FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Enoki]

I want to like this game, but I'm not really seeing the appeal.

I do think that the way the character moves around and squishes is very cute and satisfying, and I do think the environments are kind of neat. The gameplay does seem like it could get good: it's got a bit of an addictive nature where you keep pushing down, seeing new environments and obstacles, collecting shiny objects, all while racing away from a consuming darkness.

Unfortunately, it just got really boring really fast for me. The encroaching darkness moves so slowly that it is never a threat, leading to gameplay that has no tension or spice to make quick navigational decisions. The game spent no time in recycling level assets over and over, killing any sense of progression in getting deeper and deeper. Collecting fireflies to break roots made no sense and felt unsatisfying: I'd prefer if maybe fireflies gave you mana to spend on a ground-pound ability to break through roots so the player could have more control and make decisions. Speaking of abilities, the whole 'split apart' ability felt underwhelming: it's got a really lazy animation to it when you reform and all it does is get you past these certain checkpoints and is useless anywhere else. And so on and so forth.

And to top it off, the game has a really boring and unnecessary mobile-game-esque currency to buy skins: I would prefer you make the game itself fun and addicting than relying on number-go-up currency stuff to trick people into getting addicted (sorry, perhaps that's a bit harsh and not the intent, but it's just not my jam).

[Salvager]

Definitely feels like it has a lot of potential. For example, I was really impressed how, instead of having basic button menus and such, all of what would be menu actions are actually interactable objects in the environment. Also the whole aspect of moving around and ordering your bots to build/collect and such using your own health as power/order nodes made for some interesting gameplay. And, of course, I do think the graphics are very nice and well-animated as well. Certainly an A for effort.

Unfortunately the game does feel very underbaked, maybe as a result of overambition. First and foremost the game does a terrible job of explaining things: there are practically no directions and what little directions you do get remain on the screen for 2 seconds before they swoosh away. It does ok in some respects to teach you things, like how you can see the robots get an exclamation mark over their head to indicate that they are moving on your orders, but so much else is confusing and underexplained. Couple that with the gameplay being incredibly basic defense against these boring enemies (with weird recovery times) without me being able to figure out how to progress and the game ended up losing me.

[Prism Indigo]

Pretty decent shooter! It has a bit of a slow start and is a bit overall lowkey, but once you get to the boss fights and the later sections, it becomes a decent bullet-hell game with some fun patterns to contend with. I like how it has a whole story element to it which is even subtly introduced in the tutorial section as a way to hook you in. It's not gonna rock my world or anything as nothing really blows me away, but it's alright and I had a decent time for the most part.

Part of what really hurts it for me is that it is a little dry in terms of pizazz: it's not bad, per se, and the boss fights and interesting patterns do jazz it up considerably, but it is a little underwhelming in terms of special effects, and the bullet-sponge boss fights combined with sometimes too easy to dodge patterns and drab non-boss fight sections enhance the monotony unfortunately. There's also some awkward stuff like the magnetic attraction of pick-ups acts very oddly and causes them to fly past me sometimes instead of homing in properly. Finally, perhaps it may not be a long game, but I was really disappointed there was no continue option: I came back to finish it off after a break and saw I had to start all over: killed my motivation. That being said, I do still want to see if I can come back and finish this in order to see the end of the story!

F1Krazy responds:

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I always try to make sure that my games have that kind of story aspect to them, so I'm especially glad that that appealed to you.

I'm currently working on an update that should spice up some of the earlier levels and smooth out the difficulty of the bosses so that they aren't so easy to cheese. I'd like to address some of the other issues, like the lack of visual punch, but I'm yet to decide whether I'll do that in this game or save it for the sequel.

[Notebook Jam]

Cute and addictive game! Was surprised at how addicted I got to making my way through the puzzles in this game: feel like it's due to the cute graphics and music, intuitive mechanics (love the little targetting icon on the right and how it flashes red if it's a no-go, for example), and the great way it's paced by slowly increasing the complexity with more pages and more wild layouts. If I were to have any complaints, it's probably that the HUD could be polished up a bit more to pop-out (didn't even notice the page indicator at the top at first) and that it can be a bit confusing at the start (you're going back and forth between two pages and yet the animation keeps flipping pages to the left instead of a left-right loop, it works for multiple pages but with two its weird). Great job!

[The Ferryman]

Oh man, this is a really rough one for me.

The game absolutely started out fantastic for me: love the way it builds up a sense of dread and this dreary, gloomy atmosphere through its spooky soundscape, artistic graphics, light-based mechanics, and weird cast of characters. I was so looking forward to how the game escalates and introduces new horrors into this seemingly mundane job.

But then as early as the second level, it threw out everything it built up out the window: all the subtlety and intrigue, gone, as it just blasts you with a horde of never-ending ghouls that munch away at your boat non-stop. You'd think it would tease you with only a single ghoul, or maybe a few ghouls appearing at first, maybe so few that you're not even sure if it was your imagination, the light playing tricks on you, as you repair the holes left behind. I was so scared to carry coal and buckets around since I thought in doing so, the diminished light would open me up to attack from ghouls. But nope! My fears were unwarranted as the ghouls did nothing but constantly munch at the hull with no threat towards me: suddenly what was once scary becomes nothing more than a common pest, a roach I swish away with a broom as I dash madly around patching my boat and bailing out water. A spooky game no more, now just a weird task-juggling game.

Beyond just the annoyance at the spookiness being ruined, I also feel like the difficulty spikes way too hard as early as level two because of the sudden onslaught of ghouls. Although it could be just that the game doesn't communicate its mechanics well. While I can assume that the holes fill up the boat with water, I was never sure if that was the case because the holes did not drip water or anything like that. Likewise, I kept trying to empty the boat of water by picking up the water buckets below deck, carrying them topside and and throwing them overboard, but that never seemed to do anything (only once I ignored bailing water and just focused on patching holes did the water level seem to decrease, which didn't make any sense).

I'm still giving it a good score because despite my gripes, I do find the game's atmosphere, charm, and intrigue very appealing (not to mention you do have a save/load system). I'm hoping I can continue to play and maybe find something to change my mind for the better.

EDIT: Once I did get used to it and accept the game for what it was, I had a pretty good time! It was still a little frustrating and repetitive at times, and I do still feel it missed a trick, but overall, a very cool experience! And yes, it is impressive it was made in such minimal time, haha!

crelish responds:

....made in... 5 days.............

[Cursed Travels: Below the Factory]

Another solid entry in the Cursed Travels series! This is only my second entry played after Flame of the Banshee, but I find myself enjoying going through the puzzles and seeing all this lore being built up. Once again, I really love the kind of La-Mulana/Simon's Quest vibe it has to it that makes it fun to explore and solve the brain-teasers. Game really gets me addicted due to the rapid-fire introduction and bite-size nature of the various puzzles scattered about in close proximity: just paced so well that I find myself always wanting to move onto the next puzzle and the next, while other games would kill my flow by having too much travel time or unnecessary fluff. Couple that all together with a nice little graphical style, story hook at the beginning, and save/load system and you got a great adventure I'm gonna finish!

If I would have one nitpick about it, it would be the stairs: seriously, I gotta jump up each step? No Castlevania walk-up-stairs animation or nothing?

Ferociter responds:

Hey, thanks for playing! I've always disliked the slow stair-walking in Castlevania, but I'll see if and how to improve them in Sunken City.

As usual: looking forward to seeing you play this.

[Cave Buster]

Nice little game overall, but had a bit of a mixed impression due to some odd design choices. The game, while short, is a pretty decent metroid game with some neat puzzles, progression, and overall solid presentation and gamefeel. Boss fights were a nice treat as well. I think some of the puzzles, like the ones involving the jet boots, were very nice, and I would've loved to have a longer game to let more of these puzzles expand and breath in greater variation.

Some of the other puzzles, however, like the ones that seemed to require taking damage to bounce or force your way through spike mazes, were very odd: an interesting brain-teaser to require damage-boosting, but such didn't sit well for me as I don't feel like the game did a good job introducing such a twist (leave damage-boosting for weird kaizo mario maker levels, I say, haha). Didn't like the puzzles that require not breaking enough blocks so as not to destroy stepping stones required for a too-high obstacle jump either: since the blocks don't regen like they would in a metroid game, you have to annoyingly backtrack to reset the room, killing the flow. The game also just had some general wonkiness/glitchiness to it, like enemies spawning where they shouldn't, hitboxes acting odd and bosses not taking damage when they should.

All things said, though, it was still an interesting and notable experience in its wackiness: some of the weird choices, like the damage-boosting puzzles, did stick out in my mind, so while I disagree with them in theory, they were intriguing in memorability.

[Jesus Christ! Holy Menace]

Cute little game! Funny concept, and I like the little touches like the audio/visual quips that are generated when spraying people down. Only issues I had with it is that I had a game get absolutely stuck at 32/33 with no last target to be found, with me having to start all over to actually win. Would love if there was an arrow/guide to help find the last targets, or if the game graphics did a better job at differentiating between a person who has/hasn't been sprayed. Continuing on that, I thought at first that people who are stationary are targets and mobile people aren't, but on my 2nd play I noticed that there were some mobile people who haven't been sprayed yet, so maybe that inconsistency is what led to me being stuck at 32/33: maybe I had a mover who I thought was sprayed already but wasn't. Anyway, quite the short and sweet experience!

[lose95]

Wow, I'm super jealous! I thought I made a pretty good tech support game this month, but I'm loving what you've done here! This was a serious slam dunk for me: great concept, professional and crisp minimalist graphics, juicy and satisfying effects, tons of variety in enemies and powers, and an overall smooth feel to everything! Felt like a real super hacker. Only complaints I can think of are really nitpicky stuff that I don't even feel count: I was just having so much fun! Can't believe this was a game jam game and that it was randomly generated: everything felt so hand-crafted and professional! If possible, would love to see this even further expanded into a bigger title, maybe with a little bit more narrative or story to it all!

[Sores And Sorcery]

Bit of a hidden gem here! It certainly doesn't put its best foot forward: the title screen is very bland, you can't read the tutorial instructions in a safe space and they're super tiny, and overall while the game looks decent in terms of graphics with a unique sepia filter to it all, it is a little muted and dry, desperately needing an extra bit of juice like effects or music to reduce the constant drone of the wizard firing shots at you over and over.

But putting all that aside, the gameplay was pretty solid! Loved how fast-paced it was in getting me right into some challenging levels and constantly varying up the obstacles and layout in creative ways. The decent amount of moves/mechanics and the variety really kept me hooked and wanting to play more. There was a little wonkiness at times, such as the ledge hang sometimes putting me farther out from the wall than usual, causing me to get hit by a passing saw that wouldn't usually hit me, but overall controls felt pretty tight (which is good to make a hard game like this feel fair). I'm definitely coming back to finish this later on (many thanks for adding a continue feature for the levels!)

EDIT: Whoops, I already beat it! Aww, didn't realize I was already on the final level: with all that space left on the main menu, I thought there was gonna be even more levels! Oh well, had a nice finish where I got to have some sweet revenge: nice stuff!

HelperWesley responds:

I'm glad you got to finish it!

And those points are totally valid, I was thinking about re-doing the title and adding some music. But I hadn't thought about how the first time you see the tutorial text, the boss is already attacking you, so that's definitely something I could fix. 😅

The extra space is for the "speed run mode" button. Did the "type in your name" text not pop up when you beat the game? If you type your name in you'll get access to the speed run mode that has a timer, and your name will go on a leaderboard I've set up. I was wondering why so few names were getting there, despite the number of plays..... Maybe it's not showing up?