FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Daymare Cat 10-year Anniversary Edition]

Neat stuff! Unfortunately I haven't played the original Daymare Cat so I'm missing out on the sense of nostalgia as well as a point of comparison for changes made between versions, but it was still interesting to see this piece of history as a newcomer!

Overall I thought it was a decent short and sweet experience, but if I were to be rough, I'd say that the game is largely carried by its vibes, as while the art style and music are very cool, the game itself is pretty ho-hum, being short in length with janky feeling platforming and no real sense of puzzles or challenge. Perhaps this is unfair as I'm comparing it to games nowadays instead of back then. But then again, those vibes and their sense of mystique did push me all the way through the game, so hey, it was clearly enough, and I enjoyed seeing the music come together with the ending cinematic!

I'll have to check out Slice of Sea sometime!

[Raide]

Another Kultisti classic! Love the puzzles in how intuitive, challenging and creative they are, love the charming story and visual design, love the chill vibes, love the overall smooth as silk feel to the game, and love the extra bit of secret mysteries to keep you going! Not much else to be said: it's just cool and fun and I'm always amazed at the consistency!

[Hive Blight]

Yowza, this is looking to be a fantastic autobattler! I was really impressed at the game's overall construction as it felt very professional, intuitive and polished, so much so that despite not being a fan of autobattlers, I easily found myself getting sucked in and enjoying myself!

In particular I want to give a lot of praise to certain elements:

*I loved how intuitive and informative it was to track aggro by seeing the exclamation points over enemies when you place or hover over your units.

*I loved the way the shopkeeper would get excited as you hovered over items, increasing as you hold it.

*I loved how when you are awarded nectar after a fight, you can see it fly towards your units and towards your bank, intuitively teaching the player that nectar is split between being spent to heal them to full (and there's a tooltip to clarify this as well).

And so much more to praise! That being said, in the interest of helping this game develop, here's some feedback for areas that could use some work:

*It's understandable since it's early in development, but I was irked but some of the visual fidelity inconsistencies. In essence, the game looks so good in some areas that other areas look very bland in comparison: I really felt the lack of transitions between scenes, and in particular the map screen was dull as dishwater compared to other screens like the shop. There were also some weird graphical glitches like tooltips not appearing over other elements properly.

*It would be really annoying when I'd go to pick up a unit and drag them to another space but I end up snatching one of their items out of their inventory instead. Maybe there can be a way to lock this down, like only allowing inventory management in the green roster zone but not in the field?

*Found it weird that the initial speed is fast-forward? Would prefer if the game would start on normal speed and have the player elect to speed it up if they want.

*Combat could get very messy and confusing at times to determine who is attacking who and whether effects are going off. Perhaps there could be a bit more to the visual design to make it more clear what is happening so you can figure out weak spots in your formation. Maybe there can be a combat log?

Looking forward to seeing how this develops!

[An idle nightmare]

Wow, this game sucked me in more than I thought! I'm not really much for idle/clicker games, but something about this with its whole horror themed elements and creepy graphical design compelled me to keep going. In essence, it tricked me as it didn't feel like an idle/clicker game, but more like a mysterious adventure! I feel kind of silly letting these superficial elements deceive me like smoke and mirrors, but hey, that's the magic of video game design, so well done on that!

So far I've played the game to completion and gotten the first ending, and I did so by playing it as you'd expect where I stay safe and cautious. I'm assuming that in order to get the second ending, I'll need to intentionally mess up by staying in the corridors too long or torturing the cultists too much to build up trauma points so I can unlock those tomes in the basement. Again, I'm surprised at myself for actually wanting to go through and do this since it is a dumb clicker game and I'm sure it'll be bad times all around for the people in the story, but this game has its hooks in me! Having said that, I need to wait a bit to do so because my wrist and fingers are in pain, haha!

adriendittrick responds:

sorry for your fingers, and thanks for the well thought out review as always :)

[sæter]

Hmm, not too shabby! Reminds me of games like Lemmings or Gyromite due to the whole escort concept.

For the most part, I think the game shows some good potential. Having to race back and forth between gathering resources and building the bridge is fun and has some strategic depth to it where you need to factor in distance and optimal order, and later on it escalates the challenge with enemies to contend with. The game also has a very goofy and weird aesthetic to it that adds a certain amount of charm.

Having said that, it is quite rough and janky at the moment:

*I found the targeting system for building platforms very awkward: you'd think that you would build a platform directly above you, but instead you need to stand weirdly to the side to build where you want to. Just really finicky and weird, which can be frustrating when you need to be quick and precise. In general the game has a really inconsistent sense of depth or perception of the psuedo-3D space.

*I didn't like how you don't know where the exit is when you start a level: this led to me sacrificing runs where I'd just go forth and find out where it is, restart, and then build the bridge based off of that knowledge. I'd prefer if the game points it out with an arrow, or does a little camera swoosh to show you where it is before going back and starting the level proper.

*I like that the lemmings will eventually fast-forward when they see the exit, but I'd prefer if we could manually order them to fast-forward as it can be very finicky when they start and I hate to wait when I've already completed the bridge.

*It's to be expected for a game jam game, but the visuals, animations, hitboxes, and basically lots of things just have a rough and awkward feel to them.

*Bummer that there is no save/load or at least a level select.

Overall it's an ok game jam result: it's rough, but the concept is interesting that I'd like to see it fleshed out and polished!

[Home 45 Min Experience!]

Wow, this certainly looks to be quite the RPG you're making! First impressions are incredibly positive as the visual presentation is very impressive, the world and characters are charming with lots of goofy dialogue, little interactions and lively animations, and the combat being challenging and unique with its music/rhythm-based mechanics. Overall just smacks of extreme potential and I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops!

In order to help that development, here's some feedback:

*Really wish the game had some sort of save system, especially since it's a long experience to play through at the moment in one sitting, but also because it would be more helpful to experiment with the systems and provide more feedback!

*Find it weird that the defense input is colored red when all the other inputs are consistently blue. I guess the intention is that defense is used on red notes? But because the defense note is colored red, it makes me think it's disabled/locked or does something bad or something. Just strange.

*I thought it was a bit too verbose and confusing when explaining the special move mechanic. First, I think you just need to say that if you hit notes correctly, you'll build up your bar and can do a special move when it goes green: don't bother explaining all the numbers and junk, keep it simple! Second, when it said to do the special move on a 'free note', I thought it meant empty space, like a black line: I didn't realize it meant to use it on a normal/attack/white note.

*I don't mind getting lost to a degree, but I found it a bit weird that there is no straightforward dirt path from the house to Joh at the start: makes it really confusing to determine where to go at the beginning and you could get roped into a lot of fights and such that you might've thought were necessary.

*Difficulty is pretty hard starting out for combat, particularly the mushrooms, where it is throwing in some challenging note charts with all sorts of tricky melodic beats. This early on, I think it should stick to something easy like strong beats. I suppose it's nice to get a preview of where the combat will build up to though, but I just think it's too much too soon!

*Defeating enemies results in the game freezing in an unsatisfying manner: I actually thought the game broke when I won my first fight since it was so awkward! We need some more fanfare and a satisfying death animation for the enemy instead!

*Combat is nice, but there's something unsatisfying about it. I'm just not able to feel a satisfying connection between pressing the notes on time and fighting the enemy: I need stronger and more satisfying feedback, particularly sound effects, to let me know I'm making progress in the fight. Another reason for this vague disconnection might be that I can't focus on the combat animations because I'm too busy looking at the notechart: maybe there's a way the UI can be redesigned to keep both visible?

Hopefully this can help!

[The Funnel]

Hah, pretty interesting game! I really like the vibes and presentation as they gave off a heck of an amusing first impression: I just loved how weird the world seemed and loved all the charming touches like the diegetic instructions you get to read and the HUD where you need to manually reload and watch the player's eyes dart around. The thing that let me down was the gameplay though: it starts off ok and I wanted to keep going, but it doesn't take long for it to just feel tedious with the way it's just the same enemies over and over but more of them, and the power-ups never get more interesting either in a way that would freshen things up.

BingoWaders responds:

Thanks for the review! I will try to build on it in the future

[Hidden Dinosaur]

Huh, not too shabby! Navigating these labyrinths took me right back to playing Golgo 13 The Mafat Conspiracy on NES (or perhaps more appropriately, Jurassic Park on SNES?)

The game overall has a very polished and quality look and feel to it which enticed me to play more and more. The concept is nice, but I'd admit I found my attention flagging around 10 levels or so as the levels didn't feel like they were increasing in difficulty in a satisfying way. They were introducing new mechanics but it never felt like things were stepping up significantly: everything was just a bit too easy and bite-size, and the levels just started to blend together in a blur.

Again, while this didn't quite get me, it's not a bad idea, nor a bad attempt as the construction behind the game is solid, so I'd definitely love to see future games from you as you look to have some decent chops.

[Type For Your Life]

Hmm, I certainly like typing games and this is not bad as a foundation for that type of game, having some niceties like the text highlights for direction, but the execution left me a bit bored.

Every enemy seemed to just be more of the same, neither escalating the challenge or varying the mechanics in an interesting way that matches their characters (and when it did differ, like the one that makes you type the same one character over and over, it was for the worse, not better). Furthermore, the tension of the chase is lessened by both the way the camera is so zoomed out, and the game just overall felt very bland, lacking pizazz and effects needed to heighten the mood.

It definitely could be something nice, but right now it's just a decent rough draft/foundation I'm seeing.

Also I felt a bit weird that I got caught by the demon but my timer hadn't depleted yet. Unsure if that's a bug or if there's supposed to be a weird desync between distance and time?

errorerratum responds:

Thanks for the review!

I had wanted to differentiate the enemies via the content of the sentences/paragraphs as well as how they attacked. Changing the typing mechanic more than once would have made the characters more notable but honestly I can't think of too many different typing challenges.

I do like the idea of bringing the camera closer to the action and adding more effects, however I did want this game to be a bit more "toned down" in its gameplay.

As for the demon thing: All the enemies will "catch" you if you get too close to them, regardless of where the timer is. The only thing the timer indicates is how long the challenge will last.