FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gem Frenzy]

Hmm, this is a pretty decent and fun little job simulator! The presentation is a bit lackluster and inelegant, but I found myself getting quite addicted to the loop of making sales and upgrading the business, and I liked the complexity of having to find time to stop tending the front and go mine up some resources. Not too shabby!

While it was ok, I did think the game was rather rough:

*As said, initial impression from the rather lackluster graphics was pretty bad, but it goes deeper than that: the initial load time was so damn long too, and in my opinion, I wouldn't blame a lot of people for not even getting the game a shot because of that.

*The game has a distinct lack of pizazz, particularly in that pulling off actions like completing an order for a customer doesn't feel satisfying, and when that's the main driving force of the game, well...that's bad.

*Starting out the first day without any initial resources caught me off guard and led to me failing the first few customers as I scrambled to get my bearings. I know there was a tutorial and everything but still, throw me a bone here and slow down the pace when just you've just started!

*While I got used to it eventually and even enjoyed it, the way the movement mechanics for mining works is very odd. I don't know why you can't just use a more intuitive setup of allowing the user to move directly how they want to.

*I had an ok time but I started to get bored pretty easily as the game seems to lack depth (pardon the pun). All it was doing was adding more and more gems, but the core process of the game remained the same: would've enjoyed more complexities being added, like maybe different forges. It didn't help either that going up and down the stairs felt more like an annoyance than a challenge.

*I found it absolutely bizarre that you can get orders and collect ores that are beyond your storage capabilities. I started to get some orders that wanted the bright green ore, and I felt so bad that despite collecting them, I couldn't actually construct the gem because I didn't have the chest for sorting that ore yet. All I could do was let the clock run down and watch the customer leave in a huff!

pabten responds:

Hi! thank you for your feedback, we fixed the loading screen

[Excuse Me.. Are You Summoning Crokel?]

Wow, quite the interesting fast-paced puzzler you got here! It's a simple enough game to understand, but damn if I didn't get addicted to the intense challenge of solving these progressively-harder glyphs quick enough to beat the clock. It's definitely an arduous experience due to the ticking clock and the ability to lose progress: feels like you're constantly sprinting while holding your breath and while I enjoyed the pressure, I wouldn't blame people if they found it too be a bit much.

In fact, that leads me to my biggest complaint with the game: the pause button just plain doesn't work! It says it pauses the game, but technically the game still keeps the timer going and you can still interact with the glyphs even though they are all invisible. Even worse, there's no way to unpause once you do pause, so you're screwed if you just want a quick breather! Other than that, there were also some minor issues like how the glyphs can sometimes be so on the edge that they are hidden underneath the timer circle.

[Humblest Wizard]

Hmm, it certainly seems like it could be a nice dungeon crawler, but at the moment it feels very halfbaked and unfinished. I suppose it's understandable given the note that it was rushed for Pixel Day deadlines, but I still want to be honest that I didn't have a good experience with this.

The worst part for me was the combat, which considering it was practically the whole focus of the game, was a bad first impression. There's a lot of things wrong that I could list off forever, such as how when you attack the special effects are oddly offset instead of being on top of the enemy, but the primary point for me was the lack of feedback, both in terms of how unsatisfying it was to execute moves due to a lack of impact and how confusing it was to determine what is happening due to a lack of any signals like damage numbers or an event log or just a clean and intuitive interface.

I like the concept of playing as a mouse, I like the attempts at introducing some unique concepts like the meat system, and I like that the combat starts to evolve past brainless mashing with the introduction of sword moves and other enemy types, but yeah, the execution leaves much to be desired for me and I just couldn't stand playing enough to get far.

[Bird Tapper vs the Krampus Fellowship Clan]

Certainly nice to see an expansion pack for this game as I do enjoy it a lot...but sometimes, I enjoy it more in theory than I do in execution, and unfortunately many of the problems I had with the initial release are still present here.

I definitely still sing the same praises I did before: love running a track just to beat it the first time and then go back and puzzle out ways to build up a combo for that gold, and I love subtle touches like how animated the menu is when it calculates your score and unlocks new stages, as well as the way the sounds get higher-pitched as you're building up a combo. It's definitely a neato game, and the new levels add some great variety and innovations!

But yeah, I still have the same problem where every time I'm getting into a flow state, something gets in the way and brings me out. Part of it is my fault where I just can't accept the odd way that the character moves: those awkward states where, for example, you slide down off a wall and you're just standing there like a goof and need to punch to start moving forward. But another part is that the game just feels so buggy and inconsistent at times, especially when it comes to edge cases: I've had plenty of times where I lose a flap charge for no reason that I can see, I try to do an uppercut while on a wall and sometimes he just punches in place and falls down, I do a punch that gets me killed because I'm too close despite the fact that I can see a frame of my punch hitting them first, and so on.

Definitely a lot of potential and I want to love it, but it just feels like it is lacking that smooth polish and intuitiveness that challenging games like this need to have to make it feel fair.

[2-Bit Explorer]

Yowza, I loved 1-Bit Explorer a lot and this seems to be much of the same, but with some interesting improvements and quality-of-life, such as the ease of inventory management, active item usage, and new camera that allows for big spanning environments instead of just room-by-room. I'm definitely down for it, and I immediately got addicted to exploring and solving the various puzzles, some of which are the obvious ones that require items, but others more subtle and knowledge/observation-based such as noticing that eyes point towards illusion walls: clever stuff! It's definitely pretty intimidating what with the big map and the tons of spots I'm going to have difficulty remembering to go back to once I get something, necessitating loads of backtracking, but I'm all for it!

Overall I'm very pleased and looking forward to playing more, but if I had to have any feedback so far, it'd be some minor things like:

*While using the items such as the sword more directly is nice, it's a rather slow and stiff animation to do so: makes me much less inclined to cut all those bushes as it can be so tedious, and because it shares a button with interaction, it can also be very awkward when you're trying to do so but end up pulling out the sword instead. I'd hate to see someone be so annoyed with how slow it is that they don't experiment enough to realize you can chop ivy to reveal doors, for example!

*Movement can be a bit too fast at times: sometimes I like it because it means it's much less tedious to explore the world and backtrack everywhere, but other times I hate it because I go a bit too quickly when I'm trying to delicately weave through pitfalls and other such traps.

*As said, the game can be pretty dang overwhelming at times: so much to see and do makes it so easy to get lost and lose track of whatever you were doing. There's also plenty of times where I'm not quite sure whether I don't have what I need or I do but I'm just not doing it right (so many unsure dead-ends) or times where I don't know the effect of what I've done, like turning in the music box to the sister. Not sure what's needed here: maybe some sort of 'last item received', or a journal or map or whatever? Also might just be what it is and you gotta deal with it, haha!

Great stuff you got here!

[Inn & Out]

Oh man, I was really psyched to play this game as it gives a great first impression from recreating classic retro arcade vibes so accurately...but I unfortunately ended up feeling really let down!

There certainly is a lot of craftmanship on display here and I do think that, in a vacuum, it's a pretty neat arcade game with a lot of pizazz to it. But I couldn't help but be flabbergasted when, upon completing the first level, the second level was exactly the same as the first! It doesn't even stop there, as the third and fourth are the same as well too!

I can understand having the same general level layout recycled a few times, but you need to shake things up someway to give a sense of progression and spicy variety! You know, change the location of the doors and powerups and enemy spawns, increase enemy density, decrease amount of powerups, and for gods sake, change the AI! I was going crazy with the way the game kept giving me deja vu: every level it was watching the mouse and porcupine come down the elevator and go to the right, then the roach comes down and goes to the left, and then the bee, over and over and over, it's the same damn pattern every time! What's the point in playing!

Yes, eventually it does shake things up by introducing a bonus level and finally changing the level layout with something new afterwards, but it takes way too long to do so, and on any other day, I would've quit before getting to that point, safe in my assumption that the game just keeps looping the first level forever!

It didn't help either that the difficulty of the game felt very strange as well: powerups seemed to be in too generous of a supply and made it too easy to clear the board of all threats. The only difficulty of the game was the fact that it doesn't give you a good signal to let you know when your powerup is about to run out, such as through blinking.

I also wasn't a fan of the controls in some instances. For example, I disliked how delicate you need to be when going into elevators, having to come to a full stop and then hitting up after waiting a moment: feels very unresponsive and awkward. Why can't I just hit up when I'm running past an elevator to get into it smoothly, similar to how I can close doors by hitting the button when running past them? There's also a weird bug where you can get stuck on stairs, and the way your forward momentum is immediately killed when you jump and touch a wall is super annoying, especially in the bonus stage.

So yeah, unfortunately, this feels like a real case of style over substance for me: it looks pretty, but the gameplay just isn't fun and is incredibly repetitive. As a big fan of games like Mappyland and Tapper and Burger Time and so on, this should've been right up my alley! But that's all the more reason I'm so critical of it in failing to live up to them.

[Toilet Paper Please!]

Hmm, it's got some stuff going for it that surprised me, but I'm not really feeling this game that much, unfortunately!

As said, while it is a rather simple game, it did surprise me with how it changed things up in some of the later levels with different mechanics being introduced and some interesting level layouts, such as the various power-ups like the toilet flush and when it opened up the side walls to let you cross-over. I also liked some of the nice touches like how your character gets... progressively messy as they take damage: much more interesting than your typical health bar.

But overall it just feels like an overly simplistic, repetitive and boring game that can't shake the feeling that it was something created in a 'programming 101' class. The first impression was pretty bad, where you go through several levels which are way too easy and dull, to suddenly having an incredible difficulty spike in the form of swarms of crap, whereupon it suddenly goes back to being easy again for several levels, all while never introducing anything significantly new to keep my interest: it just felt like the overall quality was bad and the game was not crafted with a good sense of flow and progression to it.

I wanted to keep playing so I could get to some of the later stuff, like the boss fight which is hinted at in the screenshots, but as said, I just couldn't bring myself to continue as the level quality felt so out of wack and inconsistent, mostly trending towards being too simple and boring. If the levels were to be redesigned to have a better sense of escalation and introduce more unique mechanics, I think this could be decent.

[Knight and Prison of Ice]

Hmm, there's a lot I do like about the game in theory, but something about the execution left me a bit cold, if you pardon the pun.

I do find the whole combat aspect of summoning your sword to make it hit everything during transit to be rather creative and fun, and the additional powerups you can acquire add a bit of variety. The subtle way that the turrets have symbols above them to let you know their shot pattern is also very nice and makes things feel fair. I also found the world, while simple, to have a certain amount of cool flair, like the way you reset by stabbing yourself with the sword. Certainly has a lot of potential!

As said though, I don't know exactly what it is, but the game lost me rather quickly and I just didn't find myself that compelled to go back and replay much. Maybe it's just a bit too dull or not juicy enough: the constant turret enemies can be a bit boring, and the dungeon rather repetitive and plain, and the combat doesn't have enough depth. There was also some annoyance where I would get hit by things I felt shouldn't have hit me, such as the tiny lingering darkness particles from the wrath of the dungeon: feels like those things should be superfluous and I should only have to dodge the main body or a significant mass of the darkness. It was also awkward how you could get hit by the wrath of the dungeon when you're standing above it: it's like yes, in a 2D sense I'm technically overlapping with it, but in a 3D sense I shouldn't be getting hurt because I'm not making contact with it, I'm only 'behind' it, if that makes sense.

voidgazerBon responds:

I truly appreciate your feedback. It's very helpful! Thanks a lot.

[DARK SWORD: The Light of Ainn]

Nice to see work continue on this game, but my review is mostly the same as it was before, albeit maybe a bit more positive.

I certainly do enjoy what the game is going for: the dark, brooding atmosphere is very mysterious and intriguing, the bosses are challenging and have all sorts of crazy patterns to contend with, combat is cool with a nice layer of strategy due to a back-and-forth between melee and ranged to manage energy, and so on. It's also got some nice touches like collectable lore and subtle effects like the way your character explodes when you're out of energy to help signal that you're out. it's basically a nice boss rush game, reminiscient of Titan Souls, Shadow of the Colossus or Furi!

However it still does feel rather clunky and unpolished. The hitboxes and the graphics for certain elements felt really awkward and inconsistent which led to a lot of confusion as to where objects actually are in space, making me take damage when I thought I shouldn't, or not being able to hit an enemy that my sword looks to be making contact with, and so on. It's important for a challenging game to be really airtight and polished with its controls and systems to feel like its fair, and this currently doesn't feel like that.

In the more minor aspects, I find the text very difficult to read as it looks to have lost a lot of definition from compression or something, and I also find it really awkward how you can control your character still during transitions or menus and so on when you shouldn't be able to: for example when I'm at the shop and clicking on buttons, I shouldn't be hearing my little guy swinging his sword around. There's also some weird bugs, AI glitches, sound balance is off, and so on.

I still think the game is rather fun and impressive and somewhat acceptable in its current state, but I can't help but want more from it. It's definitely getting there bit-by-bit and I'm looking forward to seeing the final version of this!

[Mimic Lens (Dungeon Crawler Jam 2024)]

Hmm, I do like what the game seems to be going for here, where you're exploring this dungeon and collecting audio logs that provide clues as to ascertain the target you need to photograph: it's like an interesting fusion of a detective game with a dungeon crawler!

However, it definitely felt rather clunky with its execution. It was difficult to figure out how anything worked without any sort of instruction or tutorial, and the game just lacked a sense of polish and a lot of features felt superfluous or unfinished. There was a lot of lacking quality-of-life features as well, especially around the logs: when you're trying to check on something specific, it was very annoying how there was no text transcript or subtitles for the logs, and you couldn't use the timeline bar to skip ahead, and you couldn't turn it on and listen while you're moving around since it stops right when you close the journal.

The fact that it was static was a disappointment as well: if it could somehow be constructed so that there were random clues, targets, dungeon layout and so on, it would be more exciting and replayable instead of a one-and-done and exploitable through brute force trial-and-error. I could really see this game becoming something like Shadows of Doubt with enough time!

Not too bad for a game jam game as while it didn't necessarily prove its concept (most likely because it bit off more than it could chew in the short dev time) it was enough to be intriguing, and that's better than getting something that's more technically competent but boring.