FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[My Aunt's Cats]

Wow, didn't expect a Pico-8 game to be a point-n-click adventure, and a Clock Tower-esque one at that!

For the most part, I felt like this was a pretty short and sweet adventure! It was a bit confusing at first with the way it just dumps you in with no story or prompt to work from, but luckily as long as you follow your natural instincts to explore, everything starts going as it should. Presentation was really slick and solid, especially in terms of graphics, and I thought the touch of having a mood indicator for your character was cool. I felt like the chase scenes were pretty well-designed in how it naturally leads you around to discovering water, and later you have to outwit them by circling around to get to the basement door. Loved the cute little ending of the monster disassembling to feed on the cat food surplus, haha!

There were a few clunky and buggy aspects to the game, like how dying feels rather awkward and almost like it didn't happen clearly, and I had a weird case where it used my brass key on the stairs but then gave me it back after dying but I didn't use it again afterwards? Also in general some of the chase scenes were a bit weird with how it can spawn you in an unexpected position away from the door after going through said door, instead of just putting you in front of the door as it does when outside of a chase scene, and then spawning the monster behind you shortly after.

[M.U.N.K.E.]

I was very glad to see that, despite its low-effort thumbnail not giving a great first impression, that this game actually did have some effort put in to providing an unexpected memorable experience! The use of text prompts to move the tank around was quite novel and fun to get used to, especially as the game only gives you limited fuel and starts to add in all manner of obstacles that can throw you off. I was also very pleased to see all the secret commands you could enter: not only did it recognize the classic 'die' command, but a bunch of others like 'shit', 'fuck', 'newgrounds' and so on, all providing amusing responses. Looks like the monkey hasn't heard of 'chdonga' though, haha!

All that being said, the game did end up losing its luster rather quickly. Since you can just drive in absolute directions instead of having to turn, as well as being able to stop easily at any time to avoid overusing fuel, and obstacles not being that punishing in the first place, the game wasn't that challenging to completely conquer in no time flat. The levels also seemed to stop introducing any new elements past a point very early on that made it feel like the game just kept going on and on with no point and ending in sight despite me trying my best to keep continuing. I'm not even sure if there is an ending to the game with the way it just keeps going. To top it all off, I eventually died because my car glitched between two bricks and suddenly drained all my fuel instantly (I'm assuming when it got wedged inbetween it got in a bit of a crash loop).

So yeah, quite the memorable first impression, but didn't feel like it had enough content or challenge or sense of progression to last as long as it does: would've preferred if the game had more to it or just ended early before it ran dry to leave a better impression.

[Fat Fish Aquarium]

I'm always a little wary of these Ant games as I'm never quite sure whether the low-effort presentation will actually cleverly hide a well-constructed game, or if it will play as bad as it looks. It's a gamble, and in the case of Fat Fish Aquarium, I really wanted to like this game as it made a very solid impression with its goofy yet well-made retro Windows aesthetic and nice little touches like being able to click on the fish on the main menu. Gameplay looked like it was similar to idlers like Insaniquarium which I enjoyed, so I thought I won the gamble and was experiencing one of the great Ant games: I was all set for fun!

As the gameplay went on, however, I found myself feeling once again that I had been tricked, duped, and bamboozled. Yes, the gameplay did seem to be somewhat similar to Insaniquarium at a glance with its money generation through feeding the fish, but it was lacking all of the interesting management and strategy, and worst of all, the progression was criminally slow, like even worse than the progression of trying to play a free mobile game without spending money. I spent 10 minutes with the game and in that time, I wasn't even able to acquire enough money to buy a single other fish: call me impatient, but I don't feel like I should've had to wait even 2 minutes for such a simple thing to happen! It was just ball-achingly boring to only be able to wait on my single fish to generate anything, even worse since all I could do as a player was feed it and listen to its one single om-nom-nom soundbite over and over.

If I were to try and be nice, I suppose there could be the argument that the slower pace makes this more like a true idler game: something you leave on your second monitor as you do something else and only check on it every now and then, similar to a real fish tank. Unfortunately I don't think it works in this manner either as the amount of atmosphere and ambiance and simulation that the aquarium provides is very shallow, what with its repetitive and minimal variance in sounds, braindead AI and lack of random events.

So yeah: nice first impression, but it was all style over substance as I felt like the game lacked any fun mechanics or depth, and to put insult to injury, it progressed at a speed where I would expect the heat death of the universe to happen before I would be able to get all of the achievements.

AtreyuGilbert responds:

Yeah, I feel like pacing could definitely be improved. I remembered my original prototype of the game I showed to Ant as reference was actually a little faster paced, and I hope he can actually fix the pacing eventually. Thanks for your review!

[Must Escape The Haunted House]

Decent little escape room game! Certainly has some nice puzzles that are mostly simple but nevertheless fun to solve, along with some ones that'll wrack you brain for a bit of flavor. Found the artstyle and presentation to feel very vintage: mmm, smell that nostalgic old-school Flash style! Speaking of that, I do wish the castle and rooms had a bit more life and differing details to them as they can all end up looking the same apart from the puzzle implements within them (though I suppose this style does make it very readable to determine what objects are interactable and what aren't by avoiding unnecessary clutter, so it's not necessarily a bad thing). Again, fun little game and ended up beating it in 558 seconds!

[Glash: From Cinder To Cinderella]

While I do find the storybook aesthetic for this game quite charming, alongside its interesting story/concept and choice of presentation for the game field, the gameplay really didn't gel with me as it felt so dull and lifeless, and because of that, I found myself quitting quite early on. Crystals just didn't feel satisfying to collect and felt like tedious busywork, all of the new attacks felt lackluster and samey and annoying to memorize all their weird targetting zones, combat was frustrating with your attacks having both long charge times and short ranges that enemies can easily walk out of mid-charge, and every level just felt like more of the same and got repetitive quickly. I certainly think some aspects of the gameplay could be interesting, such as combat involving all sorts of moves with certain ranges and charges to manage while looking out for enemy telegraphs, but it all just felt so pointless in this lackluster world, especially from the audio department. Basically, stylish visuals weren't enough to make up for the lack of substance in gameplay for me.

[Complot]

Haha, had a good laugh and a lot of fun with this game! Not only does it have a very clever concept of invoking the absolutely bonkers world of 'connections' that conspiracy nutjobs get involved in, but I found the gameplay to be a very fun investigative gameplay that kept me hooked through the way it slowly increases the complexity of the connections and the amount of proof you must establish. Top that all off with a really cool and professional style of presentation, little touches like seeing how your theories pay off, and a feel of polish that made all the actions very intuitive and gave me no confusion in understanding how to play and this is a big winner in my book. Really takes me back to games like Papers Please or Case of the Golden Idol and so on. And what a crazy and intense ending to top it all off!

Only real bummer with the game was that it lacked a proper save/load. It's not the worst as, now that I know the answers, I can just power back to where I left off without too much trouble, but still, a hassle that I wish didn't exist. Also, wish the screen was a bit bigger as the text can be real tiny and difficult to read. Also I'd just love even more puzzles to solve!

[Dead Horizon: Demo]

It didn't make the greatest first impression on me what with its overwhelming and confusing start where it just dumps you in the thick of it, along with its terrible controller controls (a game that just uses a controller as a virtual mouse feels really bad to me), but nevertheless this game really impressed me in the end and I look forward to seeing more of it!

I was really impressed at the amount of choices and reactivity that the game has. It was really cool how the bad guy not only has so many lines when reacting to things you say, but also reacts to events like staying idle, or drawing early, or drawing/undrawing when you're got him down, and so on: really made the characters feel so alive and made replaying fun to see all the ways things can go down in the end. Fighting was neat as well where you have so many ways to dispatch the bad guy: you can fight him straight up by countering his attacks, or you can use your clever examination of the environment to find objects you can shoot first to distract him and make him a sitting duck, similar to an immersive sim like Deus Ex where you can outwit a strong opponent instead of fighting them straight up.

That's not to say that I don't still think the game can be rather confusing. There are some silly aspects that the game didn't notice that I feel like it should, like the fact that the guy only reacts if you draw your pistol, but not if you start reloading it: shouldn't that feel like just as much of a threat? Furthermore combat felt very odd and inconsistent where sometimes I couldn't tell whether I was doing damage or not: it seems like the game intends for you to only be able to hit the target when you either distract them with an environmental object first or shoot them when they are about to attack (exclamation point) but there would be times I'd kill him with a shot despite not doing those conditions.

Alongside all the great reactivity, the game has a wonderful and charming presentation to it all, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this ends up in the full version!

Emptygoddess responds:

You're amazing. Thanks for the feedback.

[Lunatic Lane]

I like the fast-paced Crazy Taxi-esque energy this game was going for where you race to pick up passengers with reckless abandon, smashing through houses and such, but overall the game felt very flat and undercooked to me, most likely due to its jam nature.

The game just felt really unfinished, especially with a lack of polish and special effects. While some aspects like running over kittens was fun due to the explosion of gibs it produces, the critical aspect of the game, aka picking up passengers, felt really boring due to the lackluster feedback: where's my style rankings, where's my score and time pop-ups, where's funny banter from the passengers, where's the satisfying ding and rattling of the score ticking up, and so on? With a really boring HUD and no feedback from passengers, it just felt like I wasn't making any progress until the game unceremoniously ends without even a 'time over' message or anything to signal it. There wasn't even a end score ranking or high score table to see how well I'm doing and compete with others, making it all feel pointless.

Moving on from that, I also felt like the car movement scheme was pretty boring: the fact that you just move in the direction of whatever arrow key you press immediately instead of having to make turns and build up momentum and such like, you know, a car does, really reduced the amount of fun and skill involved for driving.

First impression of the game was also really odd: there was a weird bug that happened to me where suddenly my speed got all out of whack and merely tapping the movement keys would send me blasting at light speeds knocking over houses and such. It was so fast I couldn't even pick up passengers because I would instantly overshoot their positions. Bizarrely, though, despite me moving so fast, I couldn't run over all of the cats that would swarm me. This luckily didn't happen to me on any of my other runs.

Certainly could be pretty decent, but again, most likely suffered from the jam time limit: kudos getting as much as you did in just three days.

[Down Hole]

Hrmm, unfortunately I didn't really have much fun with this.

The mechanics of the game just seem way too simple, the levels take almost no time before they just start repeating themselves and don't evolve in any significant way, I can't see what the goal or end could be, and the way maps seem to generate randomly with some coins in impossible to reach spots and such gives me no confidence in the game being smartly designed. There's just no fun goal or mechanics or anything that I can see, and the boredom sets in almost immediately.

To add insult to injury, the grind commitment that the game expects is crazy too: there's absolutely no way I would have the patience to get 100 coins to unlock a single character, let alone all of the characters, not to mention that since the game isn't that fun to play in the first place, what point are cosmetics going to do?

I'll at least give it that the game looks alright and does have some nice little effects here and there, but as long as the core gameplay isn't any fun, it's just smoke and mirrors. Also I did play it on mouse/keyboard so I understand that's likely not the ideal environment to play it on, but even when I tried on mobile it didn't make a big difference.

[ScatterPaws]

Hmmm, this one was rough for me: I really like the concept, but I think the execution was flubbed a bit!

There's a lot to like about this game in theory. The whole concept of a cat running around the house wrecking stuff for attention while dodging distracting cat toys under a time limit is very cute. Combine that with the vague laser pointer guidance movement mechanic that has the cat slipping around and pinballing off walls, and it just adds to the chaos and creates an authentic cat experience! The game also had some wonderful graphics and animations that made it look great. I was really onboard at first and thought that, while there was a bit of jank to it, it'd all be great.

Unfortunately, as the game went on, those janky aspects overpowered the good concept and it just kept getting more frustrating. I understand the idea of the cat slipping and sliding on tile/hardwood flooring, but the physics involved just seemed really out-of-wack and too chaotic where it crossed the line from intended challenge to absolute annoyance. The objectives were weird too in that you are forced to scratch objects in a certain order: feels stupid that you can't just scratch objects in any order you want. Speaking of scratching, the way the scratching worked just felt so vague and unsatisfying: dunno why it doesn't make an effect or animation when you're not near something despite going on cooldown. In general the audio and feedback of the game felt quite missing as well: would've loved more sounds and such for bumping off walls and the like, as without it the game feels so quiet.

In a way, while the game did feel really halfbaked and missed its mark for me, I still think it's an ok game jam result because I did find the concept very fun in theory and would've loved to see a more polished version of it. Just imagine a game that had even more interesting mechanics and levels, like different friction coefficients for all the different flooring types and so on!