FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[MUSESTRUCK DEMO]

Wow, this is looking to shape up to be quite the adventure! While it was difficult to get the game to run initially in the browser, once it did, it made quite the positive first impression as the overall look and feel of the game felt very professionally-done and well-polished! There's just so much to get excited about: the charming characters and dialogue, the awesome boss fights, the strategic character swapping mechanics, the mysterious story, and so on and so forth. It's just got some great vibes and I look forward to seeing how it shapes up!

That being said, there were some rough spots in my experience with the game, which I'll outline below:

*Call me impatient, but I really felt like the start of the game is just too overly wordy and constantly interrupting you to deliver loads of exposition. Yes, I like flavor text and all the charming dialogue you've written, but even after so much time playing the game, I didn't feel like I actually got to 'play' it and get a real feel for it, if that makes sense. Let me get into the action quicker so I even know what kinda game I'm in for! I was shocked at how cool the boss fights were later on and with how easy and wordy the game was before then, I could've easily quit before getting that far since I had no idea it would go there!

*The character swapping currently feels very token: you pretty much switch between them at very obvious staged points, like where there is a wall too high to jump over, or where there is a literal green wall that can only be broken by Quinn. Yes, there are cool parts here and there that feel more organic, like where you need to switch to Journey to make walls to jump over a charging boss, but I'd like to see the characters get more unique and complementary in creative ways. Hopefully it does so as the game continues.

*As mentioned a bit earlier, the difficulty can really spike up and down, with bosses being great challenges but the levels between them being very simplistic and linear. Hoping that the levels get some more exciting elements to them, and to be fair, it seemed to be doing so as the game went on.

*The story is nice, and maybe I'm being reductive, but it feels like it is hitting a lot of the same beats that other games like Undertale have done. For example, I see a lot of Papyrus DNA in Plum with the way they are trying to be nice and chivalrous and set up all sorts of puzzles despite being tasked with hunting us down. I just hope that the game has something unique to say, though hey, ain't nothing wrong with imitating your favorites (hell, I do it).

*The controls were a bit awkward at times, particularly when it comes to shooting bullets: I didn't like how they change their velocity depending on your movement since it would throw me off, and I didn't like how awkward and delicate you need to be with placing platforms, like you can't accidentally fire one more bullet than 3 otherwise it deletes them all and weird stuff like that. I also thought the need for two separate buttons for skipping/advancing dialogue was unnecessary when they can be the same button.

[5 min without TV !]

Pretty cute little game! The game has a very charming look and feel to it, and I like the concept and challenge of stacking all sorts of furniture awkwardly together to somehow build up a tower. All in all, seems like a very short and sweet little arcade game that is fun to go back for a higher score!

Unfortunately, I suck at it! I'm willing to admit that part of this is probably a skill issue, which is why I'm still overall positive on it. But I do have to admit that there are some frustrating aspects with the game itself that get in the way of my enjoyment, like how sometimes the game would remove control of an object before it even makes contact with the tower which leads to less than optimal placement, or how sometimes I just get myself into what feels like an impossible jam to get out of because of how terrible a huge portion of the items are to work with. Can't help but wonder if there could be some subtle changes made to keep the feel but reduce frustration, like maybe a grace period for moving pieces even after making contact, similar to how it works in Tetris.

As a side note, do the youth of today even know about TV static and antennas? Boy, I feel old...

Dominoobscure responds:

Thank you! Glad you still appreciate the game even if it's really flawed. So yeah, I think we could have handled the placement a bit better your frustration is legit. I too think the hitbox for dropping furniture could be more accurate, but I didn't have time to fix that during the jam nor after haha

[ZIMA - Temple of Souls]

Seems like a pretty promising adventure game! There wasn't that much to chew on, being just a short demo, but the journey through the temple was filled with a decent variety of traps, obstacles, and hidden treasures to contend with, and I really enjoyed how the dog is an actual sidekick that you need to work together with! There's enough on display to make me want to see the final product, so I look forward to it!

If I were to have any complaints:

*I hate to say it, but the main character is pretty ugly and awkward in how she animates, especially for the basic walk cycle which looks incredibly stiff. It's like she is made of jello with the way her body proportions warp wildly from pose-to-pose. Could definitely do with a touch-up, I'd say.

*You should probably remove the shadow effect from the player character as it actually makes the world seem more flat since it doesn't distort based on other background objects.

*In the sword fight stage, there were a few times I got hit or killed for seemingly no reason, as the enemies didn't get anywhere close to me or the dog. Maybe some of the hitboxes are messed up? Dunno what happened there.

*I have no idea why you made it so that you need to jump against a wall to knock it down when you use your fists to break or hit everything else in the game. If you need to make a special sign that pops up to teach people to do something they'd never figure out on their own, you've messed up!

Not a complaint, but just a little note! That part where you fall into the water and tentacles come up to grab you if you don't move out fast enough? I recognize that reference! That's straight from the start of Out of This World (aka Another World) from Eric Chahi!

protomation responds:

Thank you for playing and for the brutally honest feedback, I appreciate it. Lots to think about for sure. ( Over a bottle of whisky. )

Glad you picked up on Another world! Just a quick nod to a game that had a huge impact on me years ago. It is kind of the type of atmospheric game I'm going for.

[Character Select Collab]

Not too shabby of an art collab! It is just your standard gallery presentation at heart, which is a bit of a letdown, but it does a decent job at adding enough bells and whistles to the overall presentation to make it match the fighting game theme, and it was rather amusing to see all of the characters rendered through other game creators like Soul Calibur!

That being said, I really wish the presentation and interactivity was a bit more spicy and exciting. Compared to character selects that you see in games like Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Under Night In Birth, Smash Bros, and so on, this just lacks charm and feels so sterile and lifeless, even when you go to the trouble to play the music which couldn't be included in the game (yes, I'm the one bitching about it, sorry, haha). I'd love some more cool effects like an announcer calling out the names for when you make a selection, voice barks from the characters, background animations, maybe make the bios display their special/super moves and their motion inputs, and so on. I just can't help but want more!

Obviously this is a big ask, but it'd be so awesome if this actually had a fighting game component attached to it where you can face off two selected characters. Not a full proper game, of course, that's way too complicated, but maybe just an automated rock/paper/scissors CPU match where you watch them take turns doing their moves and you can gamble on who wins or something.

TheJamarillo responds:

That would be so cool!

[Help! I'm Trapped on The Torment Trapeze]

This is a pretty neat game! Kinda feels like a alternate version of Dream Punk that plays around with similar upgrade gathering in a grappling world, but in a condensed form.

I'm a bit torn on my impression of the game. On one hand, I really like how wacky and crazy it is, and the concept of discovering all of the upgrades to eventually put together a coordinated heist with your ghosts to get all of the upgrades in a certain order and timing to allow you to reach the finish is very intriguing.

But on the other hand, it can just be so frustrating when you know what you want to do, you've already solved the puzzle, but the uncoordinated flip-floppy controls make it so that you can't reliably execute it! I wanna play this, but I just dread the constant retrys and paranoid thought that it might be all for naught when I discover I need to use a different approach and start all over, wasting so much time. And this is coming from someone who really likes foddian games like this.

Credit where it's due, though, the game does everything in its power to try and make the experience tolerable, such as having the convenient timeline display at the bottom, as well as the soul audit system to let you delete ghosts that are getting in the way. Because of this, I'll try and give it my best, but I just wanted to be honest that as much as I think this is cool, it can be a hard thing to enjoy, and don't be surprised if I never finish. But hey, it ain't called the happy-fun-time trapeze after all!

[Copper Odyssey 2 Demo]

Hmm, I'm not familiar with Copper Odyssey 1, so I'm not exactly coming to this in the best way possible, but I was certainly intrigued by this. Feels like a lot of work was done to create this very unique world and set of characters: even though it's an RPG Maker game (derogatory), it stands apart from a lot of the other clones I've seen with its surreal graphical touches and mystique. Basically, the vibes were really cool, and I wanted to dive in and learn more about this!

Unfortunately, as neat as the game was at first glance, I couldn't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing? Call me impatient or dumb, but I got the snacks for Lottle, talked with everyone to the point of exhausting their dialogue, explored everywhere I could, and I'm still stuck here. Maybe that's all the demo is? I just don't know.

It didn't help either that the game seemed to be a in halfbaked state. For example, the combat menu is all glitched out and cuts off menu options so it's difficult to get all of the information. Combat in general is really wild in how spiky and random it can be: can't tell if I'm doing something wrong or if I'm just supposed to avoid it or whatever.

So yeah, great first impression, but I got lost along the way: sorry!

[Panthalassa Demo (Web Version)]

Holy moley, this is some crazy shit you're peddling here: I love it!

Definitely seems like quite the surreal and wild point-and-click adventure, like some bizarre mish-mash of old edutainment games like the Magic School Bus and Cruelty Squad, most notably in terms of theming and interface design. It's confusing to grasp, but that's just part of the fun, and I loved messing around with all these alien systems to learn about their functions, kinda like learning a whole new language: like what in the hell does deep-frying eels have to do with restoring power??? The wild art design brings it altogether with some fascinating and mysterious vibes that keep me wanting to dig further. Great stuff!

It already looks to be in a very promising state, but if I were to offer any feedback:

*I hate to say this, but could the characters in this game just please shut the hell up? I love examining objects and reading flavor text in these games, but this is a case of too much of a good thing: it got really annoying and tedious to listen to these goobers yap on and on and ON for every single examined object. The intro in particular was really annoying because I couldn't even get a chance to examine anything when I open it with my own eyeballs before they interrupt me. It seriously feels like all dialogue exchanges could be cut in half across the board and nothing would be lost. Not having everything explained to me so directly as well would increase the level of mystery and allow me to have fun pondering the situation.

*I understand it adds to the vibes, but the amount of post-processing effects was ludicrous to the point of hurting my eyes. Still, the game does offer the options to turn them off, so that's nice.

*It might be intentional to add to the mystique, but I got a bit confused as to who 'I' am at times, like am I a separate person interfacing with Magellan and listening in, or am I actually Magellan? And is Magellan now the floaty white/green alien thingy? Not quite sure, but I'm sure it would become obvious over time.

*As said, I love figuring out how the machines work, but boy was I having a tough time figuring out how the offering machine works. I swear I'm following the instructions properly, but it wasn't clear whether clicking the center is how you confirm the offering or if it only flushes, whether I need to turn on and then off the pipes or just leave them on as I adjust intensity, and so on.

*I ended up playing the Steam version of this as the web version you've got here is wayyyy too tiny to be legible, especially when you're got all these post-processing effects distorting the text even further.

Consider this wishlisted, and I will attempt to spread the word as I know some other people who love this kinda stuff!

MeiaCalca responds:

Thanks for the lovely review! The feedback is very apreciated as well.

To answer your question about the offering puzzle, it works like a password, you need to input the correct combination of symbols at the correct intensity and then press the center button, if it glows red then you have typed in something incorrect, green means that you have attracted a sea creature to the observatory and blue means that you have already typed in that combination.

In terms of "who" you're playing as in the game, you will have to keep guessing

Thanks for playing and sharing the game!

[Captain Peggles: That Man's Chest]

Hah, this was a pretty cute and creative game! I didn't know what I was getting into at first, but I love the idea of this communal treasure map drawing game, especially as a fan of other navigation games like Miasmata. Reminds me a lot of something like Super Mario Maker, in a sense, and I was surprised at how charming and polished the look and feel of the game was considering it was made in such short order. I'm sure it isn't immune to trolling despite its best efforts to prevent it by challenging people to beat their own level with their own map, but hey, it's a lovely proof-of-concept that makes you imagine all the possibilities for expansion, and isn't that the point of a game jam game? Nice work!

[M.A.I.day]

Wow, this is a pretty cool retro action-platformer! First impressions were great as the music, art, and gameplay were very impressive, reminding me of NES classics like Vice: Project Doom. The game also had a good variety of enemies and obstacles to deal with that kept things exciting all the way through. Some of the platforming in the later sections gets really challenging and creative, and the final boss was quite the step up in difficulty from the mooks you deal with beforehand, but I love the challenge! Nice work!

However, there were a lot of annoyances that got in the way of the fun:

*There were a lot of deaths that were caused by the game's clunky controls and lack of quality-of-life features like input buffering or coyote time, and that made things feel really unfair and frustrating when the game is challenging enough as it is. Wall jumping and trying to dash jump again after landing from a dash jump was particularly annoying to pull off consistently with my inputs being ignored or something going wrong.

*The game doesn't explain certain mechanics like the dash jump, leading to a lot of initial confusion where I just couldn't figure out how to make certain jumps.

*The platforming section where you're jumping across moving platforms is annoying because they aren't consistently in-sync, meaning you can be waiting around a long time for the ideal moment to jump.

*The art is great, but sometimes it isn't clear what is in the foreground and what is in the background. I was constantly surprised by what the game considered a platform when I thought it was just set dressing (or vice-versa, leading to me plunging to my doom!)

*Was difficult to tell who was friend or foe at times: there are some NPCs in the mix who look like bad guys but don't get in your way, and that threw me off.

*Also I dunno what the point of the story was: just felt like dumb low-hanging fruit that didn't need to be there, but whatever, you can just ignore it and have fun, I suppose.

This is definitely a game I really want to love, and do in a lot of respects, but it's a tough one to love at times when the controls and physics are hard to get to cooperate! You're on the right track, though!

[Faith in Despair - Demo]

Wow, this one really surprised me!

I'll admit that I wasn't quite fair to this game on first glance, as I sighed heavily when I saw that it was yet another roguelike deckbuilder to add to the mountain of others. But that makes it all the more impressive that it won me over in the end!

I think a big aspect that helped get me into it was just how well-crafted the interface and the tutorials were: everything just felt incredibly smooth to manipulate and intuitive to understand, and when there was ever anything that wasn't obvious at first glance, there was something to help me along, like the various tooltips, battle log, and subtle signals like the golden lines, as well as being able to slow down the game speed.

The mechanics were also very interesting and added a lot of strategic flair to the game. Having to wager whether it's worth damaging my despair to play another card, moving around the condition/effect orbs from my inventory or from other cards to build my up army with all sorts of cool effects, determining the best way to handle the enemy to keep their orb effects from firing off: that's just so much depth to this! I can't get over some aspects like how free you are to move orbs around, even from existing spell cards onto your creatures!

All that aside, the game also just had a really dark and hallowed vibe to it. Some fantastic work here!

muddasheep responds:

Thank you very much for your kind words! I'm glad you still gave the game a try and that it won you over in the end.