FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[PLOMO]

This one was a bit of a odd duck! On one hand, it was a very pretty and cinematic experience, and I enjoyed the adventure of figuring out what the game was even about and how it operated. For example, I felt overjoyed that I was able to intuit exactly how to handle the first duel without any overt instructions. On the other hand, though, the game was just pretty repetitive, I didn't like how the duels were hard-coded in terms of timing as I would prefer an actual reflexive challenge ala Samurai Kirby, and I have no idea what the twist at the end was or what the point of the story was, amusing and baffling as it was to experience. Memorable in a way, but not entirely in a positive sense, haha!

TheGorondorf responds:

Thanks for the feedback! Never really expected to gather attention at all with PLOMO, but if it lingers on people's mind I'll be happy no matter the reasons for it (next game I'm working on will be more traditional in terms of everything, so I guess that one will be more enjoyable).

[Your turn to Disembark]

Pretty cool story game you got here! Definitely reminded me a lot of those other 'death game'-esque stories like the Nonary Games, you know, where it's some motley crew of characters stuck in some mysterious place they're trying to escape, solving puzzles while their personalities clash and they get picked off one-by-one and so on and so forth. In that regard, this story was pretty cliche and not breaking any new ground, but hey, I was still very intrigued and wanted to figure out what the heck was going on, so you got me there! It also helped that the game has a solid sense of presentation too, and everything felt pretty smooth.

While the initial impression was solid and I was enjoying watching events play out, I have to admit that the game started to lose me. I could forgive a lot of things, such as the cliche setting and Deviant Art Fanfic OC characters as explained before, but the thing that ultimately ruined the game for me was the pacing: the story just moved way too fast that all of the deep emotional beats that the game tried to hit just came off as very shallow!

Don't get me wrong, I think writers should try to be concise, but it really didn't do this any favors and I couldn't take these deaths, redemptions, betrayals and twists seriously when they happen at such a lightning pace. Take Bree for example: even though I could see the whole 'jackass with a hidden heart of gold' coming from a mile away, it would've been fine if it played out slowly, but seeing Bree go from enemy to changing heart and gushing her whole back story at me in just two interactions just felt silly. It's impossible to take things like the hard-to-remember character's death seriously when we've known him for just a few minutes: it actually makes total sense that we'd barely remember them!

Now, credit where its due, I still was compelled to get through the rest of the game despite these pacing issues because the whole setting still intrigued me. But that's where another issue raised its head: the ending felt incredibly unsatisfying in that it didn't explain anything nor provide a believable emotional conclusion. Maybe it's just my bad luck for making the wrong choices or something, and I understand that the game implies that we should play it multiple times, but with no way to easily skip/fast-forward dialogue, I can't see myself retreading all of that ground just to see if a game that already let me down might not do it again.

Apart from all this, I do wish the game also had a bit of quality-of-life, such as allowing you to pause and save at any point, though it's not too bad as the game does a decent job at providing breaks. Also I wish the gameplay was a bit more involved beyond just talking to people: would've been nice to have some puzzles and other interactions.

I was also curious about the whole possibility to skip interacting with characters in the break periods: I wonder if that is supposed to be some sort of fast-forward to let you continue if you've already done them before, like a convenience feature, or if it's just a weird decision because you wouldn't be earning points to influence the ending.

SquidoodleDev responds:

Hiya, I’m not going to lie this was incredibly hard to read but I understand your point and agree.
I’m now going to go back through the game and see how I can improve the narrative and story so that I can hopefully make it better and more enjoyable.
- SquidoodleDev

[Bunny Bun]

Hmm, I really want to like this game, but my first impression of it was pretty rough!

I definitely do think there is a lot to like here. Sure, the platforming is a little generic, being your standard hop-n-bop with simple upgrades like dashes, but the world felt very mysterious and stylish with the way you rendered it, and I was very curious to see where the story goes. I also think that the gameplay was doing a decent job at keeping things interesting by constantly introducing new elements: breakable blocks, wall jumps, boss battles, upgrades, and so on! I also liked some of the creative enemy patterns, such as the blockers who need to be air juggled, and the cute sound effects for movement/footsteps.

But on the other hand, the gameplay and controls just felt kind of awkward and I was finding it difficult to get used to. There's just so many little things that crop up that don't allow me to get into a flow state with movement: for example, there's this weird delay where you don't cling to a wall immediately but have to wait until you start moving downward, the wall jump controls are odd in that just pressing the movement key without jump makes you jump and there's no way to drop down from a wall cling, there's no coyote time which constantly makes me miss my edge jumps, the way my dash keeps firing off if I try to jump a little too early from hitting the ground, combat feels kind of weird with its hitboxes and knockback, and so on.

There were also just some really weird design decisions, like why is the inventory so limited? Why would I ever want to remove an essential upgrade like being able to dash with some boring passive regen/lifesteal?

All of the above were things I was slowly getting used to, and like I said, I was still intrigued by the story and world, so I was going to keep playing. Or at least I was, until I decided to take a quick break, and was then shocked to realize that, despite the game having very obvious rest benches which you would think would save the game, did not save it at all, and I was forced to start all the way back at the beginning when I came back. Perhaps it is technically not a long game if you play it straight through, but still, why in the world is there no save/continue system?

EDIT: Ok, whew, there is a load/continue option, it's just hidden in the corner for some reason instead of just being front-and-center with the start button. Why in the world...well, if it's there, at the very least I can finish this game! Thank god it didn't erase my data when I started up again after missing it the first time.

That...was a pretty weird ending. I feel like it was trying to be real emotional, but it was such a last-minute exposition dump that it really didn't connect with me. I have no idea what moving the clouds was doing? How...odd.

ErikSwahn responds:

Glad you played it through! I will remember the feedback you gave. I agree with most except the coyote jump mechanic but I do not like it in other games either. It is very good to hear feedback about the story as I am new to that. There should have been more of a "build up" towards the end to make it feel less random and more impactful. I have learned that it is easier to judge than to create good work on your own. Thanks for your review :)

[Babel Adventure]

Huh, quite the interesting game you got here! I was really worried at first as it seemed a bit simplistic and a bit janky, but I was impressed at how addicted I got to scaling this tower! Something about how you have such a large and diverse cast of enemies and traps, each with their own unique patterns to contend and exploit, and combine that with trying to get coins and the mind-bending nature of using the screen edges to teleport: it creates a really cool puzzle adventure where I loved figuring out the appropriate route to make it through each screen! Not only does it keeps escalating in terms of gameplay mechanics, it does so as well with the weirdness of its story and cool music to create quite the memorable experience. Well done!

Having said that, though, the game is pretty rough and janky, as mentioned before. In terms of feedback:

*There was some jankiness and such in terms of hitboxes being a bit ill-defined and movements being a bit weird, but more so than that, it was so janky that I had a point where I got awkwardly shoved off the screen by some attacks and was stuck in limbo: unable to restart but unable to continue either, moving around in some void jail but unable to get back to the stage proper. Luckily I was still early in the game so it didn't hurt much to quit and full restart, but boy, it felt super unfair and if I was further along, that woulda been quits for me.

*Speaking of the above, it was a real bummer that this game has no save/continue option. It has checkpoints, yes, but if you close the game and come back to it, it puts you all the way back at the start, and while the game might not technically be that long, it just feels bizarre to not include such an option (especially since it would've saved me from that crash!)

*As much as I wanted to collect coins and get items and such, it just felt pointless and not worth the risk since 1) death is plentiful and resets your coins and 2) I couldn't tell what kind of item I was even buying due to a lack of information, and it was such a big risk to spend so much to try something out and get a whole heap of nothing, like that time I bought the red coin 2 pack and I still have no idea what they even did. I like the incentive to get coins as an extra challenge, but I dunno if having an item shop is necessary in this, with the way its been setup.

*While I generally liked all of the enemies and how diverse they were, there were still a couple that felt really bad, like the sudden rocks that would come from off-screen and explode: I get that its an increase in difficulty, but I dunno, it just felt unfair in how you need to memorize it and can't see any sort of telegraph for it so as to help keep it in mind, like how spikes will still have a minimal presence on the stage even when they are retracted.

DaShahRach00 responds:

Hey ! Thank you very much for this review, it is very useful !
mentioned the shop as poorly rewarding for getting parts, thank you for putting the word out there. I should have made sure to provide information on the items we are taking before purchasing them. (ps the red coin when used transforms all the coins visible on the screen into double coins)
And I note the need to have a game that saves for future games!
We will pay more attention to crash issues like this for future games! I'm glad that despite this you continued the game.
Thank you for playing it! And I'm glad you enjoyed the experience ^^

[Hive Jump 2: Survivors]

Hmm, this seems to have a lot of potential to be a fun little survivors arcade game where you blast a bunch of bugs using some nice graphics, but there were just a lot of confusing and annoying elements to it at the moment which got in my way.

For one, the UI and menus felt incredibly messy, overcrowded, and difficult to control and parse. Sometimes I could click on buttons with the mouse, while other times it required that I use the keyboard instead. Similarly, other times there would be buttons that would be faded to look like they were disabled, only for me to press them and find out they were active after all. I felt like you tried to make everything intuitive somewhat with lots of labels and prompts, but overall it was just really difficult to tell what my objective was, how to progress, what buttons do what, text was hard to read due to colors and overlaps, and so on.

Furthermore, the game loop felt really unsatisfying with the way the inventory fills to capacity almost immediately, making it incredibly risky and annoying to try and experiment with other items as I'd like to do: instead I would feel like I need to stick with what I have and just upgrade its stats in a very boring manner. Bizarre to see such a limitation in a series where they usually allow tons of weapons and equipment to create these dazzling fireworks displays of chaos. Despite me getting so many upgrades that constantly interrupted the gameplay every few seconds, it didn't feel like the game was changing significantly.

GraphiteLab responds:

Big changes to the UI in the recent update. Would love to have you play again and share your updated thoughts.

[Pinball Breaker DELUXE]

Pretty neat little break-the-targets arcade-y pinball experience! Overall the game feels quite flashy and fun with great menus and fun characters that brighten up the experience with their unique animations and backgrounds as well as their informative callouts, like when you're on your last ball. Certainly an improvement from the previous version!

Having said that, though, I'm still a bit down on it in some regards:

*Pinball is all about pizazz for me, and while this is an improvement from the previous version in terms of that, it still felt quite lackluster in a lot of regards. Potentially exciting powerups like slow-mo felt pointless in their usage and nukes felt limp with the way they just clear the screen with no exciting explosive sounds or visuals. A bonus round is usually something that shakes things up significantly and feels like a celebration and a reward, but here, barely anything changes, most notably the music stays the same, and the collection of coins doesn't feel that gratifying. Certain elements like winning the time challenge for a board or racking up big points should be broadcast to the player, but instead are being stuck in the corner where you might not even notice them.

*The gameplay also just feels kind of stale to me: the lack of pizazz as explained above contributes to that, but more so I feel like the game easily gets repetitive as the board only changes itself in very minor ways from level to level, with the main board construction not changing at all and lacking any sort of exciting elements like ramps, additional paddles, and so on. There are no significant changes to music, the board construction, your character or background, and so forth, to give a sense of progression, and the minor changes to the target patterns and introduction of elements like purple barriers felt like impediments rather than interesting additions.

It's a decent game that I feel has loads of potential, and so I can't help but wish for more!

CubePunks responds:

*As far as overlay elements go. Being mobile compatible, it had to be portrait rather than landscape with the hud being on the boarders optimizing screen space. Because of that, a lot of elements like the text overlay and character had to share the same real-estate as the game board; so the goal was lots of movement without distraction making gameplay hard to manage.

The Nuke is a good example: when shaking the screen violently on impact, that half second distortion can make a player loose track of the ball and then get a fallout (happened in testing). That level of player frustration would drop a review a few stars.

I reserved the timer and the score counter to the corners cause they're persistently available, having movement to not be too static but out of view that they don't distract from gameplay. I feel character reaction audio and animation make vision indicator that adding "text overlay of extra points from a time bonus in center focus" redundant and a poor use of real-estate.


*As far as board changing (not just layout changing) goes - its something I'd love to do ; but there's two barriers on that.

1- Game design: Layouts change but your ball never resets until a fallout, which gives the game a lot of the kinetic fun. As is, having that seamless feeling clashes if your foundational board elements spontaneously move on you. Some design work would have to be done to see how to have it not lead to player frustration.

2- Budget: I treat my browser games as demos/vertical slices I can put in a portfolio with hope that one day I can get the resources to expand the idea into a larger package. While everything is still self funded, I'd rather have spend (and have been spending) recent years establishing a variety of ideas rather than a refinement of a single one. This doesn't mean I don't ever want to revisit this game with updates (like I have the foundations to plug in new characters if I want) but a gameplay expansion requires a level of work on par with making another small game.

So either I need to be in a spot where I'd rather invest in an expansion over a new game (and I just did that with Deluxe being a ground up remake of the 1st) OR I need help (publisher, dev team and marketing) making a paid version that'd expand to a 5/5

___________

Either way, I want to revisit PinBall Breaker again in the future; so an expansion will happen IDK when.

- KageKMB

[Rootin' Tootin' Lootin' & Shootin' Demo]

Hmm, quite the interesting game, feeling like a cowboy-themed top-down turn-based version of SuperHot! Coming to terms with how the combat system works and the addictive nature of experimenting with the various weapons you have certainly hooked me, and the game overall felt like it had a decent amount of polish, what with its nice HUD and special effects.

However, in its current state, I find the execution of its interesting ideas a bit rough:

The game was difficult in not letting me get enough information. For example, while I can see info on guns when I'm buying them, I was annoyed that I couldn't see information on guns that are in my inventory, and the gun info was incomplete, lacking details like the cooldown between shots. I found it confusing too that gun info only appears when you mouse over an item, when I feel like it should happen when you walk over it instead (or perhaps both). Speaking of, I would've loved to have more information, such as seeing a preview for attacks and explosion radiuses and so on since I wasn't sure how they'd play out, as well as seeing enemy health amounts. Other aspects were a bit confusing, such as how some enemies will fire in a rigid cardinal direction cross formation, yet they will still point a gun in your exact direction as if they're going to fire directly at you like other enemies do.

The game also just felt a bit lackluster at times. The levels felt incredibly cramped and claustrophic which made all of the gun fights quite boring as you have no space to move around strategically. It was really easy to run out of ammo and get in a dead-man-walking vibe where you just don't have anything to fight with and no cash to buy more guns since it disappears almost immediately from when it drops: would much prefer picking up guns/ammo from enemies or chests instead of buying as I think it would help create more improvisation.

Again, really interesting ideas you got here, just don't feel like its been executed in the best way yet, but best of luck!

RaspberryJamGames responds:

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!
I am currently working on a new version of the game for Early Access, which will address a lot of your issues.

I intend to add tooltips to the inventory, extra tooltip info (such as cooldowns) and also tooltips for when you walk over an item.
I hadn't thought about attack previews, that's a good idea.
It feels like showing enemy health might clutter the screen to much, but I could give enemies their own tooltips.

I'm sorry that the levels feel cramped - At some point I want to revamp the level generation, so I'll keep that in mind.
About the money disappearing, that's quite a common criticism and I'm trying out some alternatives, but I still want people to play aggressively, rushing to get money as soon as it drops.

Thanks again for the feedback.
I agree with almost everything you've said and I will keep on improving the game.

[Moomoo's Maple Mishap v3 (Third Demo)]

Nice to see another chapter of this! Certainly a promising sonic-esque platformer that you're building up here, and it seems to get a bit better each time I see it. I'll just give you some play-by-play impressions as I went through:

Level 1: Decent level, basic stuff, very easy, but good to start off and get used to everything. Does feel a bit silly at times though, like how you can be standing right next to a rock wall and hit roll to smash through it: you'd almost expect to have to charge up or build up momentum. Can get health back so easy I practically don't need to think about it. Again, though, fine to be forgiving starting out.

Level 1 Cow Boss: Good variety of attacks, but sometimes it felt really confusing to figure out when you're free to hit him. Had loads of times when I tried to attack him right when he finished an attack, but he'd suddenly transform into a new attack right when I hit him and I get damaged instead.

Level 2 Snow Stage: Nice to see so many new mechanics like rails and see-saws. Can't really get a handle on rails, end up losing speed and coming to a stop, slipping around, reversing, feels awkward. Some nice puzzle sections like where you need to use the seesaw to make a ramp to get up...oh, maybe not and I'm just supposed to wall jump? That's a bit of a letdown. I appreciate the increase in challenge but it just started to get really annoying with so many see-saws and snowballs rolling down: a real uphill battle, pardon the pun. Felt like I was playing those annoying Hoth levels on Super Empire Strikes Back, it's just too much and I end up wanting to facetank through it!

Level 2 Hat Boss: Decent, fun animations, certainly easier to determine when I can attack compared to the first boss, but he was a disappointing one-trick pony.

Level 3 Mirror Stage: What a cool level! Love the whole puzzle element of having to look in the mirror to see invincible platforms and hazards reflected. I wanted more of this! Though, sometimes it was a bit annoying to be speeding along and suddenly you're in a mirror and you hit some spikes in the mirror you couldn't see coming. Speed and these puzzles don't mix well at times I guess.

Level 3 Eye Lasers: Again, I appreciate the increase in difficulty and having a unique race challenge, but I literally cannot beat this. Not only do a lot of the courses feel like annoying trial-and-error, but some courses I do not physically know how to build up enough speed to get away. I feel like maybe I'm missing some sort of hidden tech I'm suppose to learn about how to accelerate or something: maybe this is why I was having trouble with the rails earlier on, maybe I'm missing something. I tried everything though: spamming roll, spamming jumps while rolling, jumping and hitting down into a roll, backtracking to build up a head of steam, nothing works!

Side note: if you jump straight up when next to a wall, I don't think you could wall-cling to it unless you physically move towards the wall. Since this game doesn't do that, the character can feel too clingy.

Alzter responds:

Hi again! Thank you for playing my game and giving honest feedback, I really appreciate it!!

Level 2 Snow Stage: I'm sorry to hear that the grind rails were frustrating and unintuitive to use. A friend suggested I make it so that the player can turn around whilst on them, maybe I will have to make that possible for them to feel less uncontrollable and awkward like you said.

As for the seesaws, yes, initially I wanted the player to use the seesaw like a ramp, but I couldn't implement the behaviour well enough for it to work on its own, but clearly that's no excuse and having the mechanic not implemented in the way you expected was a letdown, so I will see if I can improve it to work more like a ramp in future.

Level 3 Eye Lasers: Damn, that's a shame that it's not intuitive or clear how to gain speed to escape the eye lasers. I will need to add some way of teaching the player how to move rapidly before this section so that they don't get stuck here like you did. If you're still stuck, try mashing the roll button whilst you are rolling, it gives you a short boost in speed, and tell me if you can beat the section using that technique.

Can't get to all of your points just yet, but I will say, if you want to disable Moomoo clinging to walls automatically without having to push towards them, turn off Assist Mode in the settings.

EDIT 28/03/24: I have decided to make the Gazers (eye lasers) NOT immediately kill you. They now only deal 1 damage like other enemies. This means that you are not FORCED to know speed techniques (which are not yet well taught to the player) in order to make it to Chapter 2's boss.