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FutureCopLGF
Still working at it, bit-by-bit.

Lucas Gonzalez-Fernandez @FutureCopLGF

Age 36, Male

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UMD

Joined on 11/21/06

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Best Games of January Review! (with video feedback)

Posted by FutureCopLGF - February 7th, 2022



Every month I see to review all of the games that were nominated as the Best of that month, which you can view in the link above!


As a game developer myself, I know how difficult it can be when you are starting out and how tricky it can be to tell how your game will be received by users. After all, you know how your game is meant to be played, and you can't just wipe that from your memory when you're building and testing it!


Therefore, I record myself playing all of the games for the first time for 10-15 minutes and try to voice how I'm feeling when I'm playing it, so that developers can see how a user might experience their game for the first time, especially for things like tutorials. I also try to provide some advice as well, but it might not always be the best: what I'm really hoping is that developers can draw their own conclusions on what might need work from how I stumble through their game.


Game Devs Reviewed: @jakes1403 @Dungeonation @Peti @mmattugh @Rob1221 @Oscura @3p0ch @Little-Rena @Roksim @Jack @sarnyoger @CorpAmerica @UnlimitedTrees @Just-a-ng-dummy @bluswimmer @jefvel @Miroff @LeviRamirez @plufmot @Ferociter @Ennuikal @sheebstuff @nokoi @almostnot @Shal @DieterTheuns @YWainczak @Tombdude @Stepford @Pomegranite @YewTM @HealliesGames @Vonka @eyedust @BlackthornProd @DefaultLabs @ShortCakeCafe @SlickRamen @spoike @andrfw @bokononyossarian @AtreyuGilbert


While all of these games were the best of the month...


MY PERSONAL ARBITRARILY-RANKED TOP 10 GAMES OF THE MONTH


My Top 10 was (in sort-of ranked order and based on my own criteria which is some weird sense of 'memorability' for me personally and totally subject to genres I like and I don't feature an author twice even if they had two good entries so as to spread the love etc etc):












(Yes, I'm a little surprised I put Pico Vs Bear DX and Peter's Quest in Top 10 as well considering all the issues I had with them. What can I say? Despite all that, I found myself going back to play 'em over and over, and that's a powerful quality I gotta recognize!)


And here are some Honorable Mentions (games that were close contenders for the top, additional games from an already highlighted dev this month, games that are still demos but promising, games that are clones of existing games but still good, etc):










(and no, I'm not just putting Pixelgrounds there because I'm featured in it: it was fun! I won't be bribed, haha!)


Thanks to all the portal warriors that sifted through all games to find the best in the bunch for me to check out in the first place! And as always, even if your game wasn't listed by me personally, hold your head high as I enjoyed playing all of them nonetheless as they are, after all, the best of the month!


I'm planning on hopefully taking part in the upcoming Flash Forward jam: as much as I have a big project I've been working slowly on, I couldn't help but get inspired to do a little project. Also, it should let me remember what it's like to be the one being reviewed, and keep me in check for how I should act as a reviewer for future, haha. (Might be reaching out for an artist and a composer, if anyone is interested in dealing with my shaky leadership)


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Comments

Thank you for playing my game! Its the first time I had ever made a game and I made it for my friends to piss them off but from that I've learned a new love for making games.

I used Game Maker Studio with help and advice from some awesome creators on Newgrounds!

Watching you figure out the game was a treat for me. I learned a lot from making this and so I promise next years game will be a whole lot better!

Haha, good to hear the reasons behind the madness. Was a pretty interesting game with a creative mechanic for a first time: looking forward to seeing more!

I'm glad you liked pixelgrounds bud. I agree with the UI stuff you mentioned and yeah, when it first got released you couldn't use mouse...
And to also answer a question you had, all the levels were made by artist that requested to get in through discord.
Have a good day bro :)

Cheers! I'm a pro with the keyboard controls in Pixelgrounds now: got the shortcuts memorized and everything. Thanks again for making that level for me as it was quite the workout for my brain!

I'm so glad you consider Olive's Artventure to be that good!!! Thank you so much for the kind words in your review. <3

That's the number one slot gained on both the Newgrounds top 5 and my top 10! I dunno if that's been done before: that's gotta be a record somewhere!

Thanks for the feedback on my game! Super insightful and totally agree on the overall jankness and lack of polish. I appreciate the honesty a lot and it's been super helpful in thinking on making games going forward.

Also you're fucking awesome for doing these videos, takes crazy dedication and love for this community!

Cheers! Thanks for the game as while it was pretty rough, I gotta admit it was quite the trip and made me surprised. Glad that it sounds like I was able to balance myself between being brutally honest but not overbearingly negative.

@Taka Wait all the art stuff was in discord? I kept posting all my ideas on the file sharing because I didn't know the existence of a discord server, so that's why there's just one level of mine-

Even for that I'm grateful that people liked it and also you Futurecop!!!

Cheers! I'm still working through Pixelgrounds puzzles here and there when I have time: looking forward to seeing yours!

Pog i could finally sit down and check this out!! Its always fun watching you look at games and give feedback, im super glad you got to look at mine!

Also id genuinely love to hear more about how to make the menu ui better, Unity's ui system is hot garbage and makes me angry ive had back alley fist fights with it

Cheers! And yeah, I hear you, part of the reason why I wanted to get into the Flash Forward Jam was because it can be nice to go back to the familiar ease-of-use of Flash compared to Unity.

I could be missing something since it's been awhile since I coded it, but on my Unity Buttons I attached an extra custom Component I made called HighlightFix, which looks like this:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.EventSystems;
using UnityEngine.UI;

[RequireComponent(typeof(Selectable))]
public class HighlightFix : MonoBehaviour, IPointerEnterHandler, IDeselectHandler
{
public void OnPointerEnter(PointerEventData eventData)
{
if (!EventSystem.current.alreadySelecting)
EventSystem.current.SetSelectedGameObject(this.gameObject);
}

public void OnDeselect(BaseEventData eventData)
{
this.GetComponent<Selectable>().OnPointerExit(null);
}
}

It's with this that I was able to solve that weird issue where you can double highlight, one button highlighted by default or keyboard and another by mouse: this code makes it so you only highlight one at a time. Again, probably not perfect and maybe it actually creates a hidden problem and it's not a big issue to solve in the first place, but there you go!

@FuturecopLGF your welcome dude. Have fun with the others

Thank you so much for playing my game!!! It's very silly and made for goofs but im glad you enjoyed :D

Damn, I should've put the goal for the level with the wall jump powerup at the top of a chimney or something to make it clearer that a wall jump would be the ability to get you there. I obviously didn't want to just say what the powerup abilities were, considering that the "holy shit" when it goes 3D is half the impact of the game.

Also looking forward to having the tables turned when your Flash Forward game comes out :3