of potentially taking some health damage? If you decide to shoot them, do you go for a tricky headshot to put them down permanently or do you just stun them by shooting their legs and run past? And so on. Unfortunately in this game, the enemies are just sponges that have no locational damage despite there being an aiming system, and who cares about shooting them when you can just spam rolls to get past them!

Moving past that, the game just had a lot of rough edges to it. For example:

*The controls are mislabeled: it says that Inventory is M and Map is P, but that's backwards. It also labels the inventory as 'Game Menu' on the other control display.

*Speaking of the map, it says you can exit it by pressing Esc, but you can't: you have to press M again.

*There are no music or sound sliders in the menu, only on/off switches.

*Camera gives me nausea from how much it whips around when you turn.

*When you pick up the health item, sometimes it is labeled as 'small medkit' and other times it is labeled 'healing spray' despite them both technically being the same object.

*The map doesn't label locked doors or make any other notes for you to help.

*The blood splashes when shooting enemies show up inbetween the player and the enemy instead of at the point where the bullet makes contact with the enemy.

*Without any sort of highlighting of objects you can interact with when you get close, it can be really unclear whether you can: for example, I tried to interact with the elevator by standing in front of its doors and it didn't work, and this made me think I couldn't use the elevator at all, despite the fact that you can if you interact with the buttons next to it.

[Heroes of the Seven Islands]

Pretty neat RPG you got here! While it certainly reminds me a lot of party-based RPGs like Wizardry and Might & Magic, its goofy vibes and point-n-click interactions remind me of games like Kingdom of Loathing or Shadowgate. I enjoyed my time with this: building my party from a diverse roster of classes, adventuring the island and clicking all the secrets, using the best of my parties skills to beat monsters, seeing all the interactions locked behind skill checks that I wanted to level or do on a separate game, and so on and so forth. It's all fun stuff and feels very well put together overall!

A few notes and feedback on my experience so far:

*I found it a bit strange that the game is so generous with giving back MP fully after a fight. On one hand, I loved this because it meant I could use all of my parties abilities in a fight instead of always holding back and just picking the boring attack option over and over: what a breath of fresh air! On the other hand, I felt like it reduced a lot of the long-term strategic layer to the adventure and allowed me both to cheese fights and healing as well as avoid using camp.

*Small control nitpick: when you select fire arrow from the spell book, it then lets you click on an enemy to finalize the action, but if you select toxic cloud from the spell book, it uses it immediately. I understand the reason behind this, but I do kinda wish toxic cloud has you click an enemy for extra confirmation to use it: keeps things consistent and lets me preview the effects more clearly.

*Some explanations are a bit confusing to parse. For example, willpower says that it powers up 'special abilities', but I don't know what those are: is it referring to class abilities like Cacophony and Concentration? Weapons were a bit strange to in that I wasn't sure if there were all equal when you don't consider any of their extras, like is a pirate cutlass with +1 speed just as powerful damage-wise as a soldier sword?

*I kinda wish the combat log was available at all times like it is in RPGs like Fallout, Pillars of Eternity, and so on, instead of being hidden away in a separate window. I know there is a small log at the top of the screen, but that can vanish very quickly. In a similar vein, I wish I would see the enemy statistics in the lower right when I hover over targets instead of seeing my character's statistics.

*I like that there is a scoring system that gives you bonuses for doing well in combat, but I don't feel like it gives significant feedback and satisfaction when you get a high score. It'd be nice if, say, you can see the bar slowly fill up and with every tier it passes, you see your gold and exp get boosted, for example, as that helps illustrate the system more clearly.

rap2h responds:

Thank you so much for your feedback and for playing!

Some quick answers (each bullet point represent one of your bullet point in the same order):
* Yes, MP is fully replenished when you rest. In the first versions of the game, it was not the case: players complained that they always had to rest between combat, so I changed it (to only heal mana to not totally remove the need of rest which is something I like in RPG, even if it's a kind of chore sometimes). Maybe I can make it an option, not sure if it's a good tradeoff.
* Not sure how I can fix it. I keep it as a suggestion in my backlog.
* Willpower description is an error, I definitely have to fix it, thank you! The weapon system is also not clear. The idea was: if you don't have the skill, it does 50% dmg of your strength, then 100% on Novice, 115% on Expert and 150% on master (or something like that). Then, there can be additional bonuses such as +1 speed and so on. I realize it's not clear, so I have to do something: either change the system (cost me more) or explain better (cost me less)
* Log all the time was also asked by other players, so I have to consider it! Currently, I have not found a way to add it in the UI without breaking the... uh... harmony (I have not found a less pretentious word, English is not my mother tongue) of the UI.
* This is a super idea and should not be that hard to implement. One of my friend told me: you have to add feedback everywhere, like in modern games, and this is definitely something I should do to both increase fun and comprehension for players.

I copied your comments in my backlog, it may be implemented.
Thank you for your feedback, it helps me improve the game!

[Falling Thingies]

I feel silly for saying this, considering it's such a simple game, but...I don't get it!

I understand that I need to collect thingies to level up, but I don't understand why I would want to do that: there's no sense of a goal, purpose or challenge that makes me want to do so, like getting a high score within a time limit. If this was Vampire Survivors, for example, I would need to try and collect experience efficiently to level up fast enough to deal with the increasing threats within the time limit. But this has no time limit and no threats, and the level ups are unsatisfying and contradictory, so why bother?

I mean, sure, the thangies technically pose a threat that should make harvesting challenging, but really they don't because you can easily avoid them by only sticking your neck out to harvest thingies when they are gone and you aren't penalized for laming it out like this: shouldn't there be some sort of time limit either to the game or your combo to make you want to take the risk to gather thingies when thangies are falling to maximize your score?

It's very strange: my instincts tell me that I want to like collecting the thingies and hearing those satisfying sounds. But beyond that primitive instinct, this is a progression game but without purpose to its progression, making it all feel pointless. I suppose it's a classic example of putting the cart before the horse. I dunno if I'm missing something: is there some sort of secret boss that pops up if I play this long enough? Unfortunately I don't think I have the patience to stick with it.

[Örnöga: Idle]

Hmm, I'm a bit mixed on this one! I really want to like it, but it has some rather large issues that get in the way of my enjoyment.

First, the good stuff. While I'm not usually a fan of idler games, I can certainly see the appeal of 'number go up', and this game is rather satisfying to watch your guy chew through hordes and slowly evolve while managing their various stats, inventory, spells and so on. The game looked nice, the menus were intuitive to manage, and it was interesting to see all of the options that let you choose how automated you want the experience to be. It's quite nice and makes a solid impression, especially with its great title screen.

Unfortunately, I just found myself easily getting bored from how repetitive it is in so many ways. The music is a 5 second loop that drones on and on, that when coupled with the constant sound effects that lack any sort of pitch-shifting to avoid monotony, made me want to shoot myself. Leveling up my character felt pointless because nothing seemed to be a threat at all in the first place, not even the bosses, so why bother? Beating stages wasn't satisfying as the music or background doesn't change in a way that makes you feel any sense of progression. And so on.

Apart from that, I found the CRT filters to be incredibly bad and hurt my eyes (thank god you can turn them off, but I think you need to make the executive decision and not have them in the first place), and I wish there was some sort of notification system that could let you know when you've picked up a new item, like if you made the menu buttons like discord buttons where if you got 3 new items to review in your inventory you put a little 3 next to the button.

In spite of my complaints, I still think this is definitely a very promising game! Would be interested to see how the full game shapes up.

[Swordius]

Hot damn, this kicks ass! I love me a good boss rush and this is definitely hitting all the right spots with its excellent boss variety, simple yet expressive move set, and incredibly juicy and satisfying special effects that make even dying feel cool. As said, the gameplay is technically rather simple, but I thought it was really cool that there's a lot of neat tricks you can pull off as you experiment, such as utilizing the cyclone move right after an attack to stay in the inner circle layer for more damage or to dodge (this helps a lot with clearing the sword turrets next to Swordian of Earth while dodging his outer circle wave, for example).

If I were to have any complaints, they'd be small nitpicks like so:

*I wish I could hold down the button to keep slashing with the sword instead of having to click multiple times, but I guess you have a charge move so it can't be helped. Speaking of that, I wish I could hold to charge without being forced to have the initial click trigger an attack.

*I'm no stranger to very limited dash invulnerability, but I had so many times playing this where I swear I did a well-timed dodge only for me to eat an attack. Could just be me being bad, but something felt off.

*It's a silly complaint, but I do feel like once you get good, the bosses can get melted too easily, especially due to how generous the game is with limit break. Near the end of my session with the game it felt like I could just chain limit break after limit break and barely be vulnerable at all. I know that's because I've gotten better, but still, it just felt like a bit much.

In the end, my biggest complaint would be that I wish there was more to the game, and that's even counting the light/dark bonuses. You got me drooling for more, so I'm really looking forward to the sequel!

Yword responds:

Wow, thank you so much, FutureCopLGF! It's always great to read your detailed reviews, they're very helpful! I'll definitely keep your feedback in mind, and thanks a lot for playing too! :D

[Jane's Pumpkin Patch!]

Hmm, this was a rough one for me! The art is cute and all, but unfortunately the gameplay is non-existent, largely due to the fact that the crows don't pose a threat and without that, the points don't matter and there's no satisfaction from swatting the crows.

Ideally, I think this could be a cute arcade game in a similar fashion to classics like Missile Command or Defender, where you're running around trying to protect your pumpkins from being carried away by crows through swatting them. Little by little, the amount of crows to deal with could increase, causing the gameplay to become more hectic and exciting as you need to optimize. Maybe there could be power-ups, special events, new crow types and so on that would shake things up and add more strategic layers. A high-score table could inspire competition between friends. And while I'm dreaming up things, maybe it could give everyone twenty bucks gratis.

Sadly, the game just feels like a very amateur or unfinished project in its current state, which is a shame because I want to like it! Better luck next time, and I hope the suggestions above give some food for thought.

As a side note, the game doesn't even play music if you click to start the game instead of pressing space. I had no idea why ConnorGrail was credited for music as the game was completely silent for me until I realized this!

BoiledMilkz responds:

thanks for the advice! i'll look into it!