FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hallow Helpers]

Pretty interesting puzzle game! Reminds me a lot of something like Lemmings with all the weird powers you get, or maybe more so like Mosa Lina with how wild and creative both the puzzles could get and how my solutions could be: sometimes I wasn't sure whether I was solving it as intended or gaming the system in a weird way, like an immersive sim, but I nevertheless enjoyed that it embraced such aspects. Very memorable stuff!

I liked it, but I'll admit it can be tough to love at times, having a rather janky and low-quality feel to it, especially with the platforming, where the jumping physics would wonk out and be inconsistent. And as usual, the humor can be a bit hit-or-miss, though I still find it impressive how many unique lines there are. I think the bomb critter is my favorite.

[...Vincent: Mansion of The Dead]

Hmm, it's a rather decent attempt at a survivors-like game that gets most of the basics down-pat, but nevertheless is let down by technical issues and rather ho-hum bog-standard gameplay.

In terms of technical issues, there were a few weird ones here and there, like how the text is difficult to read, and when you select a power-up on level up, whatever you selected will remain in this selected state once you get another level-up, forcing you to awkwardly click away so you can unselect it and properly preview all the selections. But the most critical one is that the game doesn't properly pause when you enter the level-up screen: your orbital masks will continue to rotate and collide with enemies, and exp gems on the field will decay in real-time, unfairly fading away while you're just trying to view all your options.

Moving away from technicalities, the gameplay just felt rather plain: all you do is cut down a mob of enemies, with no special events, waves, mini-bosses, treasure chests, or anything to shake things up and add a bit of spice. No, all that happens is the enemies get spongier and spongier, becoming an absolute slog, forcing you to unfairly engage in metaprogression to even have a chance of winning, instead of allowing player skill be the determining factor.

I don't want to be too down on it since there is a decent foundation to work from here: the basics of cutting down enemies and building up your power to become a god is present, and the presentation is rather charming. I just think there's still a lot of work to be done to turn this into something special and fun, feeling like an early alpha in its current state.

NOTE: As instructed, I played the downloadable itch.io version for this review.

[Misty Hollow - Halloween Multiplayer]

Pretty cute game! I'm not really much of a multiplayer kinda guy, but the game still provided me with a fun little time.

The standout element here is definitely the presentation, where the world and especially the shop just have so much wholesome and cute energy to them: it's just such an absolute delight to interact with everything. The racing was ok as well, having a bit of a strategic element to it where you need to decide between hitting the streets or hitting houses for max candy gains.

Having said that, once you race a couple of times, heck, even just one time, I didn't feel like there was much else to do or see. I'm not someone who is compelled by unlocking costumes, so that kinda superficial trickery isn't going to keep my attention: I need more substantial gameplay enhancements, such as other race courses and the like, and that wasn't present here from what I could tell. I suppose there are leaderboards, but I didn't feel compelled to go for a high score as the racing seemed to somewhat luck-based and also influenced by player-bought power, which is a no go for me.

So yeah, cute and wholesome, but for me it didn't have enough meat on its bones for a satisfying gameplay experience (though I'll admit that I'm not a multiplayer kinda guy, so I'm not necessarily the target audience, in a way).

[Slippery Chambers]

Oh man, this is a tough one for me! It's like, as a fan of precision platformers and speedrun games, I really, really, REALLY want to love this, but boy does this game make loving it difficult!

When you finally get into the flow and figure out how this game wants you to play, it can be pretty magical, chaining together walljumps, dashes, gunshots, sword slashes and so on to become a real speed demon. The game is also loaded with tons of memorable events, such as the introduction of the gun and sword power-ups, as well as constantly upping the ante to never let the player get bored. And as difficult as it is, it does try to help the player along with a lot of tips that show up after deaths.

But all of that enjoyment is dependent on getting into a flow state, and boy can that be hard! I was constantly falling to my death or not landing on a platform when I thought I should because it can be so difficult to tell what your current height is. My momentum kept getting messed up because of those weird camera rotation things, never being quite sure how I'm supposed to lean into them. It was difficult to tell what sort of effect shooting or dashing had on your height: sometimes it seemed to work while other times it didn't. There were weird glitches like how you can still swing your sword despite already being in the death state. And so on and so forth.

I don't think you need to look further than the leaderboards to see proof: it goes from hundreds of entries in the first few levels to not even being able to fill up a top 10 as early as around half-way. I don't blame a lot of people for dropping off, but to look at it another way, there is something about this game that does make some special few people, including myself, want to stick around to the end! So yeah, like I said, mixed impression: it flubs the execution, but there is something special at the core of this that I want to see blossom!

[Stay Indoors]

Hmm, bit mixed on this one!

For the most part, I think the game is pretty cool! The retro ZX Spectrum aesthetic is very neato, the town is huge with all sorts of interesting environmental details, there are a lot of creepy aspects to the game which are both subtle (faces appearing) and overt (monster chasing you, descending into hell, etc), there's some amusing little touches like recognizing my attempt to run the monster over with a car, and so on and so forth. It's also rather amusing to read the whole backstory behind it to get in the proper mood. It's just got a very cool sense of mystique to it all!

However, in retrospect, I think I like the game more in theory than I actually enjoy playing it, if that makes any sense. It's like, the game gives off cool and mysterious vibes, but when it comes down to actually playing it, I'm an ending 3 kinda guy: I just can't be arsed to search through this absolutely massive town to find that dog, especially once you get the monster nipping at your heels and you just can't lose him no matter what clever tricks I try to use: from there, the monster just devolves into white noise, kind of like the missile alert sound in an Ace Combat game.

To add to that, there were some aspects that felt a bit rough or unfinished. For example, I found these books lying around which I assume are secret lore or something, but I can't interact with them: maybe they can only be interacted with by winners who have rescued the dog at least once? I was also unsure whether the ability to cheese the monster by abusing the non-normalized movement vectors which make diagonal movement much quicker was intentional to represent the old-school construction or an overlooked aspect. And the creepy faces seem to be all that happens, when I was expecting more interesting scares and distortions to build up over time to make it all creepypasta-like.

So yeah, in a way, it's the old style-over-substance that I'm getting from this game, but I still think the game is pretty neat and can excuse some of the gameplay quirks because it is trying to authentically recreate retro limitations and such. Definitely shows a lot of promise and effort!

[Pokemon Variance Collab]

Pretty decent art collab! It's not exactly the most creative or interesting presentation, being your bog-standard slideshow, but it nevertheless has a good amount of effort and design put into it, what with its stylish pokedex interface, neat lore to go along with the art pieces, links to the artist profiles readily available, and random/gallery view options. There are some rough edges here and there, such as how difficult it can be to read the text (outlines are preferable over angled drop shadows, as well as higher contrasting colors from the background) and how the gallery view scroll bar isn't visible when you aren't over it, but overall it's not too shabby. Neat to see so many creative pokemon variants!

[Twigi's Twisted Costumes]

Cute little dress-up game! It's not really my kinda jam, and it is rather simple and lacking the depth of other dress-ups I've played, but it still has a nice amount of costumes to pick from, some fun interactions from wearing complete sets, and a lot of goofy nonsense like the spooky/twist buttons and achievos, so yeah, not too shabby for a quick chuckle!

[TapTapBOOM]

Huh, this is quite the fun little mobile game! The standout element for me is definitely the presentation: there's just so many flashy effects, transitions, and juice in every single action that the whole experience feels so lively and satisfying! It's not all superficial, though, as I think the game does a good job at evolving the gameplay over time, introducing all sorts of new obstacles and puzzles to contend with. Fun stuff!

I got pretty confused at how the game progresses, though. Initially it starts out as a physics puzzle game where you try to plant bombs at key points to collapse these structures in a way that all of the green blocks go off-screen, and I liked this! Later on, though, it turns into a completely different game where bombs are largely relegated to being used to press down buttons with no room for any sort of creativity or experimentation, with the puzzles being solved through other elements like plungers and sliding blocks. It just feels like the core identity of bombs is completely lost! Like, instead of making this new dynamite/plunger mechanic, why didn't you make it so that the second bomb you place could be triggered separately from the first bomb? That way players would actually need to puzzle out the second explosion, instead of just relying mindlessly on the fixed dynamite placement!

I guess you could argue that it's novel how the game changes, and if I turn my brain off and just play, I think it's fine and very addictive, but I can't help but feel like it is rather confusing, like you just gave up on the initial premise and then made a completely different puzzler and the bombs just remained as a vestigial property.

Chaz responds:

That's fair (and very valuable) feedback, thanks for pointing this out!

[Deep Deep Deep Nightmare Demo]

Hmm, this is a pretty neat game! It's pretty blatantly a top-down shooter clone in the vein of games like Binding of Isaac, but for the most part it's got some solid construction to it: enemy/weapon variety is nice, the graphics and story are cute, there are nice quality-of-life features like controller support and a testing area in the hub, and everything just feels very smooth and polished overall. The standout element for it is definitely the boss fights, which were pretty cool with some interesting and challenging patterns. It's pretty impressive!

Since you're going for a commercial release on Steam, though, I feel like I have to be a bit more critical since that's a much bigger arena you're stepping into. And to be honest, I don't think this game has enough going for it to stand out in that crowd, as to me, it just felt rather generic and derivative, all stuff I've seen done before, but better elsewhere. There's nothing wrong with imitating your favorites, heck, we've all gotta start somewhere, but when looking at this, I see no reason to play it over the original deal, nothing that sticks with me or hooks me in or, most importantly, makes me whip out my wallet.

I can offer some slight feedback here and there, such as how I think the feedback for damaging enemies should be more satisfying, possibly by adding blood splatters, and that the weapons are rather boring and could use some more exotic choices, but those are all just minor: the core gameplay loop of simplistic arena combat just doesn't have enough spice to it, apart from the boss battles which I mentioned before. It would be up to you to see if there's something special you can add to this game to make it stand out, something to finish the sentence of 'it's like Binding of Isaac, BUT..."

That's just me, though, and like I said, the game does have a very nice look and feel to it, so you should be proud of what you've accomplished, and best of luck on the release!

[Slime 3K Demake]

Hmm, this is a bit of a weird one!

It's like, on one hand, I think this game is a pretty neat recreation of how an early Survivors-esque game would work and feels quite authentic. But at the same time, that authenticity is a double-edged sword because, well, an early attempt at a Survivors-esque game would probably feel like this does, where it just doesn't quite land with me, feeling quite rough, janky and not as satisfying since the way these games work haven't been iterated upon yet, and the capabilities are also limited by the system. I guess take that as a strange compliment that, uh, you pulled it off?

I want to like it and think it's charming in some ways, but the core gameplay just didn't feel satisfying and addictive like I'd want, and it just felt awkward with weird hitboxes and confusing when I couldn't figure out the rules, like when I'd go to a shop to get a power-up or when I'd just be thrust into a new level. The sense of progression and enemy design felt really strange as well, with all sorts of crazy spikes and unfair starts.