FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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!

[Octillery VS. Collection]

Hmm, bit of an odd egg and difficult to judge!

On one hand, I feel like the games are just absolute insanity with most of the humor just being non-sequitur and too personal/inside-jokey for me to understand. Just feels like I'm reading some kid's cringey/edgy diary or fanfic where they make fun of their bullies or weird discord friends and it's like, I don't even want to make fun of it, it's more like I feel like I shouldn't even be reading it in the first place and it's not my place to judge. Really feels like it is a game that should've just been shared with friends and family, not with the public: it's too personal and inscrutable.

It didn't help either that some of the combat seemed very confusing and overloaded. For example, I died in the very first fight in Jonathan's Adventure 2 and I was surprised to get kicked out all the way to the main menu: it was so overbearingly hard that I just figured it was one of those fights where you're destined to die (and with how confusing this game is, heck, maybe it is?)

I will say though, for as much as it looks like it is kinda low-effort weirdness, it actually did end up intriguing me and kept me hooked to see what the heck was going on. It's like there's some sort of charm and smart design behind its strange facade: almost like a lot of effort went into making it look like it was low-effort despite actually being high-effort, almost like Cruelty Squad or something akin to that. Outsider art, perhaps.

In a way, it was certainly more interesting and memorable of an experience than many other RPG Maker games that I've played, where they usually just bore with way too more generic exposition and grindy fights with no strategy: this at least gets right into the action and provides you with a lot of options! So I will give it that much at least!

Vidyabatter responds:

Thank you! This was genuinely helpful!

[SQUADADDLE]

Pretty neat game! For the most part, I had a lot of fun with this. I love the fast-paced, bite-sized platforming challenges, and I love how juicy and lively the game is: everything is just so animated and stylish that it really elevates the experience.

That being said, the game can be a bit frustrating at times:

The controls were a bit awkward to get used to: not only are you super tiny yet move so fast that it can be difficult to judge your movements, some rooms that would make you do really challenging maneuvers felt like a huge difficulty spike. Eventually I got decent at it, but I just wish it had walljumps instead of climbing as it might be a bit more intuitive, or maybe if it had controller support it'd work a bit better.

Sometimes I was questioning what the goal or rules of the game was. Scoring at the end of the levels isn't really explained and you never see how the numbers add up: couldn't tell whether time left was giving me more points or if it was a flat rate, and how much of a bonus the fruits were giving was difficult to tell as well. Wasn't sure whether the game has an ending to it either: the way everything is randomly generated makes me think it's endless, but it was rising in difficulty, so maybe it eventually ends? It was also a bummer that every run ends with a game over and a sad little dude: you'd think it would celebrate me getting a new high score or something, but if everything just ends in sadness, and the game just feels pointlessly endless, it really hurts motivation to retry.

Also there were some odd bugs like ice sometimes not doing anything to you whereas other times it would have that slow start-up slipperiness that you'd expect.

Again, though, while it was a bit rough starting out, I still find the game very addictive and fun, so well done!

kaiakairos responds:

i was awaiting your review!! i wanted to respond but I waited to watch your video first to get a full picture of your thoughts.
I was actually intending on adding something that told you how exactly the score counted up, but I gave myself a deadline of the 25th of february and wasn't able to get it in in time. The score is calculated +500 for level completion, + (time left * 100), + 2000 if the bonus was picked up.

The game is significantly easier to with a controller, and would have been the intended way to play, however I never got the support in because HTML5 controller support can be finicky, plus the only controller I own is a switch pro controller which can be VERY weird to set up properly. I'm now aware shift is odd for a lot of people, I found it fine, but if I had more time I'd add remappable controls.

The ice bug is caused because momentum is preserved on ice (if you walk from regular terrain onto ice, it won't slow you down) however if you spawn on ice, the code checks for your movement before checking if you're on ice, so the first frame of movement basically ignores the ice and lets you get up to about 40% of full speed immediately. Didn't realize the cause of this bug until watching your review, might have to go fix that one.

The sad face at the end was just added because I thought it was silly, I really didn't think about it much at all if i'm bein honest lol. It would have probably been nice to put a happy guy if you got a new high score or somethin.
The game does run infinitely, and there are about 150 levels to play through. Eventually the hardest levels do start repeating, but they are so extremely precise that I just wouldn't expect many to make it through a whole loop of them.

Overall though, I'm glad you liked the game! The visuals are usually my main focus, so I'm very glad you liked the juiciness, despite the obvious flaws overall. I'll be taking your feedback into consideration for my next project, whenever that will be :]

[Turbulence]

Decent little arcade game! I found the concept rather unique and I was surprised at how it builds it up as the levels go on: got quite addicted!

I will say, though, that I did have a rather confusing start to the game in learning what was going on: I know you're probably limited on graphics or something due to the jam, but if you just had some animations to represent the air flows in gameplay, such as dots or lines swooshing by, I felt like it would've been much more intuitive and satisfying to play instead of having to memorize the flows at the start (besides, you already showed you could make sparkly dots when the balloons are collected, so why not do the same here?)

All in all, it's not the most exciting game despite its uniqueness, but it still provides a decently good time and I found it quite fitting for the jam theme, so well done in that regard!