FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cathedral Nautilus: Virgiliath]

Hmm, as a lover of cool boss fights, I really want to like this game, but overall while it does deliver some flashy stuff and has a interesting back-and-forth health/ammo system, it just feels incredibly clunky. I suppose it's understandable for being made on such a short notice, but still, I feel like these issues have come up before in previous games so it's a bit disappointing to not see them ironed out yet.

*While I certainly like some juice in my games and this aims to deliver, this game is just overdoing it with way too much explosions and particles that the screen becomes a confusing mish-mash. I could barely tell what was happening: death always came as a surprise to me since there was no feedback if I was hit.

*While the camera zoom-in when you're sword-comboing the boss is a neat effect, it shouldn't come at the detriment of no longer being able to see the HUD: not being able to see my health or the bosses health makes this already confusing game even more confusing. In general, HUD elements should always be absolutely positioned and not influenced by camera changes.

*I feel like the way dialogue boxes should work is that, if you press while the text is being typed out, it should fast-forward to fill-out the text, and then await another press to move forward to the next box. In this, however, pressing while the text is being typed skips to the next box outright, making it frustrating to read at your own pace.

*I hate how you both can't hold down the attack button to keep swinging your swords, and that the rate of fire for swinging your swords isn't limited in some way: not only does that mean I need to keep mashing the key which can be painful, but it means that the game can be unfairly won by having an auto-clicker while people without dexterous fingers have a harder time.

*There's just a lot of weird awkward things, like being able to move and attack during dialogue or when you're fading back in after death instead of being locked down, weird delays between walking up to a door or dying and then the transition happening, not sure where hitboxes are, etc.

At its heart, this seems like it would be a great explosive boss battler, and I like where you're going: just needs some polishing and more fine-tuned execution.

[9 Cam]

Wow, color me surprised with this one! It may not make the best impression with its visuals and slight clunkiness, and while I do think that the story was a bit unsatisfying and it didn't quite push the camera concept as hard as I'd like it too (for example, some of the final challenges like the laser room can be beat too easily by just staying in the center when I would've loved if it pulled more perspective tricks), I found myself easily getting addicted to this due to its intriguing 9-camera perspective and its steady escalation of puzzles and mechanics. Basically, I think this is a pretty good example of the classic gameplay trumps graphics (and as much as I'm dissing the visuals, they still have some style and serve to evoke a rather mysterious mood). Quite the experience, and I guess I need to look up HalfQuake now...

Mantis1 responds:

Thanks a lot! I had trouble coming up with puzzle ideas that utilize the 9 camera concept. I specifically wanted levels that are not mazes, frustrating platformer challenges, or can be more understandable with 1 camera. I appreciate your review!

[Spooky Tripeaks]

Huh, solitaire ain't really my jam and I have no idea how to play it, so I was really worried about this game, especially since it doesn't seem to offer any overt tutorials or instructional text. But lo and behold, through a combination of intuitive design and a great, juicy, polished UI that helps you through subtle reactive means, I was actually able to make my way through this, learning bit-by-bit and having a good deal of fun! The music can get a bit repetitive and I wish certain elements like building up a combo to get a Joker were a bit more exciting and prominent given the struggle, but like I say, overall this feels pretty nice.

[Grave Danger]

Ummm...call me stupid, but...how do you start the game? I can walk around and dig but the title screen doesn't go away and the game never seems to start. It is an unfinished game jam entry? I can retry later if it gets patched or explained or something.

EDIT: Ok, now I've actually been able to play the game proper by holding down the key. It's a decent little arcade game, but unfortunately I found it rather awkward and frustrating. I like the idea behind the game getting more and more harder since burying creates tombstones that make it more difficult to walk around, but the execution didn't work for me: most of the time it just led to coffins appearing in blocked-off areas or on top of others which made it an inevitable failure.

Extar responds:

You need to hold X to start. :)
I've uploaded a more up-to-date version.

[Disguise and Conquer]

Cute game with a pretty decent idea where you dress for the occasion with your limited resources, but felt kind of dry and insubstantial, not making the most of it: would've loved it if for every costume we put together, we were to get a funny little cinematic where it shows us in-costume at whatever event we planned for and we can see the earthling's response and be graded. That'd feel so much better than the current setup and would really encourage replays. Also, when you put together a costume but then cancel, I don't think it should reset you to no clothes: keep everything on and let us adjust instead.

AhWham responds:

Thank you for the review! Cutscenes showing the consequences of your picks were planned, unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of free time during this jam to make it the best it could be so a lot of features and replay incentives were scrapped to put out a complete game. As for resetting the clothes, that was done to prevent a bug of rewarding the player with no points if they canceled and then hit confirm without changing the clothes. I admit it was a bandaid fix and if I had put more time into this, it could've been much better.

I do hope, if I have the time and motivation in the future, to make an update/sequel that'll push this concept to its peak and make an overall great game

[1-BIT HALLOWEEN]

Decent little short story game! In general the game feels well-made and polished, and I like the way it's all presented like a play where it's all on one screen with all rooms and elements visible: makes for some fun moments like seeing the kid interact with Eyezy while you're occupied talking with the mother still. Some of the visuals and interactions are quite creepy too.

I gotta admit, however, that I found the story rather unsatisfying. Once I got past all of the ways you can get kicked out before the story even starts by saying some rather innocuous things, it just didn't lead to a good payoff. It was also annoying for replays that you have the correct answer to the child's intro question about the rain as the second response: this means that, despite being able to mash through every other response to get back to where you were, you have to slow down there lest you get an immediate game over and start all over again. As a huge fan of CYOA books who enjoys finding all of the unique endings, this felt like a quantity over quality situation where all the bad endings are just insubstantial, purposeless filler and even the good ending fails to satisfy, so much that I wouldn't even be sure if it was the good ending despite it being the case.

[Expedition 32]

Huh, neat little game! It's a little repetitive and slow and kinda dry in some aspects, but I liked the general presentation, it felt pretty smooth with no major bugs that I encountered, and the core spraypaint mechanic was quite satisfying and novel to use both for solving puzzles and for deterring monsters! Was also impressed that you even coded it so that the solutions were randomized, so you couldn't just find the solution, die, then race straight to the exit with your previous solution memorized: this forces you to ensure that you do the whole run of searching for answer then making it to the exit legit.

[Ruins of Paradise]

Hmm, a decent little dungeon crawler! The story, visuals, and exploration were pretty good as I liked reading all of the logs, collecting items and seeing weird creatures, but the game was held back by the tedious menus/navigation, rather dry combat and annoying random encounters/resource management. It was short enough that I made it to the end, but it was good that it ended when it did as my resources started to fall apart and I needed to awkwardly redo the boss fight after dying and just spam it down.

Seethe-Thorn responds:

Thank you for your feedback I really appreciate it!

[MATCHBOX]

Hey, this was pretty cool! It's short, sure, and a bit janky with weird visual glitches and some odd interactions, but I found myself really immersed into this spooky story experience! I wasted no time playing this several times over: even though the story always generally goes the same way, I still liked the little choices and interactions you could do and seeing the different responses, and was impressed at how some of them were more subtle than others, like not bothering to attack the creature with the knife. In general the writing and graphics were very evocative and it all led to a great 'title drop' finish as I doused myself and set it all alight!

In terms of feedback, as said before, the game can be quite janky in general. Some specific aspects that bothered me were moments like the photo appearing in your inventory before picking it up, weird visual glitches that sometimes even obscure text you're trying to read, examining the knife giving you the description of 'now covered with blood' even if you forgo attacking the creature with it, and whatever the heck was going on with the 'sound' if you can even call it that, haha. Nothing was too bad, but glitchy stuff like this did take me a bit out of the experience when everything else was doing its best to immerse me. It's a testament to the game that I kept continuing with the story in spite of the oddities because I just wanted to see the end!

WURMxFUD responds:

Wow, thanks for taking the time to play it so much! This was for a jam project so I definitely feel you on the jank- there's lots of areas that I think would benefit from more polish. That said, means a lot that you found it so immersive! Definitely will take your feedback into my next project, I appreciate such in-depth thoughts on it!

[Creature Collab 2023]

Pretty cool art collab! It may just be a slideshow of art, but I like the effort in theming the experience by putting all the art in their own test tubes, as well as providing some fun info to read about each piece. Also appreciated being able to go to an artist's profile by clicking on their name: makes it much easier to follow or check out the rest of their art if you see a creature that catches your eye!

If I were to have complaints:

I did feel like the aforementioned test tube theming was a bit low-effort: it all just looks incredibly static and boring, and the creatures don't even look like they're in test tubes, but rather standing in front of them. If you made the creatures color-tinted to match the liquid in their test tube, made them animate to move up and down a bit to simulate bobbing, and put some bubbles to float in front and behind them, then it would look like they were properly immersed and make it look a lot cooler, in my opinion. If you look at Xavier from @Zfert, that's getting somewhat close to what I'm suggesting where it looks like it is properly floating in the tube!

I also found the buttons to be a bit clunky, especially with the way you can hit buttons that are under the info pop-up which doesn't make any sense: you should disable any buttons that the info pop-up is blocking, or reduce the size of the info pop-up so it doesn't block those buttons, whichever works for you.

Nebulate responds:

Yeah… the creatures being static in the test tubes was also pointed out in the discord server. But the imiges was too big to be floating up and down or smth (i wassnt the programmer). Still glad that you found this cool. At least it was more unique than the previous creature collab.