FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Heroes of the Seven Islands]

Pretty neat RPG you got here! While it certainly reminds me a lot of party-based RPGs like Wizardry and Might & Magic, its goofy vibes and point-n-click interactions remind me of games like Kingdom of Loathing or Shadowgate. I enjoyed my time with this: building my party from a diverse roster of classes, adventuring the island and clicking all the secrets, using the best of my parties skills to beat monsters, seeing all the interactions locked behind skill checks that I wanted to level or do on a separate game, and so on and so forth. It's all fun stuff and feels very well put together overall!

A few notes and feedback on my experience so far:

*I found it a bit strange that the game is so generous with giving back MP fully after a fight. On one hand, I loved this because it meant I could use all of my parties abilities in a fight instead of always holding back and just picking the boring attack option over and over: what a breath of fresh air! On the other hand, I felt like it reduced a lot of the long-term strategic layer to the adventure and allowed me both to cheese fights and healing as well as avoid using camp.

*Small control nitpick: when you select fire arrow from the spell book, it then lets you click on an enemy to finalize the action, but if you select toxic cloud from the spell book, it uses it immediately. I understand the reason behind this, but I do kinda wish toxic cloud has you click an enemy for extra confirmation to use it: keeps things consistent and lets me preview the effects more clearly.

*Some explanations are a bit confusing to parse. For example, willpower says that it powers up 'special abilities', but I don't know what those are: is it referring to class abilities like Cacophony and Concentration? Weapons were a bit strange to in that I wasn't sure if there were all equal when you don't consider any of their extras, like is a pirate cutlass with +1 speed just as powerful damage-wise as a soldier sword?

*I kinda wish the combat log was available at all times like it is in RPGs like Fallout, Pillars of Eternity, and so on, instead of being hidden away in a separate window. I know there is a small log at the top of the screen, but that can vanish very quickly. In a similar vein, I wish I would see the enemy statistics in the lower right when I hover over targets instead of seeing my character's statistics.

*I like that there is a scoring system that gives you bonuses for doing well in combat, but I don't feel like it gives significant feedback and satisfaction when you get a high score. It'd be nice if, say, you can see the bar slowly fill up and with every tier it passes, you see your gold and exp get boosted, for example, as that helps illustrate the system more clearly.

rap2h responds:

Thank you so much for your feedback and for playing!

Some quick answers (each bullet point represent one of your bullet point in the same order):
* Yes, MP is fully replenished when you rest. In the first versions of the game, it was not the case: players complained that they always had to rest between combat, so I changed it (to only heal mana to not totally remove the need of rest which is something I like in RPG, even if it's a kind of chore sometimes). Maybe I can make it an option, not sure if it's a good tradeoff.
* Not sure how I can fix it. I keep it as a suggestion in my backlog.
* Willpower description is an error, I definitely have to fix it, thank you! The weapon system is also not clear. The idea was: if you don't have the skill, it does 50% dmg of your strength, then 100% on Novice, 115% on Expert and 150% on master (or something like that). Then, there can be additional bonuses such as +1 speed and so on. I realize it's not clear, so I have to do something: either change the system (cost me more) or explain better (cost me less)
* Log all the time was also asked by other players, so I have to consider it! Currently, I have not found a way to add it in the UI without breaking the... uh... harmony (I have not found a less pretentious word, English is not my mother tongue) of the UI.
* This is a super idea and should not be that hard to implement. One of my friend told me: you have to add feedback everywhere, like in modern games, and this is definitely something I should do to both increase fun and comprehension for players.

I copied your comments in my backlog, it may be implemented.
Thank you for your feedback, it helps me improve the game!

[Swordius]

Hot damn, this kicks ass! I love me a good boss rush and this is definitely hitting all the right spots with its excellent boss variety, simple yet expressive move set, and incredibly juicy and satisfying special effects that make even dying feel cool. As said, the gameplay is technically rather simple, but I thought it was really cool that there's a lot of neat tricks you can pull off as you experiment, such as utilizing the cyclone move right after an attack to stay in the inner circle layer for more damage or to dodge (this helps a lot with clearing the sword turrets next to Swordian of Earth while dodging his outer circle wave, for example).

If I were to have any complaints, they'd be small nitpicks like so:

*I wish I could hold down the button to keep slashing with the sword instead of having to click multiple times, but I guess you have a charge move so it can't be helped. Speaking of that, I wish I could hold to charge without being forced to have the initial click trigger an attack.

*I'm no stranger to very limited dash invulnerability, but I had so many times playing this where I swear I did a well-timed dodge only for me to eat an attack. Could just be me being bad, but something felt off.

*It's a silly complaint, but I do feel like once you get good, the bosses can get melted too easily, especially due to how generous the game is with limit break. Near the end of my session with the game it felt like I could just chain limit break after limit break and barely be vulnerable at all. I know that's because I've gotten better, but still, it just felt like a bit much.

In the end, my biggest complaint would be that I wish there was more to the game, and that's even counting the light/dark bonuses. You got me drooling for more, so I'm really looking forward to the sequel!

Yword responds:

Wow, thank you so much, FutureCopLGF! It's always great to read your detailed reviews, they're very helpful! I'll definitely keep your feedback in mind, and thanks a lot for playing too! :D

[Jane's Pumpkin Patch!]

Hmm, this was a rough one for me! The art is cute and all, but unfortunately the gameplay is non-existent, largely due to the fact that the crows don't pose a threat and without that, the points don't matter and there's no satisfaction from swatting the crows.

Ideally, I think this could be a cute arcade game in a similar fashion to classics like Missile Command or Defender, where you're running around trying to protect your pumpkins from being carried away by crows through swatting them. Little by little, the amount of crows to deal with could increase, causing the gameplay to become more hectic and exciting as you need to optimize. Maybe there could be power-ups, special events, new crow types and so on that would shake things up and add more strategic layers. A high-score table could inspire competition between friends. And while I'm dreaming up things, maybe it could give everyone twenty bucks gratis.

Sadly, the game just feels like a very amateur or unfinished project in its current state, which is a shame because I want to like it! Better luck next time, and I hope the suggestions above give some food for thought.

As a side note, the game doesn't even play music if you click to start the game instead of pressing space. I had no idea why ConnorGrail was credited for music as the game was completely silent for me until I realized this!

BoiledMilkz responds:

thanks for the advice! i'll look into it!

[Bunny Smoosh (Nokia3310)]

Cute little arcade game! It's rather simplistic and a little clunky so I can't see myself sticking with it, but the Nokia aesthetic is an amusing novelty and the foundation for an endless runner is executed decently, especially when you put it in the context of respecting the limitations of the Nokia. I like the neat little touches like how the game over screen keeps trying to roll over you until it finally does. Not bad for a game jam result!

Sjhillustration responds:

Thanks for the feedback! It was nice to just make something simple in a short space of time.

[waxweaver]

Wow, this is pretty dang impressive! Feels very much like a clone of Terraria and just like it, I easily got into that addictive loop of exploring to discover new resources to build new stuff that lets me explore into dangerous territory to discover even newer resources and so on and so forth. All around very professional stuff that feels smooth, polished and intuitive: it's something I could easily see on the Steam store for people to whip out their wallets for!

If I were to have any feedback, it'd be that:

*Getting the game to play in the first place was really awkward. Trying to play it in Firefox just caused my computer to start melting down, fans blazing like a jet engine, and Chrome didn't fare much better, though it at least loaded up the game eventually. I followed the advice and downloaded it on itch, but still, there must be some sort of optimization issue going on that could be addressed.

*Would love it if the crafting menu organized objects into categories, or if some sorting/filtering options existed (beyond hiding uncraftables). It's just too awkward and tedious to try and find or figure out what you can craft.

*Would love if I would attack in the direction of my mouse instead of where my character is moving: so many times I had my mouse to the right of my character and they'd swipe their sword to the left, for example, causing me to get killed.

*Is there no way to pass time by sleeping? Resting in a bed only seemed to save my respawn location, whereas I was hoping I could use it to skip nighttime.

*Could be nice to have a targeting indicator for placing blocks, as well as a range indicator for objects like crafting tables so you can figure out the best place to put it when considering how far you can access it.

*Player footsteps are kind of loud and intrusive: I'd lower their volume or even remove them altogether. Maybe it'd help if they generated little puffs below your feet so my brain knows they are coming from me and not from an enemy I can't see?

*Could be nice if I could see tools that I have equipped in my hands at all times, similar to how I can see torches in my hand when I have those equipped.

*While there is nothing wrong with imitating your favorites as it's a great learning tool and we can always use more of a good thing, this game is very much a Terraria clone to such a degree that, well, it makes me want to play Terraria instead of it since Terraria has much more content and quality-of-life in comparison. I would love if this game had some sort of unique twist to it to make it stand out: perhaps if it leaned more into this 'wax' theming?

kaiakairos responds:

there was originally gonna be more space related stuff to make it less derivative, but they all ended up not being very fun, and cutting it was better for the game and better for me and the scope. sorry about the performance!! the game doesnt work on firefox at all (unknown why) and generally whether or not the game chugs on chrome seems unrelated to computer hardware (ive gotten it to run flawlessly on toasters and its chugged on high end machines. i am not smart enough to fix it lol)

[Arcane Board]

Hey, this is a pretty solid Slay-The-Spire-like with an interesting tetris block twist! It's certainly an intriguing concept that I had fun learning the strategic ins-and-outs of, all helped along by the the game is designed with all sorts of tooltips, highlights, animations, feedback and other subtle hints to make it all intuitive and easy to learn. Definitely a great first impression!

If I were to have any complaints, it would be that as cool as the game was, I found myself falling off after a short while. It just felt like it takes so long to get to the good stuff of actually launching big attacks since it takes so much prep work and lucking into getting the tiles you want, and when you combine that with spongy enemies and a huge map, it all can really drag out and tire someone as impatient as me. But I don't know whether that's an actual fundamental issue with the game, or just me being the unintended audience: up to you to decide, and for me to maybe give it another try to see if I change my mind once I get good enough!

Other than that, there are some things I would like spruced up a bit, like the very tiny text that's difficult to read even in fullscreen. But for the most part, this is very promising and professional stuff!

FancyReckless responds:

Thanks for the feedback! You're certainly not the only one that feels like the game is quite slow paced at times and I often get that feeling as well. I'm experimenting with stuff that could improve that, hopefully there's some trick I will figure out to make it more dynamic, but meanwhile I will try to reduce health on some earlier minions.

[Winsley's Guardian - Demo]

Hmm, I think this game has a pretty good foundation for a Zelda-esque adventure set in contemporary times. All the necessary bits and pieces seems to be in place: you've got your items, your slashy combat, cute art and menus, dungeons, boss fights, and so on...but it unfortunately didn't have any sort of spark or hook that caught my attention and made me want to keep playing, rather, it quickly bored me.

Some of my issues are attributed to aspects that can be fixed, and perhaps are already planned to be fixed in a future release, since this is a beta. For example, the lack of music really made everything feel so dull and without a sense of atmosphere. Even worse, it felt like I wasn't making any progress on my journey since it lacks the excitement of hearing a new track when you transition into a new area. There were also some glitches like how if you walk to the side of the slingshot boss, you can get stuck if he walks into you and get comboed to death with no way out.

Other issues aren't so easily solved. For example, I found the story kinda boring and with an odd sense of motivation: we've got a mysterious dream at the start which is cool and could set up some sort of quest, but then suddenly we're searching for an owner of some blanket we randomly found in the closet? Why is the blanket important? Makes no sense. And the other issue is that this does just seem to be yet another Zelda clone that lacks the smooth and satisfying feeling of the original and isn't bringing anything interesting to the table to set it apart.

As much as I'm being down on it, I do think it has some promise and I'd like to see how it evolves over time. If the game got polished up with some music, a better story/motivation, and some other stuff, I think it could be great.

Elv13s responds:

thanks for the review, the game is already finished and its already out as we speak. physical copies are available at https://guardiangamesstudio.com/. The dream intro issupposed to teach the player the basics of the world, before going into the real story...story revolves around Winsley's life and is much more of a cozy slice of life rather than an action adventure game. Thanks for pointing out issues, I strived and tried to address them in the full release. This is the beta demo that I am allowed to show publicly so some bad reviews might come from it being in early stages. But I assure you, this is a wholesome cute and heart warming experience. its not perfect but its still a good game in my eyes.

[sillinder's somewhat uneventful tuesday noon]

Oh wow, this is some amazing stuff! Really feels like a NES hidden gem with the way it pulls off the aesthetic so authentically with fantastic visuals and audio, and the gameplay is wonderful with how good the movement feels, how interesting the levels are to explore with loads of neat secrets and new mechanics being introduced like shroom power, and so many other great things like the crazy boss fights (seriously, that second boss is like something straight outta Cuphead). It just feels like a damn good adventure and practically drips with charm from every pore!

Again, it's amazing stuff that you should be super proud of, but if I did have some feedback, it'd be:

*Curious about some of the aspects like the cockroaches that fly away: are they some sort of bonus speedrun objective, like you need to reach them fast enough to hit them before they fly away? Also curious about the little baubles you pick up: they get sucked out of you at the end of a level, but I was never sure if I was having any sort of effect with how many I gathered: does it matter?

*The map can definitely be a bit confusing to navigate at times. Plenty of times I'd walk to the side of the screen thinking it was a transition point but it wasn't, and plenty of times I'd walk where I thought it was ground but was actually a ledge or other such things. But at the same time, I feel like I'd always find the right way to go without too much issue, so hey, it still flows well in the end.

*My biggest issue with the game is that it doesn't seem to have a save/load system: got really bummed out when I got all the way to the third level and wanted to take a break, only to come back and realize I'd have to do everything all over again from the start. Maybe the game isn't technically that long in reality, but c'mon, some checkpoints between levels would be much appreciated.

sillylittlepyro responds:

very glad you enjoyed and very flattered!!!

that is indeed how the cockroaches work, however i havent yet added a reward for getting all of them so theyre just kinda there for funsies right now.

the bits absolutely 100% do not matter and will be of absolutely no importance in the full release.

i dont know how to do saving in html so i just didnt bother, but there will definitely be saving in a full release.

[Skatorio]

Oh man, this is a tricky one. It's weird, and I like weird, but maybe it's a little too weird for its own good!

As said, it's a pretty fascinatingly weird game that took a lot of time to try and figure out. Having to freeze enemies by grazing past them like a bullet hell or Y's bump combat, avoiding going back on your own ice to not break the combo while also trying to cover the ground with as much ice as possible, and so much more: it was quite unique! I like learning about scoring systems like this, and being incentivized into getting high scores to unlock new levels like its Mario 64 was right up my alley.

Unfortunately, the game was very confusing and not only did it take me a long time to learn the mechanics, I actually still don't feel like I have a good grasp on what I'm supposed to do. For example:

*For the longest time I thought the 'combo breaks' were referring to chaining freezes in rapid sequence, not avoiding going onto your own ice: yes, there is a small X reaction for your character once they start sliding, but I didn't even notice it at first, let along connect the two together.

*I found it very strange that for a game that seems to be scoring you based on time, it was rather annoying that one of the scoring goals was filling up the map with as much ice as possible: a goal like that just inflates every attempt with so much annoying busy work to redo. I get that it's challenging how the two goals of not breaking the combo while putting as much ice as possible are opposed, but still, it just felt tedious.

*I kept getting confused at the scoring results: I'd get an S in combo breaks and an A in ice coverage, and yet my total score was B or C. How does that make any sense? You'd think it would average out to be A at the very least. That made me think that perhaps my time was influencing it the total score, but if that's the case, why don't I get a letter grade for time? Because time doesn't have a letter grade, you'd think it would be a separate goal, which does match what it says in the description, but then what's going on with my score?

So yeah, I like how weird and unique this is, but man, I just got lost and didn't feel like I ever got my feet under me. At the very least, good on you for trying out something weird like this: always down for some experimentation over just more of the same!

dreamcastgh0st responds:

Thanks for the review! There's definitely a lot of places where the scoring system could be more clear, and that's my biggest regret with this game. I've been meaning to do a little write up in response to one of these comments to clarify it for everyone, so here we go--

Percent iced is pretty self explanatory, and you're right, combo breaks is based on how many times you stepped back on your own ice. I was hoping the little indicator that pops up would help make that clear, but I guess it wasn't enough for a lot of people. (Side note: The UI in the top left 'shatters' and changes colors too in order to indicate your current combo break rank! This isn't really meant to help with tutorialization, but if you're not sure if you've broken your combo yet, you can just check up there and it'll show you. The color of the meter indicates your percent iced rank, and the color of the background behind it is your combo based rank. The best color is, of course, icy blue-- the others all match up with the colors of the rank icons on the level complete screen.)

As for the total rank, there's no excuse for this one, it's super unclear. Time isn't taken into account at all-- it's a totally separate metric, just so that people can go for speed once they've reached a level of mastery of the game. I was hoping that would be more obvious since it's the only thing on the ranking screen that didn't have its own rank associated with it, but honestly, I should have left it off of that screen entirely. I think literally every single person who's played it has gotten confused by that, whoops lol.

Basically, for every rank below perfect either element is, you'll go down one rank. That sounds confusing, but it's basically like... S+S is a perfect rank, each A moves you down by 1, B moves you down by 2, C by 3, etc. So an A+B => C, since it moves you down three ranks. This system, for obvious reasons, sucks, and honestly I might patch it to fix it. But unless that happens, I figured it was best to leave some sort of comment so curious players could figure out how it actually works.

Anyways, thanks for the thorough review! Gave me a good excuse to talk about all this, and I'm glad you enjoyed it despite some of the flaws!

[SENTINEL - Echoes of the fallen]

Hey, not too shabby for a survivors game! I'm reluctant to play yet another survivors clone as there are so many, but overall the game feels pretty well-constructed and fun, with some great touches that made a fantastic first impression, such as the well-animated main menu, as well as some amusing chatter like your operator chewing you out for not paying attention to your health, haha! Game also sports some good fundamentals: I liked how there was a good amount of enemy variety, for example.

It's nice, but if I had some feedback, I'd say:

*Gameplay felt kinda dry and not that satisfying. Could stand to spice it up with some more loud, addictive and impactful special effects, especially for hits and collecting gems, a more vibrant environment, and more special events like mini-bosses, waves, and so on.

*As mentioned above, this game is just yet another survivors clone, with its own unique qualities being purely aesthetic, such as the mecha theming. Would love this game to have something more substantial, some sort of unique mechanic, twist, hook, whatever you wanna call it!

Would love to see how this develops, as I think you have a good foundation to work from!

NuelSquare responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate that you took the time to comment on my game and give your opinion. I'm still constantly developing the game, adding content and improving the gameplay.

What I mainly thought of as the unique mechanic is the perk system, but I think it still has a way to go to make it as I envision it, anyway, thank you very much for your comment!