FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Wizard Ran: chapter 8]

Wow, what an amazing ending to this series! Feels like it encapsulated all of my favorite parts of this series, being the crazy time-travelling fourth-wall breaking mind-bending adventures, tons of weird secrets and references and callbacks, crazy puzzles and setpieces like getting stuck in the void, multiple endings, and a classic good ol' boss fight against god filled with fantastic spectacle. There's been some ups and some downs on this adventure, and I wasn't as committed as I'd like to get every single secret and ending on our way here in previous chapters, but I feel quite satisfied and found this whole experience incredibly memorable. Well done!

In terms of feedback:

I gotta admit, I was a little disappointed that the whole time-traveling adventures through previous chapters to collect lore for the final plan(s) wasn't done by actually going and playing the previous chapter's respective games, but I appreciate the convenience and momentum by doing it all in this game, so it's all good.

Had a weird softlock for a bit: I was going to do Shade's plan as I had already done the Run plan, but then got stuck in the void. I got out of the Boid, but then whenever I tried to start Shade's plan by refreshing the page to go back to the start, it would just take me back to the void again, where I would get out, try to start Shade's quest by refreshing, and loop back into the void over and over. Eventually I got out: not even quite sure what I did differently to break the loop! I was trying out minor things like reading the lore things, trying to do the Ran ending again, talking to people, and a lot didn't seem to have an effect until it did. Oh well!

Speaking of Shade's plan, it was a bit weird that I was able to initiate the boss fight but I still had a remaining empty pip for the plan? Bit odd, though I did go back and see that getting the remaining pip in the first world (or last world, technically) just tells you its pointless since it's too late and warps you to the fight, so whatev.

Loved all the music remixes! I always forget to shout out music and sound in my reviews, need to get better at doing so, haha.

Speaking of sound, I wonder what's being said when you die in New Mexico you die in real life. The world may never know.

adriendittrick responds:

Thanks as usual for your detailed review :) there are still many bugs in this one but finding them all will take much time and I need to move on to other projects X)
This whole series was a great gamedev experience for me, and I loved all the community interactions I had :)

[Hedgehog Dilemma For Robots]

Great little arcade game you got here!

For the most part, I have no major complaints as I feel like the game is a wonderful fusion of style and substance! For style, it's got a rather charming look and feel to it all with its cartoony graphics and some great juicy feedback and special effects, and for substance, it's got an addictive and exciting risk/reward gameplay loop through its proximity damage system and a great variety of enemies that force you to stay on top of things and improvise. I had a great time and it just feels so good to get in the thick of it with a bunch of enemies and blast them away!

If I were to have any complaints, is that I do find the metaprogression of the game to be a bit odd, in that it'll slowly dole out new abilities like blasting and such, but then eventually you just have everything from the very start and suddenly the game starts off harder: just feels a bit weird that, as a high score game, it's a bit unfair as the progressively different starting conditions and higher power you get make the scoring a bit compromised and unfair? Like whistlers are a big problem initially, but post-tutorial runs are much easier due to your higher firepower. I would almost expect that every run has you collecting the powerups to get more powerful to keep it consistent, though maybe that's not ideal. Oh, and the screen is so vertical that I find it impossible to fit the whole screen on a desktop computer.

Also, as a minor bit of confusion, I have no idea what the purpose of the 'draw' menu is supposed to be about. I guess it's a nice bonus? I was kind of expecting that whatever we draw would be added to the background play area, but it just gets deleted once you're done?

ClayGodLordThing responds:

Hey there! Thank you and I'm glad you like the game! The idea of the progression system is so that people don't have to experience the slower parts of the early game again once they get a bunch of the powerups. The early game can be a bit frustration/boring after a bunch of replaying so that was our solution. The draw room was something I just made for fun, you can share it around by screenshotting whatever you made or got as your score. That draw screen however runs better on the downloadable windows version.

[Days Without]

Hrmm, this is a rough one for me. The game does remind me a lot of cool 2D survival horror games like Lone Survivor, and when this game works, I think it is quite well-designed with some solid art, exploration, combat, and an intriguing story. Was impressed at some of the little touches it did for events, and that it was even going so far to include multiple endings!

It's quite the buggy game though! Here are a few examples:

I had one time where I saved at a dog, fell down a hole, then was sent all the way back to the start when I started the game despite me saving, and that felt really unfair (especially when it let me go back to the save point for other deaths/endings).

The worst issue was that there seems to be a really weird problem the game has with performance where it is constantly stuttering, perhaps due to it forcefully redrawing the inventory HUD over and over when you go past interactables?

Speaking of the inventory HUD, I had it remain on the screen even when I died and went back to the title screen and it was blocking text behind it, so there's definitely something funny going on with that.

There were also a lot of weird interactions where confusing options will be present (why is there an option to pet donut and pet buddy, aren't they the same?) and where you can walk around after petting a dog and after a brief delay you'll be frozen in place for the response (why not just keep us still for the whole interaction so it feels less awkward?)

Apart from bugs, the game is also a bit oddly designed. Felt like it was more of an action game than a survival horror game with the way it kept dumping me in huge loads of ammo, both from pickups found during searching and from killing enemies: would much prefer if the game limited your resources more to push stealth or avoidance as strategies, since being able to easily blow all of the enemies away just makes it too easy to the point of boredom.

It's certainly quite the interesting game and I want to love it, but the bugs, choppy performance, and lack of difficulty really kind of bring it down for me. It's a bummer because I think it could really shine if it just had some more polish to it!

Elv13s responds:

Hi!

Thanks for trying out the game, the game was made within a game jam limit so some bugs and the length were pretty much inevitable, tho Ill try and fix them [already fixed some] in the future when this game is expanded.

The HUD bug is new to me, if you like to elaborate on how and when it happened, ill try and fix this issue, thank u for finding it out, and sorry it happened to u.

the saving dog is different from Job's old dog, Buddy. It kinda implies in the story that he had one before the events of the game occurred.

yeah, the moving while some interactions can be quite the jarring experience, ill keep the player still when those happen. I just figured players may want to skip fights/dialogues for speedrun sake [also as this I a jam game, I wanted people to have to play the game faster as there were many entries to play through]

multiple endings are a last addition, so bugs can occur there, ill go back into this game and fix them. really thanks for the feed back and for playing

[Bando's Comic Wizard]

Quite the nice little application you've got here! Certainly nice to have something to help people display their comics in a simple and intuitive page flip format, and I had no problem following the instructions from cute widdle Bando to do a sample upload (though some of the instructions could stand to be spaced out a bit more so it's not just a big wall of text, such as putting the instruction to unzip the file for personal webpage uploads in a separate paragraph so users don't get confused as they should keep it as a zip for newgrounds uploads).

If I were to have some feedback, I'd say that the viewer is a bit too minimalist for its own good and while it'd be nice to have the option to view just the image with no clutter as it does now, I'd love if there were some additions such as:

It'd be nice if, when you hover over the right side of the page, a right arrow would pop-up to indicate that you'll flip to the next page if you click, and vice versa for the left side: it would make it less confusing as to what action is about to happen.

I feel like you should allow someone to press anywhere on the side of the screen to flip the page, instead of being constrained to only clicking directly on the sides of the image itself.

Would love if there were more utilities for viewing the page, such as being able to click on a magnifying glass to zoom in/out, or being able to choose whether to view pages through a fit width, fit height, original size, and so on.

Would love if there were more options for viewing pages, like maybe a gallery view where you can see all the pages as thumbnails to click on, or a dropdown where you can select a number page to go to, and so on.

I could go on with other additions that'd be great for different formats such as when you want the option for double-spreads or vertical comics, but I'll cut it off there since I could go on and on. Essentially the viewer is nice, but it is incredibly barebones and while that's nice for a minimalist impression and perfectly fine, it does make it a bit lackluster. It's still a nice gizmo though that I hope helps some people publish their comics in nice ways!

As a side note, I just wanted to say that I found the credits on the bottom page very amusing: reminded me of those hacked in rom credits you can see around, haha!

KittyhawkMontrose responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback FuturecopLGF! It's super awesome to know that you found using the app as simple as we had hoped (formatting issues aside, which we will fix).

This first version we were concentrating on getting an "end to end" experience that worked well with NG (ie, streams images etc), but your suggestions for features are right on. The plan is to collect feedback like yours, see how we can best complement the new art portal when it comes out, and iterate towards something more in line with existing stand alone readers.

Also, super happy you picked up the "keygen vibes" we were putting down. :)

[Handle With Care]

Wow, this one really surprised me! It's very complicated and overwhelming to learn what you're even doing, let alone all the crazy ins-and-outs of construction, but after sticking with it, I felt like a genius once I built a little vehicle that could take that egg all the way to the finish for a 3-star delivery!

It's certainly an interesting little game, like some twisted combination of Kerbal Space Program, Trials Fusion, Tears of the Kingdom, and those high school egg drop/racecar derby contests. Yes, it's a little clunky and confusing and unwieldly (could maybe stand to have more builder tools through maybe mouse usage to increase the pace and the ability to snap to certain angles for consistency) so it can be frustrating, but in terms of a game jam game, I feel like this is a great success since it is very memorable and makes my brain explode with anticipation for how a fully fledged version of this prototype would turn out. Would love to see more of this!

Frogrammer responds:

hey thank you! means a lot coming from you haha

[Underboard: Omen]

Wow, solid game you got here! I was a bit worried at the start that it would be way too confusing and opaque due to the 'help' menu that is just a wall of boring text with no visual examples or such, but I was glad to see that the 'help' was just essentially a bonus glossary you can reference for more in-depth technical parts of the game, while Meno does a great job at walking you through the essentials.

Indeed, while the game might seem overwhelming to start, not only does it have a solid step-by-step tutorial through Meno, but the game is also very friendly with having every element of the HUD be hoverable to get tooltips. Due to this impressive design achievement, it didn't take long for me to get comfortable with all of the systems as any question I could possibly have could be answered by simply hovering over it! Want to know what unit another unit will target? Hover over it and see what gets highlighted red! Want to know the range of a unit? Hover over them and see what tiles get bordered! Want to know what the spell or item does? Hover over it! And so on and so forth.

With all that out of the way, I found the game quite fun to build up a party and get them through the dungeon through a combination of setting up formations, giving them all sorts of items to turn them into some crazy cross-class abomination, finding the right time to cast spells to turn the tide, and all sorts of other strategic elements. Very addictive and fun all-around!

In terms of points that bother me:

While the game is quite informative with all sorts of tooltips and icons and such, it's not always showcased in the best way, such as how many icons are so tiny you can barely see them: for example, I didn't notice the icons for how many exp potions you need to level someone up, or the icon above the reroll button indicating you can use a potion as currency for that action.

I couldn't shake the paranoia and fear that the game would screw me over with RNG at some point, like not giving me good balanced party, and I really don't like the idea of sacrificing experience points to reroll, as interesting as that might seem on paper.

Furthermore, I found it incredibly disappointing that there doesn't look to be any sort of save/load or checkpoint system in play as runs can be pretty long and I don't necessarily always have the time to do it all in one sitting.

To add onto that, it was really annoying to have the game always treat me as if I'm starting for the very first time with all the tutorial messages and such: as cute as Meno is, you'd think those would go away on a second run (or at least offer the option to skip).

Overall great stuff!

chazmuco responds:

Hey dude amazing feedback! We will consider those things for the Steam release, thanks a lot!

[Pico's Boss Run!]

Wow, incredible stuff here! I'm a sucker for a good boss rush so I'm probably bias, but I feel like because I love 'em so much I'm very critical on them, and this happily delivers a wonderfully well-crafted experience! Everything about the experience is great: love the graphics and lively animations, love the varied and challenging boss patterns with very fair telegraphs, love how juicy and impactful everything feels, love the strategy of the risk/reward nature of dodging or parrying to build up special, love the scoring system to encourage me to go back for perfects, and I also love some of the wonderful touches the game has, like the way you ragdoll bounce around when you die, and the way the parry has a cooldown so you can't spam it, except when you successfully parry which refreshes the cooldown to allow another instant use. Everything just feels great!

My only major complaints are that the game didn't have a tutorial so it took me a moment to learn some aspects like parrying and specials: you don't necessarily need a tutorial, but I would've loved some more design changes to make things more intuitive, like if the special bar was a bit larger to draw attention, and if you try to use a special without having full bar if it would respond/signal you in some way to let you know it's not ready yet and you need to parry more. Furthermore, with no way to hold down the trigger to fire, this game flares up my carpal tunnel incredibly fast with the way I need to mash bullets: at least for Alucard I could rest in between his invincible states, but with Hanzo forward there's no breaks! Also I don't know why the game has both Pico and Darnell on the board mirroring my movements despite me wanting to play single player: if there was an option to select coop that'd be one thing, but I'm not seeing it, and I find it confusing to try and juggle both of them and I don't know whether it's intentional or a bug. Most of the time I just immediately run left so Darnell is overlapping behind me, making us essentially one character and therefore a non-issue, but why is this happening in the first place?

I'm still only at Hanzo because, as said, this game cramps up my hand too fast, but I'm hoping to come back and get to the end soon after a rest!

JalenBrah responds:

Thanks for the review!

The Co op is a controller bug, it slipped through the cracks despite me testing the full game in multiplayer and single player on HTML5 and EXE. The gamepad code is checking the same controller twice for some reason but I'm not sure why. I'll figure it out and patch it up by the next major update though, which should hopefully be soon!

[Pico Untamed]

Hrmm, got a bit of a mixed impression on this one. In general I like what this game was going for and thought it had a lot of cool ideas and some nice touches, but many parts of it just felt unfinished or confused, giving a bad impression.

As said, I think it does a decent job at attempting to be a Pico's School style game. The story is an interesting exploration of the themes of Pico with all the various choices to make, the presentation and animations are very nice, the point n click adventure is decent with all the necessary elements of exploration and inventory management in place, the boss battles have a great variety of interesting patterns, and I love some of the little flavorful touches like boyfriend getting scared if you fire off some shots around him: you didn't have to add that but you did and it adds so much life and humor to the world!

But while all the ingredients are there in theory, so much of it felt really badly executed:

*The adventure felt a bit too linear, scripted, and easy for my tastes: would've loved a greater sense of exploration and problem solving, but the game world is just too tiny that it ends up leading you straight to solutions without even having to engage your brain. All of the little minigames like hiding and sneak attacking the guard felt so token and handholdy instead of being an interesting system to engage with: would've loved if the guards were more like Nemesis stalking you and you need to randomly react to their appearances in time.

*While some people might defend it, I didn't like how the game didn't highlight interactables when you hover over them (besides the obvious arrows) which made it confusing to determine what you can click on.

*The boss battles felt so terrible: without any sort of blood splatters or reactions from Pico and the boss when taking damage, without any sort of telegraph from the bosses for when they make an attack, without clear hitboxes for explosions and attacks, without any sort of strategic limitation to fire rate or ammo and being able to just spam-click until your ears blow out from the repetitive noise, it all just comes together feeling like a confusing, lifeless, dull mess.

And so on and so forth. Definitely feels like this had a great design and passion that could've came out great, but might not have had enough time to fully solidify the execution, leaving it ultimately feeling unfinished and lackluster. While that is a bummer, I think the hearts in the right place, I didn't completely hate my time with it, and it shows a great deal of potential: would love a more polished version of this or at the very least, would love to see future games from you!

TrickWithATwist responds:

First off I just want to say thank you so much for playing the game and leaving a detailed and thoughtful review. I'm sorry that your experience was mixed and you have brought up a lot of valid points. I really wish I could have properly fleshed the game out and make it more dynamic but due to tight time constraints and attending university a lot had to be scrapped. I really appreciate your feedback and I'll definitely keep this in mind once I work on future projects. :)

[Package Man]

Hrmm, not much to say unfortunately. Once you've played the game for a few seconds, you've seen pretty much all it has to offer, and while you can derive some minor pleasure from running around and throwing boxes and watching them bounce around, I didn't feel like the delivery mechanics were exciting enough to make me compelled to go for a high score, especially since the whole scoring system is comprised by random box variations that can give you an unfair lucky advantage (two people could play just as skillfully as one another, but one could have a lucky run where they get some +1 boxes).

I think the concept does have some merit: trying to deliver packages rapidly by having to both plot a course through a complex environment and manage precise/risky manuevers like throws could certainly be fun. The execution to me at the moment feels rather halfbaked and insubstantial: maybe if it had more interesting levels/geometry to get through (maybe even changing the terrain every delivery so you need to constantly react and replot your path), some fun risk/reward mechanics (like maybe being able to damage the box with bad throws), and altogether just had a bit more pizazz, it could be nice! As it is, though, I'm not seeing a great hook to make it a memorable experience.

CaperCube responds:

I think most of your points are right on and are things I'd much like to address if / when I come back to this project.

Watching your video review, I noticed that you picked up on this being an Ludum Dare game. tbh, we 100% could have done a better job with this project, but we missed most of the jam an only had 8 hours to put this thing together. I was surprised when we got FP'ed here, but I'm glad a bunch of people were able to have fun with it!

Thanks again for playing and reviewing!