FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[1-Bit Explorer]

Wow, quite the cool adventure game! Can't believe it's technically an RPG Maker game as apart from some subtle clues like the sound effects it looks and feels completely different: definitely must've been quite the effort to totally convert this in such a way, and I appreciate that it doesn't fall into the usual RPG Maker trap of relying so much on grindy combat and the same ol' assets!

Game overall feels very well-done and polished in practically all aspects and I was having a blast solving puzzles, running quests, talking to NPCs, collecting trinkets and upgrades, and so on: the world is just so big, charming, and addictive to explore with so much variety, and there's some cool intrigue around the title screen and the ghost that follows. No major complaints I can think of at the moment: still early in the game but first impressions have been solid, so I'm looking forward to seeing the rest!

EDIT: Damn, I ended up getting super addicted to this game! Couldn't believe the amount of stuff that keeps opening up, like the temples and their dimensional versions!

[Forest Shack]

I was really excited for this game and while I think it has improved in some ways from the original prototype and does have a certain mystique to it with its horror atmosphere, I was overall unfortunately quite disappointed and baffled by it, and feel like it actually got quite worse from before.

As said before, the most critical issue I have with the game is how incredibly confusing it is. But before we get into that, I just want to make note that when I say it is confusing, I'm not talking about the elements that are intentionally confusing for reasonable effect, such as how the player needs to pay a fee in order to see where a path leads to, or how certain mechanics are withheld for explanation until later as a means of progression/tutorialization, or how outcomes of events can be a bit vague like when you choose to steal the offerings and some such: those are perfectly understandable and add to the mystique I mentioned earlier.

What really confused me about the game is the absolutely abysmal UI/UX and the bizarre design decisions that made it so difficult to parse. I'm not even sure where to start: it seriously felt like every menu and UI layout was designed in the most worst way possible. Why can I not learn the use of certain items by hovering over them, until I first visit a shop and read the tool tips there, and only there? Why are some elements given tooltips while others are completely absent, such as the aforementioned items and path symbols? What the hell is the bone totem menu and how do you use it? Why do I have to click a bush in the corner, and what does it mean? And on and on.

The worst confusion of all was the combat design: without any proper feedback for attacks and the HUD elements spread so far apart, it was difficult to keep track of what was going on, let alone derive any sort of satisfaction from fighting. Take the lizard spitting some acid onto the ground in front of the player, or the deer just stamping its feet in place: did that hit me? Because it didn't look like it physically connected with me, and my sprite didn't react in the slightest, and my eyes were focused at the battle in the center not the health bubbles in the corner so its difficult to notice any change there: for all intents and purposes, its easy to think that the attack missed!

This confusion extends to a lot of other elements: for example, the feedback for landing a normal or critical timed hit on the arrow QTE is the same, so it's never clear whether you're getting the critical or not. Similarly, I had no idea I was actually succeeding in the knife QTE because the confirmation is so delayed from my input, and I have no idea what success does: did I hurt the enemy, or did I just stun them from attacking me, or something else? Who the hell knows, everything is so vague and lifeless and lacks any sort of logical connection that can be made due to the complete absence of visual or audio effects! A few hitsparks here, some player knockback animations there, a few damage numbers appearing above heads, moving health and turn timers near enemies instead of stuffed in the corner, perhaps slowing down the speed: some very simple things could help a lot here!

Even if I were to put this all aside, learn all of the game's rules through trial and error, and just focus on the gameplay...there's not much there either. Combat pretty much boils down to mashing attack, chugging a potion when you're low, and reacting to random QTE prompts: there's no real engaging strategy to the fights that I ever found, like having to prioritize certain enemies first, managing supplies in the long-term, or having to stay alert for powerful attack telegraphs and pre-emptively defend against it or stun them first. To add salt onto the wound, the game seemed incredibly buggy, with QTEs sometimes appearing behind enemies thus making it impossible to read, it losing my save file due to oddly-worded instructions, and with it just looping me back to the start despite my best attempts to progress over and over. Finally, without having any real sense of an ultimate goal or story from the very start to strive for, what's the point?

It was unfortunately a big miss for me, but as said, I think the concept behind this game could be nice, and for your first foray into game design, these kind of things will happen. As you create a game and get used to all of its systems, it can be very confusing to realize just how much you need to teach a player and facilitate their experience since it all seems so obvious in your head. Best of luck in future.

HatiValcoran responds:

Looping you back to the start? ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ❓

The save system doesn't load your save unless you *click* load at the very beginning.

It is likely you were confused by the overworld travel, after you reach the campfire you enter a different area, it is not visually distinguished but it becomes obvious as you unlock new runes and new enemies that show up as you progress.

It feels wrong to say it, but most of your complaints touch the things I focused in the least in this project, I learned the most on how to craft an atmosphere, a progression system, different types of encounters, balance, coding, planning, prototyping, developing a concept, and *so* many other things.

A far smaller, more tightly designed game where I focused on a small gameplay loop and clarity would had made the more solid experience you were looking for, but unfortunately it would had taught me much less.

Thank you for your feedback, I'm still learning so any feedback into the parts a player might find the most confusing about my design is very valuable. ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ✎❑

You would had made a great playtester. ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ❤

[Bleek]

Hey, pretty dang cool game you got here! The game may be bleek, but the design of this is hella sleek (pardon the dumb poetry): everything about this looks and feels great overall, with a very professionally-crafted impression. The good times don't stop there, as the gameplay is also pretty cool with a nice core design of having to avoid ghosts that can only be seen and defeated with your limited flashlight, while the game keeps ramping up the stakes with new obstacles and enemies that push you out of any potential safe zones and encourage fun chaos. It's technically a bit shallow with it being the same progression over and over with no big story to strive for, but nevertheless its a fun, addictive romp.

If I did have one big complaint, is that it was very tricky at times to determine when I would take damage: many times I would get hit by a bullet or ghost that I thought would only graze past me since the perspective makes me think that they, while technically overlapping, were not actually colliding with me. Upon testing, the game does seem to be rather generous with the hitboxes and only counts it if you get hit dead-center in respect to the 2.5D perspective with depth, not reducing everything to a flat 2D perspective, but still, without shadows for bullets and ghosts it was difficult to discern their actual position: just how far are they actually hovering over the ground?

FodderLabs responds:

Thank you for playing the game!

Sounds like the collision boxes from Bleek will make you "shriek". :P (Bring on the silly poetry! >:D)

We are working on adding some additional content, with different mechanics + additional power-ups.

As for a story... We are thinking of keeping this as an arcade style game, but I would love to explore a story with this character and it's world for a sequel/ spin-off! :D

We've made some tweaks to the collision box (now it's the shadow of the player), but maybe we should revisit the collision boxes of the enemies + projectiles.

But currently, the collision for the ghost and projectiles is actually flat, no hovering or any collision on a z-axis for this game. If it overlaps with the player's shadow, she will take damage.

Hope this helps!

And thank you for the kind words and giving some good feedback! :D

Hopefully we can keep up a good streak with Bleek. ;D

[Dinosaurs Attack Collab 2023]

Pretty cool art collab! It is just a slideshow which is pretty plain jane, but it makes up for it with an interesting concept, reactive buttons, fun interactivity in flipping in cards to compare/constrast with the original, and some nice quality-of-life features such as being able to immediately go to the artist's page by clicking on their names. I easily found myself getting addicted at flipping through all the entries: well done!

As a side note, one of the song intro's sounds so similar to the Leviathan raid theme in FFXIV, at least to me if I'm remembering right, maybe it was another raid but it was definitely from FFXIV: wonder if the musician @namosaurus would find that amusing, haha.

namosaurus responds:

Thank you so much for the love, I know nothing about FFXIV but thanks! I'll def gonna check it out!

[The Ghost of the Witch: An Ear-ie Halloween Headphone Adventure]

Wow, quite the interesting adventure game you got here! I unfortunately never experienced one of these so I don't quite get the nostalgia, but as a fan of adventure games like King's Quest, I was down for what this was offering.

I gotta admit, considering I'm a person who needs to put on subtitles for everything and has a severe lack of imagination, I was really worried at whether I'd be able to play this audio journey. And yes, while it was tricky to navigate with a lack of visuals, no text log, and some difficult to parse voices (not so much a problem with the VAs I think, more a me problem with understanding accents), as well as tedious to replay voice lines to get the one bit of information you want, I did nevertheless appreciate the commitment to the bit and greeted the development with good cheer, especially since it was presented with such charm and care.

For the most part I really enjoyed myself with this, but if I did have a substantial complaint, it would be that I was frustrated it had no save/load option: I find it difficult to beat games like this in one go, and with my slow pace, I believe I might take even more time than the estimated 40 minutes. Hoping to beat it at some point, but I'm almost hoping that there is a save/load that I missed in the overly verbose instructions that you could tell me about (or maybe patch in later)!

KittyhawkMontrose responds:

Thanks so much for the thorough and awesome review and for appreciating the commitment to the bit, which, granted, is sometimes a barrier to getting to the adventure. XD

There was a planned password feature (again, in keeping with the bit) but the passwords were overly long. You're right that it's a worthy concession to QOL though. All of the save menu dialog was recorded, so if we do go back, we'll definitely add saves.

Again, thank you so much for giving this so much of your time despite the frustrations. If you do decide to give it another go, there are a few features that you might have missed that help to speed things along! The first is that ALL dialog is interruptible, and there's no need to wait between presses for choices to become available. You can literally beat the game in moments by pressing a "correct" sequence of keys one after another. The second is that most locations have a long and a short description, with the long one always being played when you move from one location to another. By using the '5' key when you move into a location, you can interrupt the long description and hear the short one. Lastly, and this is almost more of an easter egg: try playing the game in a browser with the JavaScript console open. ;D

Again thanks so much for meeting this little novelty on its on terms. Your thoughts are always helpful!

[Hauling Ass]

Quite the goofy game! I quite like the presentation and general comical appeal the game has, as well as the nice touches to certain aspects like the credits and the menu especially, where you made aspects like difficulty selection have a physical satisfaction to them by flipping a switch. Speaking of difficulty, the choice to make it require a more diverse selection of buttons was a much more interesting choice than other typical difficulty modifiers like just increasing the amount of laps and such.

While the general gameplay is somewhat fun, I do feel like its ultimately rather one-note and easily loses its appeal quickly, especially since it is rather dry and devoid of any juicy effects that you think would be present in such a goofy game like this: the most it has is playing a fart sound when you miss a key and it just doesn't feel like enough. I'll admit that I might not be getting the best experience since I'm playing it singleplayer, though.

If I were to be nitpicky, I also found it a bit annoying that we can't use the numpad for entering numbers in gameplay, and I found it a bit odd that, if you lose in singleplayer, it still plays victory music, which should technically only be heard by our opponent while we should be hearing downer music instead.

[MÆRE]

Wow, quite the spooky game! Really impressed me a lot and reminded me of other games like Amnesia (where looking at monsters wracks your sanity but is necessary to determine where they are) and FNAF (having to juggle so many different elements that force you towards taking scary risks). Absolutely loved having to strategize, listening intently with my headphones to determine where the monsters were and therefore when it was safe to glance at areas and regain my confidence. All in all just felt wonderfully crafted in many respects, and not only delivered some great scares in gameplay, but had some stylish poetry intermissions as well, haha.

The only thing that really brought it down for me was that the game was a bit too easy and short, what with its bite-size levels with constant checkpoints for break time: it just doesn't really allow you enough time to build dread and tension and deal with the repercussions of errors in the long-term. I know it's a bit unfair to say since I was technically engaged and enjoying myself, but there was a nagging feeling at the back of my head that thought it might all just be smoke and mirrors without a proper fail state or actually engaging strategy. It's not necessarily that I want it to be hard, but I do want to be properly, convincingly engaged with the mechanics and be fearful of failure, and this kind of lost me there.

As much as I was a little let-down, I still found the experience not only incredibly memorable, but very promising for improvement. I would absolutely love some sort of endless mode where you evade random scares as long as you can for a high score, or some sort of FNAF-style level structure where you need to survive a series of long nights that get more and more challenging as you go.

[Sentient Cleaning Device]

Wow, quite the unique game! Fascinating 'limited perception' idea for a horror game that somewhat reminded me of games like Scanner Sombre or Perception, or many others that use mechanics like camera flashes for lighting dark areas.

While you'd think having to slowly print a black and white pixelated image every few seconds would be incredibly tedious (and in a way, it is) I was nevertheless enthralled at the novelty of navigating the world in such a unique way. Really impressed at the commitment to the bit as well, even modeling certain aspects like how turning while the picture is printing will distort it with new data, and having a great soundscape that helps for determining your location. All in all felt very slick and well-made!

Speaking of the soundscape, the other thing it does well is creating a very spooky game. Never being quite sure what you're looking at or hearing due to the low-quality distortion, worried what might show up on your next picture, and even second-guessing yourself at whether something moved or if it was just your imagination: the game had me on tenterhooks the whole time for some sort of big twist.

If I were to have any complaints, it's that the game did feel a bit short, one-note, and lacking some sort of story with an impactful end. As I just said, the game does a great job at delivering a dreadful atmosphere, and while part of me is glad that it didn't jumpscare me or anything, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't some sort of cool story progression with events like maybe once you're done cleaning and go back to the charger, suddenly you notice the door is now closed, and then you notice the body gone that was there before, and so on and so forth.

But then again, I do kind of like that it just asks questions and doesn't provide answers and still scared me even without destroying my ears, so maybe it actually should be considered a positive that it tricked me into being scared when there was nothing to be scared of? I'm rambling: whatever, neat game!

[Dude - The Deck Swabber]

Hey, pretty neat game! Feels like a legit bootleg NES game that you'd see from some company like Color Dreams or Wisdom Tree. For the most part the game feels pretty well-constructed and delivers some decent sokoban-style puzzles. I was impressed at how some levels intuitively taught certain rules from their layouts, like how sponges work in that they can stop you from sliding (but be careful of the fact that you still push it a tile in doing so).

Now, as much as I liked it, you'll notice that I compared it to bootleg games instead of proper games you'd get from Konami or something (boy, times have changed huh). And that's because it is a bit lacking in some regards:

For one, it is quite a drab game due to a lack of juice. I was disappointed that certain actions like using a sponge on a oil spill just had the sprites immediately disappear: would've much preferred if it produced a satisfying soap bubble explosion sprite and a pop/wiping sound effect. Similarly, it'd be cool if when you finish the objectives of a level, the bucket sparkles or glows in a pleasant way, similar to when you collect everything in a game like Solomon's Key. Little things like that would help to liven up the game considerably.

Another aspect that bothered me slightly was the pace and difficulty curve of the game: it just didn't feel like it was delivering a solid and addictive engagement due to the difficulty suddenly dipping back down at times, lots of puzzles having too much wiggle room, and the game not introducing enough new mechanics or twists. I imagine it eventually gets better, but I found myself getting a bit tired around level 10 or so due to the slow pace.

It's still a nice game, but if I were to be brutally honest, I'd say it is merely nice, instead of being something great or memorable. Not a crime or anything, but it did make me wish for more!

RichardOz responds:

I thank you very much! Regarding the rest, I totally understand the examples you gave and what you said and I personally agree with it in part, I don't agree with it fully because there are two factors about it, the first factor is that the game is a game for NES and that alone means really optimizing everything to the maximum to have a good product, visual effects, sounds and all, the second factor is that although you can do something more elaborate even for NES I couldn't do it because basically I am not a programmer but a cartoonist and animator, I used a game engine which made the development of the game even more limiting, I love to work on the details when I make something so believe me when I say that I did everything I could to be able to take advantage of the game engine to the maximum, you can try the engine yourself.

Regarding the difficulty of the game it was intentional that you had to have easier and harder rooms to detach yourself from the world and experience 30 minutes of carefree play as Dude, he doesn't care if something in a room is too dirty or not too dirty, while whistling he cleans up and is carefree, this let's say was the main purpose, to play and relax without having to think too much, so well-balanced difficulty without rage or anything like that, there is to consider that the game doesn't even have a save so you would have to complete everything in one run and so increasing the difficulty would have stressed the player, which I was trying to avoid
I will play difficult games, but that's not it.

While about the fact that I bored you already at room 10 I am sorry, I will work and study even more to improve my next games, you can already have a look at my portfolio, follow me on twitter or join the discord to stay updated on the next news about Dude - The Deck Swabber and other games

"merely nice" is not so bad for a small game of this scale! I thank you again!

[Cursed Dreams]

I really liked the concept behind this game: going into the dreams of each family member who has their own themed minigame is promising for helping to keep things fresh and interesting with a lot of variety. And I did like that walking around the house wasn't just a vehicle to get to the family members: there were a lot of interesting interactables with fun flavor text for people who want to explore!

But at the end of the day, all of the minigames felt incredibly simplistic, bland, and one-note: sure, there were a lot of them, but it was a real quantity over quality situation where none of them were particularly fun or deep, all of them feeling like they put the bare minimum effort in design. Some of them at least kept things short to match their mechanical depth, but then you had games like the sister's top-down shooter which overstayed its welcome: seeing that I had to kill 100 dolls made me practically quit right then and there. If I were to sum it up, this felt like a clone of Action 52: more games doesn't always equal more fun!

Pitigamedev responds:

Thank you for the detailed feedback as always. I hope one day I will make a game you will 100% enjoy.