FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Strange Garden]

Wow, quite the interesting and fun puzzler! Despite being quite complex, I found the game very intuitive due to its clever use of symbols, tooltips, feedback, and so on and so forth, and it didn't take long for me to get quite addicted at growing some perfect crop arrangements to meet the ever-increasing demands! There were some rules that were a bit confusing for me to grasp at first, such as how the pig herbs need to be surrounded by 3 crops but I wasn't sure what counted (such as whether diagonals counted) and I was confused at the purpose of the footsies, but for the most part everything could be grasped with a little trial and error. Overall this felt well put-together and polished and I had a good little time with this!

[Mighty Mini Golf (Prototype)]

Not too shabby of a concept and has some cool presentation to it, but ultimately the design felt a bit confused and frustrating to get used to.

The game makes a pretty good impression at first with its charming explosive title screen and funny graphics, and it goes on to have other nice touches like the way your character skeedaddles away to the next level while displaying the scorecard and playing a jaunty tune: always loved to see that. At the heart of it, the golf gameplay is pretty decent with a large variety of courses with all sorts of obstacles to contend with, and I really did want to enjoy my time with this (and did, at least somewhat).

But unfortunately, the game started to lose its luster quickly. First and foremost, the game never explained the controls at all so I had a real bad time figuring out how to clear out bushes and the like: would love a tutorial or the very least a how to screen for this in-game. Speaking of those weird controls: I appreciate the thought of trying to spice things up with whacking bushes/levers with your club and finding items and such, but it all felt rather pointless: just some annoying busywork to clear the course before you can actually play the game. The aiming was a very imprecise pain the butt as well: I know you eventually patched in a way to more precisely aim, but 1) I don't know why this wasn't the default and 2) it's still not explained in-game. Wrap this altogether with a complete lack of any sort of music and the game just became very boring to play.

I definitely think the game shows a lot of promise and ambition, but was just a bit clunky in its execution. If the core gameplay was just polished up a bit more and the more superfluous elements were redesigned, I think this could be great!

[Cheese Cats]

I've played a lot of wonky physics rage games in my time: Getting Over It, QWOP, Surgeon Simulator, Mr President, The Professional, and so on and so forth, so I'm no newbie to this type of stuff. I'd like to think that this game is perfectly fine and just takes some getting used to, but after trying my best I felt like I had to call bullshit on it.

I certainly gave it the ol' college try and tried to get used to the controls as much as I could: figuring out whatever scrap of tech I could muster. And indeed, I was able to do...whatever the hell I did well enough to get through a level or two. The sense of exploration and experimentation in this game was fun, in a sense, and the struggle was real.

But as said before, I think this crosses the line from being a well-designed rage game challenge to just straight up wonky jankiness that uses "rage game" as an excuse. A lot of those rage games always felt that they had a method to their madness, some intuitive design that, while difficult to grasp, could be uncovered and perfected. For example, I absolutely love the feel of the hammer in Getting Over It: the weighty way it moves and bends, the friction it creates when scraping different objects, it really becomes an extension of my being and movement becomes fluid. For this, I dunno, it just felt too flippy-floppy and ill-defined to get anything done with any sort of accuracy, and just felt incredibly frustrating. Even when I did find a workable method, it lacked satisfaction using said method. It was also lacking elements like cursor lock to keep me from clicking off-screen when making big movements.

At the end of the day, I will say that the victory of beating what few levels I could get through will live on in my memory. So while I have gripes with this, I think that's quite the accomplishment for both of us, haha.

Maybe I'll try again once I work up the patience: who knows, maybe I'll change my mind if I'm able to make it through more (but don't count on it).

[The Wizard Ran: Chapter 5]

Another interesting chapter in this adventure! My first playthrough had me go what I felt was the intended story route of making it to the southeast airship and skeedaddling (but getting in a big surprise fight on the way) while my second route had me trying to save up money to at first buy magrits but instead stumbling upon the power of fire and burning everything away instead. Both were pretty enjoyable in terms of discovering the mechanics of the game and exploring around, figuring out the best route while being shocked by some twists. I felt pretty intimidated by the scale at first but it wasn't anything compared to episode 3 with the maze: with the map and the hints supplied here, this was surprisingly no problem and I can see myself going in for more endings.

While I enjoyed it, this one did have a lot of weird oddities which made it a bit annoying. For example, I dunno how the heck the airship bullets worked and what was going on with their physics. It was so difficult to tell how to fight properly so I just spammed bullets and that unfortunately led to me spamming past whatever their last words were. For another example, the fact that attempting to move to face a wall when standing next to it facing 90 degrees away makes you walk around it instead of just facing it made certain interactions annoying as well, such as burning the trees. All in all, though, it wasn't anything major that impeded me and it was still a neat little adventure!

adriendittrick responds:

the confusing airship bullets are intended because they're a reference to the very first game I made, if you're interested you can try it here (you might need a second player):
https://adriendittrick.itch.io/i-remade-my-very-first-gm6-game-from-memory

[Dashosaur]

This game really sent me on a ride: lots of ups and downs, but mostly downs, unfortunately.

Definitely didn't start off with the best first impression, what with its misaligned text-input on the starting screen which made me unable to type in my name, lack of instructions on how to play, and the first few levels being incredibly unchallenging and boring, not helped by the dreadful 3 second music loop.

Once the meteors starting firing off and the music popped off as well, however, things were looking up! There were still some weirdness like how the meteors could collide with background elements like trees and grass instead of just the foreground floor tiles, but the game started to get challenging with the need for both jumps, dashes and jump-dashes to make it through the ever-changing landscape from meteor impacts deforming them. Felt compelled to go fast!

As it went on, however, the game plummeted into an absolute disaster for me: the meteors just became too heavy in number and being randomly-generated, leading to tons of unfair situations that made it impossible to progress from player skill, but luck only. Combine that with the dash being incredibly awkward to get to work when jumping and the game became too frustrating to continue for me.

It's not a bad idea, having meteors crash into the environment and deform it as it can lead to dynamic play and quick reactions from the player, but this game just went too overkill on it and made it too easy to get softlocked. Food for thought, I suppose!

SleepinPanda responds:

Thanks for the feedback! That's it. I mean, really, this game was made mostly to experiment an idea. And I tried to go as far as possible with that idea. Ship it like it is, and get players to test it. Love it or hate it. Whatever this was just an experimental prototype I tried to polish it as best as I can.
This meteor gameplay is going to be part of the main game I'm building, but I'll build it differently and avoid that much luck/randomness thing.
Thanks a lot for the constructive feedback! This really helps and you guys around here are awesome! <3

[Badass Beatrice]

Hah, it certainly does capture that old-school Newgrounds edgy aesthetic, along with the classic "pick an animation" button style gameplay, so not too shabby in that regard! I did find myself a bit disappointed with the options, though: I liked the Fire and Knife options since they had amusing twists to them that served as a funny joke, but the rest of the options just played out normally with no creative twist to them. Just wished there was a bit more to this instead of playing it so straight: take it as a compliment that you got my hopes up, I suppose!

[Sokobird]

Damn, I dunno if I'm just dumb (don't answer that) but this game felt like it started off way too hard! Don't get me wrong, I don't like it when games baby me and take too long to get to the good stuff, but damn, the first few levels felt really rough, only for it to suddenly get easy again, then get super hard again, so I feel like the level ordering is out of whack in terms of making a good difficulty curve. Nice change of pace in a way, though!

Moving past that, while the game is just sokoban which has been seen many times before and is thus not that exciting, it did nevertheless have a decent craftmanship to it, what with the cool graphics, nice animations and sound-effects for moving/pushing, and large amount of levels. I did find myself dropping off due to the sameness of levels and lack of any new mechanics being introduced, and the lack of any sort of grade/rank system (like a number of steps/pushes to beat), but I had a good time while it lasted. For the most part, not too shabby!

[Hexagon Puzzle Blocks]

...I mean, it's quite literally just Fit Puzzle Blocks, a game you already made, but using Hexagons instead of Squares, so I'm not sure what to say as most of the feedback I'd say here is the exact same feedback I'd already given for that game. This isn't a bad game, per se, but I feel confused as to why it is repackaged here like some sort of chinese bootleg with a different name and no noticeable improvements, so I do feel like I need to rate it lower for that.

[BOTKILLER_]

Hmm, it's a decent little shmup that I want to like since it has an interesting style to it, but I found the gameplay ultimately a bit boring without enough meat on its bones.

Game certainly made a pretty good impression at the start: its got a pretty cool retro graphic style to the whole thing, and I liked seeing the character bios and different ships and so on. Gameplay was interesting as well with the various enemies and bosses you could fight: definitely some effort was put into this! The most memorable boss for me was the giant one who traps you in a laser grid, but there were plenty others that were cool: definitely the star of the show here were the bosses, so I see why you made a boss rush, haha. Also appreciated some of the neat options like being able to display hitboxes: made it clear whether my hitbox was the tiny point style or whole plane style.

But as I played, the game quickly got repetitive. While there were a lot of enemies, they never really differed in significant ways to make interesting combat. In a similar vein, the one ability you get was never interesting enough to cover up the fact that all you do is just hold down the shoot button and that's it. Couldn't tell what the scoring system for the game was and if there was some sort of combo system or accuracy ranking.

Most importantly, the game just lacked any satisfying feedback to combat, especially in the audio department. Even after I changed the music/sound levels to make the music more muted and the sound effects louder, the game still lacked any satisfying explosions or other exciting sounds: there was just the constant drone of your own shots and a few token sounds here and there.

The graphics could also be very confusing: the first level especially was a nightmare where background blends into foreground and its so hard to keep track of everything since it all devolves into this incredibly sharp, neon colored hell. Could definitely stand to have the background more desaturated or something to make the foreground elements pop and more easy to track.

In general, I came away from the game feeling like it was more style over substance: while it looked cool and had some promise to it, especially in the boss department, in the end it really felt like a student project or something akin to that with incredibly basic and undercooked gameplay. Certainly does make me looking forward to seeing more projects from this team though, with this not-too-shabby experience under their belt!

[Downhill to Infinity]

Hmm, bit mixed on this one! Certainly a pretty stylish and cool game, but at the end of the day I was left feeling a bit frustrated.

Overall the presentation of the game is nice: it starts off on a great foot with a cool title screen and menus, and continues with some smooth and slick animations and gamefeel during actual gameplay. Speaking of gameplay, that classic Tony Hawk skateboarding gameplay is here and while it isn't anything new, it is nevertheless fun and addictive to chain tricks together for big combos. I say it isn't anything new, but there are some interesting touches like being able to up+flip as a psuedo-double-jump, and I do like the stylish way you wipe out in the game (though sometimes the camera would glitch out for me).

Having said all that, though, the game did feel a bit frustrating:

There were times where I wasn't sure if I was in control: for example, I'd hold left or right to slow down/speed up, but since the change was so gradual and my character wouldn't change stance or anything, I wasn't ever sure if the game was even reading my inputs. Similarly, the physics of the game would be really wonky at times, as sometimes when I'd ollie I would barely leave the ground, sometimes I'd launch to the moon, and other times I wouldn't ollie at all and just fall straight down a pit: just never felt like I could get a handle on it.

The camera was definitely a pain in this as well and felt like it suffered from the classic Sonic problem: you're simply feeling too fast that you can't see far enough ahead of you to plan for anything. In this I would want to go fast so I could get big air and so I'd be stable enough to grind, but that would always lead to me not being able to see far enough ahead or below and plummeting into a pit or other hazardous situation.

Moving on from controls and camera, the game also just felt a bit pointless after awhile. There didn't seem to be any sort of goal or sense of progression: every run would just go through the same endless randomized level devoid of any checkpoints and always end with my death (mostly an unfair feeling death) and that'd be that. It never felt like I was improving or winning since every run ends in a "game over" and it never does anything like praise me for a new record: you're just stuck in this endless void.

I still think the game is pretty neat and well put-together, but the rough edges really stick out for me since it shows so much promise. Planning to revisit and see if I can do better!

cheesycoke responds:

Jesus, thank you so much for this incredibly detailed feedback!! Glad to hear overall about the core gameplay n the presentation and stuff, really appreciate that. (Can't actually take too much credit for the spin trick, got that idea from Kingdom Hearts 2)
All these issues are things I really wanna look into. The ollie thing, I do wanna mention that sorta like TPHS you "charge" it by holding the button, so small presses get you less air but I might need to fine tune how quickly it charges. And I especially need to figure out what's happening if some just aren't registering.
Really appreciate the feedback on camera, was definitely thinking that needed some kinda work. Was thinking about just minor positional tweaks on it but mayyybe something more dynamic will be a better choice? I dunno, I'll think on it, might not get anything out too soon but this is all helpful!! Really looking forward to the video, too, since that should be good for helping pinpoint where the issues might lie.
AND yeah that last part is totally understandable, making games that're more rewarding is def a big next step of mine. Thank you so much again, though, for the detailed write-up and the overall interest in the game!