FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Newgrounds Snowboarding]

Not too shabby: felt fun to hit the slopes and build up a big combo (though I do wish there was a clock or something to show you how long you have to do a move to keep your combo up). Menu is a bit drab and confusing though, and the game does get boring pretty quickly, especially due to the small amount of tricks, small amount of variation in obstacles, and the endless random generation. I'd end up killing myself intentionally just so I could get back to the shop! Maybe consider, instead of randomly generating mountains, hand-crafting a few mountains as levels with a start and finish to them. That way, people could ride down the mountains and try to create a best combo route for maximum points, which you could store in high score tables for people to compete.

Oh, there was also a funny glitch: I found that you will grind on a rail no matter what, even if you are completely upside down in the middle of a flip (it'll just automatically insta-adjust you). Feels like that shouldn't be possible, haha!

MSGhero responds:

We started to make hand-crafted levels, but we didn’t have the time. Deadlines!

[Scott's Quest]

Hmm, seems like it could be an interesting adventure, but at the moment I was just too overly confused in trying to get through it. I'm coming at this as someone who is not familiar with Scott the Woz, so I'm trying to just be straight and evaluate it as a game first and foremost. I had several times where I glitched through the boundaries and ended up walking on top of the ocean, and I was stuck at the beginning for a long time as well because I didn't even think I could jump the gap (top-down games usually don't have jumping in my experience, shame that the only jump tutorial wasn't until way later with the drones). Even when it wasn't glitchy, a lot of the game felt a bit, I dunno, vague or sketchy, like how I wasn't sure how to dodge the drone bombs with confidence or how to fish or where to go, with a lot of the time spent getting stuck at dead ends only having to backtrack. Didn't help that the graphics were quite drab as well, in terms of repeating tiles, simple Paint graphics and not much variation. Definitely quite impressive in terms of scale and I would like to see if I could finish the game, but it might help if the game was polished a bit more and maybe had more guidance with NPCs and maps, and tutorials to teach controls, among other things.

Nomron responds:

Hi, thank you so much for your feedback! I agree that there should've been more thorough explanations on many mechanics-- it was difficult to implement everything with a proper tutorial in our timeframe. As for difficulty exploring, the fast travel system was added to make that (or at the very least, backtracking) a nonissue. Thank you again for your very articulate review :)

[RetroMMO]

Certainly quite the impressive undertaking to make an entire MMO, and while I can certainly appreciate that, it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I only played it for a little bit, so perhaps I haven't done enough to get a good impression of it, but that was pretty much my main problem with it, that it doesn't really make a great first impression. While I enjoyed the old-school feeling of getting some gold, buying some basic equipment, and fighting some mobs outside town to level up, it didn't take too long for it to become stale. Everything is just a bit too old-school for me: gold and levels just come by so slowly and the combat is very basic, slow and with minimal abilities or exciting VFX to it. Not to mention that there doesn't seem to be a story or any sort of quest to guide or motivate me: I know one might say that the game is just about leveling up and wandering around to fight bigger monsters, but the combat just isn't fun enough nor the world interesting enough for that to be an incentive for me.

I haven't tried any group play yet, so I don't have anything to say about that, and perhaps that is my problem with not having much fun with the game. In that regard, however, maybe there could be something that could make it easier to group up? Instead of making people that get into fights vanish on the world map, maybe you could make a battle icon appear where they are, and if you click on it, you can jump in as a guest to help them, and maybe party afterwards? Again, would love to see some fresh new ideas to set this game apart from just being a straight old-school recreation in MMO form.

Again, this is definitely very ambitious and impressive despite my gripes, and I wish you the best of luck in adding to this game further and further. Perhaps I'll revisit later on!

EvanMMO responds:

Thanks for playing and providing such detailed feedback! Most of your requests are planned features.

[Rat Game: Roaming of the Wretched Rat]

Pretty neat game! Has some interesting and impressive old-school presentation and gameplay that, while simple and not very long, does have some decent strategy to it in the character classes. In my warrior run, the strategy just involved whittling the enemy down while timing my blocks. However, in my witch run, it was more about trying to utilize the magic wand as little as possible so I could save it up to burn the ogre boss down at the end (since I had no defenses).

While I had fun on my runs, and I do think there is some strategy, I do still feel like the gameplay is a bit shallow with very few decisions to make, and I'm a little bit worried that it's too overly reliant on RNG. I feel like the only reason I was able to make some runs work is completely down to whether I got some drops I needed from chests, and whether I didn't get overly unlucky from potions. I always prefer games to be more skill-based than luck-based, and this felt a bit more on the luck side, unfortunately. Perhaps there is some systems in that try to always give you the items you need? It's difficult to tell though because it can be tricky to tell what an item even is, since you don't get any descriptions or names when they drop from chests.

There are some elements to the HUD that are a bit confusing to parse, especially because of all the blur and scanlines making things difficult to read. For example, I had no idea there was a turn counter for the enemies because it's so tiny, dark, and crammed in the corner: something that strategically important should really be made more prominent, I think.

LeviRamirez responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm meaning to do a semi-large update for this game that'll fix most, if not all of these problems, but I'm busy with finals weeks and moving rn. Come back and try it again in like a few weeks hopefully!

Glad you liked it for what it is right now!

[Don't Get the Job]

Pretty cool game! Reminds me of stuff like Shin Megami demon negotiations where you have to get a grasp on the person's likes and dislikes and then answer appropriately. The three interviewers were set up cleverly in terms of difficulty, with the first being easy (just answer badly), the second being medium (reverse it and answer correctly instead), and the third being a more difficult wild card. I liked how you could gather a lot of clues on their personality not just from the questions and dialogue, but the posters and such around them as well. Definitely was a lot of fun to figure it all out!

For minor feedback, I did find it odd that, for the actual gameplay, the buttons were nice in the way they get highlighted and react when you hover over and press them, yet the buttons on the main menu are static and boring.

I must admit, my first playthrough was a bit confusing, despite me liking the game overall. I felt like I grasped exactly what needed to be done in terms of answers, and I think I only had like one question go wrong for Angelo and two for Greg, and yet I still had them head over heels for me. On my second playthrough I did the same general approach but did it more perfectly and that worked out as it should: I dunno, just felt confusing that the game is so overly difficult it pushes you to be completely perfect for a good ending: might be better to have some wiggle room or a middle ground to let the player get a few wrong without outright failing, or know they're on the right track. For example, instead of Angelo loving me despite getting 99% of the questions wrong, maybe have him say 'well, you did pretty bad, but eh, there's something about you I liked in the end, so I say we hire you'. More gradient variations in dialogue, essentially.

YaenGames responds:

Thanks for the in-depth feedback! I agree with you, we accidentally made it too hard: Reason being a slip-up when changing it from the game jam version. Originally we had 12 questions per interviewer and since people said it was too long and repetitive, we decided to reduce it to 10. However, we accidentally reduced it to 8, giving you fewer chances to get your score low enough.
More gradual ending statements would surely have been great but would have required more poses and we had no time to do more when we made the updated version. But I agree, that would have improved the game further for sure!

Thanks again and have a great day!

[NextDoor]

I'm not familiar with the story myself (only Junji story I know off-hand is Amigara Fault) but I had a nice time experiencing it the first time through this! Felt like a cool adventure that had a lot of good effective spooks (especially the time where it creeped up during the talk at the soda machine, jeez louise), very neat art and animations, and immersive, atmospheric sound.

The sound was a little hit and miss at times. On one hand, it did do a good job at having really spooky music and sound effects that immersed me into the experience and got me all tense, and if you wear headphones, you can get spooked as the sounds change direction based on your position. On the other hand, the way the sound transitioned from ear to ear based on position was too sudden instead of gradual, and I felt like there were times where, when approaching the loud room for example, there should've been a gradual increase in volume as you get closer and closer. I feel like it kind of ruined the last bit where you hear it stomping away, wasn't sure what was happening since the sound was a bit confusing in the way it was trying to communicate. (I'd admit my headphones aren't that great so it could be an issue on my end, perhaps).

Ending was a bit bleh, in my opinion, though perhaps that's no fault of the game but rather the source material: I wonder if it would be better if I was caught? Wonder if that's what happened in the actual story. Maybe I'll go back and get caught intentionally just to see what happens...

Sijbren responds:

Hey thank you for the kind words and the feedback. A lot of problems with the sound came from a lack of control over Game Maker's 3D sound in combination with html5. We are working on our own sound system to improve the last part a bit.

[Gravisquare]

Really cool puzzle concept, and great execution! Loved playing through this and not only making my way through the levels, but learning how to utilize the gravity mechanic to its fullest. Speaking of that, though, and maybe you think I'm an idiot for this, but man did I get stuck on level 6 for an embarrassingly long time, haha! I felt like this level should be moved to much later on, as the gravity slingshot technique it teaches you felt way too challenging and unnecessary to learn at the time, considering the much simpler levels that followed it with more standard box stacking mechanics and such. Speaking of that, it's kind of a double-edged thing: I thought the gravity slingshot level was a bit too complex and early, but that's only because the majority of the levels didn't rely on tricks like that and instead were more basic, but perhaps that's just a sign that the levels should've used gravity in more interesting ways instead to spice it up? Felt like it did have a good variety of mechanics though, just maybe the difficulty curve was a bit wonky at times.

In terms of controls, maybe it's just me, but I felt like the alternative control scheme (always left/right and up is always jump) made a lot more sense than the default controls. I feel like the controls should be switched, with the alternate being the default. Maybe you think that's silly, since both are available options, so why does it matter which is default, but I do feel like a dev needs to set forward a good default control scheme for a first impression and intended experience, as many players in my experience will not bother trying to try other controls schemes than the default: they'll just complain and move on to another game.

Anyway, glad to see another cool puzzler from you!

Rob1221 responds:

An older game I made called Gravity Arrows had the second control scheme as the only one and that had a bunch of complaints about the controls, so I'm not sure which control scheme is the overall preferred one for games like this.

[‎ BUGGED‎‎‎]

A pretty cool idea, and decent execution, but a little rough for me at the moment! I quite like the idea of being stealthy and taking control of other people's bodies for their powers as a means of compensating for your weak body, and I did feel like it led to some interesting puzzle-esque combat scenarios in my experience where I could improvise in interesting ways.

However, there were plenty of issues I had. The controls were initially a bit confusing to learn: wasn't sure why I have to repeatedly enter and exit a host to kill them, when I felt it might be more straightforward to just kill them when you exit once (and you can even make the infection process take longer to compensate for it only taking one time). Was quite frustrating in the later levels that there was no way to get back from making a mistake: once you get seen, it didn't seem like there was any way to reset back to zero by, for example, outrunning the enemies and hiding from them, or maybe by infecting someone and fooling everyone, and that made me just quit too easily, leading to boring repetition. Also was a bit disappointing that the only power to get from infection is a gun: no other interesting elements to work with.

Also, it's a small complaint, but the kinda weird curved screen, odd moving camera and blurry chromatic aberration or whatever you got going on kinda hurt my eyes and just made the game more difficult to play and aim: maybe lessen those effects and just deliver the game in a more plain manner (or have a toggle to turn those off in options).

Basically, it's a little bare-bones at the moment without much to work with, but I still thought it was an interesting experience!

Frogrammer responds:

Hey, thanks for your feedback. I do agree that all the issues you mentioned could have been done in a better way and that infect/exit process was quite annoying. However killing enemy on exit once may have ruined some strategies where you would especially disable an enemy and then run to others, but idk there def is a way to make this mechanic work more properly. Also yeah the CRT effect is kinda toxic, could have been an option, so thanks again, i'll keep this stuff in mind

[Until There Was Nothing]

Quite the weird experience! It's not exactly the most complex or fun game or anything like that, being essentially a walking simulator, but it did nevertheless feel intriguing and compelling to be part of this odd adventure. In particular, it felt quite powerful to be part of the process, to be the button, the jumping force that strips him down further and further: as simple as it was, it did feel a bit harrowing. I thought it was a bit odd that the dialogue triggers were visible to the naked eye: usually those are hidden, wasn't sure if it was a glitch or intentional? Nevertheless, as much as it was a bit of a bummer, thanks for the trip!

dietzribi responds:

Thanks for the review!
Regarding the dialogue triggers- originally I didn't plan to have them visible, but it felt better to where they are!

[Blue Square and the Mystery Cave]

Pretty neat puzzler! I felt like this game had a pretty cool concept, and did a good job at walking you through escalating challenges with more and more clever designs to solve! In particular, I thought a lot of the puzzles that required you to do some recon so you could make a shot you couldn't actually see from the throwing position were neat, and I liked some of the ones near the end where you guide the ball through doors. Just really fun all the way through!

In terms of complaints: there was a little bit of confusion at the start when I didn't realize I could hold down click to charge my throw, but I figured it out rather quickly, so no biggie. I didn't like how previous ball throws wouldn't vanish when you make a new throw: they could end up getting in the way of your new throw, so I'd have to annoyingly wait for them to vanish before making a new throw. Also some of the physics were a bit wonky at times, particularly with balls getting influenced by opening/closing doors. Also, the fact that a lot of the puzzles were about making shots where you couldn't see where it was going since the target was off-screen were a bit annoying at times because of that lack of visual feedback (though I did like them nonetheless).

I had a nice time with this though! My only actual complaint would probably be that I wish there were even more puzzles to go through as I felt it was doing a good job at escalating the difficulty and introducing new mechanics like guiding yourself through the dark when suddenly it was all over. Oh, and speaking of that, the ending was a bit of a downer, hah!

raulmorenotamayo responds:

I completely agree with everything you said. This is very valuable feedback, thank you so much!