FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[a s c e n t]

Decent little Metroid/Flashback-style game! It's a rather simple, small game without quite enough challenge as I'd like through platforming or combat, but I nevertheless found it fun to get in the addictive loop of exploring to gain new powers to make it through locked paths I remembered to explore some more (and it does still have some occasional fun precision platforming here and there). Never did anything too amazing to wow me, but all in all it felt like a short and sweet adventure.

Having said all that, I was really disappointed to find that the game doesn't have a save/load feature. It's probably not the longest game, and I understand it was a jam game and all that, but I quit for a moment after making some considerable progress and was hoping to finish it later on, only for me to see that I was put right back at the start. Unfortunately, as much as I want to see the end, I don't think the game is fun enough at its core to make me replay the whole thing just to get back, so alas, it will remain unbeaten! Still, I had fun while it lasted!

[Alien Hominid Art Collab [20th Birthday]]

Decent little art collab! It's nothing mindblowing, but its got a good assortment of art, some decent backgrounds and music, nice little sounds and feedback for buttons, and its nice to see links to the artists profiles below them. It's got some minor issues like how some of the text is difficult to read (could stand to have it be outlined or use a thicker font) and how the arrow buttons are difficult to click (should probably have the click area not be the arrow itself, but a bounding box for the arrow), but for the most part everything is functional.

That said, I do wish it was a bit more creative in its presentation: it's not bad or anything, but it's a very general slideshow-style presentation that has been seen a hundred times before. Considering it's Alien Hominid, it might've been cool if the game was presented in a more wacky way to fit with the game: perhaps you could make a side-scrolling level where you wander around as Alien Hominid and can either collect the artwork by getting points or just see it in the background of the city. But again, taking it for what it is, it's alright.

s-zenmode responds:

HI FUTURECOP!!!!!!!!!!!
sorry bounding boxes are hard as shih to do in scratch thats why i usually dont.
and i was actually going to do something like that wacky thing you mentioned but it was scrapped because I made the engine when I was a total newbie and was too lazy to actually rework.

thank you again our saviour FuturecopLGF

[Seven Fridays Cat]

Pretty funny choose-your-own-adventure game! Really loved the graphics and presentation for this: love how everything is so lively and animated, including stuff like the title screen, text and menus which would usually be an afterthought. All in all had a good time with this: got really addicted to seeing how all of the various choices played out, helped by the comical situations and outcomes.

For the most part, it was fine, but I did have a few minor complaints. I did feel like the game was a bit too 'real' in some cases: so many times I would follow some wacky decisions hoping that they would take me into some comical and unique scenarios, only for the game to punish me for trying to have fun with an immediate ending. I'm not saying that every stupid decision should lead to good things, and I could be just blowing some minor situations out of proportion when maybe the majority of the game does go along with it, but I'd like if the game took me for a loop a bit more, if it'd riff on the situation instead of giving the more realistic ending. Speaking of, I also really wished the endings would be a bit more varied in terms of visual outcome: it felt weird to get some more happy-ish endings but still get the same ol' dead body ding-dong ending as the rest of them. Sure, the text differed for every ending, but seeing how every ending had the same visual and same sound effect really made it monotonous and killed my motivation to collect more. Also there were a few bugs, like how when I met the stray cat but then left him behind yet he stayed wandering around on my screen in spite of that, and then I met him again later and then had two of them on my screen for some bizarre reason, haha!

[D.Va Clock and the Quest for Flash 8]

The game doesn't make the greatest first impression with its rather lackluster graphics and presentation, and it certainly is a bit janky, but I ended up enjoying myself quite a lot with this point-n-click adventure! The key to it all was the amount of humorous interactions, flavor text, and events in the game: I loved that everything had a unique response to every action even if it was nonsensical like trying to talk to a knife, and I loved that the story went some crazy places with all sorts of weird achievements and hidden endings like if you just go to sleep immediately. I found myself easily wanting to go back and replay for more endings, while other more flashy games never could get that kind of grip over me! The game could definitely stand to be constructed a bit better (for example, there is a bug where interaction windows don't go away if you open up and then go to another screen, and I do wish objects would get highlighted when you hover over them for clarity), but I still think this is a good example of graphics not always being the end-all be-all for games if it's just fun in the end!

[Kill-BOI 9000]

Pretty neat game! An interesting twist on a survivors-esque bullet-heaven game where instead of empowering yourself, you play as the weak master empowering a powerful minion. Felt like it had all of the basics in place for a game of this genre and it was decent fun to blast away slimes and watch them split into smaller and smaller versions.

That said, while it wasn't bad or anything, I did find it a bit unsatisfying to play after awhile and didn't feel like replaying after I easily won my first run. While it was fun at first to get my bot equipped, it didn't take long for it to have all of its weapons and then for all of the upgrades to just be boring slight upgrades of the existing weapons, causing it to feel very repetitive. It also felt kind of odd to not be able to control the bot in any way: while I agree that the gameplay loop of being a weak scavenger risking going away from the bot to collect hearts to bring back was intriguing, it eventually just felt really frustrating to not have any combat feedback and not feel like any of the kills were from me: a weird sense of disconnection, I suppose. It didn't help that the game felt very muted with lackluster sounds and special effects: could stand to have some more juice in both gameplay and menus, like how I was disappointed that dying just immediately boots you unceremoniously back to the menu.

While the bot concept did end up alienating me, I still had a decent amount of fun and thought it was a cool experiment, so well done!

PlayWithFurcifer responds:

Have you checked out the hard mode? :)
Don't fear, more juice is coming. The game was made in a 3 day game jam, so there is a bit of work left!

[Panpukin Panic]

Very cute and charming game, but ultimately was a bit too stiff, frustrating and repetitive to really have fun with.

As said, I love the presentation of the game with its wonderfully cute art and the story is very goofy and comedic to read with a great range of expressions (though maybe a bit too wordy for my liking, but perhaps I'm just an impatient sod). I also found it impressive that the game, considering it was built for a mobile jam, since had PC controls and effects, like buttons that react when you hover over them. Gameplay was alright in that it was going for an interesting bit of manic fun where you stave off a flood of ever-encroaching pumpkins, so it felt good to try and get faster and faster at making good and efficient quick decisions.

However, the controls really killed it for me: I just couldn't get the controls to be fluid for me and was constantly frustrated. It just demanded so much precision to move and drop things: so many ignored inputs because I didn't tap on the exact perfect pixel it wanted me to, or because I was 1cm away from being considered close enough to an object to pick it up, and so on and so forth. To add insult to injury, even when I'd put in a movement control the way I want, the game would constantly be tripping me up with vines that seemed very inconsistent when they'd trip or not: just so annoying! Even when I tried to switch over to a mobile to have the intended experience I still had a lot of difficulty controlling it: maybe even more than on PC, actually.

Even moving on from the controls, however, the levels were pretty monotonous and didn't change things up. Every level felt like pretty much the same thing and it never introduced a new type of obstacle or challenge: the only thing it did change was the number of pumpkins you could carry for some bizarre reason. Didn't help that the game didn't do a great job at explaining the mechanics either: I didn't even realize you could carry multiple pumpkins, and what was this new fire spell we got, and so on and so forth.

[A missing shepherd]

Nice little puzzler! I felt like the mechanics were pretty clever and intuitively introduced through some solid tutorial levels and good tips. Didn't take long for me to get rather addicted at going through puzzle after puzzle, especially with the way the game kept ramping up the difficulty and complexity bit-by-bit, such as with stacking sheep into groups or adding water into the mix. All-around very good stuff.

Only complaint I would have is that maybe the game is a bit too chill for its own good: would love if it had a little more pep to it. For example, I'd love if maybe when you beat the level, the sheep lean down and start eating the grass, or bleat with happiness, or some such thing: you know, little touches like that which make me feel a sense of progression and accomplishment. Instead the game is just a constant drone of the same level graphics over and over with this really depressing music with random bleats: as much as I like the game mechanics, the lack of energy really kinda saps me out, haha!

Olivier-Guillaume responds:

Thank you for your detailled feedback!

I'm not 100% satisfied by the music myself, but I didn't find any better.

About the lack of variety and feedback, it's a 2.5 weeks solo project, so yeah it's pretty basic (and I'm not an artist).

[Dynacore]

Wow, really impressive game here! Feels like a lot of effort went into the presentation and construction of this game, as every single thing about the game explodes with life and energy, including elements that usually wouldn't get much attention like the menus. Seriously, without even getting into the gameplay, it's just a delight to click on buttons and watch the cool little animations and transitions as it positively crackles with energy. I felt like the game shined the most with the cool boss fights, especially if you get your hands on a neat gun, but I also loved the little special things you can do in the game, like picking up fired arrows to use as an impromptu weapon, or stealing from shopkeepers by exploiting invisibility potions.

But having said that, and it hurts me to say this...but I didn't find myself actually having that much fun. The game starts you off with a really limp and unsatisfying melee attack that doesn't give great feedback due to the lack of sounds, and that unsatisfaction was further compounded by all of the enemies feeling so spongy. Even once you finally get a gun, you can get screwed over and just get a really odd one that just feels awkward to use, and even if you get a good one, the combat still felt rather limp and lacking depending on RNG. While the game does seem to have a decent enemy variety and traps and other such things, it never felt like they had a chance to shine because all of the rooms just felt like they were slapped together randomly and thus has no cool obstacles or formations: it felt more like just clutter, and they were too cramped to allow for me to stretch and employ some movement. Traps just felt like an annoyance, like I was playing some sort of Indiana Jones game instead of the dopamine crazy experience that was promised. Game was also confusing to keep track of all the items and such you get: I had no idea what were inventory items I'd shoot/use or what were passive boosts and whether they stacked or whatever.

Could just be a bad first impression, perhaps: maybe it really picks up in the later levels, and I'm not saying it's a bad game, just that maybe right now it's a bit style over substance: it's not as fun as it looks like it should be, at least for me. I do plan on revisiting the game and giving it another chance: while I would typically drop a game that doesn't make a good impression, the sheer amount of effort put into the construction makes me want to play and hope for the better!

EDIT: Now that I've gotten further, I feel like I'm getting more in vibe with what the game is going for and am enjoying myself. There are certainly still some annoyances, like how dropping items and reading more detailed descriptions for items is very unintuitive, and generally I'm still not a super fan of some design choices and the RNG causing some runs to be super boring and painful due to lack of interesting items or health or level layouts while other runs give you an overabundance of crap, but still, having a better time overall.

Prox276 responds:

Hey, thanks for the thorough feedback! :)
It does take a long time to grow on a lot of people but most of them do enjoy it more once they overcome the initial difficulty spike. That isn't to say that the game isn't flawed but it does click for a certain audience.

[Casino Roll]

Not too shabby! Fun little game with combat that reminds me of games like Undertale and such, where the outcome of an attack is based off of whether you win these little mini games. Pretty charming presentation and concept all around, and had a pretty good time for awhile.

Having said that, there wasn't many games on offer and they started to get pretty monotonous. It does pep things up by making them more difficult as you go through further loops, but that actually added more frustration as it felt like the games were largely up to luck instead of skill. I know it's part of the casino theming and all, but it is what it is, and it didn't take long for me to quit the game since it just felt like I wasn't in control of anything and would inevitably end up wasting time losing to the luck of the draw. I know you say the war game is pure rng, but to be honest, the rest of them, except maybe the wheel spinners, felt very similar. Adding to the frustration was the fact that your health doesn't recover on a new loop, making you want to almost kill yourself intentionally just so you have enough health to fairly stand a chance at lasting another loop.

Some of the games were also confusing: they didn't always explain the rules properly, and the outcome would happen so fast without time to see how everything turned out and extrapolate from that. For example, for the war game, I was unclear on whether I was drawing my opponent's card or my card at times. For Red Jack, I didn't understand how draws or holds worked since they seemed to both result in you getting an extra card and then adding them for the result, and it wasn't clear whether I facing off against an opponent's total (and the result was weird in that the face cards would be more than 10, I think?). Sometimes I'd win despite going way over the limit? Also wasn't sure how aces were handled, and so on and so forth.

Despite my frustrations, it's certainly a decent idea and a fun little experiment with this mini-game esque combat, so all-around a good example of a game jam game to get inspiration from.