FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cards with Personalities Classic]

Pretty neat game! I definitely took the hard way by not reading the instructions provided, but despite my initial bumpy first impression (which I suppose is my fault) I still felt like I got to terms with the game and ended up having a good time, which is quite the achievement!

I feel like the game is very well constructed: love the various animations for actions like having a card get highlighted and float when it is selected, and the effects that act out when you play a card, like how the icons zip up to the top part of the HUD and add to the counters. These elements, along with other subtle things like how the screen shakes and plays a bad sound if you attempt to do something you can't (instead of just giving no response), the way it warns you if you try and end a turn too early, and the contextual control instructions always displaying at the bottom so you know your options, not only make the game feel fun and juicy, actually make this complex game rather intuitive without even needing to consult the outside instructions. Despite my rough start, I felt like I was able to gather all the info I needed to be able to play within the game from trial and error.

It definitely could do a bit more to help, but I understand the Pico-8 template is limiting with the space it has available (I mostly mean screen space, but I imagine data space as well) For example, why does the game even bother starting without just forcing the first draw? I understand not forcing a draw later on since there can still be remaining choices, but I feel like that would help a player see how to start out and hit the ground running instead of starting blanky at these cards they can't do anything with. I felt like you did a pretty dang good job with the limited space already, though.

There were a few bugs I experienced here and there, like where my cursor would remain over an empty card slot and it'd give me options to use it as if it still existed, only for it to not respond to those options and for it to disappear once I move away from it. It was also sometimes tricky to navigate around, for example where sometimes when I go up it takes me to the graveyard instead of the boss which I expected. I also still am not sure I understand the destroy card option.

These card games aren't really my jam so I'm not the intended audience, but I gotta give big props to this game for hooking me in despite all that and the initial confusion: the juicy and reactive menus just gave the game such a good feel to it that I put faith in it and wanted to push on and learn!

Elastiskalinjen responds:

Thank you! Yeah, there is a reason there are very few card games in pico8, and I was fighting with the limitations both in screen space and in tokens the whole way. That's why I decided to revisit it and create a full version with a tutorial, better guidance in general and also tons more content!

[The Wizard Ran: Chapter 2]

Wow, this game is really going places! I feel bad for calling it the most 'sane' adriendittrick game I've experienced: I suppose it still makes some sense as it's probably the most potentially straightforward if you just mainline the first endings, but doing so would miss out on all the crazy interconnected elements that this game has!

Learning information like names and ages from this and going back to previous chapters to plug it in and see what happens, or knowing that information in future chapters might help with mysteries like the maze and so on is very fascinating! It's like a weird Virtue's Last Reward or Majora's Mask experience but spanned across multiple games, or perhaps like a Metroid map, where every time I play one of these games, new paths blossom forth on the mental map of the current and previous chapters to gain access to other endings and so on.

Of course, even discounting the mysteries that cross games, there were plenty of cool mysteries in this game as well. Learning how to exploit coyote time to get through the jumping puzzle, the amusing way the camera was used to hide spikes (look at the platforms above to figure out where they are) or to allow you to eavesdrop on conversations, those strange entities or upcoming traps, being able to race to grandma and get access to a boss fight that I have no idea how to beat: so much craft and care in the experience!

The game does still overall have a janky, clunky feel to it all with stiff movement and odd/inconsistant physics and collisions. Exploiting coyote time to get through the jumping puzzle was a bit of an odd stretch: typically I'd call it bad programming if a game is built like that, but for a weird game like this I guess I give it a pass. Luckily the game never demands any perfect play and it's quite generous with restarts and continues, so it's not necessarily an issue, but it can still have a subtle effect in making the game feel somewhat unprofessional to a player, diluting its appeal and potentially making a player less willing to stick with it despite its hidden charm and depth. Course, the clunkiness and low-effort look can also give it another layer of 'mystique' to certain players, so its a mixed bag.

Again, major props in creating this hidden depth through this series with its inter-connected mysteries: it's a ballsy move since I can't imagine everyone is going to experience everything on offer, with a vast majority most likely just getting the general first endings and that's it. Hell, I doubt even I will uncover all of the mysteries in this, and I'm a fan! I really admire the effort in crafting this.

Oh by the way it took me an embarrassing amount of time to get the pun: their name is Ran, as in, The Wizard Ran.

adriendittrick responds:

oh cool, you've played the second one :)
Yeah I'm glad this series is having a nice amount of success! (so far I have 4 chapters out and all 4 chapters were nominated for game of the month X) ) next one might be a bit more janky too :p

I will be experimenting a lot with this series though, so you should expect more rough edges here and there. But also specifically for those games I don't mind players being less willing to stick around, the TWR series isn't for everyone and that's normal. Add to that the fact that those games take about 2 days for me to make.

[An apple a day]

Cute little game! Reminds me of those health-conscious edutainment games like Captain Novalin and such, though I found this to be way more fun than those ever were.

The rapid-fire decision making that this game calls for when juggling so many goals and systems and red herrings that serve you trick you makes for a very addicting, simple-to-learn difficult-to-master gameplay loop that I very much enjoyed. For the most part, I felt like the game did a good job at slowly increasing the complexity as it went to keep me hooked, with elements like only being able to eat certain apples, some apples containing worms, bad objects that look like good objects, and so on and so forth.

I say that, but there was a bit of a lull period in the middle where it felt like it got too easy and I was about to drop it, but it changed things up enough near the end to keep me hooked (perhaps the game could've been compressed a bit more to not wear thin, or more interesting red herring objects could've been introduced in that lull period).

All in all, it was a fun, short and sweet challenge that I very much enjoyed! Got to the end and I very much appreciated the inclusion of a save/continue option when I had to step away momentarily (which can be unfortunately absent in a lot of these short games)!

[Miss Fortune]

Heh, not bad! Certainly reminiscent of those old Newgrounds Assassin type games where you beat up a celebrity. This game does have, despite its low effort appearance, plenty of subtle effort put into it actually through its many detailed and smooth animations, decent all-around graphics and charming sound effects. Found myself chuckling at some of the fatalities like the coffee and fan fatalities.

Having said that, though, the game was a bit lazy and confusing in some aspects. For example, I found the punch/knife/gun buttons really lackluster: you'd expect multiple repeated punches to escalate the damage they pile on until their face is all mashed up, but it never goes beyond the damage you get from the very first punch. Even worse, any damage from an attack, like a knife, gets removed when you select a different attack, meaning you can't get any big combos and lasting damage going.

Finally, the biggest issue was that I have no idea who this woman was, so it felt really confusing to heap so much abuse on them. Assassin-esque games like this are usually about targetting someone that everyone hates and would like to see get punished and feel carthasis from it: I dunno what carthasis we're supposed to get from this random woman.

Anyway, I'd say it is a decent intentional 3 star game which is what it is going for: alright in concept and shows promise, but has a rather confused and lackluster execution. Well done!

[The Present]

Pretty neat game! I thought this had a pretty good concept to it and also had a good sense of progression to the presents that slowly built up dread and tension to the finish. It's a short but sweet horror adventure!

Having said all that, I was a little disappointed in some respects. I felt like the game started to drag on a bit in the final sequence with minor additions like red lighting and such, which felt a little silly: would've been a bit more powerful if it ended quicker while I was still engaged, and maybe introduced more cool changes like maybe a chase event. Also I felt like the game relied a bit too much on eardrum-shattering jump scares: would've loved a bit more subtlety and a more intriguing plot or story that gets uncovered. Also a lot of the scares were just goofy and practically comical in retrospect: the cheap clip-art looking eyes that plaster the walls, the low-fi polygonal teddy bear at the end, and so on: would've much preferred some more scary attackers with more unique designs and effort put into them, I dunno, at least smear 'em with blood or something, haha.

Still, for something made rather quickly, I think it had some solid fundamentals: it was a good concept with a nice sequence of events that was just flubbed in some of the details in my opinion, but overall well done! I still consider the jumpscares a cheap shot, but I did feel rather immersed and tense through my playthrough, so nice work (though I am a pansy, so take it with a grain of salt, haha)

[Loveblade]

Hmmmm, this one was a bit tricky for me. I really like it in concept: swinging this sword around to stylishly slash projectiles while also being careful not to swing your crosshair into enemies and take damage. An interesting and chaotic multi-tasking battle! But in execution, I just felt incredibly confused on how to control and play effectively.

First impressions were a bit odd: the game used a sword icon for the thing you are magnetizing toward the crosshair, but it kept pulling the handle towards me and not the blade, leading to me hitting enemies with the handle instead of the blade during a pull which felt bad. Not only that, but you could hit enemies just by clicking the button for a sec to make the blade red: feels like that shouldn't be allowed since there is no strength in motion. Swinging the sword was possible with big motions, but it felt really unintuitive and difficult to pull off. It almost felt like the game should just be about attracting an orb towards the crosshair, an orb that discharges electricity when you click: that's what the controls felt like they were built for, in a way.

It felt like the most effective and safest way to play the game was to just sandwich an enemy between the crosshair and the sword and click to pull it towards you, making it hit during transit. But it felt really unsatisfying because you're just bonking the enemy with the handle instead of the blade, which a sword isn't built for. So I would try and do big swooshy motions to swing the sword and hit enemies with the blade: this had the effect of making satisfying feedback when hits were made and also made the power-ups work, clearly giving me thought that this is the intended play. However, this was incredibly unsafe because it would either lead to my crosshair bonking into enemies and making me take damage, or my big motions taking my mouse outside of the screen and losing focus since the game doesn't lock the cursor. Either way, it felt like I was stuck with an unsatisfying situation: play safe and win but don't have fun, or play wild which feels fun but leads to loss and unwieldly controls.

When it works, this game does seem quite satisfying to play! The effects for smashing enemies with a good swing, as well as even taking damage as a player, are quite satisfying in their sense of feedback. I'm sure a lot of people can have fun with this, but for me, I just couldn't get used to it, unfortunately.

[The Wizard Ran: Chapter 1]

Certainly an intriguing game! It's one of the more 'sane' adriendittick games I've played as it is quite straightforward, which is a bit of a shame in some respects, but it still has plenty of weirdness and subtle craft and charm to it, what with all its hidden endings, lore and deep story, ambitious mechanics like guard AI and a sandbox that responds to various player behaviors, and so on. Had a good time figuring out my escape in the first run and then playing around and seeing what else was there, like changing responses based on gathered information and watching the characters react. Could certainly be considered as shallow if you just do it straight for the first ending, and the game is a bit janky with low-fi graphics which can give a bad impression, but again, the hidden and subtle elements to be found are impressive.

As said, it was pretty janky in some respects: my first run had the guard glitch out his pathing and act oddly, then suddenly start attacking me, eventually knocking me clean through some walls (which I didn't know I could phase through yet) and killing me. Subsequent plays had the guards pathing go awry many times as well. The stealth mechanics felt really unreliable as well: I got seen by someone who had his back turned to me (this might've actually been because they just started to walk upwards, but they don't have up/down sprites, only left/right sprites, so it treated them as walking upwards while looking left at me despite going right previously).

Looking forward to seeing the rest of the chapters!

adriendittrick responds:

thanks as usual for the great review :)

[STRG.SNEK]

Hey, pretty neat game we got here! Certainly an interesting premise with a cool story hook to keep me motivated, neato ASCII aesthetic and blending of a scavenger hunt with snake mechanics, and a nice big world to explore around with tons of different obstacles like warps, hidden proximity tiles that keep the challenge and pacing up, and so on and so forth. Definitely a lot to love here and it feels like a great adventure through cyberspace!

However, I do have some complaints with the game that did kill some of my enjoyment:

You'll laugh at me for this, but I had no idea how to start the game for quite awhile: it was a cool reveal once I figured it out I could go past the footer (which I thought was a wall just like any of the other walls), but I came really close to thinking that the game was broken or I was just misunderstanding and almost turning the game off from confusion (thank goodness I didn't).

I appreciate a good challenge, but the game could be incredibly frustrating in unfair ways and led to me losing patience in wanting to continue. There were plenty of times where you transition between screens, either normally or through a warp, that could put you in a spot where you have zero time to react and end up running into a wall immediately in front of you: sucks that you feel like you have to trial and error and memorize sooo much.

Not only that, but the game loved to have warps and corridors, even ones outside of challenging situations, be just one single character wide which made the game feel so cramped and requiring an annoying level of precision, even for things that aren't part of the challenge, but just trying to use a warp room, for example.

Another issue with the game that might've led to a lot of these annoyances is the adherence to the ascii aesthetic, which makes horizontal movement very slow compared to the lightning speed of vertical movement due to the different way characters are spaced compared to new lines. Entering a new room vertically that has a wall immediately in your way leads to constant deaths.

These constant unfair or annoying deaths when coupled along with the checkpoint system, which only spawned you at the last character collected or checkpoint added insult to injury. The checkpoint system isn't too bad, but at times I would've preferred if the game would just spawn you at the entrance (or wherever you warped in) to the room you last entered, though I understand if maybe you think it would make the game too easy. In my opinion, I feel like being set back potentially a lot after a failure doesn't add much to this game, making it just an annoying addition. In particular, backtracking through areas you've mostly cleaned out but you feel you might've missed something is super annoying, because you've removed all potential checkpoints in your first run and now a single mistake can set you back so far.

Overall I'd say the game was an unfortunately frustrating game due to some of its design choices, but I still had a really good time with the game and think its pretty cool.

[Santa Clauminid (Demo)]

Hmm, not too shabby, but in its current state it is quite rough.

The game certainly did have some nice things about it: some of the more subtle special effects like how the sleigh and gun arm tilt based on direction was nice, and I liked the way the enemies exploded (especially the bosses). I also liked how it tried to do some interesting stuff like rewarding risky play (grazes) with MP to use for a special attack, being able to change powerups by shooting at them, and it looked like it had some sort of present dropping mechanic that could create an interesting multitasking challenge.

But the game also felt really janky in many ways. There's a few obvious ones like in how short it was and how the Santa boss was absolutely nothing, but in terms of other complaints:

*For example, I kinda hated how power-ups blocked bullets which would actually end up not only giving cover to enemies behind them but also make it too risky to pick up since you could get insta-shot by someone right behind them due to the lack of attack telegraphs.

*Doing grazes felt incredibly awkward because the actual hitbox of the character felt very vague and ill-defined, and it wasn't worth it anyway since you barely get anything out of them and the payoff special move is pretty lacklaster, being just a rapid-fire gun, similar to your regular gun, instead of a cool bomb or beam or some such.

*The present dropping mechanic felt really silly and not emphasized enough: it only comes into play briefly later on and it's not worth the risk to engage in it. Maybe if the present dropping gave you power-ups back it could be worth the risk to keep an eye out for houses, or maybe if it was an objective you have to accomplish to beat the level or keep an acceptable score similar to Paperboy it'd feel crucial. I definitely feel more importance should be given to this mechanic as it could be a clever and interesting Christmas themed twist on typical ground-bomb weapons seen in space shooters.

My biggest complaint though, as stated before, was that the game just felt really rough and unfinished: more of an alpha than a demo, I'd say. Not only was the game overall a bit rough and stiff with things like how static and unanimated enemies, space shooter games are kind of a dime-a-dozen and this didn't really bring anything interesting to the table to hook me in and want more, which should be what a demo does first and foremost.

I certainly think this game could be cool in a finished version, what with if the bosses and enemies become better, more mechanics like present dropping get expanded and so on, but it's hard to see that potential in its execution at the moment. Still, fingers crossed!

Chdonga responds:

Thanks for the long review LMAO.
I'm glad you see potential in this. I actually started working on it in '21 but stuff got in the way and it was even more rough than what I released this year. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it by winter '23!

[Sophie The Slug]

Cute little puzzler! Got some nice pep and overall good construction to it all, what with its goofy music, satisfying squishy sounds and animations for movement, and solid level design that keeps you hooked with its constantly increasing difficulty and new mechanics being introduced!

Well, I say it keeps you hooked, but I have to admit that the game is somewhat generic overall, being a sliding game that has been seen many a time before, so I found myself dropping off after some time. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad: it's well put-together and does a solid attempt at keeping things fresh by introducing crates, buttons, and so on, but in general it is kinda same ol' same ol' without anything really unique or eye-catching.

In summary, it's a solid game with no overall complaints, but nothing really incredibly or noteworthy either, so it is merely 'good' (which is fine, of course)! Again, general construction felt well-crafted so I look forward to seeing more games in future!