FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[TapTapBOOM]

Huh, this is quite the fun little mobile game! The standout element for me is definitely the presentation: there's just so many flashy effects, transitions, and juice in every single action that the whole experience feels so lively and satisfying! It's not all superficial, though, as I think the game does a good job at evolving the gameplay over time, introducing all sorts of new obstacles and puzzles to contend with. Fun stuff!

I got pretty confused at how the game progresses, though. Initially it starts out as a physics puzzle game where you try to plant bombs at key points to collapse these structures in a way that all of the green blocks go off-screen, and I liked this! Later on, though, it turns into a completely different game where bombs are largely relegated to being used to press down buttons with no room for any sort of creativity or experimentation, with the puzzles being solved through other elements like plungers and sliding blocks. It just feels like the core identity of bombs is completely lost! Like, instead of making this new dynamite/plunger mechanic, why didn't you make it so that the second bomb you place could be triggered separately from the first bomb? That way players would actually need to puzzle out the second explosion, instead of just relying mindlessly on the fixed dynamite placement!

I guess you could argue that it's novel how the game changes, and if I turn my brain off and just play, I think it's fine and very addictive, but I can't help but feel like it is rather confusing, like you just gave up on the initial premise and then made a completely different puzzler and the bombs just remained as a vestigial property.

Chaz responds:

That's fair (and very valuable) feedback, thanks for pointing this out!

[Color Maze]

Not too shabby! It's not necessarily anything noteworthy, but it's a competently made and decently fun puzzle game that provides a nice more-ish experience as the stakes escalate from level to level with enough special effects to feel good. Nothing to write home about, but perfectly fine for a bit of fun!

If I were to have any feedback, it'd be that I wish the game had input buffering so you could do rapid sequences of moves a bit easier, and that it'd be nice if the game had a bit more pizazz to it. Also some of the ways it would recycle maps felt kind of bad, and I swear there was one time where it repeated a level it had already done before? Maybe it was a misinput on my part, but I don't think so.

Pitigamedev responds:

Thank you for the feedback!

[Anzu Castle Gracula]

Oof, this is a rough one for me!

I definitely want to give this game a lot of credit because I feel like it is really pulling off this whole retro DOS metroidvania it's going for, both in terms of style/presentation and in terms of the old-school difficulty design. A big sprawling map with all sorts of routes and upgrades to find, a huge variety of unique enemies to contend with, and that glorious DOS/pixel aesthetic, what more could I ask for?

But as much as I want to keep playing it because of how promising it looks and feels, I keep bouncing off of it because of the difficulty design. I'm someone who actually enjoys a lot of old-school difficulty, but man, this game just felt absolutely exhausting to play, especially when it starts pulling all sorts of bullshit like enemies respawning/entering from the sides of the screen. And perhaps I'm just the unluckiest bastard to play this, but it seemed like every single route I took would end up with me at a dead-end, staring at an item out-of-reach without some other sort of power-up that must be down another route I should've taken first if I had any damn clue where to go.

The final nail in the coffin for me was the lack of a proper save/load system: I made it to a statue and saved, hoping to revisit after a break, but when I selected continue at the main menu, it put me back at the very start! Perhaps it's one of those classic save/loads where it only saves your items collected and not your position, but ugh, it just feels so bad and eliminated the last remaining vestiges of my motivation!

So yeah, this game is something I both absolutely want to play, but also never want to see again: oh, the duality of man!

EDIT: I keep coming back to this to try it out, especially now since I know I can save, but jeez, this is hard to love! Did it seriously weaken my power after defeating the first boss? Enemies that used to take 2 hits now take 3! I don't think I can take this: this game is for like next-level masochists.

EDIT: ...surprisingly I keep coming back for more punishment. Actually making some decent headway now with another boss down and double jump acquired. What an odd experience, to be tossed back and forth between love and hate, haha.

RainbowCemetery responds:

i love u but half the description is a disclaimer about the save system D:

[Wizard Brew]

Hey, this is a pretty neat game! I'm always down for a little job-sim like potion brewing, and to combine that into a crazy and chaotic competitive battle royale was quite the interesting fusion! Having to collect ingredients and brew potions while dodging bullets and screwing over the competition by messing with their pots or just outright killing them was wild, and overall I felt like the game was a very polished and intuitive experience with both a well laid-out tutorial and all sorts of tooltips and feedback within the game itself to help you along. I even liked all of the goofy extra touches it had, like how the 1st place wizard scorches the runner-ups, haha! Well done!

Having said that, I did have a few things come up in terms of feedback:

*It felt quite frustrating with the way the screen is setup, as the camera is so zoomed in and unable to see forward that you just can't get a good handle on the environment or see threats coming, so it felt impossible to dodge attacks or keep track of anything.

*I was very reluctant to deal with other wizards and found myself wishing I could just collect ingredients and brew and that's it. Don't get me wrong, I understand why the competitive aspect is there and I think the game is better for it since it would be too simple without it, but I just found it annoying and pointless to try and deal with other wizards. It's kinda like how a lot of people enjoy Dark Souls but don't want to engage in PVP. If I had my way, I'd make it so that you have to journey into a separate area, some sort of dangerous forest with monsters to collect ingredients, instead of cramming everything into a single area filled with absolute chaos, but that's just me spitballing.

*There were some minor sound errors with some music only playing out of my left ear for some odd reason.

Definitely a cool game, but it might be something I technically love in theory more than actually playing it, if that makes sense, haha! It's cool enough though that I want to revisit it at some point, hopefully embracing the chaos on that second try!

Sjhillustration responds:

Thanks for the feedback! It was my first game, so it was difficult to get a balance without making the game either too hard and complicated, or too easy and not fun.

The one thing I had hoped for is that it was chaotic, as it was supposed to be a game jam, knowing I had a limited time (I didn't even come close to finishing it in time lol) that having it be a hard, almost multiplayer style game would give it a bit of a challange so people might play it more than once if they liked it, as it only lasts 3 and a half minutes.

I'll check out the music/sound issue. I hadn't noticed but there might be some audio that's spatial by accident.

I honestly thought only 10 people would play this, so I'm grateful for everyone that did!

Thanks for playing!

[Zombies Ate My Fruits]

Hmm, this one was a bit weird to me! There's definitely some interesting elements at play here: the presentation is pretty nice with good pixel art, sounds, and animations, there's a bit of a strategic element with limited ammo usage, and it does seem rather charming in some way. However, the gameplay never seems to coalesce into a unified vision or loop, with me getting confused at certain elements like how ammo doesn't reset on death. And then before I know it, the game was already over with me feeling rather unsatisfied and unsure of what the game was trying to go for!

Obviously you have my sympathy because it must be very difficult to make a game in such a short time limit. If it helps, I did feel like the game showed some potential to be something like a roguelike survival horror game. The tomato and corn weapons reminded me of a handgun and shotgun: one being good for taking out single targets, while the other being good for taking out crowds, but being much more rare. Perhaps if the game was randomized and punished you with a full restart on death, it'd force the player to be more improvisational to make it through the gauntlet: they'd have to decide quickly whether to save ammo and avoid the zombies by jumping, or whether to spend their precious ammo to completely wipe them out or at least thin the herd to make avoidance easier. The player could then be given a score at the end for how fast they make it through and how much ammo they saved and so on. There's definitely something in here if it made me think about it that hard!

speed8327 responds:

Yah I really wanted to add more features but ran out of time for the jam.
I might update this game at some point.
Thanks for the awesome feedback! I really appreciate that.

[Color Critters]

Hey, this was a nice little puzzle game! For the most part it hits all the right notes to deliver a fun experience: neat concept, intuitive design, simple but cute presentation, good escalation, and so on!

Most of the feedback I would have is just nitpicks and obviously due to the limitations of the game jam time limits: you know, stuff like I wish the sound design was a bit more varied with different sounds when you're crossing water/lava/electricity, a better death/reset transition, and, of course, just wishing there were even more levels because I was really getting into it!

I'd consider this a good game jam result because, despite its simplicity and shortness, it still hooked me and left me hungry for more!

F1Krazy responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I've begun development on a full-sized version which should address most of these issues, in particular the short length (I'm aiming for 60 levels but that's subject to change depending on how many more mechanics and level ideas I can think of). Glad you enjoyed it!

[MÆRE II: Hypnagogia]

Very cool horror game! I was a fan of the first Maere, and I'm a fan of this one as well: the concept of trying to sleep while strategically scanning the area for safety while risking your sanity by doing so is very clever and nostalgic. My favorite part was definitely the sound design, not just in how it creates a creepy atmosphere, but in how it intuitively gives feedback and teaches how to play the game: hearing your heartbeat pound from seeing a ghost, turning away, eventually looking back, and having your heartbeat return to normal upon seeing it's gone is so cool and communicates how the game works incredibly well. I also liked the inclusion of a scoring system as it naturally incentivizes replays and makes the short length less of a problem. Cool stuff all-around!

While I do like it, I did still find myself a bit letdown by how easy and short it is. I was able to get an S rank without any sort of problem on my second try, and I couldn't help but wish the game had more meat to it. Would love if it was more like Five Nights at Freddys, where it slowly builds up the difficulty over the days, both in how punishing it can be and in new mechanics and obstacles to contend with. Right now I can't even see how a player could ever fail, but maybe if you introduced more ghost types that need to be handled in different ways, like having to look at them instead of away, that'd be neat. Couldn't help but want more, and I hope you can take that as a compliment, because it means you've got me hooked!

Chris responds:

Thanks! I think there will be a third game next year so there will be more. I like that idea about having certain ghosts that you have to look at, it would be an interesting twist to keep it interesting. It might make it into the third and final entry next year if I can figure out a way to make it immediately obvious which ghosts you need to look at and which you need to avoid.

[Clickery Hexagon]

Clicker games aren't really my thing, especially since my old hands just aren't up to the task nowadays, but I'll give this game credit that it did a lot to try to win me over with its stylish cold-open, tons of unlocks with satisfying blips and bloops, slick presentation, combo meter, addictive sense of progression as you keep quickly catching up to wherever you left off after buying an upgrade, and so on. Clickers live and die on how stylish and juicy they are since that's where the sense of addiction can be grown, and this is one of the first ones I've played in a long time that does good work in that regard, so kudos!

In terms of feedback: as a person with old hands, it was a bit rough that the game locks the auto-clicks behind a long initial commitment. Also, the music player didn't seem to work for me and it was a gamble whether a song that I switched over to would play or not: sometimes a song that was playing before wouldn't work when I went back to it, even!

amyspark-ng responds:

im glad you liked the game! i tried to make it as juicy as possible since it's one of my favorite aspects in games :3

it's kinda weird the music player doesn't work for you, if you can please PM me with more details about your browser maybe?

[Necrowave 5.0 (Old version)]

Oof, this was a rough one for me!

Credit where its due, this game does have a lot going for it: the graphics, particularly the animations, are absolutely gorgeous, and the game experiments with a lot of different mechanics, be it old-school Prince of Persia ledge-grab platforming, pogo jumping off enemies, and some puzzle elements like the invisible mime block and the fire extinguishing. A lot of potential on display here!

Unfortunately, it felt like a very style-over-substance experience to me. The world is so repetitive and bland, almost like a grey-box prototype, in the way it is constructed out of these blocks, and it takes so long for the game to introduce any sort of interesting mechanic or challenge, and when it finally does, it almost immediately discards it to introduce something else, meaning that nothing gets time to breathe and evolve into something complex and interesting. I really wanted to see some sort of final exam platforming challenge that combines the mime blocks, ledge climbing, pogoing and all of that, but it never came and I was left with a bunch of discordant one-offs!

Bit nitpicky here, but the world's also filled with a bunch of these goofy out-of-character backer statues that remind me of those weirdo self-inserts in Pillars of Eternity: I understand it's part of the Patreon grind, but it's just not my thing as it detracts from the world and immersion for me.

Clearly there are some great artistic chops on display here, but not so for everything else quite yet. For me, I would say find a designer and programmer to team up with here on Newgrounds to delegate those tasks to while you stick with just handling the art: I'm sure you could make something great that way! If you wanna stick with it solo that's fine too, because as harsh as I am on this, I would like to see it evolve into something great!

Arfhis responds:

You some really fine and valid points honestly. I'm gonna listen to this closely and apply it as best as I can. Thank you <3

[Party Pooper]

This was a great little adventure game, like a spiritual sequel to that 'Don't Shit Your Pants' game!

Always down for a bit of a 'straw millionaire'-esque puzzle adventure where you collect a series of objects through quests to make trades for more objects and get to the end goal, and this delivered that very well with some very charming presentation, lots of funny characters and dialogue, some great setpieces, and so on. I was worried a bit at first that it was gonna be too overloaded with goofy non-sequitur nonsense, but if anything, I felt like the game was well-paced and balanced for a short and sweet adventure, and in fact, I wouldn't have minded a bit more!

A bit of feedback:

*I feel silly because I now realize you could ask that girl for a Russian dictonary, but I thought the only way to solve the cheesesteak puzzle was to pull out Google Translate camera, hah! Having said that, I wish the solution was a bit more puzzle-y than the text just automatically transforming to english once you get the dictionary: would've loved if, for example, it's just a scrap of a dictionary that shows you simple info like Russian numbers and the name of common food items, and you have to use that to find the keywords within the text while ignoring the rest.

*I wasn't sure how exactly one is supposed to win the video game fight: is it just that once you play long enough they will fumble eventually? If so, then similar to the above, I wish the puzzle was a bit more elegant and complex than that, like maybe you need to time your shots appropriately that you trap him, like firing a crouch shot quickly followed by a standing shot so he jumps into the second bullet or something, otherwise he'll keep perfectly dodging.

*I would say that the voice actors need to get better recording setups, specifically with pop filters and the like, but I suppose the goofy audio quality matches the goofy atmosphere and is thus actually a benefit to the intended experience, so, uh, stay the course!

popperr responds:

Thank you for the kind and thorough feedback, sir! Much love!