FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Magirune 2 - Demo]

Hmm, bit of a mixed bag that's a bit rough at the moment, but that is the point of a demo, so hopefully I can give some feedback to make it better!

*Overall I found the game to be pretty bland and lifeless in all aspects. The story was pretty drab and unexciting with no real big goal (though walking outside to see how desolate the world is was pretty neat), there was no animations or cutscenes which made events like dad falling down or the mayor running away confusing since they just vanish, there was barely any music or exciting sounds or effects, and the directions were pretty vague with no journal or anything to help keep track (don't get me wrong, I don't want a line or marker to follow as I like exploring, but sometimes it wasn't clear what's going on).

*There were plenty of typos and odd phrasing: felt like the script was badly translated from another language and could use a proof-reading pass.

*Controller controls were pretty bad: I had no idea how to navigate the inventory menu with the control and access other tabs. Felt like I was forced to use the mouse to access things like inventory tabs when everything should be possible with just controller. Perhaps it was because I'm using a Playstation controller: some games aren't built for it.

*I didn't even realize that I was being hurt when engaging in combat because, unlike the enemies which have good feedback to being hit by shaking and the slash mark effect, the player stands stock still and doesn't react. Even disregarding effects, though, combat was pretty boring and devoid of strategy (though it was kinda cool to get flashy kills when you level up enough to one-shot them).

*I felt like the whole way that enemies respawn when you reenter a screen was really annoying and punishing. I felt like the game could have a survival horror aspect to it where you really gotta plan whether fighting is worth it, but plenty of times I was forced to fight without knowing I'd end up going the wrong way, and it felt frustrating to go back and refight everything, especially considering I don't get exp from it. Just feels like it leaves too much up to trial and error and luck.

I certainly think that it has some interesting ideas and could shape up to become a grand adventure, so hopefully my feedback can help somewhat!

FluffyLotus responds:

Thanks, there's some good feedback in there. This will make me focus some of my time in directions that I wasn't thinking to much about.

[Ben Stiller's 3D Tour of Hell]

Bit of a mixed bag for me: felt like it had a lot of potential in some respects, but didn't make the most of it.

For something that looks very low effort, I felt like it has a lot of nice little touches in there, such as being able to fire each gun in the dual wield independently, being able to be noticed for staring at cock, some funny signs and voice samples, and a really clever puzzle level where you need to jump up on Ben Stiller to go out of bounds and find the key. All in all I feel like it could be a fun little adventure with each level having its own theme and puzzle to it.

But that's just it: I felt like there was only one really clever level in there that tried to do something interesting, while a vast majority of the levels were just the same thing but with a different paint job: wander around and click E on everything till you win. There was an attempt at having some variety: finding the android phone in a sea of iphones was a fun modern take on the "needle in a haystack" dilemma, and yes, some of the ways the E interact levels did differ were funny despite it, but it was just really minor stuff with no challenge to it. I actually made the lust level a lot more fun for me by jumping from bed to bed and treating the floor as lava: why couldn't the game do something like that instead of me having to invent my own fun? I was also disappointed that there wasn't more humor in there: just having Ben Stiller be a character isn't a joke, and while you're at it, c'mon, at least throw some voice lines in there, I liked him in Royal Tenebaums! Also how, how could you miss not coding the game to recognize the possibility of shooting Ben Stiller as an easter egg in the gun level, c'mon (yes I played the game twice to verify that)!

Anyway, I do hope that this does serve as a learning process and you can make an FPS in the future like you mention, haha.

[Witchcraft Tower Defence]

Hmm, quite the interesting twist on tower defense! It's a lot to get used to at first with the whole merging system and learning what towers do what and dealing with randomness and the positives/negatives for wave rewards and so on, but there was a certain fun and addictive novelty to seeing all the crazy towers you randomly get and what the next level of merge is going to be and then just blasting away and enjoying the chaos of your various towers wiping through waves!

I gotta say, though, that at the end of the day, I didn't find myself getting that far. I do think the idea is novel and that there is some fun to be had, but I just ended up getting bored quite quickly due to the lack of variety and feeling of not being in control or needing to strategize. Don't get me wrong, I think there is some level of strategy in here that can be done, interesting improvizations and saving up to then pick a 100% spawn wave to do a big merge and such, but it just didn't feel substantial enough compared to a typical tower defense where you have all your tools and there are all sorts of different layouts and enemy units and rule changes you can puzzle it out. I also wish I knew how some of the skills work, like fear and Xx damage (what does fear do, and does Xx damage affect other units or just the unit in question, and so on). I could definitely see other people having a lot of fun with this though, and I still had a good time while it lasted!

[Pixel Dash]

Huh, this felt a little half-baked and lacking in content for me. It reminds me a lot of the game Qix where you keep drawing lines to form squares and in doing so you fill out the board bit-by-bit, with the challenge being that you have to be careful of bouncing balls on the board colliding with the lines while you're drawing. The problem with this is that while there is a challenge and strategy to Qix, this game has none of that. I found that I could easily just place blocks whenever and wherever I wanted: I didn't need to time my placement or anything like that as the bouncing balls avoid getting caught, and even when they do, it's a non-issue to free them with no penalty. Without needing to be careful with how you place blocks, and with a way too generous time limit, winning is a foregone conclusion in this and it just becomes an incredibly repetitive affair of placing blocks as fast as you can to get a pointless high score. It's a bummer for me especially since you need to click on each block instead of being able to hold click and drag, and that easily flares up my carpal tunnel. Even worse is that there's only a single level: I was really hoping that the first level was just a tutorial and it would keep adding new challenges and such, like maybe a level with multiple green zones where you need to catch a certain amount of balls within them, so you need to strategize and time splitting the herd up and such. It certainly could be promising, but this is barely even a prototype in its current state for me.

blit-blat responds:

Sorry to hear about your carpal tunnel man, the click & drag method sounds interesting, though I think that would just make it even easier to be honest! I am working on a follow up with more levels & challenges so watch this space!

[Hop Owl]

Nice little game! It ain't anything crazy, but it's a solid and well-put-together short and sweet experience: the controls are intuitive, the animations are subtle but smooth and bouncy, and the game does a good job at keeping the pace up by introducing more and more mechanics and mixing them up in interesting ways. The game is even generous enough to have a whole new B-side as well! The only nitpick I could think up at all is that sometimes it did feel like a few levels were out-of-order in terms of rising difficulty, there were some minor physics glitches like being able to trigger a dotted-line box without actually going over it but instead bumping into a nearby wall, but really it's very minor and everything feels great!

[Catlike Magic]

Pretty nice game! Was a little bit confusing at the start as well as being overly simplistic, but eventually the game became incredibly addictive and fun in how chaotic it can get with all the various skills and equipment you can get while battling a crazy variety of enemies and bosses! Indeed, despite the combat being a bit too simple in both graphics and complexity which can sometimes make it difficult to parse telegraphs and such, it nevertheless was fun to dance around through enemy fire in slow-mo and watch your abilities go off. Definitely a lot to love here, like the whole world map aspect which was like something out of Commander Keen: gave it a real sense of scale and decision-making to it. Put that chaotic action together with the really wacky story and you've got a nice game!

While I'm rather positive in regards to the game, there is some room for improvement:

*Has no idea what stats were and what effect they had. Most of them seemed obvious, but something like power and will was rather tricky since they seemed to overlap, so I spent a long time confused and hoping I wasn't making bad decisions. Eventually I saw the button in the corner where you could see stat descriptions, but why not just display an info pop-up when you hover over the stat names like you do for other cases (like the buttons in the options menu)?

*Found it weird that stats don't update immediately when you assign a stat point in leveling up, even when doing multiple in succession: wasn't even sure if they were having any effect because of that, especially since some screens display the stats as X (+Y) or X > Y when other screens do just X.

*I didn't even realize that I needed to click on the level up icon to assign stat/skills after leveling up as I thought it would be automatic. Maybe the game should just automatically take you to the level up screen when you get levels and have points to spend?

*Found it odd that, when you're picking a skill, you can click on one and, despite not hitting continue to finalize a choice, you can't actually go back and pick another choice, so what's the point?

*There came a point pretty early on (as early as the second level boss) that I was just able to stand still taking bullet after bullet and barely get hurt at all: I wasn't even trying to make a broken build or anything, so the game balance is probably quite questionable and could use some tinkering.

[Farmula 1 Racing]

Haha, this was a rather cute take on Outrun! Bit bizarre that it just dumps you in with not even a title screen, but whatever! For the most part, I had a lot of fun playing: driving felt smooth and intuitive, the visuals were pleasing in their retro-ness, and I enjoyed being able to explore the multiple routes available.

Don't really have many complaints, though I did feel like some of the visuals were difficult to parse at times: the snow level in particular was really difficult to tell what was happening, and in general sometimes it was difficult to tell the distance of other racers, especially when you're on a hill and it can get a little wonky. I wish checkpoints in tunnels were a bit more obvious with a visual of the banner, and also I wish you could still keep your momentum and trot a bit further once time is out instead of being stopped immediately. It also has some of the small problems that the original games had, such as it being difficult to tell how sharp a turn is exactly: maybe a case of reacting the old style too accurately, haha!

[Otherwise]

Pretty neat game! Kind of a retro demake of a game like Until Dawn. I was impressed at the level of ambition in regards to all of the mechanics present: quick time events, branching narratives, collectibles, puzzle platforming, and so on. Not all of it is great as it can kind of fall flat for me at times like with the arcade minigame, but for the most part I was interested to keep playing to see how the story would proceed, and very inclined to play again to see if it truly does differ a lot for each run.

In terms of feedback, the most obvious one is the script, which has plenty of typos and odd word choices present: luckily it was never anything so drastic as to make it not understandable, but still, it can take you out of the moment. There were also some minor glitches like the wonky physics for moving crates and some places having an exclamation mark to indicate interaction but not actually being able to interact (like Penny with the car near the beginning).

Final feedback is more something that I would prefer, in that I felt like maybe it was a bit too retro for its own good. In terms of audio, the game felt very lacking and way too silent: I would've loved more spooky ambiance or music to set the mood, and I especially would've loved maybe different beeps and boops for text for each character to give them their own 'voice' (it'd be great if it also would pitch shift to indicate their tone/mood). Speaking of that, I would've loved if the visuals could get increased a bit as well as again, with such simple graphics, it can kind of be difficult to keep track of characters, whereas if there was some more color/detail and maybe animations and different facial expressions when people were talking, it'd make it much easier to parse and read their tone/mood and just give them so much more character. Basically the game is neat, but for being about characters, I'd love if they had more life to them through visuals and sound as I think it would increase immersion and readability (though I understand if maybe that hurts the gameboy aesthetic).

[Iced]

Pretty neat action-packed game! For the most part, it seems very similar to something like Super Crate Box except with the inclusion of bosses and a temperature mechanic, and with this it indeed delivers some great, explosive, juicy and slick action as you chaotically juggle all sorts of weaponry and dodge enemy attacks all while trying to keep yourself warm. Definitely enjoyed myself a bunch with this: it's simple but fun!

My initial impression wasn't that great as I felt like the heat mechanic wasn't that interesting as it was too easy to stay in the middle: felt like maybe there should be another mechanic to gather wood for the fire to keep it going, or for the fire to move. However, as the waves increase it gets more and more difficult to stay in the middle so it all works quite well: I guess it's just a bit of a slow burn and takes awhile to warm up, if you pardon the pun. Maybe it could stand to increase the difficulty quicker to get to the good stuff faster: feels like it takes until the 3rd wave for the game to actually start.

Still, I do have to admit that, in regards to the heat mechanic, I wish it was a bit more easy to tell. I actually died in the tutorial and had to do it again because I had no idea I was freezing: basically I think the effect of getting colder is a bit too subtle for its own good. Would probably help if the effect was a bit more amped up: maybe make the vignette larger or more dark blue as you get colder, use maybe some more ice related visuals like frost or cracks appearing on the screen, maybe some ice cracking or winter wind blowing sound effects, and so on. I also felt like the simple change in opacity and nothing else made it too difficult to tell how close you were to the limit: there's beeping but it covers too large of an interval, where sometimes I'd freeze not realizing I was that close to the end and thought I had more time. Maybe you tried to make it subtle so as to not impair the players vision, but I think you overdid it by not overdoing it. Oh, and I also wish it was more obvious when you get hit with something like a screenshake or a full screen red flash.

[Star Trek: Collective Mischief]

Pretty decent little shmup! It ain't gonna light anything on fire as it is pretty much a bog-standard shmup without any crazy new mechanics (and what new mechanics there are, like the decision to make the torpedo button use all torpedos at once instead of one at a time, can be a bit confusing rather than interesting) but for what it is, it's a pretty short and sweet time with good explosive effects that doesn't wear out its welcome by stretching its content too far.

A particular highlight is the inclusion of two crafts to choose from, with one being fast but weak while the other is slow but strong: adds some good replayability through needing to use different strategies. Another highlight was the boss fight which was pretty cool: I had a really rough time with it as the Enterprise at first since it felt way too slow to be able to dodge the patterns, but with some practice I was able to see that the boss was designed enough to have gaps to exploit despite the slowness (you just really gotta be on your A game). Nice stuff!