FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Nyghtmare: The Ninth King]

Hrmm, a bit mixed on this one!

First impression of the game was great, as I loved seeing the really cool title and map screen among other nice little touches that take some good effort to put in where other devs would skip. In general the graphics seemed very well-done and added so much to the atmosphere, and the gameplay itself was delivering some solid Castlevania-esque fun with interesting levels, enemies, obstacles, and solid boss fight patterns.

However, as the game went on, the first impression kinda fell off due to several factors that felt unpolished. It's difficult to nail down what exactly contributes to it, but in general the gameplay felt a bit off and unsatisfying: at first I thought it was just the fact that I was playing with keyboard, but even when I switched to controller, which I felt helped, it still just felt very awkward. For example, it felt really annoying to get used to the delayed attacks despite Castlevania having similar delayed attacks which felt alright: not sure what the difference was, maybe it's because of the jump acting differently or the attacks lacking impact and feedback, especially in the audio department. Speaking of audio, I felt like the music really took a downwards dive in quality on the second level (the second level also felt like it kicked up the difficulty way too high way too fast, what with all of the instant death pits and enemies perfectly positioned to shove you into them).

Moving on from the general feel, there were also just a lot of weird bugs. For example, there's a certain checkpoint that you respawn at on level 2 where you will spawn right on top of enemies and immediately and unavoidably take damage: having that happen really diminished my faith in the game's design as I couldn't believe something like that could be overlooked, and therefore really killed my motivation to keep going on (for if a bug like that was missed, what else might have been missed?)

I think it still delivers a decent experience, but it was very close to feeling like a bit of a style over substance thing: the game looks good, but doesn't exactly feel good to play. Definitely has a lot of potential though, just needs a bit of polish in my opinion.

Elv13s responds:

thanks for the honest review. the spawn bug is fixed in recent builds of the game, this embedded build, in particular, was 0.2.6 if i remember correctly, the full game is much more balanced imo?

[Bore of Time]

Hrmm, it definitely doesn't make the best first impression, what with its very complicated rules that are sadly only explained in a massive wall of text devoid of any pictures or colors that could've helped make the information easier to retain and recall. That, along with the fact that the game just seems to be a randomly generated assortment of levels with no clear end goal making it all seem repetitive and aimless, I wouldn't blame a lot of people for quitting outright from, well, the namesake boredom.

However, I will admit that I actually did have some good fun with the game when I gave it the ol' college try. Wrangling the complicated rules wasn't too bad thanks to the actual gameplay having some intuitive symbols, and utilizing the rules in game lead to some very clever and crafty moments that made me feel good: using the lightning tiles to avoid damage while maneuvering around, setting up yellow kills to recover health, recovering a doomed run where I wouldn't be able to reach the stairs without dying by managing the kill the final enemy and thus freely move to the stairs without taking damage, and so on!

I'm still a little sketchy on the game, but it does have a fun little core that creates clever gameplay hidden in there, so well done on that aspect.

amidos2006 responds:

Thanks a lot for giving the game a chance, sorry for not having a better tutorial as I was rushing to submit the game for the 7drl and I didn't have much time to polish the game and make it easier to learn. I am glad that you enjoyed the main game loop and understood it :)

[A Hollow Heartbeat]

Interesting little point n click adventure game! For the most part, I felt like the game was pretty intriguing what with its atmospheric sound coupled with its well-done background art, along with its rather bizarre world to explore. Definitely kept me hooked and wanting to see more of this world.

For a horror game, however, there were a lot of aspects that unfortunately took me out of the experience, such as multiple typos in the text, sound effects like wood creaking that occur on certain screens instead of just part of the atmosphere, the almost comical entrance and exit of the hand in the well, and so on: these could definitely use some polishing up as I feel like the horror atmosphere is well-crafted when these issues don't pop up, but when they do pop up, the immersion bubble is popped and takes time to get rebuilt.

While I did overall enjoy my time, I ended up getting stuck and unsure how to proceed, and bummed out that when I tried to come back and play more, there was no continue option, meaning I'd have to do everything over again. It wouldn't take too long to get back, but it definitely doesn't help motivate me, especially since I feel like I might've just missed an aspect that the game unfairly doesn't direct or clue in your attention to, such as the few times where there is an unintuitive 'up' option that is present. We'll see what happens!

EDIT: Damn, I take back what I said about the game being a bit too comical and such: the more I got into the game, the more it gave some really eerie surprises, incredibly evocative imagery and subtle spooks! Really wowed me, and impressed at all the various endings you can get!

Fakewisdom responds:

Wow, that's a long review! Thanks
I seriously underestimated how important, and expected, save features are for web point and click games these days, i saw complaints about it in multiple languages :P
With the way i built the game it would be hard to implement, but maybe i will
The room with the machine functions as a hint system in the early game, it tells you to look for the attic, i thought it was enough but i accept that it wasn't :/
Wish you told me where the typos were, i think i found a few but my english is still not there

[Pimbo's Pudding Panic]

Cute little adventure! I like that we got two different adventures for the price of one as a nice twist and hook, and while they were a bit short, they had their charming aspects to make up for it, such as the text adventure's multiple amusing endings, and the platformer's wild and wacky physics. In the end, I did enjoy my time, particularly with wrangling the platformer's controls and getting all the pudding hidden in its challenging sections.

However, there were a lot of aspects to the gameplay that were a bit hard to stomach. The text adventure felt quite lifeless with the way buttons don't even respond to hover-over or press and there were no pictures or sounds to pep it up a bit. The platformer just felt a bit too wacky to the point of confusion where jumps would send you up with inconsistent height for no discernable reason, or sometimes not even reading your jump input at all. There was also the fact that a single death in the platforming section boots you all the way back to the start, which given how janky the controls can be, can feel really unfair and frustrating. I'll admit that this was before I knew how short the game was, so in retrospect it's not that bad, but I was strongly considering quitting a few times when I wasn't aware of how close I was to the end at first, and I wouldn't blame some others for feeling the same.

tydaze responds:

I agree with you on all of your points! This game was rushed to meet the deadline of the game jam and there definitely were a lot of things that could be improved. I think I'm done with this game as is, but I'm definitely taking what I learned to apply to future projects. Thank you for the thorough review!

[Monkey Fcuk!]

Bit of an awkward game to get used to at first, but quite the novel experience that reminded me a lot of one of my childhood favs: Pac-Man 2 The new Adventures on SNES! The whole aspect of learning the various typing commands, having to manage the upsides and downsides of moods, and the crazy level arrangements really gave the game quite the interesting puzzle element to it all that I found quite addicting to conquer!

Despite that, the game did have some clunkiness to it that was difficult to ignore. For one, I felt like the bus driver was a bit too chatty at times which kept killing the pace: I know he's trying to help and all, but sometimes I just wanna play and figure out the puzzles myself without all the hints! There were also a lot of times where you're caught in a cramped situation where you can't enter commands fast enough comfortably even with the up command. For example, on level 2 I was frustrated that you can't jump in a direction when you're standing still, like you can't 'jump left' or something like that, you can only jump straight up when still, meaning you need to rapidly type 'go left' and then 'jump' very quickly before you fall off the edge immediately to your left. There were also just plenty of weird collision issues and general wonkiness. It wasn't ever too bad to get me to stop, but still, it made it feel a bit undercooked.

But the biggest part that killed it for me is that it had no save/load system! I got all the way to the third world and wanted to see how it ended, only to find out after coming back that I'd have to do everything all over again in one sitting. I dunno if the game was fun enough to have me put in the effort to replay all of it just to continue, so yeah, bit of a bummer that it might be left unfinished!

NothanyTPM responds:

Can't explain how the process went completely (since I only did the art), but from what I've heard from Sodoj it was a pretty rough development.

A lot of the wonky-ness came from the fact that they only had a few days to finish the game, and already spent a good chunk of that time scrapping it to redo it in a new engine halfway through the Jam. Play-testing was also only done on the second to last day, and I only got to test the fist level.

I will admit as well that the game isn't the best, and I pretty much encountered the same problems as you. Not 100% sure if Sodoj is going to patch the game later-on, or if they'll just abandon it, but I can say that you've pretty much saw everything in the game.

There's only like 2-3 worlds, and no proper ending, so it would have been disappointing regardless.

Still, you gotta admit that it's a decent little concept.

[Fat Fish Aquarium]

I'm always a little wary of these Ant games as I'm never quite sure whether the low-effort presentation will actually cleverly hide a well-constructed game, or if it will play as bad as it looks. It's a gamble, and in the case of Fat Fish Aquarium, I really wanted to like this game as it made a very solid impression with its goofy yet well-made retro Windows aesthetic and nice little touches like being able to click on the fish on the main menu. Gameplay looked like it was similar to idlers like Insaniquarium which I enjoyed, so I thought I won the gamble and was experiencing one of the great Ant games: I was all set for fun!

As the gameplay went on, however, I found myself feeling once again that I had been tricked, duped, and bamboozled. Yes, the gameplay did seem to be somewhat similar to Insaniquarium at a glance with its money generation through feeding the fish, but it was lacking all of the interesting management and strategy, and worst of all, the progression was criminally slow, like even worse than the progression of trying to play a free mobile game without spending money. I spent 10 minutes with the game and in that time, I wasn't even able to acquire enough money to buy a single other fish: call me impatient, but I don't feel like I should've had to wait even 2 minutes for such a simple thing to happen! It was just ball-achingly boring to only be able to wait on my single fish to generate anything, even worse since all I could do as a player was feed it and listen to its one single om-nom-nom soundbite over and over.

If I were to try and be nice, I suppose there could be the argument that the slower pace makes this more like a true idler game: something you leave on your second monitor as you do something else and only check on it every now and then, similar to a real fish tank. Unfortunately I don't think it works in this manner either as the amount of atmosphere and ambiance and simulation that the aquarium provides is very shallow, what with its repetitive and minimal variance in sounds, braindead AI and lack of random events.

So yeah: nice first impression, but it was all style over substance as I felt like the game lacked any fun mechanics or depth, and to put insult to injury, it progressed at a speed where I would expect the heat death of the universe to happen before I would be able to get all of the achievements.

AtreyuGilbert responds:

Yeah, I feel like pacing could definitely be improved. I remembered my original prototype of the game I showed to Ant as reference was actually a little faster paced, and I hope he can actually fix the pacing eventually. Thanks for your review!

[Dead Horizon: Demo]

It didn't make the greatest first impression on me what with its overwhelming and confusing start where it just dumps you in the thick of it, along with its terrible controller controls (a game that just uses a controller as a virtual mouse feels really bad to me), but nevertheless this game really impressed me in the end and I look forward to seeing more of it!

I was really impressed at the amount of choices and reactivity that the game has. It was really cool how the bad guy not only has so many lines when reacting to things you say, but also reacts to events like staying idle, or drawing early, or drawing/undrawing when you're got him down, and so on: really made the characters feel so alive and made replaying fun to see all the ways things can go down in the end. Fighting was neat as well where you have so many ways to dispatch the bad guy: you can fight him straight up by countering his attacks, or you can use your clever examination of the environment to find objects you can shoot first to distract him and make him a sitting duck, similar to an immersive sim like Deus Ex where you can outwit a strong opponent instead of fighting them straight up.

That's not to say that I don't still think the game can be rather confusing. There are some silly aspects that the game didn't notice that I feel like it should, like the fact that the guy only reacts if you draw your pistol, but not if you start reloading it: shouldn't that feel like just as much of a threat? Furthermore combat felt very odd and inconsistent where sometimes I couldn't tell whether I was doing damage or not: it seems like the game intends for you to only be able to hit the target when you either distract them with an environmental object first or shoot them when they are about to attack (exclamation point) but there would be times I'd kill him with a shot despite not doing those conditions.

Alongside all the great reactivity, the game has a wonderful and charming presentation to it all, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this ends up in the full version!

Emptygoddess responds:

You're amazing. Thanks for the feedback.

[Octillery VS. Collection]

Hmm, bit of an odd egg and difficult to judge!

On one hand, I feel like the games are just absolute insanity with most of the humor just being non-sequitur and too personal/inside-jokey for me to understand. Just feels like I'm reading some kid's cringey/edgy diary or fanfic where they make fun of their bullies or weird discord friends and it's like, I don't even want to make fun of it, it's more like I feel like I shouldn't even be reading it in the first place and it's not my place to judge. Really feels like it is a game that should've just been shared with friends and family, not with the public: it's too personal and inscrutable.

It didn't help either that some of the combat seemed very confusing and overloaded. For example, I died in the very first fight in Jonathan's Adventure 2 and I was surprised to get kicked out all the way to the main menu: it was so overbearingly hard that I just figured it was one of those fights where you're destined to die (and with how confusing this game is, heck, maybe it is?)

I will say though, for as much as it looks like it is kinda low-effort weirdness, it actually did end up intriguing me and kept me hooked to see what the heck was going on. It's like there's some sort of charm and smart design behind its strange facade: almost like a lot of effort went into making it look like it was low-effort despite actually being high-effort, almost like Cruelty Squad or something akin to that. Outsider art, perhaps.

In a way, it was certainly more interesting and memorable of an experience than many other RPG Maker games that I've played, where they usually just bore with way too more generic exposition and grindy fights with no strategy: this at least gets right into the action and provides you with a lot of options! So I will give it that much at least!

Vidyabatter responds:

Thank you! This was genuinely helpful!

[SQUADADDLE]

Pretty neat game! For the most part, I had a lot of fun with this. I love the fast-paced, bite-sized platforming challenges, and I love how juicy and lively the game is: everything is just so animated and stylish that it really elevates the experience.

That being said, the game can be a bit frustrating at times:

The controls were a bit awkward to get used to: not only are you super tiny yet move so fast that it can be difficult to judge your movements, some rooms that would make you do really challenging maneuvers felt like a huge difficulty spike. Eventually I got decent at it, but I just wish it had walljumps instead of climbing as it might be a bit more intuitive, or maybe if it had controller support it'd work a bit better.

Sometimes I was questioning what the goal or rules of the game was. Scoring at the end of the levels isn't really explained and you never see how the numbers add up: couldn't tell whether time left was giving me more points or if it was a flat rate, and how much of a bonus the fruits were giving was difficult to tell as well. Wasn't sure whether the game has an ending to it either: the way everything is randomly generated makes me think it's endless, but it was rising in difficulty, so maybe it eventually ends? It was also a bummer that every run ends with a game over and a sad little dude: you'd think it would celebrate me getting a new high score or something, but if everything just ends in sadness, and the game just feels pointlessly endless, it really hurts motivation to retry.

Also there were some odd bugs like ice sometimes not doing anything to you whereas other times it would have that slow start-up slipperiness that you'd expect.

Again, though, while it was a bit rough starting out, I still find the game very addictive and fun, so well done!

kaiakairos responds:

i was awaiting your review!! i wanted to respond but I waited to watch your video first to get a full picture of your thoughts.
I was actually intending on adding something that told you how exactly the score counted up, but I gave myself a deadline of the 25th of february and wasn't able to get it in in time. The score is calculated +500 for level completion, + (time left * 100), + 2000 if the bonus was picked up.

The game is significantly easier to with a controller, and would have been the intended way to play, however I never got the support in because HTML5 controller support can be finicky, plus the only controller I own is a switch pro controller which can be VERY weird to set up properly. I'm now aware shift is odd for a lot of people, I found it fine, but if I had more time I'd add remappable controls.

The ice bug is caused because momentum is preserved on ice (if you walk from regular terrain onto ice, it won't slow you down) however if you spawn on ice, the code checks for your movement before checking if you're on ice, so the first frame of movement basically ignores the ice and lets you get up to about 40% of full speed immediately. Didn't realize the cause of this bug until watching your review, might have to go fix that one.

The sad face at the end was just added because I thought it was silly, I really didn't think about it much at all if i'm bein honest lol. It would have probably been nice to put a happy guy if you got a new high score or somethin.
The game does run infinitely, and there are about 150 levels to play through. Eventually the hardest levels do start repeating, but they are so extremely precise that I just wouldn't expect many to make it through a whole loop of them.

Overall though, I'm glad you liked the game! The visuals are usually my main focus, so I'm very glad you liked the juiciness, despite the obvious flaws overall. I'll be taking your feedback into consideration for my next project, whenever that will be :]

[The Time I Was Stranded in Some Planet]

Wow, this was a really great adventure: it's short but incredibly sweet in my book and surprised me quite considerably!

It's true that it is a little short especially in terms of exploration where all of the collectables are within like 10 feet of each other, it's a little janky with bullets not functioning sometimes and some events not resetting properly like how the alien talk prompt reappears on continue even though you've already gone past that point, it can be a bit annoying with the floating eyeball enemies showing up and the way they phase through walls to attack you with no way to defend, and it is a little simple in a lot of respects, but goddamn if I didn't have an absolute blast with this!

I absolutely love the Blaster Master-esque player/vehicle synergistic gameplay with various upgrades, and I found the story and dialogue so wonderfully goofy and charming: I just couldn't stop playing with the way the pace kept everything going. The end boss fight was a great cherry on this sundae that I was really impressed the game had, especially with the cool escape sequence at the end. Very well done!

streq responds:

Thank you so much for the feedback! I agree with all of the negatives you mentioned. Some of it is due to a bunch of "I'll fix them later"s that I straight up forgot or got used to. Regarding the flowers, they were originally a last minute addition (the game was a submission to a 9-day long game jam, it featured no boss fight, and ended after collecting the flowers), so some of the flower spots were chosen at random and never questioned again!
I'm very glad you enjoyed it, thank you for playing and taking the time to write this!