FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

['Curse of the Sock']

Pretty cute game, but it was a bit choppy and weird for me so I hope I can give it some good feedback since it's a demo. Climbing on ladders was very frustrating at times: if you just hold up on the very first ladder in the game, you'll just fall right back down, as you need to kinda force yourself onto the platform with other movement. The standing melee attack is a bit annoying in how it forces you to stand still, makes you want to constantly use the air attack instead which feels better. You can mash the jump button to keep playing the jump sound even though you are already mid-air. The scythe ghost enemies felt really annoying to fight since they can get right into you and you force you into taking damage if you try to attack them since you can't knock them back with an attack effectively. Animations seemed a bit wonky at times: would have attacks be cancelled or have enemies I've killed since look like they're getting their attacks out and such. Controls flash away too fast in the beginning: I didn't even realize I had a duck because I didn't have time to read it all. There are some nice things already in the thing like how it seems like the hit box for the player attack does take into the account the arc of the swing, not just the final position of the sword. Hopefully this gets polished up for a full release as I think it could be cool!

Butzbo responds:

Always appreciate the more technical reviews, and you make some pretty good points!
>It's weird how long I wasn't aware of the 1st ladder issue, its kind of critical being the very first thing you do so I just updated it now.
>The 'standing attack' endlag was something I made a bit more intentionally at first for a slower pace of gameplay, but it hasn't been so well recieved so I'd have to look more into that.
>Usually with animations I'm used to fixing the ones that interrupt eachother (mostly with death triggers), but I had so many of them that eventually one of them slips away lol.
>Glad you mentioned that detail on arc hitbox! I hadn't done these kind of melee attacks in games before so it's great to hear that some parts are on a good direction.

Thanks Futurecop!

[Vampi 3D]

Pretty neat game, but a little clunky! Made it all the way thru and saved my cute goth gf. Game was generally quite fun to get through, and I liked using the bat powers to scout out areas and collect hard-to-reach items and such. Had a few stumbles along the way though that kinda hurt my experience. First, the game was way too dark: you eventually get a torch, sure, but for a long portion I needed to turn the lights off in my room and even then it was difficult for me to tell how to get around. Speaking of the torch, I was lost for a long time because I had no idea that the torch was a pickupable item: might've helped to make it more obvious. I also don't think the 3d graphics use the cool clay graphics you guys used to the fullest effect: just felt very drab and generic for the most part, with the only charming parts being the characters you rarely get to see. 3d graphics were very glitchy as well: prison bars would clip through my hands weirdly and the lighting was very glitchy and made navigation confusing. Hopefully you guys can nail it outta the park next time with this just being a 3d experiment for now as I usually love your style!

Guy-Unger responds:

fair points. On my monitor it's not a problem at all but a lot of people have issues with it, it just needs a brightness slider.
The levels could definitely be a lot more interesting, right now it's more of a blockout with a couple of props. But like you say, it's kind of a first test for us to work in 3D. Thanks for the review!

[The Faces of the Forest]

Pretty awesome game! Really sweet and interesting story that both endears you to the characters in the world and gets you pumped to smash the system! Thought the game did a nice job at portraying the peaceful nature of the story in its gameplay mechanics, by, for example, only being able to stun bugs instead of killing them. Loved the whole mask system and the way you can slow down time to draw the sigils and the way it changes the music: felt so cool to get better and better at drawing them quickly and gave me a real Trauma Center/Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow vibe. Some parts of it were a little bit of a nuisance: if you jump on a bug and a bug is right next to them, you'll get hit by that bug despite the fact that you shouldn't have ever been in danger, the world is huge and locations can get a little samey without any significant landmarks to guide you, and I also felt like sometimes the game just went overboard a bit as I couldn't take two steps without being forced into drawing another sigil, haha, maybe a few more normal platforming parts could be needed.

DavidMarchand responds:

Thanks! Fair points all around. I saw you play this the other day! https://youtu.be/NNLQIwDowlg?t=17710 The whole team was really happy to see that. I'll eventually get around to fixing the typos you pointed out and maybe adding a blinking effect for when enemies are about to recover, since all of those are pretty easy changes.

[Curly's Chase]

Hmm, between two minds on this game! On one hand, it's a very cute game, and it is kinda fun and challenging to puzzle out the ideal route since you need to compensate for your turns in advance. But on the other hand, the controls were quite difficult any annoying to get used to at times: there were a lot of turns where I was just stuck and I wasn't sure if it was the games fault or if I was just confused on what the heck to do. While most of the time the turns were smooth and nice, other times the turns just felt clunky, and also the teleport was unreliable on how far it'd send you back, and sometimes it'd spawn me inside a cloud block for some reason! Feels like the teleport was maybe just a cheat, an easy way out of not fully designing the movement properly: for example, the turning might've benefited from other aspects being redone to compensate, like zooming out the camera to give you more room to compensate, or being able to shift half-way to do an s-curve and such. Basically, a mixed bag, but a very interesting experiment!

aeveis responds:

Thanks for the feedback, some good observations there!

[Disc Us]

Pretty ambitious and impressive to get all of this setup! Unfortunately it was just a confusing experience for me, both because there was barely any way to learn what the heck to do in the game and because the online experience seemed pretty glitchy (countdown timers getting stuck in an infinite loop that goes into the negatives, people not voting and not knowing what to do and pressing buttons and such randomly, the game keeps putting me into chat mode when I'm trying to move around, etc). But I suppose I'm not the intended audience as I've never played either Disc Room or Among Us, so I was totally lost as the game didn't provide much instruction since it assumed you already knew how the game worked. Still, I think I started to understand how everything works after awhile (maybe) and did have some fun and I think it does have a lot of potential: just maybe needs to slow down a bit!

keybol responds:

Yeah I have presumed players have idea on how to play Among Us and other social deduction games. The instructions aren't clear also for both teams, which items go where and how traitors will actually win. Though with games like these, I feel part of the game is to try the game many times to actually understand it (the same is said by Secret Hitler designer in his GDC talk).

[GUNWYRM]

This was a bit of an odd duck for me! On one hand, I think it looks great and is a really interesting concept! Presentation is great with the wibbly-wobbly letters, the menus, the transitions, the pop-ups and the HUD and so on all looking great! Gameplay is pretty solid as well: it took me a bit too get used to it and to use the dash more often, but once I did, I was making good progress and it was neat to get a gunwyrm going with all sorts of guns and abilities. But on the other hand, I don't feel like I had as much fun as I should? There were a lot of confusing aspects of the game: there aren't any cool effects when you dash like glowing or turning blue or blurry to let you know you're invincible; while there is a 'ding' that lets you know when your dash is ready there's no bar that fills up to let you know dash is on cool down in the first place (nor is there an error sound if you try to dash without it being ready yet) leading me to thinking my dash was malfunctioning; and there was a lack of feedback in general. It just didn't feel satisfying for some reason: enemies die without much fanfare and the guns fire so slow and nothing sounds powerful and the levels and enemies get really samey quickly. I mean, when I die, I get a big, crunchy explosion, but when enemies die, it's practically nothing. I think some juice and variation to make the gameplay not only more satisfying, but more intuitive by giving more information, would help. But still, rather solid for what it is!

THXsprites responds:

Hey! Thanks for the feedback, I totally agree with what you have to say about the game lacking "juice", I would love if there was more user feedback and things felt better to do. Sadly, due to the constraints of the jam we didn't have time to polish the game as much as we would like, thus there isn't a ton of wave varieties nor did we get around to adding things like a bar for the dash as we just didn't have time to think about it.

Thanks for playing! :)

[Deadswitch 3]

Pretty impressive game! Entire thing has a really professional design to it, both in terms of menus and gameplay. Game just has so many little touches to it that make it feel great, like the countdown timer for a match starting and so on. I wasn't able to play the multiplayer unfortunately since it wasn't working possibly from lack of players, but kudos for attempting anyway: thanks brains and guts to make a whole multiplayer component. The single player content was great anyway: enjoyed the survival and operations modes, though I wish maybe they were more apparent in the main menu instead of being shoved into ranked. A few confusing aspects for the gameplay: one, was a bit of a bummer I couldn't switch weapons with mousewheel, two, headshots didn't seem to do any bonus damage despite giving bonus cash, three, it's a bit too easy to get shot from off-screen causing frustration. All in all, a really ambitious shooter that delivers on it!

WilkinGames responds:

Thanks so much! Multiplayer should be getting more players as I release the game on other sites/platforms. New operations will be coming in future updates as well! I recommend you play in fullscreen to avoid getting shot off screen. :-)

[Luminous Edge]

Wow, this game really blew me away! It was a little confusing initially, maybe intentionally, with the whole reset spawning a clone of you (maybe it shouldn't say reset, but clone? or maybe it should say both, like 'hit R to reset and clone'?), but once I got past that everything was awesome! I loved the smooth and fluid way the game played, and the animations and special effects for all the moves were so great and satisfying! Loved the escalation of challenges as well with the introduction of new powers and levels that combine several mechanics. All it needed was for you to have to dock the sword in the stand at the end for it to be epic, but I'll let that go, haha. This game had it all: awesome puzzles, great boss fights, heck yea! Absolutely want to see the continuation of this!

Yword responds:

Thank you so much for playing! I'm very glad you liked this game. Thanks!!!

[Little Maddie Dear]

I found this pretty dang impressive! I'm not one for these RPG Maker games typically, but this one seemed so custom-built that you could barely tell it was built from it initially, so kudos on that! Really cool and intriguing presentation and theme: I got really hooked into it and wanted to see where it went! Love the weird little dialogues with the characters as well that had a real Darkwood feeling to them. Some aspects of the game were a little confusing, like how despite every other item, like the drawing, having a descriptive label, the candies don't. Would help also to be able to see/know what items were interactable or not: some items like the meal were shining, but I was surprised to see I could interact with the inconvenient tree and pushing boxes. Also, I felt like the inclusion of some meme stuff, like the yaranaika pumpkin, for me, wasn't good since it took me out of the spooky experience: I can understand wanting to get some jokes in to lighten the mood or what-have-you, but I thought you did a good job building up the horror so it kinda shot itself in the foot with that. Also, I wasn't sure if keeping the lantern on was a good or bad thing? You can turn it on or off, but I wasn't sure if there was a reason, like if it helps not let enemies detect you or something.

Marckel responds:

Hi Futurecop! Thanks for the review! I'm so glad the Darkwood inspiration shows through, I really love that game. Sorry for the memes all over the place, that was partially stress relief due to all the rushing we had to do to finish the game in a month. The lantern is incredibly vital in stages 4 and 5! The mechanics for the two new monsters in those areas are heavily reliant on it.