FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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?

[Facemaul]

Not too shabby! It doesn't have much meat on its bones, and the swinging is a bit wonky to get used to because of the delay, but it was a nice, short and sweet experience. Felt great to try and get better to see all of the various fatalities: so satisfying to blast the pitcher's entire torso off with a line drive!

As mentioned before, one thing that drove me nuts is the delay with the bat swing: I kept trying to click right when I wanted to hit, only to miss because clicking doesn't hit the ball, it merely starts the motion of swinging to eventually hit the ball. I got used to it and consider it part of the challenge and all, but it just felt a bit unsatisfying to not have that synced connection between click and hit. I think it was mostly due to the NES graphics: those type of games practically always have instant response on button press, so it was odd to see this game go for a more modern delayed response on button press.

[Flamebearer]

Not too shabby! I like the concept and found it to be quite fun due to the big variety of obstacles to contend with. The levels really kept me hooked and overall I thought the game looked quite good as well with some solid presentation. Game was also quite impressive in the amount of meat it had on it: I thought I was getting close to the end of the game and suddenly it started adding lighting mechanics, opening up a whole new set of challenges! Definitely very addictive.

The thing that really bothers me with the game is that the controls can be a bit wonky at times, leading to frustrating deaths that didn't feel like my fault. In particular there was the wall jump mechanic: sometimes my character would cling to the wall and refuse to get unstuck despite tapping the other direction, and other times my character would uncling from the wall with the slightest tap. There's also a weird magnetic force if you jump next to a wall that can force you to attach when you don't want to. Finally, some of the bouncepads can act strange, not bouncing me as strongly as I feel like they should, most likely because they are requiring too much initial button inputs to influence the bounce strength. For a challenging platformer like this, I feel like the controls and physics gotta be really tight, and they somewhat miss the mark here. The game is fun enough that I persevered and tried to get used to it, but even then, it just felt inconsistent at times.

Only thing I'm really bummed about is that it didn't save my progress: like I said, there was a lot more meat in this game than I expected, so I was hoping I could continue from where I left off. Oh well, might give it a another go from the start anyway since I do quite like it!

[Reversary]

Hmmm, this was a bit of a bummer for me: I totally love the concept and think it's really cool and funny, but over time it just became so repetitive for me that I just let the hero kill me so it would end, haha. I wanted to see how the game naturally resolves, but didn't have the patience.

As said, initial impressions were strong. The concept was amusing alongside the dialogue, and I loved both controlling the sluggish boss and learning all of its secret moves. Presentation was solid as well, with tons of little touches like how the music builds up when you get damaged enough to represent new phases. I found it a bit confusing that the game's HUD was from the perspective of the player (their health bar in top left and boss in bottom middle) as well as the death message being "You died" instead of "They died", but I felt like that was part of the humor so I let it go with a smile. From there, I kept playing, wanting to see how the game would escalate and what the characters would talk about next.

But as time went on, I grew really bored with the game. For one, the AI for the hero was brain-dead, so brain-dead that I was curious whether it was so bad so as to stretch out the game so the hero wouldn't win too early and make you miss intended dialogue events. Whether this is or isn't the case, fighting the hero just felt bad, unchallenging and repetitive because of this, amplified by how sluggish we control. I know it's part of the experience at how the hero is so bad that all they can do is keep grinding to win by numbers, but at the end of the day, all this didn't make for a fun experience for me. Also, I found the dialogue hit-or-miss: some of it was quite amusing, but other times it would be a bit too fourth-wall-breaking and overly quirky with references to simping and such.

So, with both the gameplay being boring and the dialogue not worth it to keep going for, I let the hero kill me (and ironically, that was the hardest challenge since the hero is just that goddamn bad, which was probably the funniest part for me, so kudos for that?) Again, I really love the concept and feel it's a great and impressive game jam prototype: would love to see this polished up and executed better in a full version.