FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Furcifer's Fungeon]

Wow, this is some really crazy stuff on display for a demo!

Game is absolutely cram-packed with not only so much visual flair in terms of graphics like the game over glass shatter and explosions and so on, but it's also just very bloody charming with things like the host interjecting a lot of flavor commentary and there being a funny risk-reward system where you can increase the difficulty by angering the host through stealing their items! Really gives you whole thing a very professional and well-crafted feel despite it only still being a demo. Gameplay was also solid as well: while it was a bit cramped and slow, both in terms of movement and attack cooldowns, the enemies seemed to be built around that aspect so it all gelled together. Had a great time going for a burn build on my first run and saw so many abilities that I wanted to try on later runs, along with the wands I unlocked: so much potential replayability!

I did have some slight frustrations here and there though. Sometimes there was just so much going on that it was difficult to tell what to focus on: I couldn't even figure out how to start the game since a) I didn't realize the title logo was interactable and b) the dialogue text box kept covering it! Also, as fancy as the health bars that are part of the characters themselves are, they are difficult to parse compared to more common solutions like health bars being above them, leading to confusing feedback on how much damage you're doing and taking. Finally, I was quite frustrated that it seemed like a wand only recharges when it's in your hand: it made everything so slow and I would've much preferred if the game lets wands recharge no matter what, meaning that effective play could involve a lot of cool weapon swapping to alleviate the boring act of waiting on cooldowns. Also I felt like the combo mechanic was a bit confusing and unsure how it worked: seems like you should just always special attack after a regular attack with no downside, and it doesn't work the other way around? Also, the combat did start to get a little monotonous after a while: maybe it could've used some more enemy variety or special events, or have a better sense of boss or story progression as you go (though I imagine that's just because it's still a demo).

Looking forward to seeing how this shapes up: I feel like it's already got a solid foundation that's ripe for tons more content!

PlayWithFurcifer responds:

Let me use this chance to give some constructive criticism back.
I really feel like you should mention that this Feedback is based on 8h livestream where you only play a few minutes while intensely looking for something to criticize. It would give a much needed perspective on the nature of your feedback. I fully believe you have best intentions, but this approach will lead to very biased and surface level criticism and should be marked as such.

Regarding the combo mechanic:
It seems like you understood it within a minute. If you feel like always using special after attack, go for it and see if it works for you. A player typically tries this and finds that the special locks them in place, making the special situational.

If it would also work the other way, you would have no cooldown at all - i don't think we should allow this.

[GRIDHEART]

Wow, this one really surprised me!

I was a little fearful of it at first: the tutorial was decent as it provided a good mix of images/animations along with text, but it was still a lot to take in and I was worried I wouldn't understand this very unique concept. Luckily, I feel like the game helped greatly by providing a lot of intuitive feedback in the game itself, such as the tiles having a good shorthand to represent their properties, the arrow preview for showing where you can move (which let me learn subtle things like being able to loop around the level) and the way elements pop when you interact with them in a way, like the time bar and tiles popping back up when you nab a heart! Really wonderful design on display here that makes something complicated be very intuitive!

With that, I found myself getting absolutely addicted to the game: the concept was really clever and the game's presentation was incredibly charming with such cute graphics and juicy feedback. Loved trying to react to situations and plan ahead with the tiles to keep the combo going: I don't know if I'm good enough yet to get great combo multipliers going using the colors, but I still love just trying to keep a rally going and not lose to time. Really nice stuff overall!

tonyfinale responds:

Thank you for your thoughts!!!!!!!!!! Yeah I'm always worried I never explain things well enough in the tutorials, so I'm REALLY into obsessively trying to jus make all the gameplay interactions and elements and stuffs all elegant and legible on their own like that. Good to know that worked out well enough for this one :)

Thanks for playin~~~

[Just Passing - Chapter 2]

Pretty cool game! I haven't played the first one, unfortunately, but I really love the professional design of this so much that I'm seriously considering it before I proceed with playing this some more! From what I've seen, this seems like a nice little adventure game: walk around the big world, talk with all manners of wacky characters, get to know them from collecting items to solve their problems with, all the while learning bits and pieces of the larger intrigue behind your existence. Tons of crazy little touches in this game, such as the animated text, speech bubble shadows, great graphics and animations: nice stuff!

That being said, there was something about how well-constructed the game was overall that made a lot of little odd things stand-out to me. It's kind of silly: I wouldn't complain about these for other games, but you've raised the bar so high here that I found it wild that you missed them, so sorry for punishing you for being good, haha. For example:

*Was puzzled at how hidden the save/load feature was all the way in the Settings menu: feel like it would be better served to be more accessible on the home screen given its importance. I actually didn't think it was even possible to save/load at first: even though I saw 'Data' in Settings, I easily thought it was just to access a reset/wipe, not save/load.

*Some dialogue was confusing: felt like sometimes it was implying that someone was thinking the lines instead of saying them despite using the same speech balloons no matter what. Would help if maybe the balloons could change shape: spiky ones for yelling, cloudy ones for thinking, etc.

*Was surprised that the footsteps didn't change depending on what surface you're walking on.

*Found it annoying that whenever you go into a phone option, like Settings, and then go back, it puts the cursor back on the default Messages instead of staying on the option you just selected previously.

*Found the transitions into houses and zones kind of annoying. I would prefer if they activate like anything else by popping up an exclamation point and confirming, instead of just walking into them, as sometimes I would walk past a door, not towards a door, and trigger going in despite not wanting to go in. Furthermore, was disappointed at the transition: would've loved a player animation of them going in, or at least a sound effect like a door being opened or fading footsteps.

*There were some odd graphical errors like misplaced tiles, as well as wind effects that look like they are supposed to be in front of a building yet are layered behind it.

*Would prefer if quest notifications only pop-up once the character has fully told you what the quest was: awkward that the notifications come so ahead of the game that it tells the future, haha.

*There's an awkward period after a zone transition where you're frozen solid for a bit too long: just feels really stiff, especially since it looks like everything is already loaded in and it's just waiting for the transition overlay animation to finish.

*Some minor typos, like "a quick peak won't hurt" instead of "a quick peek won't hurt". Those homophones will getcha like that!

I'm sure I could think up a bunch of other little nitpicks, but that's just me going overboard to provide feedback: these and any other aspects I can think up doesn't really hurt the game or anything like that as I still think what you have here is really cool!

JoelLikesPigs responds:

Wow

Lots to think about here - thanks for the feedback, I'll see about adding these as some improvements later down the line

Thanks again- and if you do have anything else feel free to message me directly always happy to get feedback

[RandoBots]

Cute little game! Not a bad concept for some back-and-forth gameplay: there's a little bit of strategy in trying to improvise with whatever terrain is generated and planning your stopping position before transitions. Game is also quite juicy for a game jam game: love the way the music transitions between modes, and I feel like the feedback from shooting is great. That being said, the appeal of the game didn't last that long for me, mostly because the combat felt a bit mindless. For example, when you're in tank mode, there's no reason to not be shooting all the time: feel like it would've been better if say, you turn faster when you're not shooting, so there's a bit of strategy on whether to win through quantity or quality, you know, stop shooting for a moment so you can turn faster to aim more accurately.

[Impact-Effect]

Decent little arcade game! The whole aspect of switching between defensive and offensive modes like Pacman was a fun pattern, and the game did a pretty good job at keeping things interesting with upgrades, new enemy types, and a general escalation of difficulty as it went on. Graphics and effects were pretty minimal, but delivered in a kind of sleek, brutalist way. Had a decent time getting to around level 10 where it kind of lost steam for me, but had a good time getting there.

If I were to have any complaints, it'd probably be that, like I said, the game does start to get rather repetitive. Once I got to around level 7 or so, the upgrades and enemy types started to constantly repeat the same over and over without providing anything new anymore. Couple that with the larger and larger XP gap meaning less rewards, along with the special effects of the game being quite bland (seriously, the sound effect for destroying missiles is so unsatisfying, I want a bunch of slow-mo booms for each missile destroyed followed by a big boom for them all once attack mode slow-mo stops) and it led to me getting bored and not really wanting to replay. But I mean, it's an arcade game, it doesn't need to last forever.

Also, and this is just me thinking instead of complaining, but I wonder if using a more classic Asteroids-esque control where you have momentum and drifting and such to contend might be more fun and have more room to learn skilled play rather than the mouse pointer controllers the game has: the mouse controls are nice in their own right, but it did seem to have a limit and got a bit repetitive after awhile, and could get confusing with hit detection if you try to make heavy swipes.

IdeasPerSecond responds:

Thank you for the highly detailed response, FuturecopLGF! I appreciate all of the points you put forward here. You make quite a few excellent observations that will help me to improve as a developer! Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed review!

[Multimove]

Another nice puzzler entry from Rob1221! As usual, the concept is quite creative and the levels do a good job at both teaching you and hooking you by slowly amping up the complexity in a very instructional and intuitive way. I like the little symbols popping up to help you gauge distance and determine where you can go, and the fact it doesn't punish you for trying a bad direction.

If I were to have any complaints, it's that the game can feel very guided and linear. A vast majority of the levels just had me naturally following whatever single path there was available after eliminating non-options, which usually just led to me collecting all the powers when possible and proceeding to the exit. It was alright, but it didn't really engage my brain: I just let go and let the developer take the wheel, so to speak.

Of course, the fact that it was guided wasn't that bad for me, as I was a bit fearful of how the game would be if it made me keep track of distances and offsets through multiple steps as I found it very difficult to keep gauge distances (especially due to the vague purple zone which doesn't have clearly delineated tiles) and plot ahead more than a few steps. Luckily, the few courses that I did encounter which did have traps that required me to be careful and plan ahead never asked too much of me, so it was alright. Still, it made me think of whether the concept was such a good idea in the first place if I was having all these fears: maybe it had a limit to the concept where asking too much just wouldn't be nice for the player due to it not being intuitive enough for them to grasp. I dunno, haha.

[Parachute Peril]

Nice little fun arcade game! It's very simple, but something about these physics-based games can be so addictive due to their analog controls, and the concept of controlling the wind rather than the player is a neat twist. Couple that with a good sense of progression from shrinking the tunnels and adding enemies, very forgiving hitboxes that along you to scrape the walls without dying, and some nice special effects for animating the wind and player, and it's well put-together all-around! If I were to have any complaints, it might be that it doesn't have very long-lasting appeal due to a lack of variety in runs and such, but hey, it was a nice time while it lasted!

bluswimmer responds:

Thank you!

[RADARE]

Not bad! Felt like a decent little score game with a nice mind-bending concept and some slick minimalist presentation: add some haikus to that and it was quite charming and fun to play! The appeal doesn't last too long, but it's quite fun to get skilled at keeping track of your mirrored partner and making sure they don't run into any trouble.

Not many complaints to be had here, except for the bombs, which I was really confused about. It just felt like they were worthless due to taking too long to explode and having no way to tell where enemies would spawn in future and thus where would be a good place to plant them. For the most part, they'd just end up killing my partner as the timing of the cycle would sync with the bomb and rotate them around to be next to them perfectly. I could've just ignored them, I suppose, but I felt like if the developer put them in, there must be a way I'm supposed to use them, so I kept searching to no avail and was just left frustrated.

[This Date Blows!]

Hmmmm, this is a really rough one for me!

I actually really, really like the concept and the game was exactly what I was hoping it would be, where you need to manage two tasks simultaneously in a chaotic juggling act. Trying to maintain eye contact with your date and answering her questions correctly while also memorizing complicated bomb defusal rules and cutting wires is a hell of a combo and, once I finally grasped it, I found very fun!

But that's just the thing: the game is very difficult to grasp and play due to so many confusing and janky elements. It took me multiple sessions to even understand how to play and what people were talking about as it dumps so much on you.

I understand that you added subtitles to try and help with the overlapping audio and such, but I felt like your execution incredibly hurt my experience more than helped. It made no sense to me that I could only see the subtitles for the date and not the bomb guy when I'm looking at the date, and vice versa: they're both clearly talking to me all the time, so why not display both of them? The entire point is that you're trying to listen to both of them at the same time no matter who you're looking at, so it makes no sense to only be able to read one at a time. At the very least, you could maybe have a set of subtitles grow or shrink when you switch who you're looking at, but again that makes no sense as you should always be seeing subtitles for bomb guy since he's in your ear and is more important.

The game also just gets really hard way too fast without any break and it was exhausting. It felt like the bombs were constantly going without a single break to look up and talk to the date. Might be a case of the game being set too hard because the developers have been play-testing it too long and didn't feel like it was a challenge anymore. I feel like I should be able to quickly defuse a bunch of bombs to reward me a sufficient break period to then talk with my date, but the bombs just kept coming and coming! Anyway, this led to the game feeling way too bomb-focused instead of date-focused: I wanted there to be more questions from the date to feel like I needed to keep both juggled equally, but the date questions only ever seemed to be dumb jokes.

Also, and maybe this is just a nitpick, but the whole defusing bombs through a phone just seemed really weird and nonsensical: felt it would work a lot better if maybe you were defusing an actual physical bomb in your lap and you just keep getting deeper and deeper into it. I know it seems like a minor thing, but I think it did add to a lot of my initial confusion.

Definitely not too shabby considering its a game jam game as it sells the concept: just wish there was a better, more polished final version of this that fixes a lot of the issues I had with it. For all the difficulties I had with it, I do want to come back to this and try it some more and get an actual good ending, so well done in that regard!

[Bygone Melodies]

Huh, not too shabby! It's certainly a charming little story with some nice graphics and music. Very much reminds me of a Rhythm Heaven type game with the general gameplay and the way the world gets more animated as you succeed, and I feel like I had an alright time going through this. I did run into some slight issues though, and I'll try to explain my experience below:

*I felt like the difficulty was a bit too harsh and out-of-order at times. The very first level tripped me up a lot: at first it felt nice as it slowly built up complexity, but then it added on way too many rhythm changes as the song went on and it overloaded me: would've appreciated a more simple, monotonous beat to start with, which ironically the later levels become! So it feels like a case where the game starts out way too hard and then gets way too easy. Feel like it could've been reordered: heck, Level 1 should've been the final level with the way it gets so complex!

*The game could get really monotonous at times as huge portions of the music could be beat by just doing the same rhythmic movements over and over and over, with only slight occasional changeups that threaten to trip you up. As said before, it felt like only the first level really had a nice progression to it, while every other level was 90% looping the same rhythm.

*Maybe it's just me, but I was really hoping that the instrument or situation would change up with every level. It's fine that it stuck with the guitar, but I was kinda hoping that maybe, I dunno, the ship level would have you raising the sails or bailing out water to the rhythm, instead of just stomping your feet and raising the guitar the same as before. Maybe I've just got Rhythm Heaven on the brain with the way it changes for every level. I dunno, was just hoping for some sort of change-up: maybe an extra guitar maneuver to manage could've been sufficient, or maybe this is just a case of the same complaints above, where the later levels song progression wasn't as exciting so it made me look for something else.

*The game was a bit unintuitive at times with its rhythm tells: the animations could vary in really unfair ways at times, sometimes not even having a tell at all and you just need to feel it intuitively (which is ironically unintuitive, haha). The game also felt like it had too many times it wanted you to hit melodic beats instead of strong beats, and the song didn't blast those melodic beats you're supposed to hit loud enough to make it easy to grasp.