FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[ENABLE]

An all-around solid puzzle game experience! Great presentation, interesting core concept of sliding blocks which evolves in challenging ways, chill vibes, and all-together just feels smooth and polished!

If I were to have one gripe, it would be the inclusion of the time limit around the half-way point. Two aspects of this stick in my craw:

1) If you don't think about it strongly, the time limit can seem like a fun evolution of challenge since it forces you to think fast. But actually, it's a completely fake evolution that adds nothing to the challenge, because there are no actual stakes. So what if time runs out? You don't have any lives, and the puzzle will remain the same, so technically you can just take your time to figure out the steps for the ideal solution over multiple 'deaths', and then just input it at the start of a run.

2) The inclusion of the time limit adds unnecessary stress to what has so far been a chill experience. Even if you realize the time limit is just fake pressure that means nothing, you still have shattered the chill vibes with a constantly tick-tick-ticking clock going on, adding a bunch of annoyance for no gain.

So yes, while my critique of the time limit might seem like a nitpick in some sense, and the game is still plenty fun, I think it is something that should be pointed out. It just doesn't feel well thought-out, like you were scrambling to figure out some sort of way to increase the challenge and, lacking any real creative ideas, just stuffed in an ol' reliable standby.

[Blood Gauntlet]

Pretty cool speedrun version of Castlevania! It's a rather short and simple game, but it felt very fluid and I enjoyed my time with it immensely: having to make both quick reactive decisions to dodge attacks and also more large-scale decisions as to whether it's worth it to backtrack for resources or just tank damage because avoiding it would take too much time were very interesting! The boss fight was a nice finale, and upon seeing that the game had a ranking system, I immediately went back for a replay, netting myself a nice B rank!

If I were to have one gripe, it'd be that I got a F rank on my first go, with most of my points coming from a 'death penalty'. This would make sense if I died on the second part or the boss and it revived me there, I suppose, but I only died in the very first part, which takes you all the way back to the start as if it were a new game...so why a penalty? What, because I didn't fully reset the game myself? It doesn't make any sense!

decafpanda responds:

You are correct. Giving a death penalty on the first level is an oversight on my part. The game attributes reset on the title screen. It should have been on level 1.

Pressing "R" will quickly reload the game if you die on your run and want to max your score. Any kind of death during your run will cripple your score. And yes there are checkpoints at level 2 and the boss. So that's where the death penalty makes sense.

Go for S rank! There are some tips in the Author Comments.

[Consealed]

Pretty neat game! The presentation is incredibly charmingly retro, and the concept of a fast-paced deductive whack-a-mole arcade game is cool!

However, while I like the gameplay in theory, I had a bit of a rough time with it! The game informs you of all the various tells there are, but I couldn't see any differences in their sweat or snot, which only left shaking as the somewhat reliable tell (piss being too random an occurence to be reliable). I was able to make it decently far by looking for the shakiest suspects, but I just felt bummed out because I feel like I'm missing a huge chunk of the intended experience. I understand you don't want to make it too easy or anything, but yeah, I'm a bit lost here: just how subtle did you make it!?

ProsciuttoMan responds:

I'm not saying this sarcastically, but are you colourblind? That might have something to do with it.
The sweat is slightly more purple and snot slightly more green for aliens (I think the snot is the more noticeable of the two, but I could be wrong).
Otherwise, solid review as usual.

[Brick Boiz]

Pretty neat arcade game! For the most part, I had a pretty good experience with this: the graphics are neat, and the gameplay is quite addictive and strategic in how there are so many obstacles and hazards to contend with as you build higher and higher.

It definitely had some rough edges that got in the way of the fun, however, such as the incredibly awkward targeting you need to do with the hammer, which might be one of the most un-fun and ass-backwards design decisions I've encountered. Also I was a bit disappointed with how short it was: was really hoping that it would have more features, like maybe an endless mode, as well as at least having a high score leaderboard that tracks the fastest times for getting up to the 100m goal.

All in all, I think it was a pretty good game jam result: while it is rough and a little unsatisfying, I think the core design is fun and worthy of expansion!

[HelioBacter]

Hmm, it seems like it could be a nice tower defense game: the graphics and theming are nice, and the whole aspect of having to set down a trigger for the traps was unique, I suppose. The foundation is there, potentially, but ultimately the game feels incredibly unfinished and rough, most likely due to game jam time limitations: missing attack feedback for the towers, the confusing and unintuitive nature of setting down eyeball triggers for traps instead of them just being automated like towers, the fact that it doesn't lock the cursor which results in scrolling for eyeball positions scrolls the browser window, and so on: there's just too many rough edges to this, and while you have my sympathy, I need to be honest in that I didn't have a good time here, unfortunately.

HelperWesley responds:

Totally fair. Not our best jam game to be honest, we regret some of the choices we made in the rush of the time limit. 😅

We made some fixes based on feedback from people since the jam ended, like the full screen button in the title screen, and auto-pick up for points at the end of waves, but the basic concept of the game is a little too far gone to bother updating more.

[Hallow Helpers]

Pretty interesting puzzle game! Reminds me a lot of something like Lemmings with all the weird powers you get, or maybe more so like Mosa Lina with how wild and creative both the puzzles could get and how my solutions could be: sometimes I wasn't sure whether I was solving it as intended or gaming the system in a weird way, like an immersive sim, but I nevertheless enjoyed that it embraced such aspects. Very memorable stuff!

I liked it, but I'll admit it can be tough to love at times, having a rather janky and low-quality feel to it, especially with the platforming, where the jumping physics would wonk out and be inconsistent. And as usual, the humor can be a bit hit-or-miss, though I still find it impressive how many unique lines there are. I think the bomb critter is my favorite.

[...Vincent: Mansion of The Dead]

Hmm, it's a rather decent attempt at a survivors-like game that gets most of the basics down-pat, but nevertheless is let down by technical issues and rather ho-hum bog-standard gameplay.

In terms of technical issues, there were a few weird ones here and there, like how the text is difficult to read, and when you select a power-up on level up, whatever you selected will remain in this selected state once you get another level-up, forcing you to awkwardly click away so you can unselect it and properly preview all the selections. But the most critical one is that the game doesn't properly pause when you enter the level-up screen: your orbital masks will continue to rotate and collide with enemies, and exp gems on the field will decay in real-time, unfairly fading away while you're just trying to view all your options.

Moving away from technicalities, the gameplay just felt rather plain: all you do is cut down a mob of enemies, with no special events, waves, mini-bosses, treasure chests, or anything to shake things up and add a bit of spice. No, all that happens is the enemies get spongier and spongier, becoming an absolute slog, forcing you to unfairly engage in metaprogression to even have a chance of winning, instead of allowing player skill be the determining factor.

I don't want to be too down on it since there is a decent foundation to work from here: the basics of cutting down enemies and building up your power to become a god is present, and the presentation is rather charming. I just think there's still a lot of work to be done to turn this into something special and fun, feeling like an early alpha in its current state.

NOTE: As instructed, I played the downloadable itch.io version for this review.

[Misty Hollow - Halloween Multiplayer]

Pretty cute game! I'm not really much of a multiplayer kinda guy, but the game still provided me with a fun little time.

The standout element here is definitely the presentation, where the world and especially the shop just have so much wholesome and cute energy to them: it's just such an absolute delight to interact with everything. The racing was ok as well, having a bit of a strategic element to it where you need to decide between hitting the streets or hitting houses for max candy gains.

Having said that, once you race a couple of times, heck, even just one time, I didn't feel like there was much else to do or see. I'm not someone who is compelled by unlocking costumes, so that kinda superficial trickery isn't going to keep my attention: I need more substantial gameplay enhancements, such as other race courses and the like, and that wasn't present here from what I could tell. I suppose there are leaderboards, but I didn't feel compelled to go for a high score as the racing seemed to somewhat luck-based and also influenced by player-bought power, which is a no go for me.

So yeah, cute and wholesome, but for me it didn't have enough meat on its bones for a satisfying gameplay experience (though I'll admit that I'm not a multiplayer kinda guy, so I'm not necessarily the target audience, in a way).

[Slippery Chambers]

Oh man, this is a tough one for me! It's like, as a fan of precision platformers and speedrun games, I really, really, REALLY want to love this, but boy does this game make loving it difficult!

When you finally get into the flow and figure out how this game wants you to play, it can be pretty magical, chaining together walljumps, dashes, gunshots, sword slashes and so on to become a real speed demon. The game is also loaded with tons of memorable events, such as the introduction of the gun and sword power-ups, as well as constantly upping the ante to never let the player get bored. And as difficult as it is, it does try to help the player along with a lot of tips that show up after deaths.

But all of that enjoyment is dependent on getting into a flow state, and boy can that be hard! I was constantly falling to my death or not landing on a platform when I thought I should because it can be so difficult to tell what your current height is. My momentum kept getting messed up because of those weird camera rotation things, never being quite sure how I'm supposed to lean into them. It was difficult to tell what sort of effect shooting or dashing had on your height: sometimes it seemed to work while other times it didn't. There were weird glitches like how you can still swing your sword despite already being in the death state. And so on and so forth.

I don't think you need to look further than the leaderboards to see proof: it goes from hundreds of entries in the first few levels to not even being able to fill up a top 10 as early as around half-way. I don't blame a lot of people for dropping off, but to look at it another way, there is something about this game that does make some special few people, including myself, want to stick around to the end! So yeah, like I said, mixed impression: it flubs the execution, but there is something special at the core of this that I want to see blossom!

[Stay Indoors]

Hmm, bit mixed on this one!

For the most part, I think the game is pretty cool! The retro ZX Spectrum aesthetic is very neato, the town is huge with all sorts of interesting environmental details, there are a lot of creepy aspects to the game which are both subtle (faces appearing) and overt (monster chasing you, descending into hell, etc), there's some amusing little touches like recognizing my attempt to run the monster over with a car, and so on and so forth. It's also rather amusing to read the whole backstory behind it to get in the proper mood. It's just got a very cool sense of mystique to it all!

However, in retrospect, I think I like the game more in theory than I actually enjoy playing it, if that makes any sense. It's like, the game gives off cool and mysterious vibes, but when it comes down to actually playing it, I'm an ending 3 kinda guy: I just can't be arsed to search through this absolutely massive town to find that dog, especially once you get the monster nipping at your heels and you just can't lose him no matter what clever tricks I try to use: from there, the monster just devolves into white noise, kind of like the missile alert sound in an Ace Combat game.

To add to that, there were some aspects that felt a bit rough or unfinished. For example, I found these books lying around which I assume are secret lore or something, but I can't interact with them: maybe they can only be interacted with by winners who have rescued the dog at least once? I was also unsure whether the ability to cheese the monster by abusing the non-normalized movement vectors which make diagonal movement much quicker was intentional to represent the old-school construction or an overlooked aspect. And the creepy faces seem to be all that happens, when I was expecting more interesting scares and distortions to build up over time to make it all creepypasta-like.

So yeah, in a way, it's the old style-over-substance that I'm getting from this game, but I still think the game is pretty neat and can excuse some of the gameplay quirks because it is trying to authentically recreate retro limitations and such. Definitely shows a lot of promise and effort!