FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Recital]

Ooo, I love me a good boss-fight, and this delivered a pretty cool one! Love all of the different phases, attack patterns, and sense of escalation, especially the fun middle part where you're falling down. The use of reflection as your only means of attack was pretty cool, too: always a classic since it forces you to put yourself in harms way. Overall this was a great short and sweet experience, all wrapped together nicely with some cool music, neat visuals and style!

The downside for me was that the game was in a rather rough state. Some of the roughness are just nitpicks, like how the text boxes aren't layered on top properly, meaning their text can be occluded by foreground elements like trees, or how the world is so flat and the character is just kind of on top of everything instead of being in front or back of elements. An explanation of the controls would've been nice too, but I figured it out without much issue. But there were some more annoying aspects like how you can get caught on the wall instead of naturally sliding across it, or how some hitboxes and transitions would just glitch up or work improperly. It wasn't enough to stop me from enjoying it, though!

CMulholland responds:

Thanks for playing Future! Always nice to see you're still playing small games and making videos

[Let's Make Television]

Huh, quite the interesting game! Certainly starts out with a strong first impression as the game has a real sense of showmanship with all the fancy presentation techniques it shows off, and I was really intrigued to see how it plays out! While it's a bit controversial, I thought the experimentation with AI was interesting as well and how it influenced chatting and the minigames, among other things.

Overall I was pretty impressed, but there definitely were some rough aspects to it, so here's some feedback in regards to that:

*I thought the chat sequences were pretty neat at first because it was cool to see how they respond to all manner of questions. I started off with some natural chit-chat about the game itself and who they were and they always seemed to respond appropriately for the most part, apart from the very eccentric NPCs, of course. The magic started to wear off though once I realized that chit-chat wasn't going to help me befriend them: instead it seemed like the optimal thing to do was just spam compliments and it just made everything feel like a superficial, annoying slog. Honestly, I'd prefer it if was just minigames instead and get rid of these chat parts.

*While the AI responded appropriately in most cases, there were times I felt like I couldn't trust them, or that it was all just hollow and pointless and I couldn't take it seriously. For example, some of the answers they gave in the pictionary minigame were just nuts and made no sense, and made me unsure if I would get screwed over later on through no fault of my own.

*I found the menus pretty weird and inconsistent in how they were controlled: sometimes you can select stuff with the mouse and keyboard, other times you're forced into using the mouse for some reason. Just made it a bit awkward to figure out what the game wants at times.

*Game was rather glitchy and janky at times, with the most prominent glitch being that when I disengage from a conversation, sometimes the camera would stay locked and zoomed-in on the NPC instead of unlocking and zooming out.

*Would be nice if there was some sort of save/load option as the game can get quite long to do in one sitting.

So yeah, kind of rough at the moment, but I like its experimental nature and that you're exploring new designs, so kudos on that!

xtrarare responds:

thank you for the thoughtful feedback!

[Vox Regis]

Hey, this was a pretty neat game! The game is very amusing and charming overall and I loved the concept of manipulating the populace to try and keep them balanced. Really creative stuff and everything was intuitive and looked and felt good, which is quite impressive for a game jam game! It's rather simple and doesn't last that long, but I had a nice time with this.

For feedback, I'd offer this up:

*Window size is a bit awkward in that it is too vertical and doesn't fit easily in a browser window.

*Once you play it once and the razzle-dazzle wears off, the game can be quite simple and boil-down to the same strategy everytime without any curveballs. Curious whether the game can be expanded upon in some way. I suppose you could always add more factions to make balancing more difficult, but I wonder what other mechanical challenges there could be, like spies or false intel or something like that. I suppose it's fine for a one-off standalone game, though.

*Bit bummed out by the scoring system as all it does is tell you how many speeches you made (6) and nothing else. Would've loved if there was a ranking system and it gives you a little epilogue for how well your kingdom did based on your rank or something like that as without that, I'm not compelled to replay that much.

[Daymare Cat 10-year Anniversary Edition]

Neat stuff! Unfortunately I haven't played the original Daymare Cat so I'm missing out on the sense of nostalgia as well as a point of comparison for changes made between versions, but it was still interesting to see this piece of history as a newcomer!

Overall I thought it was a decent short and sweet experience, but if I were to be rough, I'd say that the game is largely carried by its vibes, as while the art style and music are very cool, the game itself is pretty ho-hum, being short in length with janky feeling platforming and no real sense of puzzles or challenge. Perhaps this is unfair as I'm comparing it to games nowadays instead of back then. But then again, those vibes and their sense of mystique did push me all the way through the game, so hey, it was clearly enough, and I enjoyed seeing the music come together with the ending cinematic!

I'll have to check out Slice of Sea sometime!

[Raide]

Another Kultisti classic! Love the puzzles in how intuitive, challenging and creative they are, love the charming story and visual design, love the chill vibes, love the overall smooth as silk feel to the game, and love the extra bit of secret mysteries to keep you going! Not much else to be said: it's just cool and fun and I'm always amazed at the consistency!

[Hive Blight]

Yowza, this is looking to be a fantastic autobattler! I was really impressed at the game's overall construction as it felt very professional, intuitive and polished, so much so that despite not being a fan of autobattlers, I easily found myself getting sucked in and enjoying myself!

In particular I want to give a lot of praise to certain elements:

*I loved how intuitive and informative it was to track aggro by seeing the exclamation points over enemies when you place or hover over your units.

*I loved the way the shopkeeper would get excited as you hovered over items, increasing as you hold it.

*I loved how when you are awarded nectar after a fight, you can see it fly towards your units and towards your bank, intuitively teaching the player that nectar is split between being spent to heal them to full (and there's a tooltip to clarify this as well).

And so much more to praise! That being said, in the interest of helping this game develop, here's some feedback for areas that could use some work:

*It's understandable since it's early in development, but I was irked but some of the visual fidelity inconsistencies. In essence, the game looks so good in some areas that other areas look very bland in comparison: I really felt the lack of transitions between scenes, and in particular the map screen was dull as dishwater compared to other screens like the shop. There were also some weird graphical glitches like tooltips not appearing over other elements properly.

*It would be really annoying when I'd go to pick up a unit and drag them to another space but I end up snatching one of their items out of their inventory instead. Maybe there can be a way to lock this down, like only allowing inventory management in the green roster zone but not in the field?

*Found it weird that the initial speed is fast-forward? Would prefer if the game would start on normal speed and have the player elect to speed it up if they want.

*Combat could get very messy and confusing at times to determine who is attacking who and whether effects are going off. Perhaps there could be a bit more to the visual design to make it more clear what is happening so you can figure out weak spots in your formation. Maybe there can be a combat log?

Looking forward to seeing how this develops!

[An idle nightmare]

Wow, this game sucked me in more than I thought! I'm not really much for idle/clicker games, but something about this with its whole horror themed elements and creepy graphical design compelled me to keep going. In essence, it tricked me as it didn't feel like an idle/clicker game, but more like a mysterious adventure! I feel kind of silly letting these superficial elements deceive me like smoke and mirrors, but hey, that's the magic of video game design, so well done on that!

So far I've played the game to completion and gotten the first ending, and I did so by playing it as you'd expect where I stay safe and cautious. I'm assuming that in order to get the second ending, I'll need to intentionally mess up by staying in the corridors too long or torturing the cultists too much to build up trauma points so I can unlock those tomes in the basement. Again, I'm surprised at myself for actually wanting to go through and do this since it is a dumb clicker game and I'm sure it'll be bad times all around for the people in the story, but this game has its hooks in me! Having said that, I need to wait a bit to do so because my wrist and fingers are in pain, haha!

adriendittrick responds:

sorry for your fingers, and thanks for the well thought out review as always :)

[sæter]

Hmm, not too shabby! Reminds me of games like Lemmings or Gyromite due to the whole escort concept.

For the most part, I think the game shows some good potential. Having to race back and forth between gathering resources and building the bridge is fun and has some strategic depth to it where you need to factor in distance and optimal order, and later on it escalates the challenge with enemies to contend with. The game also has a very goofy and weird aesthetic to it that adds a certain amount of charm.

Having said that, it is quite rough and janky at the moment:

*I found the targeting system for building platforms very awkward: you'd think that you would build a platform directly above you, but instead you need to stand weirdly to the side to build where you want to. Just really finicky and weird, which can be frustrating when you need to be quick and precise. In general the game has a really inconsistent sense of depth or perception of the psuedo-3D space.

*I didn't like how you don't know where the exit is when you start a level: this led to me sacrificing runs where I'd just go forth and find out where it is, restart, and then build the bridge based off of that knowledge. I'd prefer if the game points it out with an arrow, or does a little camera swoosh to show you where it is before going back and starting the level proper.

*I like that the lemmings will eventually fast-forward when they see the exit, but I'd prefer if we could manually order them to fast-forward as it can be very finicky when they start and I hate to wait when I've already completed the bridge.

*It's to be expected for a game jam game, but the visuals, animations, hitboxes, and basically lots of things just have a rough and awkward feel to them.

*Bummer that there is no save/load or at least a level select.

Overall it's an ok game jam result: it's rough, but the concept is interesting that I'd like to see it fleshed out and polished!

[Home 45 Min Experience!]

Wow, this certainly looks to be quite the RPG you're making! First impressions are incredibly positive as the visual presentation is very impressive, the world and characters are charming with lots of goofy dialogue, little interactions and lively animations, and the combat being challenging and unique with its music/rhythm-based mechanics. Overall just smacks of extreme potential and I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops!

In order to help that development, here's some feedback:

*Really wish the game had some sort of save system, especially since it's a long experience to play through at the moment in one sitting, but also because it would be more helpful to experiment with the systems and provide more feedback!

*Find it weird that the defense input is colored red when all the other inputs are consistently blue. I guess the intention is that defense is used on red notes? But because the defense note is colored red, it makes me think it's disabled/locked or does something bad or something. Just strange.

*I thought it was a bit too verbose and confusing when explaining the special move mechanic. First, I think you just need to say that if you hit notes correctly, you'll build up your bar and can do a special move when it goes green: don't bother explaining all the numbers and junk, keep it simple! Second, when it said to do the special move on a 'free note', I thought it meant empty space, like a black line: I didn't realize it meant to use it on a normal/attack/white note.

*I don't mind getting lost to a degree, but I found it a bit weird that there is no straightforward dirt path from the house to Joh at the start: makes it really confusing to determine where to go at the beginning and you could get roped into a lot of fights and such that you might've thought were necessary.

*Difficulty is pretty hard starting out for combat, particularly the mushrooms, where it is throwing in some challenging note charts with all sorts of tricky melodic beats. This early on, I think it should stick to something easy like strong beats. I suppose it's nice to get a preview of where the combat will build up to though, but I just think it's too much too soon!

*Defeating enemies results in the game freezing in an unsatisfying manner: I actually thought the game broke when I won my first fight since it was so awkward! We need some more fanfare and a satisfying death animation for the enemy instead!

*Combat is nice, but there's something unsatisfying about it. I'm just not able to feel a satisfying connection between pressing the notes on time and fighting the enemy: I need stronger and more satisfying feedback, particularly sound effects, to let me know I'm making progress in the fight. Another reason for this vague disconnection might be that I can't focus on the combat animations because I'm too busy looking at the notechart: maybe there's a way the UI can be redesigned to keep both visible?

Hopefully this can help!

[The Funnel]

Hah, pretty interesting game! I really like the vibes and presentation as they gave off a heck of an amusing first impression: I just loved how weird the world seemed and loved all the charming touches like the diegetic instructions you get to read and the HUD where you need to manually reload and watch the player's eyes dart around. The thing that let me down was the gameplay though: it starts off ok and I wanted to keep going, but it doesn't take long for it to just feel tedious with the way it's just the same enemies over and over but more of them, and the power-ups never get more interesting either in a way that would freshen things up.

BingoWaders responds:

Thanks for the review! I will try to build on it in the future