FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lina: Witches Of The Moon]

Pretty nice shmup! Certainly had some cute and solid presentation/construction to it overall: loved how satisfying it was to blast away and see the explosive feedback from enemy deaths, and I loved how the game kept things interesting by constantly introducing new enemy types, new bosses, and new hazards and bullets to avoid, all while dangling this intrigue about the moon over you as a bit of story progression.

In terms of feedback: I'm a bit conflicted about the power-ups. It's very exciting to get powered-up and start blasting away huge spreads of bullets along with your cat, yes, but the fact that you can lose all of that by getting hit once really sucks the wind out of my sails: so much work and time invested to lose it all so easily. There's also an issue with difficulty: if you're all powered-up, you can just blast through bosses and waves effortlessly with barely having to dodge, and yet if you don't have any powers, then later waves and bosses can feel ridiculously spongy and a real repetitive slog to wear them down with your basic bullets. Not sure what the ideal solution is here.

Furthermore the gameplay is a bit basic and without any unique mechanics: it's not bad but I can see it getting a little repetitive for some despite the game attempting to keep things spicy with new enemies and such.

Also I really hated how when you kill the last enemy on screen, it just disappears instead of giving a satisfying explosion and point pop-up like it does for all the others: if you could somehow change it so that it doesn't wipe the screen of effects immediately, that'd be great. Currently the only way to see the last explosion is to leave a power-up on screen so it delays the effects clean-up.

[MarshMallow Madness: THE GAME]

It's a nice funny little gag, certainly, but if I were to rank it as a game I'd say that it is very awkwardly constructed and feels like it is barely held together. Collisions were really wonky and have you warping over and jittering all over the place, and the placement of the invisible walls were bizarre as well (why have these weird walls around the sign post pillars?) It's also an incredibly short game that doesn't provide any actual gameplay: you'd think it might be some sort of challenge to adjust the angle/power of your cannon so you get launched into the marshmallow accurately, but no, it's just a foregone conclusion that you hit it. Again, though, it is a nice novelty to play something which was once just a movie, and it did have some nice interactions like handing over the nickel which it made very cinematic and intense for such a simple action.

[Blob Omelette]

Wow, really surprised by this one! This game might look simple at first glance what with its simple moveset and lack of direct control over movement, and it can be a bit confusing to understand your abilities at first due to some wonky animations (though the tutorial does a good job at getting you there eventually), but I seriously got addicted to this! Every level kept me hooked by ramping up the challenge with introducing new obstacles, new mechanics, new subtle ways to use my abilities like being able to cling to conveyors and such: I just didn't want to put it down! I'm also such a sucker for hidden objectives like strawberries in Celeste that I was happy to collect the challenging hidden eggs and keys here (though it did suck when I missed an egg and couldn't go back for it except to restart the whole level). I hope people don't sleep on this one due to its simple graphics and controls: think you did a great job at keeping the pace up as once it gets its hooks in you its hard to stop playing!

[The Bunny Graveyard DEMO [Web Version]]

Pretty cool game! While the whole "it may look cute but its actually super scary" is a bit cliche nowadays, the game nevertheless had a lot of layers of interesting design to it where you go from PC interface to retro game to this weird hand-world and so on, and overall just had a really professional presentation to it that made me want to keep going to see what happens next. I especially loved some of the tricks like the way the game responds if you keep answering 'no' to the initial question (and boy did it make me dread what might happen if I screwed up the gardening gameplay)!

That said, I did have some issues with this game:

*The initial setting of the shift button to run was broken and didn't work: tried to reassign it in hopes to make it work but it didn't, then tried to reassign to ctrl but it didn't accept that either, until finally I had to reassign to space bar which finally worked (on the plus side, I did like how the game had a whole rebinding and test control area so you can verify this stuff beforehand).

*For a game that heavily revolves around text, I was surprised to see that the game does not allow you to press a button to skip/fast-forward text. Without this, it was really painful when I accidently examined something twice and had to wait for the whole spiel to pointlessly replay, not to mention it made it a huge issue for full replays since there is no save/load.

*Speaking of save/load, I was really hoping I could (I missed the message at the start saying its not possible) and was disappointed to see that when I tried to hit ESC to access a menu it just went to black, killing my game.

*While the game is intriguing and stylish, I don't feel like the game had the best first impression of its gameplay. The tedious maze at the start, the constant handholding and linear design that never wants to let you off the leash and just feels like tutorial after tutorial, and what little glimpses of actual gameplay there were was overly simple exploration and QTEs. Furthermore, the use of hands as a character was very strange to me (why not bunnies?) and I didn't feel like I had any emotional attachment or reason for playing further beyond morbid curiosity. It tells me that I'm looking for "her" or whatever but it felt super shallow and I didn't believe in it.

Basically, at the moment the game does have a bit of a 'style over substance' issue for me, where while the game looks and feels very well constructed, the gameplay itself is quite boring, restrictive and doesn't have a solid story hook for me. Nevertheless, the sheer level of style on display here is still enough to keep me intrigued, so I look forward to more!

[BIMSY'S BOUNTY]

Pretty cool game! It's certainly got that zany tombdude style to it all as usual with great animation and life to everything, and it provides some crazy manic fun as you aim to harvest as soon as possible while having to deal with obstacles like enemies crapping on you and corrupted crops, along with certain phases switching up grow times to keep things interesting and not get too repetitive. I liked the interesting combination of the harvesting action being able to also KO enemies if you aim into them as it offered some great feedback as well as cool decision-making, like if it's worth it to fully-grow a crop to use as ammo or just pluck them early to get the enemies outta your hair. Definitely a lot of depth and novelty to such a simple looking game: made it really quite addictive to go for a higher score!

I gotta say though, while I'm positive on the game now, my first impression of the game was pretty miserable. It sounds silly since the game is pretty simple, but I just didn't understand a lot of the rules on my first go, and I actually still am not sure how some elements work. For example, it wasn't clear to me that I needed to keep harvesting to get points: there was no sort of positive feedback like a ding or a money amount popping up from it and the tutorial put so much importance on hitting enemies with crops that I thought I just needed to sit on my crops to use them as ammo until enemies showed up. I also really wish there was some sort of score table that could tell you the value of each element, like what is the different amount you get for pumpkins vs turnips vs corrupted turnips and so on so I'd know how to prioritize. In a similar fashion, I also wasn't sure if different crops deal different damage when thrown at enemies: I coulda sworn corrupted turnips dealt more but it was unclear in the chaos. It's also annoying when a plant gets corrupted mid-pull: it can be fun to react in time and cancel, but I'd normally assume that whatever state it's in would be frozen during a pull.

[Sun Escapes Me]

An interesting little game! It's a bit shallow and short, but it doesn't overstay its welcome and keeps things interesting and novel by switching up the rules with each wave. There are some frustrating bits like how difficult it is to ricochet shots back at the sun since there's so little room to work with, but for the most part the game is exciting and fun thanks to the explosive feedback/effects and intuitive arcade gameplay.

That said, the design of the game was pretty questionable at times. I expected the rock wave to require you to shoot the rocks down quickly to prevent the sun from absorbing them and gain power: that way you're forced to play effectively and risky to keep all the rocks away. But no, you can just leisurely take your time and shoot the rocks at your own pace, killing any sort of excitement until you reach the required 100 points. It just made it a bit confusing because you'd think the game would always focus on you vs the sun, but when it comes to the rocks...why are you getting points for shooting them? The other waves made more sense since it involved you fighting back. Also, why does the game even have a high score system when getting points is required to reach certain wave progression at 100, 200 and 300: doesn't that just mean everyone who beats the game ends up with the high score in the end, unless perhaps the sun's final phase health bar has some wiggle room?

Overall though, it was quite the memorable experience due to the interesting wave progression that gets you to the final showdown: a nice, short and sweet story!

picochaz responds:

Thanks for providing such comprehensive feedback! You're totally right on all your points here, relying on score for progression was meant to be a temporary thing but I ended up getting distracted by other things in the game jam.

If I am able to prioritize revisiting this game, I'm going to use your comment as a blueprint to dramatically improve the points mentioned. Score should matter more beyond the final phase and things falling into the SUN should add to its gravity. This might even spur levels in the game itself... who knows?

It is most appreciated that you took the time to provide your thoughts like this.

[Danger Creek]

The core concept of the game itself isn't that bad: blasting away enemies that are trying to reach the bottom with a wacky assortment of weapons. It can be some good simple fun and there is a certain amusement at watching your guns get more and more wacky with all sorts of weird shots you get from each wave, but ultimately I found it quite repetitive and lacking in the long run, heck, even the short run. The shooting just didn't feel that satisfying at its core, the enemies never really showed any sort of challenge or intelligence and the variety of enemies were incredibly shallow with them all being basically sponges: once you've encountered wave 5, you've pretty much seen the entire game and it just starts recycling the same assets over and over. I gave up around wave 15 out of boredom: I do see from some other comments that the game does get harder and harder to the point of impossibility which is promising, but I couldn't see myself getting that far based on the initially dull first impression. I definitely think the game could be pretty cool: just needed more time in the oven that a jam can't provide to really balance it out and give enough variety to keep the novelty up.

[Dead Fish Clicker]

Cute little game: has some amusing little bits to it like the recorded speech and it's overall animated and goofy presentation, but for the most part I found it lacking as an idle clicker game.

There really wasn't many interesting upgrades or changes to the complexity of the game as you play to give it a sense of progression, so everything felt ultimately pointless apart from the achievements. But even considering the achievements, I was disappointed to see that the game doesn't even save progress so it expects you to achieve everything in one run which is pretty unreasonable. But more important than that, I found that the clicking registration was really odd: felt like it kept eating my inputs unless I delayed them considerably which was really frustrating and broke my rhythm, and when something as fundamental as the clicking in a clicker game isn't working, it really didn't give me much faith for anything else.

Of course, I'm no doubt taking this too seriously since it's obviously just a little gag game for a laugh, but still, I always hope to actually be surprised with some hidden quality to these games and am always bummed out to be disappointed.

[Walk with Frog Wife]

Hmm, bit of a mixed bag, this one: first impression was overall good but the game quickly lost its novelty for me.

There's a lot I do like about the game: the graphics are cute and charming, I love the feel of reloading the gun one bullet at a time (especially because the sound effects pitch up, nice touch), the concept is certainly unique and fun considering escort missions are usually the bane of games, the, uh, use of a growing belly to give feedback on how well you're doing is clever, and I like that the game has an assortment of endings depending on how well you did.

However, at the end of the day, I found the game to be way too easy and simple. Reloading is super fast so you're never outta bullets, the enemies are slow and easy to hit, and it's just got the one short level and you're done. Just feels like it doesn't have any sense of challenge or design to it, and that severely diminishes the reward. If it had some more challenge or variety to it, I think it could be great, but as it is, it's just bleh. It also has some weird stuff like how the game doesn't just end immediately if you deplete the bar.

[Into The Web Of Swine]

Hmm, this felt like a miss to me. Really feels like a work in progress that ran out of time (understandably, game jams are hard) as the game just felt incredibly dry and plain and just not fun to play. The idea of having to commit to certain movements and thus time it right to dodge obstacles is an alright concept, and playing the more difficult contracts where there are tons of different obstacles can lead to some fast-thinking improvisation, so the concept is not without merit. It's just that, without any sort of pizazz or sense of progression, it feels so boring and ultimately pointless.

My initial impression was really bad because I picked an easy contract (which I think is logical since I still didn't know how the game worked) that was absolutely, pathetically easy and devoid of any challenge. As said, picking a harder contract later on helped me see the game in a bit of a better light, but by then the damage was done (and even then, the game was just devoid of any exciting feedback or effects). Oh, and there were plenty of bullshit deaths were obstacles would be right where I initially spawn, so that didn't garner any faith in me for the game's construction.

Speaking of the contract system: not to backseat game dev, but I think it would most likely work a lot better if, instead of picking contracts where you can get stuck in a boring configuration for a long time like I did, you throw that away and just make the game be an endless mode that keeps ramping up the difficulty with each level you beat, and then you get a high score at the end: I feel like this would keep the novelty and pace up a lot more.