FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Jesus Christ! Holy Menace]

Cute little game! Funny concept, and I like the little touches like the audio/visual quips that are generated when spraying people down. Only issues I had with it is that I had a game get absolutely stuck at 32/33 with no last target to be found, with me having to start all over to actually win. Would love if there was an arrow/guide to help find the last targets, or if the game graphics did a better job at differentiating between a person who has/hasn't been sprayed. Continuing on that, I thought at first that people who are stationary are targets and mobile people aren't, but on my 2nd play I noticed that there were some mobile people who haven't been sprayed yet, so maybe that inconsistency is what led to me being stuck at 32/33: maybe I had a mover who I thought was sprayed already but wasn't. Anyway, quite the short and sweet experience!

[lose95]

Wow, I'm super jealous! I thought I made a pretty good tech support game this month, but I'm loving what you've done here! This was a serious slam dunk for me: great concept, professional and crisp minimalist graphics, juicy and satisfying effects, tons of variety in enemies and powers, and an overall smooth feel to everything! Felt like a real super hacker. Only complaints I can think of are really nitpicky stuff that I don't even feel count: I was just having so much fun! Can't believe this was a game jam game and that it was randomly generated: everything felt so hand-crafted and professional! If possible, would love to see this even further expanded into a bigger title, maybe with a little bit more narrative or story to it all!

[Sores And Sorcery]

Bit of a hidden gem here! It certainly doesn't put its best foot forward: the title screen is very bland, you can't read the tutorial instructions in a safe space and they're super tiny, and overall while the game looks decent in terms of graphics with a unique sepia filter to it all, it is a little muted and dry, desperately needing an extra bit of juice like effects or music to reduce the constant drone of the wizard firing shots at you over and over.

But putting all that aside, the gameplay was pretty solid! Loved how fast-paced it was in getting me right into some challenging levels and constantly varying up the obstacles and layout in creative ways. The decent amount of moves/mechanics and the variety really kept me hooked and wanting to play more. There was a little wonkiness at times, such as the ledge hang sometimes putting me farther out from the wall than usual, causing me to get hit by a passing saw that wouldn't usually hit me, but overall controls felt pretty tight (which is good to make a hard game like this feel fair). I'm definitely coming back to finish this later on (many thanks for adding a continue feature for the levels!)

EDIT: Whoops, I already beat it! Aww, didn't realize I was already on the final level: with all that space left on the main menu, I thought there was gonna be even more levels! Oh well, had a nice finish where I got to have some sweet revenge: nice stuff!

HelperWesley responds:

I'm glad you got to finish it!

And those points are totally valid, I was thinking about re-doing the title and adding some music. But I hadn't thought about how the first time you see the tutorial text, the boss is already attacking you, so that's definitely something I could fix. 😅

The extra space is for the "speed run mode" button. Did the "type in your name" text not pop up when you beat the game? If you type your name in you'll get access to the speed run mode that has a timer, and your name will go on a leaderboard I've set up. I was wondering why so few names were getting there, despite the number of plays..... Maybe it's not showing up?

[Facemaul]

Not too shabby! It doesn't have much meat on its bones, and the swinging is a bit wonky to get used to because of the delay, but it was a nice, short and sweet experience. Felt great to try and get better to see all of the various fatalities: so satisfying to blast the pitcher's entire torso off with a line drive!

As mentioned before, one thing that drove me nuts is the delay with the bat swing: I kept trying to click right when I wanted to hit, only to miss because clicking doesn't hit the ball, it merely starts the motion of swinging to eventually hit the ball. I got used to it and consider it part of the challenge and all, but it just felt a bit unsatisfying to not have that synced connection between click and hit. I think it was mostly due to the NES graphics: those type of games practically always have instant response on button press, so it was odd to see this game go for a more modern delayed response on button press.

[Flamebearer]

Not too shabby! I like the concept and found it to be quite fun due to the big variety of obstacles to contend with. The levels really kept me hooked and overall I thought the game looked quite good as well with some solid presentation. Game was also quite impressive in the amount of meat it had on it: I thought I was getting close to the end of the game and suddenly it started adding lighting mechanics, opening up a whole new set of challenges! Definitely very addictive.

The thing that really bothers me with the game is that the controls can be a bit wonky at times, leading to frustrating deaths that didn't feel like my fault. In particular there was the wall jump mechanic: sometimes my character would cling to the wall and refuse to get unstuck despite tapping the other direction, and other times my character would uncling from the wall with the slightest tap. There's also a weird magnetic force if you jump next to a wall that can force you to attach when you don't want to. Finally, some of the bouncepads can act strange, not bouncing me as strongly as I feel like they should, most likely because they are requiring too much initial button inputs to influence the bounce strength. For a challenging platformer like this, I feel like the controls and physics gotta be really tight, and they somewhat miss the mark here. The game is fun enough that I persevered and tried to get used to it, but even then, it just felt inconsistent at times.

Only thing I'm really bummed about is that it didn't save my progress: like I said, there was a lot more meat in this game than I expected, so I was hoping I could continue from where I left off. Oh well, might give it a another go from the start anyway since I do quite like it!

[Reversary]

Hmmm, this was a bit of a bummer for me: I totally love the concept and think it's really cool and funny, but over time it just became so repetitive for me that I just let the hero kill me so it would end, haha. I wanted to see how the game naturally resolves, but didn't have the patience.

As said, initial impressions were strong. The concept was amusing alongside the dialogue, and I loved both controlling the sluggish boss and learning all of its secret moves. Presentation was solid as well, with tons of little touches like how the music builds up when you get damaged enough to represent new phases. I found it a bit confusing that the game's HUD was from the perspective of the player (their health bar in top left and boss in bottom middle) as well as the death message being "You died" instead of "They died", but I felt like that was part of the humor so I let it go with a smile. From there, I kept playing, wanting to see how the game would escalate and what the characters would talk about next.

But as time went on, I grew really bored with the game. For one, the AI for the hero was brain-dead, so brain-dead that I was curious whether it was so bad so as to stretch out the game so the hero wouldn't win too early and make you miss intended dialogue events. Whether this is or isn't the case, fighting the hero just felt bad, unchallenging and repetitive because of this, amplified by how sluggish we control. I know it's part of the experience at how the hero is so bad that all they can do is keep grinding to win by numbers, but at the end of the day, all this didn't make for a fun experience for me. Also, I found the dialogue hit-or-miss: some of it was quite amusing, but other times it would be a bit too fourth-wall-breaking and overly quirky with references to simping and such.

So, with both the gameplay being boring and the dialogue not worth it to keep going for, I let the hero kill me (and ironically, that was the hardest challenge since the hero is just that goddamn bad, which was probably the funniest part for me, so kudos for that?) Again, I really love the concept and feel it's a great and impressive game jam prototype: would love to see this polished up and executed better in a full version.

[Echo Chamber]

Solid and interesting little game! Combat was pretty rough at times due to the cramped arenas, but it was fun to try and strategize and improvise with your spell combo that you build up. Presentation was overall quite cute and polished, though could use a bit more feedback to help direct the player.

Definitely a bit confusing at first: reminded me a lot of a Pico-8 game where the game doesn't have enough room to dedicate to tutorials/text/instructions so it relies on icons and such instead. This led to me having a rough start where I had no idea how anything worked: turns would happen instantly with enemies warping in all sorts of ways and I couldn't tell how they were moving so fast and even how to attack, haha.

But it didn't take me too long to finally learn how everything eventually worked due to the intuitive design of said icons: soon enough hovering over enemies to see their health/attack power/move stats became second nature. From there, I had a good time building up a unique chain of spells and improvising as best I could with them in the arenas. Of course, I still wish it would be a bit easier in some aspects: would love something like how in Fire Emblem or Advance Wars you can click/hover on an enemy to see their possible movement in red tiles, but it works alright with what its got.

[Volcano Maintenance]

Really fun and frantic action! Overall loved the fast-paced yet strategic nature of the gameplay: had a blast scrambling around to gather fruit and bring/chuck it where needed. The game felt really juicy and satisfying to play at its core, especially when smacking the baddies with fruit. Graphics were simple but very cute and lively, with cool touches like the volcano screen turning transparent if you hover over it. Great concept and nice execution: overall solid all-around!

The only wonky aspects I noticed were that the charge for throwing was way too touchy: if you tap it you throw it a piddly few inches, whereas if you tap it a nanosecond longer you throw it into the goddamn stratosphere. This made it quite frustrating to get a mid-range throw: would like if the charge happened a bit slower to help control the power easier. Other than that, there were some minor things like how the fruit thrown at the catapult would sometimes be layered behind it despite technically being in the launching pod, and I would've loved to throw a baddie at another baddie to damage them: felt confused as to why it wasn't possible when fruit works fine.

A bigger thing to note was that I had a real wild swing with the difficulty. At first, I found the game way too hard: baddies took so much damage and both kept reviving and spawning new ones that it felt so pointless and hopeless to fight them: all I could do was scramble to get as much done before they ruined everything. It was only later on once I learned that a) you can permanently kill baddies if you keep hitting them in their stunned state and b) who cares about killing them when you can pick them up and feed them to the volcano and kill two birds with one stone, that suddenly the game turned on its head and was way too easy! Once I learned those tricks about the baddies, managing everything was a breeze, and when you stack the powerups I got on top of all that, I became unstoppable and went from my highest being a D to suddenly getting an easy S+ and intentionally having to kill myself because my game was going too long, haha (speaking of that, I noticed that the timer speeds to zero if you're in an unwinnable situation with all trees dead: nice touch!).

[Forgotten Dungeon]

I definitely find the game quite impressive from a technical aspect (cool gameboy interface) and find the concept intriguing of going through this dead, already looted dungeon. However, all that intrigue was unable to get me to the end as I found myself getting so bored and frustrated that I couldn't continue.

It was a shame as I did want to see the ending. But between the unsatisfying combat due to the lack of feedback, wonky hitboxes that feel way too big and make it too easy to get damaged, hard to parse visuals because of the overwhelming gray palette and tiny screen, repetitive room layouts made worse by constant backtracking, lack of exciting puzzles or interesting progression since the relics don't do anything, and weird glitches like enemies spawning right on top of me, I just dropped off. I know that some of that, like the unsatisfying combat and muted soundscape, was probably intentional for the atmosphere, but I think you overdid it. Basically, I think you perhaps did too good a job at recreating a forgotten dungeon in that, well, it's forgotten for a good reason, haha!

Also I think I softlocked myself? I died in the eastern wing in a section that is now permanently locked off since the lever I hit to lock it off is within the locked-off section. I could be wrong, maybe there's another lever somewhere that can open it up, but again, the game kind of wore me down that I couldn't be bothered.

[A Date with Death 2]

Really great and charming game! Had a wonderful time playing this as I felt like the humor was top-notch: great dialogue and sequences that were paced and accentuated well despite being quite simple in construction. I did play the original story so this worked great for me: was a little worried how new people would take it since it assumes a lot of knowledge (but then again, should that even be accounted for?) Was surprised how much I loved it considering the bulk of it was pretty much a movie with only a little gameplay.

Speaking of that, though, I have to admit, I do wish the game had a bit more gameplay to it: I really loved the dodging sequences, but there were only the two of them and I beat them both on the first try which made the story feel a bit odd. Since they weren't that hard, it made the hero seem like a god who can do everything effortlessly: it works in a way since they are pretty unflappable, but I'm curious whether the fights were more difficult that perhaps the 'fight for love' would be more satisfying by our repeated attempts. Also, I would've loved if there was a bit more interactivity through a final fight: instead of everything getting resolved through dialogue, maybe you play as death in an interesting twist and dodge obstacles to make your way to the hero and save them from their nightmare, or maybe you play as a depressed hero who moves slowly until death comes in to save the day. But I don't mean that it's a really bad thing the game didn't have a lot of combat: I still loved the game nonetheless, rather I was just impressed with the sequences and wanted more everything from the game!

Really looking forward to the third act if you end up doing it!