FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rampster!]

Not too shabby! Pretty cool busy game that, despite the simple graphics, does a pretty good job at intuitively teaching the mechanics through how it shades everything (while still having some cute animations for victory, haha). Apart from my brain always trying to get on stairs sideways and failing (I know, I know, that's my fault, but I couldn't help but keep trying) I got pretty addicted to this game and how challenging the puzzles could be. Felt like it wasn't afraid to ramp things up quite quickly and seriously, compared to most puzzlers nowadays which increase very slowly.

Speaking of that difficulty curve: it was a bit of a mixed blessing. I gotta say, while I like a challenge, I got really stumped at level 6 because I did not realize the game had the chops to simulate a box rolling down stairs by itself: most likely something about the simple graphics made my brain hesitant to ever believe it would have that level of physics simulated. In that way, figuring that out finally felt less like a "eureka" moment and more like a "wait, what? bullshit!" moment. Might've been nice if there was a level before that could've taught that in a more easier-to-see way, somehow: but I did figure it out eventually, so hey, it still works alright (but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people dropped off there)!

Pjorg responds:

Thank you for this thorough review! It seems like you really "got" what I was going for here so I appreciate you sharing that experience.

Level 6's fatal flaw is that in trying to make it fit to the strict scale of the level maps (9x9 tiles) the space is not used as efficiently as it could be. The earliest version of level 6 was only 5x5, and looked like this. (Pretend the hamster and the cheeses are elevated)

🟦🟦⏫🟦🟦
🧀🟦⬛⏫🟦
⬛📦📦⬛⬛
🐹⬛⬛⬛🧀
⏫🟦🟦🟦🟦

This compact and more clear design was ultimately sacrificed so I could make all the levels a consistent size. Why do I put such arbitrary constraints on my levels? I don't know. I guess I just kind of prefer the way they look and feel. Did you also notice that the hamster begins each level where the previous one ended? Similar story there, it's mainly my own aesthetic satisfaction. I suppose I could have boxed the original level 6 off in a more obvious cage or something and fill the remaining 9x9 with empty space, but I used something akin to that motif in level 5 and level 7 and I think I was worried about it getting stale. Were these the right trade-offs to make? All the reviews telling me "I got stuck on level 6" suggest it wasn't. Then again, there's no telling. Maybe making level 6 more clear would have just resulted in a dozen reviewers saying they got stuck on level 7! Ah well. It is what it is.

Oh- and to your earlier point about having to get your brain into the habit of reading the map correctly- the overhead perspective certainly takes a moment for everyone to wrap their heads around. I have been thinking about what sort of opportunities could be had if I had the option of using three dimensional art... I could have the hamster run under archways for example without being hidden. Perhaps a spiritual successor someday in the future?

[SHOGUN TRIAD DEATHNINJA]

I know I have a history of not being the biggest fan of joke/troll games like this. Perhaps it's unfair, but from my experience, I feel like a lot of game devs make their game jokey or troll-y as a cheap way to deflect criticism and give them an excuse for low effort development. But this one is different: this is what I consider the ideal joke game that should be aspired to, in that as much as it tries to look low-effort as possible, it isn't low-effort at all and actually has some considerable effort and clever construction to it all. In that way, the low-effort veneer is actually an effective way to elevate the humor by acting as a rug-pull, instead of being all there is to it like others.

So yes, I enjoyed my time with this game and was quite impressed with it. Yes, it still has some bad signs in that, technically, the game play is quite simple and can be boiled down to talking to people, walking, and dodging obstacles over and over. But despite being a simple game, the game did so much to enhance the rather simple gameplay with charming design touches. I loved how animated and goofy the game was in all aspects, I loved the deeply layered amount of dialogue present for each character you encounter (and how you were rewarded for expending their dialogue with marriage opportunities), I loved all the little events like climbing the rope/ladder as well as the hidden events like stepping on the craps and eating the urinal cakes, I loved the subtle music references, and so on and so forth. Reminds me of playing a game like Monkey Island: so much to explore and laugh at.

So, uh, yeah, pretty epic, dude.

Also I got married to the wrong dude by accident: thank god the priest blew 'em up, did me a solid.

[The Last Construct of Edos]

Pretty neat idea! Reminds me of games like Deathloop or Majora's Mask, where from repeated trials and research into the layout and rules, you eventually build up enough knowledge to be able to execute a perfect plan on your last run to sacrifice everyone and break the loop. I did have a good time trying to put together this perfect plan, and the goofy nature of the game was amusing.

That said, I feel like in it's current state, this is a good concept, but not a great execution, mostly because the game is pretty darn buggy. I know, it's probably because it's a game jam game and all that, but still, it's really rough in unacceptable ways: I had tons of times where invisible blocks would be blocking a lava pit (they wouldn't turn purple or make the god laugh or anything, it'd just be invisible for no good reason) or where the god would not block a lava pit that I used previously, allowing me to double-kill with it, or block a lava pit I haven't used already, and numerous other weird stuff like that. Because of those bugs, I had a lot of what should've been winning runs go awry, and it felt really bad and unfair to have that happen. Would love to see a nice concept like this get expanded upon and polished to reduce the bugs: definitely some nice potential in this.

[quest of for the epic!]

Cute little goofy adventure! Well, I should probably just keep it as that: it looks like it's a troll/joke game not meant to be taken seriously, so I don't think any super criticism is needed and I'm just supposed to be "it's ebic" and all that. Still, though, while it was a funny little game, I have to admit that I did find myself disappointed: I actually was hoping that the game was gonna be something big in the veins of Battle Kid, I Wanna Be The Guy, or other similar trial-and-error trap games, but other than a few little traps and some precise jumps, the game ended in two screens (not counting the cat screen, lol). What a shame: I always like to be surprised and appreciate a game that looks low-effort but hides an actual high-effort game within, but for this, unfortunately, it is what it is. Maybe if you feel like it, it would be cool to see a more fleshed-out version of this!

Though maybe I'm just missing something? I haven't found the 'yum apple' achievo...

SomeApe responds:

cool

[Toxic Invaders]

Wow, very solid shoot-em-up here! Definitely felt like it had all the core essentials and then some: good variety of enemies, a great boss lineup with some sweet patterns to them, coop mode, and a whole bunch of satisfying audio/visual effects that really punched the combat up (love the explosions and some of the more complex effects like the croc boss beam). Game has some fascinating touches to it as well: where most games would just fade to black when you die and insta-put you back at the checkpoint, the way the game rewound the level was a cool look. Definitely was a short and sweet trip that felt professionally done: felt like I was playing Contra or Metal Slug or any other neato shooter.

I think the only demerits I can put against this game is that I don't quite agree with some of its old school design (hate losing power-ups from just getting hit once and not restoring health at a boss fight which forces you to just commit suicide to get full health lest you start at a disadvantage, but I understand its in service of the high score challenge) and that I wish it had a bit more of a sense of progress by updating the background or music whenever you beat a boss (doesn't have to be anything major, something as simple as changing the color of the background would be nice).

[Tower Of Death]

Pretty neat game! The whole grapple mechanic is pretty fun and adds a lot of interesting strategy to the fights: really escalates things in an interesting direction, similar to something like Bionic Commando. Alongside that cool core concept, I loved the goofy story and the large variety of enemies, mechanics, bosses and so on. Basically, the game just did an excellent job at constantly amping things up bit by bit, introducing new enemies, new techniques, new bosses, and so on, which kept me hooked and wanting to play more.

As nice as it was, it definitely does have some clunky aspects to it. For one, I found it very confusing to have to grapple your hand off-screen to proceed: would much prefer if you would just grapple to a point near the exit and then it would transition you (I almost thought it started to do this in the later levels, but instead it just put a grapple point that you'd still need to grapple off-screen anyway). Speaking of grappling, sometimes I wish it was a bit more forgiving at times, and they were some oddities like being able to grapple to points that enemies are sitting on top of, still alive. Some of the ways the game spiced things up, like suddenly introducing a table flip mechanic for a boss, were a mixed blessing at times, as while they did shake things up and keep it fresh, sometimes it was a bit too drastic and out of left field instead of building on core mechanics. And finally, I was really bummed that the game does not have a save/load or continue feature. Obviously a lot of these are understandable given it was a game jam game. but still, would love if some of these could be polished up or added post-game jam.

[Buggy & Snuggy's BIG DIG]

Cute little game! Seems like it could make for some fun 2-player hijinks as you compete to harvest while other getting in the way of others: the multi-use of the tools to both grow/harvest while also building pitfall traps and such is quite interesting. The graphics were especially very cute and I liked the hidden emote/taunt feature: one of those nice little touches that might need be necessary, but adds a little spice to it all.

Unfortunately, I only have myself to play it with (sadge) and while the game does offer a 1-player mode, I almost wish it didn't because it doesn't serve a useful purpose: without at least an AI bot to compete against, it really puts a bad light on the game. I know maybe you were trying to be nice by including it for soloers like me, but if you don't go all the way in its implementation, I feel like it's better left-out as the game definitely seems intended for 2-player: a half-measure pleases no one, prefer you stand strong with the intention.

Moving beyond that, there were also some confusing aspects to it. For having such wonderful sprites, I was surprised that the interaction was limited to just shoveling: you'd think that when they water the plant, they'd use a watering can, and when they harvest they'd just grab with their hands or use a sickle. Not having these different sprites made the gameplay really confusing, especially considering how many clicks you need to get things done (why do you have to dig twice just to get things started? maybe if they dug first and then showed the sprite planting next, it'd make sense to have those extra steps). There were also some minor glitches like the score not resetting on a new game and the movement/interactions feeling stiff and unsatisfying.

[Hadros]

Nice little puzzler! It's not the flashest game or anything like that, being quite minimalist, but I still found myself getting addicted nonetheless. That might just be because this was my first time experiencing '2048', and not necessarily anything the game did, but still, I found that the game was constructed well: it did a good job at intuitively teaching me the rules and making me have fun racking up achievements as I morphed the shapes together. Only got up to 10 so far, but tempted to see how much farther I can go!

[Paramyst: Breach]

Bit of a rough game, but had a little something to it that made me want to keep playing despite it all.

As said, the game was definitely being pretty rough, especially in terms of the interface. The layering was all over the place: the main mouse cursor would go behind the inventory objects I'm trying to use, and everytime I'd use an item on something the object would go behind the thing, adding unnecessary confusion to interactions. There were weird glitches where, if you pull up your tablet and click on a log, you might end up interacting with something in the world that was in the same relative position as the log button. I also suffered a glitch where once I used the crowbar on the power box, the crowbar stayed on screen in the same position for the rest of my game. Basically, just a lot of really unprofessional stuff.

And something about the way the story is presented just made me laugh: all of the logs where people either beat you over the head with the solution to a puzzle you already knew or kept typing despite dying (Monty Python, anyone?) and the weird segment at the end where it just devolves into a bunch of text telling you what happens instead of, you know, gameplay. Definitely a very odd and weird game.

But I gotta admit, despite all of that, I did actually find myself getting a bit addicted to it: perhaps not for the intended reason as I found it more funny than scary, but hey, I beat it in one sitting and had a good time adventuring around and solving the various puzzles (as easy as they were), so a win's a win, haha!

[TRAILVOID]

Hrmm, I really want to like this, but man I had a rough start and there are some serious issues I had with the design.

First and foremost, please, for the love of god, stop adding all these silly flashy filter crap to your game like the curved screen and blurry chromatic aberration whatsit: it doesn't make the game look cool, it makes it look worse by making it actually physically painful to look at and difficult to read any of the text (especially when combined with the tiny screen). Sorry, I just see so many indie game devs overdo it when they get their hands on these snazzy filters or other juicy aspects: the game would look and read way better without them, trust me, the graphics are nice enough by themselves.

Moving on from that, the game really kind of throws you into it without any directions. While it did make it quite interesting to figure everything out, it did make the introduction quite frustrating (especially when coupled with the already mentioned physical discomfort from looking at the game). For putting so much focus on RMB to start, it's odd that it doesn't use RMB for starting actual movement. Anyway, even after I did figure out how the game worked, there still were a lot of silly decision decisions, like how you can see where your ships will spawn but you can't see in what order your ships will spawn (leading to inevitably losing your first run because you can't plan it out beforehand), and also the level order seemed really strange at times with suddenly incredibly easy levels being stuck inbetween hard levels, breaking the smooth escalation of difficulty. Also wish I could have the choice to restart a single ship's run, instead of having to restart the whole thing.

Having said all that though, when you get used to everything the game has, I actually found myself having some good fun. The movement system in particular, with the way it slows down when you're holding down the aim button and then the crisp boost from release: so damn satisfying! And I like the concept of planning out multiple routes to not intersect, and the way new mechanics like collecting keys throws an extra spice into the mix. Definitely a good game in there, it's just a bit hidden until your eyes adjust to it, if you pardon the pun.