FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[HiveClock: The Game]

Never quite sure how to rate these games that feel like they are just inside jokes for a certain clique that I'm not in the know of. Nothing wrong with making games like this as you don't need to please everyone, but yeah, my expectations were not high when I played this, and I was about ready to quit just a few screens in making my way through what was essentially an art gallery with very minimal and unsatisfying interactions.

I do have to admit, though, that once you get all the way to the end and start going back, I was surprised to see the levels change themselves up. There were even a lot of secrets to find if you get creative with your clicks, like dragging the throne away or if you keep clicking the bee hive to knock it down: almost felt like it has some real potential as a puzzle-y point-n-click adventure! Seeing the whole cinematic at the end too was wild: I have no idea what it was, but I felt like I was seeing some sort of Marvel movie after-credits scene that's supposed to build intrigue, haha!

[Babel Adventure]

Huh, quite the interesting game you got here! I was really worried at first as it seemed a bit simplistic and a bit janky, but I was impressed at how addicted I got to scaling this tower! Something about how you have such a large and diverse cast of enemies and traps, each with their own unique patterns to contend and exploit, and combine that with trying to get coins and the mind-bending nature of using the screen edges to teleport: it creates a really cool puzzle adventure where I loved figuring out the appropriate route to make it through each screen! Not only does it keeps escalating in terms of gameplay mechanics, it does so as well with the weirdness of its story and cool music to create quite the memorable experience. Well done!

Having said that, though, the game is pretty rough and janky, as mentioned before. In terms of feedback:

*There was some jankiness and such in terms of hitboxes being a bit ill-defined and movements being a bit weird, but more so than that, it was so janky that I had a point where I got awkwardly shoved off the screen by some attacks and was stuck in limbo: unable to restart but unable to continue either, moving around in some void jail but unable to get back to the stage proper. Luckily I was still early in the game so it didn't hurt much to quit and full restart, but boy, it felt super unfair and if I was further along, that woulda been quits for me.

*Speaking of the above, it was a real bummer that this game has no save/continue option. It has checkpoints, yes, but if you close the game and come back to it, it puts you all the way back at the start, and while the game might not technically be that long, it just feels bizarre to not include such an option (especially since it would've saved me from that crash!)

*As much as I wanted to collect coins and get items and such, it just felt pointless and not worth the risk since 1) death is plentiful and resets your coins and 2) I couldn't tell what kind of item I was even buying due to a lack of information, and it was such a big risk to spend so much to try something out and get a whole heap of nothing, like that time I bought the red coin 2 pack and I still have no idea what they even did. I like the incentive to get coins as an extra challenge, but I dunno if having an item shop is necessary in this, with the way its been setup.

*While I generally liked all of the enemies and how diverse they were, there were still a couple that felt really bad, like the sudden rocks that would come from off-screen and explode: I get that its an increase in difficulty, but I dunno, it just felt unfair in how you need to memorize it and can't see any sort of telegraph for it so as to help keep it in mind, like how spikes will still have a minimal presence on the stage even when they are retracted.

DaShahRach00 responds:

Hey ! Thank you very much for this review, it is very useful !
mentioned the shop as poorly rewarding for getting parts, thank you for putting the word out there. I should have made sure to provide information on the items we are taking before purchasing them. (ps the red coin when used transforms all the coins visible on the screen into double coins)
And I note the need to have a game that saves for future games!
We will pay more attention to crash issues like this for future games! I'm glad that despite this you continued the game.
Thank you for playing it! And I'm glad you enjoyed the experience ^^

[Burning Down (DEMO)]

For the most part, this is a pretty promising demo! In general it feels like there is a good amount of presentation and charm, and the firefighting gameplay is pretty chaotically fun: felt good to try and get used to all the various mechanics and how to employ them best, like the two hose powers, foam, axing doors and debris, saving hostages, and all that jazz!

Having said that, though, it was in a pretty rough state in a lot of respects, and while I still am overall positive on it, I want to give a lot of feedback so as to make it even better.

*Controls could be really awkward to utilize at times. For example, why are the move keys used to advance text, instead of using a more common button like the interact key or primary fire? Why is reloading so weird in that you can't manually start it until you're totally dry, and once you're in it, there's no way to cancel it midway? Why does the super jump require you to put your cursor so accurately below them instead of just being a double-jump or allowing a looser area to click (perhaps for diagonal shots)?

*The difficulty of the game seemed really rough and unbalanced as well. Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge, but it felt like every map wanted me to do everything almost perfectly with very little wiggle room, and that just felt really bad when still learning things. There could be a few reasons for this: for one, the levels skip forward here and there, so maybe the full game would have a slower increase in complexity instead of throwing me into the deep end. I also thought that water was limited and unreloadable at first so I spent a long time rationing it, and felt silly when I learned that reloads were possible: should water levels even exist? Maybe foam, which I would usually think is meant to be an emergency thing that is just there to help newbies while pros might not even need it, is intended to be very required in this? I dunno, but the game definitely felt pretty overzealous, like it was balanced based on a developer who has gotten way too used to his game and thinks it was getting too easy.

*There were also just lots of confusing points, like while I can understand a person losing health because they're in a fire, I have no idea why a person I've carried away from fire but not out of the building entirely, or the cat on the roof who isn't in a direct line of fire, is losing health. I wasn't sure exactly what foam was meant to be used for in the best way, it felt really annoying to deal with mechanics like the crackly red floors, the fireballs spitting out of fire felt way too hard to snuff out mid-flight than it felt like they should be, and so on and so forth.

*Finally, there were some missing elements that were sorely missed, such as a scoring or ranking system to challenge me and teach me how I could play better. There were also plenty of rough spots like the unnecessary walk back at the end of each mission, as well as the really long and awkward fade out.

Looking forward to the final version and hope this rambling helps at least somewhat!

[Phantom Comedy Theatre]

Certainly a memorable game for its very unique mechanic of being a ghostly hype man for comedians, and the game also has a certain goofy charm to it with its terrible comedy acts, low-effort art, and level scores being delivered as radio reviews. It's neat stuff, and I tried my best to get into it!

Despite that, though, I couldn't help but feel like the game mechanics didn't work out. I did my best to do as instructed: capture the laughs, avoid the boos, take the energy obtained from laughs and inject it into sad or meh viewers, but it just never felt like I was in control or satisfied. Maybe there's some sort of strategy that the game has, like if you keep sad people separated from each other they wouldn't spread their sadness as easily or something, but I couldn't find it and it all just felt aimless. There's also a lot of weird jank, like how clicking on audience members would sometimes be ignored for no reason I could discern.

Again, I certainly give points for trying out a unique mechanic, but I felt like it needed more time in the oven in terms of execution.

[Candle in the Woods]

Cute little game! For the most part, I think the game delivers a decent little story and variety of activities: it was rather impressive that every new screen seemed to introduce a whole new set of mechanics and puzzles to play with!

It's for that very same reason, though, that the game felt rather unfocused: it had a strong start with an element of mystery in using the candle to see hidden paths and to defend yourself against foes, but then it felt like the candle was forgotten in lieu of more standard block-sliding puzzles and hedge mazes where the candle because a dumb impediment that you need to refuel constantly for no real reason.

In addition to that, the game felt rather janky and unpolished: as cool as the block-sliding puzzle during the boss battle was, I got very annoyed when the blocks would be pushed in very awkward ways that I clearly did not intend, making me restart the whole thing.

For a game jam game, it's a bit of a mix: as said, it's got some decent gameplay variety, but I felt like the candle didn't get to shine in an interesting or memorable way, and that's a bit rough especially considering its supposed to be part of the central theme.

[Hive Jump 2: Survivors]

Hmm, this seems to have a lot of potential to be a fun little survivors arcade game where you blast a bunch of bugs using some nice graphics, but there were just a lot of confusing and annoying elements to it at the moment which got in my way.

For one, the UI and menus felt incredibly messy, overcrowded, and difficult to control and parse. Sometimes I could click on buttons with the mouse, while other times it required that I use the keyboard instead. Similarly, other times there would be buttons that would be faded to look like they were disabled, only for me to press them and find out they were active after all. I felt like you tried to make everything intuitive somewhat with lots of labels and prompts, but overall it was just really difficult to tell what my objective was, how to progress, what buttons do what, text was hard to read due to colors and overlaps, and so on.

Furthermore, the game loop felt really unsatisfying with the way the inventory fills to capacity almost immediately, making it incredibly risky and annoying to try and experiment with other items as I'd like to do: instead I would feel like I need to stick with what I have and just upgrade its stats in a very boring manner. Bizarre to see such a limitation in a series where they usually allow tons of weapons and equipment to create these dazzling fireworks displays of chaos. Despite me getting so many upgrades that constantly interrupted the gameplay every few seconds, it didn't feel like the game was changing significantly.

GraphiteLab responds:

Big changes to the UI in the recent update. Would love to have you play again and share your updated thoughts.

[Pinball Breaker DELUXE]

Pretty neat little break-the-targets arcade-y pinball experience! Overall the game feels quite flashy and fun with great menus and fun characters that brighten up the experience with their unique animations and backgrounds as well as their informative callouts, like when you're on your last ball. Certainly an improvement from the previous version!

Having said that, though, I'm still a bit down on it in some regards:

*Pinball is all about pizazz for me, and while this is an improvement from the previous version in terms of that, it still felt quite lackluster in a lot of regards. Potentially exciting powerups like slow-mo felt pointless in their usage and nukes felt limp with the way they just clear the screen with no exciting explosive sounds or visuals. A bonus round is usually something that shakes things up significantly and feels like a celebration and a reward, but here, barely anything changes, most notably the music stays the same, and the collection of coins doesn't feel that gratifying. Certain elements like winning the time challenge for a board or racking up big points should be broadcast to the player, but instead are being stuck in the corner where you might not even notice them.

*The gameplay also just feels kind of stale to me: the lack of pizazz as explained above contributes to that, but more so I feel like the game easily gets repetitive as the board only changes itself in very minor ways from level to level, with the main board construction not changing at all and lacking any sort of exciting elements like ramps, additional paddles, and so on. There are no significant changes to music, the board construction, your character or background, and so forth, to give a sense of progression, and the minor changes to the target patterns and introduction of elements like purple barriers felt like impediments rather than interesting additions.

It's a decent game that I feel has loads of potential, and so I can't help but wish for more!

CubePunks responds:

*As far as overlay elements go. Being mobile compatible, it had to be portrait rather than landscape with the hud being on the boarders optimizing screen space. Because of that, a lot of elements like the text overlay and character had to share the same real-estate as the game board; so the goal was lots of movement without distraction making gameplay hard to manage.

The Nuke is a good example: when shaking the screen violently on impact, that half second distortion can make a player loose track of the ball and then get a fallout (happened in testing). That level of player frustration would drop a review a few stars.

I reserved the timer and the score counter to the corners cause they're persistently available, having movement to not be too static but out of view that they don't distract from gameplay. I feel character reaction audio and animation make vision indicator that adding "text overlay of extra points from a time bonus in center focus" redundant and a poor use of real-estate.


*As far as board changing (not just layout changing) goes - its something I'd love to do ; but there's two barriers on that.

1- Game design: Layouts change but your ball never resets until a fallout, which gives the game a lot of the kinetic fun. As is, having that seamless feeling clashes if your foundational board elements spontaneously move on you. Some design work would have to be done to see how to have it not lead to player frustration.

2- Budget: I treat my browser games as demos/vertical slices I can put in a portfolio with hope that one day I can get the resources to expand the idea into a larger package. While everything is still self funded, I'd rather have spend (and have been spending) recent years establishing a variety of ideas rather than a refinement of a single one. This doesn't mean I don't ever want to revisit this game with updates (like I have the foundations to plug in new characters if I want) but a gameplay expansion requires a level of work on par with making another small game.

So either I need to be in a spot where I'd rather invest in an expansion over a new game (and I just did that with Deluxe being a ground up remake of the 1st) OR I need help (publisher, dev team and marketing) making a paid version that'd expand to a 5/5

___________

Either way, I want to revisit PinBall Breaker again in the future; so an expansion will happen IDK when.

- KageKMB

[PRAXIS FIGHTER X]

Hey, this is a really solid SHMUP you got here! For the most part, this delivers everything you want from such an experience: big flashy explosions, points galore, a wide variety of enemies to contend with that come at you in interesting waves within a cool world, big bosses, challenging combat, and so forth!

In terms of feedback: I'll admit that the mechanics, while fun, are a bit too simple to a degree where it can feel a bit mindless, and the few exciting powerups that there exist are very limited and can easily be lost. There was also a big stretch in the beginning where it was getting pretty repetitive and felt like it was looping and it almost lost me, only for it to suddenly right things by introducing a bunch of new exciting elements. Definitely feel like that should be a bit edited to keep the pace consistent through the experience, but it's not that bad.

[Rootin' Tootin' Lootin' & Shootin' Demo]

Hmm, quite the interesting game, feeling like a cowboy-themed top-down turn-based version of SuperHot! Coming to terms with how the combat system works and the addictive nature of experimenting with the various weapons you have certainly hooked me, and the game overall felt like it had a decent amount of polish, what with its nice HUD and special effects.

However, in its current state, I find the execution of its interesting ideas a bit rough:

The game was difficult in not letting me get enough information. For example, while I can see info on guns when I'm buying them, I was annoyed that I couldn't see information on guns that are in my inventory, and the gun info was incomplete, lacking details like the cooldown between shots. I found it confusing too that gun info only appears when you mouse over an item, when I feel like it should happen when you walk over it instead (or perhaps both). Speaking of, I would've loved to have more information, such as seeing a preview for attacks and explosion radiuses and so on since I wasn't sure how they'd play out, as well as seeing enemy health amounts. Other aspects were a bit confusing, such as how some enemies will fire in a rigid cardinal direction cross formation, yet they will still point a gun in your exact direction as if they're going to fire directly at you like other enemies do.

The game also just felt a bit lackluster at times. The levels felt incredibly cramped and claustrophic which made all of the gun fights quite boring as you have no space to move around strategically. It was really easy to run out of ammo and get in a dead-man-walking vibe where you just don't have anything to fight with and no cash to buy more guns since it disappears almost immediately from when it drops: would much prefer picking up guns/ammo from enemies or chests instead of buying as I think it would help create more improvisation.

Again, really interesting ideas you got here, just don't feel like its been executed in the best way yet, but best of luck!

RaspberryJamGames responds:

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!
I am currently working on a new version of the game for Early Access, which will address a lot of your issues.

I intend to add tooltips to the inventory, extra tooltip info (such as cooldowns) and also tooltips for when you walk over an item.
I hadn't thought about attack previews, that's a good idea.
It feels like showing enemy health might clutter the screen to much, but I could give enemies their own tooltips.

I'm sorry that the levels feel cramped - At some point I want to revamp the level generation, so I'll keep that in mind.
About the money disappearing, that's quite a common criticism and I'm trying out some alternatives, but I still want people to play aggressively, rushing to get money as soon as it drops.

Thanks again for the feedback.
I agree with almost everything you've said and I will keep on improving the game.

[Ghost in the Graveyard]

Cute little arcade game! It's pretty simple, almost too simple that it lacks any sort of long-lasting appeal or strategy for me to sink my teeth into, but for what it is, it's a delightfully crunchy and juicy arcade shooter that crackles with energy and provides some decent fun while it lasted, really reminding me of the more simple games one would play on the Atari, for instance. There are some hints at depth here, such as with the ability to eventually break the very spongy tombstones for points (which I would've never assumed were breakable without the game over tips saying so), managing recoil, and how best to work with the magnetized pickups by standing your ground or seeking them out, but it just wasn't enough to keep my interest for more than a few minutes. Still, not bad for those few minutes!