FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Hollow Heartbeat]

Interesting little point n click adventure game! For the most part, I felt like the game was pretty intriguing what with its atmospheric sound coupled with its well-done background art, along with its rather bizarre world to explore. Definitely kept me hooked and wanting to see more of this world.

For a horror game, however, there were a lot of aspects that unfortunately took me out of the experience, such as multiple typos in the text, sound effects like wood creaking that occur on certain screens instead of just part of the atmosphere, the almost comical entrance and exit of the hand in the well, and so on: these could definitely use some polishing up as I feel like the horror atmosphere is well-crafted when these issues don't pop up, but when they do pop up, the immersion bubble is popped and takes time to get rebuilt.

While I did overall enjoy my time, I ended up getting stuck and unsure how to proceed, and bummed out that when I tried to come back and play more, there was no continue option, meaning I'd have to do everything over again. It wouldn't take too long to get back, but it definitely doesn't help motivate me, especially since I feel like I might've just missed an aspect that the game unfairly doesn't direct or clue in your attention to, such as the few times where there is an unintuitive 'up' option that is present. We'll see what happens!

EDIT: Damn, I take back what I said about the game being a bit too comical and such: the more I got into the game, the more it gave some really eerie surprises, incredibly evocative imagery and subtle spooks! Really wowed me, and impressed at all the various endings you can get!

Fakewisdom responds:

Wow, that's a long review! Thanks
I seriously underestimated how important, and expected, save features are for web point and click games these days, i saw complaints about it in multiple languages :P
With the way i built the game it would be hard to implement, but maybe i will
The room with the machine functions as a hint system in the early game, it tells you to look for the attic, i thought it was enough but i accept that it wasn't :/
Wish you told me where the typos were, i think i found a few but my english is still not there

[Pimbo's Pudding Panic]

Cute little adventure! I like that we got two different adventures for the price of one as a nice twist and hook, and while they were a bit short, they had their charming aspects to make up for it, such as the text adventure's multiple amusing endings, and the platformer's wild and wacky physics. In the end, I did enjoy my time, particularly with wrangling the platformer's controls and getting all the pudding hidden in its challenging sections.

However, there were a lot of aspects to the gameplay that were a bit hard to stomach. The text adventure felt quite lifeless with the way buttons don't even respond to hover-over or press and there were no pictures or sounds to pep it up a bit. The platformer just felt a bit too wacky to the point of confusion where jumps would send you up with inconsistent height for no discernable reason, or sometimes not even reading your jump input at all. There was also the fact that a single death in the platforming section boots you all the way back to the start, which given how janky the controls can be, can feel really unfair and frustrating. I'll admit that this was before I knew how short the game was, so in retrospect it's not that bad, but I was strongly considering quitting a few times when I wasn't aware of how close I was to the end at first, and I wouldn't blame some others for feeling the same.

tydaze responds:

I agree with you on all of your points! This game was rushed to meet the deadline of the game jam and there definitely were a lot of things that could be improved. I think I'm done with this game as is, but I'm definitely taking what I learned to apply to future projects. Thank you for the thorough review!

[Monkey Fcuk!]

Bit of an awkward game to get used to at first, but quite the novel experience that reminded me a lot of one of my childhood favs: Pac-Man 2 The new Adventures on SNES! The whole aspect of learning the various typing commands, having to manage the upsides and downsides of moods, and the crazy level arrangements really gave the game quite the interesting puzzle element to it all that I found quite addicting to conquer!

Despite that, the game did have some clunkiness to it that was difficult to ignore. For one, I felt like the bus driver was a bit too chatty at times which kept killing the pace: I know he's trying to help and all, but sometimes I just wanna play and figure out the puzzles myself without all the hints! There were also a lot of times where you're caught in a cramped situation where you can't enter commands fast enough comfortably even with the up command. For example, on level 2 I was frustrated that you can't jump in a direction when you're standing still, like you can't 'jump left' or something like that, you can only jump straight up when still, meaning you need to rapidly type 'go left' and then 'jump' very quickly before you fall off the edge immediately to your left. There were also just plenty of weird collision issues and general wonkiness. It wasn't ever too bad to get me to stop, but still, it made it feel a bit undercooked.

But the biggest part that killed it for me is that it had no save/load system! I got all the way to the third world and wanted to see how it ended, only to find out after coming back that I'd have to do everything all over again in one sitting. I dunno if the game was fun enough to have me put in the effort to replay all of it just to continue, so yeah, bit of a bummer that it might be left unfinished!

NothanyTPM responds:

Can't explain how the process went completely (since I only did the art), but from what I've heard from Sodoj it was a pretty rough development.

A lot of the wonky-ness came from the fact that they only had a few days to finish the game, and already spent a good chunk of that time scrapping it to redo it in a new engine halfway through the Jam. Play-testing was also only done on the second to last day, and I only got to test the fist level.

I will admit as well that the game isn't the best, and I pretty much encountered the same problems as you. Not 100% sure if Sodoj is going to patch the game later-on, or if they'll just abandon it, but I can say that you've pretty much saw everything in the game.

There's only like 2-3 worlds, and no proper ending, so it would have been disappointing regardless.

Still, you gotta admit that it's a decent little concept.

[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.