FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bandit RIP [BETA]]

I like what the game is going for, but it's in a pretty rough state at the moment. I know that might be obvious since it's labeled as a beta, but it's because of that I don't want to pull punches since I want this game to get built up into something great. I'll try to just hit on the important stuff to keep it as short as I can.

The controls felt very frustrating and confusing to deal with. Having something as simple as dropping down a platform requiring you to press three keys simultaneously felt pretty crazy considering that most games require you to just press down. Blocking as well had you do a crazy combination of buttons, and getting used to doing those buttons in the heat of battle is nuts. Speaking of blocking, I know you make them press three keys to drop down because block shares buttons and you want them to be able to block without dropping down, but in that case, why didn't you just make block a separate button, like holding F, so it's not an issue in the first place?

Even once you do accept the controls for what the mess they are, the precision required felt very frustrating: there's no input buffering so I found myself dropping combos constantly because the timing required was too tight that even mashing didn't help. Some fighting games do look for you to require precision, but I feel like a party game like this should opt for buffering to reduce the skill floor. Finally, I didn't like having to deal with so many cooldowns on abilities: I don't know why they existed since it slows everything down and it was difficult to tell when you were on cooldowns since you have to look at the way down in the corner (maybe play a sound or flash red or something if you attempt to use an ability on cooldown).

The game is also very dry at the moment. While you do have some slight special effects here and there, like puffs of smoke for running and fancy attack animations, there are no sounds or impact to it all. When fighting, it's very unclear whether you hit or get hit because there's no feedback like a sound or a spark or something: just feels like everything is punching at the air. All in all, it just leads to the game feeling very muted and unsatisfying.

I'd like to say that, despite my criticism, I still think it's very impressive that you created a multiplayer online game: lord knows I wouldn't do that since I don't want to deal with that level of complexity. And while I do think it's impressive you put that together, I still found it very janky. I had plenty of times where I tried to play only to go into some dark void softlock where I could never spawn, or if I did actually get in a game, we would just have out attacks phasing through each other without getting hit (though again, this could just be due to the game having very bad feedback/controls and not necessarily a network issue, it's unclear).

Again, I do think the game is interesting as a concept: you got a lot of potentially cool characters and I love a multiplayer brawler. But it's just very rough and I hope the feedback I provided can help you polish it up.

Zetoman77 responds:

Hi. thank you for your long feedback!
The game is indeed in beta, so things will certainly change, especially the lack of sound effects (which I have tried to add but failed miserably) or more animations. The online play is really what I am trying to make sure works for everyone. It seems like it doesn't work well for you, is it a server in a EU or Asia that is laggy? If possible, could you let me know xD

It seems like ASD to drop down is the major control issue, as suggested by others as well. I will add the option to double down to go down. I think that would fix the issue xD It is fortunate that blocking and going down platforms are generally not really needed that much so i still have time to fix it xD

For the precision, it is actually extremely easy, if one holds down the left click to attack. To me it has always felt intuitive to hold down to spam attacks/shoot, but I have also noticed that it isn't always the case. So the buffering is there, and I made it clearer in the in-game tutorial. I see less players in game clicking one by one. I will try to make it clearer!

So every character's first attack is super spammable. and a secondary that is often stronger and with higher cooldown. The thematic usually works well except for pico where his usual weapons are the uzi so players might want to spam the uzis, but end up not being able to. I will try to fix that in the next update as well xD

Thank u for the feedback xD

[Tenko's Magical Sword Quest]

Pretty neat game! Fun, flashy, fast and challenging gameplay: all-around seems well put-together. Loved the little touches like the way the power-ups swoosh up to the bar (as it both looks cool and subtly lets you know what the power-ups do) and the randomly varied noises for jumps and such (to avoid audio fatigue).

If I were to have any complaints, it would be:
*Game dedicates way too many levels at the start with boring layouts where springs and spikes were the only new obstacles. It was only once like 10 levels went by where the pace picked up and started introducing tons of new stuff at a rapid pace: moving platforms, lava races, sawblades, guns, etc. I would slightly push more of those new obstacles back to the early levels to keep the player hooked as I could see some people dropping off due to early boredom.
*The noise for movement should probably only happen when doing major movement: was silly to hear a big WHOOSH sound when I'm just tapping the character to adjust myself a centimeter.
*Didn't like how some of the obstacles were these off-screen traps that you only know how to dodge once you've died to them before: feels unfair and annoying.
*Springs result in your gravity distorting in a weird way where you float down too slowly.
*Was curious on whether the energy bar should just deplete over time instead of only on movement to push the player to move fast and not wait around. Maybe having it the way you do is best though, where you can have some people focus on just beating the level while others race for records. I think the game works best when you force them to race though, and in fact I think you should die if you run out of energy instead of just...nothing happening? But that's me.
*I also think it's too forgiving with checkpoints, as I think the levels are short enough where checkpoints aren't needed at all. Basically I want this game to be fun and challenging, but right now it's so forgiving with you not dying on energy loss, not losing energy by standing around, and having checkpoints everywhere, that it's too easy to just not be stylish and fast at all. Why bother trying when there is no punishment?
*Didn't like how you had controller input, but for some reason force the controllers to use a virtual mouse cursor.
*Bit confused on the ranking system: felt like I just got random congratulatory messages no matter what I did: good or bad. I'd like to get more fanfare if I do well have them catalogued so I can go back and redo levels I didn't do well.

Anyway, I know that's a lot of negative feedback, but it's still a solid game. Well done!

LVGames responds:

Try level 15 in Pro Mode and let me know what you think about that idea. Also thank you for the other feedback I will look into it. For the gamepad cursor I was going for the Super Smash Bro. That's how they have it for gamepad. You know for the swoosh sound I got so used to it I didn't notice it as much. I think it needs some looking into as well.
You can cancel the float by pressing down to cancel the gravity.
On the ranking system it will make more since on the next update. But overall thank you again for this review. It's good to hear what awesome players like yourself think about my game for playing it for the first time.

[No Passport]

Nice little game! Ultimately a bit short and janky, but I think the game works as a great proof of concept for a fun little detective game.

For the most part, the game was fun: I felt the concept was well executed and I had fun combing through the crowd while under pressure to find the perfect match. It helps that the presentation is very goofy and animated, and was a fun decision to make fingering the suspect revolve around tazering them. But ultimately, it all felt fleeting and ultimately shallow because the game only had the one level to offer and that was it. It was a fun level while it lasted, but I wanted more: the game felt like it was just getting started!

Would've loved to see a little bit of story or progression to this. For example, maybe you have 5 suspects to detain, and you search for each of them through escalating levels. The first level has you find the suspect in a small room with just a few people, the next suspect is in a slighter larger room with more people, and so on until the final level would be like the only level in this game, which is a huge room with tons of people. Maybe there could be twists as well here and there, like the amount of clues increasing/decreasing, multiple suspects in a single room, or maybe have a room where everyone is wearing the same hat.

Maybe my complaints seem a bit odd, given that it's just a game jam game so of course it's short, but take it as a compliment that the intro of the game was so nice that it really made me feel like there was gonna be a lot to this!

In terms of other feedback, I found it frustrating that, despite being focused in the game on the main menu, you had to click once again once you're in the actual game to focus again to get control of the camera. This additional click to get camera focus makes it so you involuntarily zap the tazer once: if an innocent person is passing by in front of you, as it happened to me, you can get unfairly penalized for zapping an innocent! I'd be more frustrated if it wasn't a little funny, haha.

[Immune Defense]

A pretty neat game, but very rough around the edges at the moment (obviously, since it's a demo, but still, more rougher than I would expect even considering that).

I definitely find the concept intriguing and find the two game modes to be nice, though I much prefer the 2nd game mode of protecting a huge cell bundle rather than just surviving. Always love me some educational entertainment! It took me a bit to get used to the controls and all, but I do feel like there is some interesting strategy gameplay in here. Unfortunately, as said before, it is still a bit rough around the edges:

Overall I found the gameplay quite frustrating, as it simultaneously required too much micromanagement and yet also felt too much out of my hands and up to luck. A great example that sums up a lot of the issues is the gatherer nodes: I found it tiresome how much I needed to babysit them, as they would constantly rush out like they're trying to commit suicide and I'd need to pull them back with E so as to get them to bring back the glucose they've gathered before they kill themselves. Constantly I'd fail at bringing them back because I'd either lose my attention on them for a split second or I'd just time it wrong since I don't have control on how deep they dive into a crowd of infection. You'd think that with a game that allows you to select a unit, there would be a way to tell them where to go or what to do more precisely like other strategy games do, but nothing like that was in this. Units like the sentries fared better since they would stay in place, but it was annoying that I couldn't, when switching them to mobile mode, tell them where to position next to redeploy in sentry mode: they'd just wander dumbly about. It's nice that the game tries to reduce stress by automating unit behaviors, but it doesn't help that the units can be so idiotic and you can't help that.

It didn't help that it was difficult to learn the game in the first place since it just gives you an awkwardly scaled/sized pamphlet to read, in that it was scaled/sized down so badly that it corrupted the tiny text and made it very difficult to read.

Furthermore, there was a lack of visual/audio effects to communicate gameplay mechanics in an intuitive and satisfying way. For example, there were no death animations for cells, they just poof out of existence: this made it difficult to keep track of what was going on and also made it feel empty and unsatisfying to kill the infection. Another example was the gatherer cells, which had no effect to signal the transmission of glucose to the control cell, making the process feel hollow and difficult to perceive how much glucose you got.

There were some pretty wonky bugs here and there, such as how if you, the control cell, dies, you get a game over, but if the cell bundle dies, you get a 'you win' screen, when that clearly should be a game over as well.

If I were to have a suggestion to improve the gameplay, it would be two methods:

1) Tranditional micromanagement (more control)

Introduce more traditional control into the game like you'd see in a game like Starcraft or Command and Conquer where you can select units and tell them where to go, what enemy to attack, set patrol routes, and so on. In this way you don't have to deal with your own units acting dumb: it's up to you as the player to order them wisely so as to make the most of them.

2) Spawn and forget (less control)

Focus on the cells automating themselves without player input: the player just needs to focus on spawning the right unit at the right place/time. Get rid of the Q/E modes altogether since it just makes annoying micromanagement. To address the loss of Q/E: split the #3 unit so as to make the #3 unit's chase mode be what the #2 unit is instead, and make the #3 unit as the sentry as default. Additionally, make the #1 gatherer unit go out to gather as much as it can until it dies: upon death, do not delete the cell, instead have it come back and deposit all it could get, and then delete it. You might think this would make gathering too easy, but you'd still need to spawn the gatherer smartly to get the most out of it, like spawning it to attack the sides of enemies that are busy attacking one of your beefier units.

ulsan responds:

Thanks for mentioning our game in the video, really appreciate it! We'll try our best to take this feedback into account for the next version.

[Interstice Academy: Love is Blind]

Cute and funny dating game! While there certainly are a lot of dating games around and this is yet another similar one on that pile, and the game is a bit short without much meat on it, I nevertheless found it very intriguing due to the concept and eligible partners, cute art and presentation, great descriptive writing, and was impressed at the level of choices and effects. It could be smoke and mirrors and the game doesn't have as much consequences to match the levels of choice given, but it certainly has me fooled so far, so well done on setting it all up!

I did have a big gripe with the game in that, with the first choice of date options, it sets a precedent where selecting an option lets you see a description of the date, and then asks for confirmation. Imagine my surprise, then, when I get a similar set of options for gifts and I select an option expecting to see a description of what it is, only for the game to take that as my final answer and proceed! I didn't want to pick that crazy eyeball, I just wanted to see what it was! You ruined my date with Formless Mass of Energy!

Other than that, there were some minor issues like buttons being inconsistent in whether they were highlighted or not to signal interactivity (I at least appreciate that the buttons consistently played a sound on hover to let you know they can be interacted with), gallery interactivity being buggy (before when I tried clicking on blank pictures in the gallery it did nothing, yet later it would boot me to the title screen), a bit disappointed at the range of emotions from characters (why didn't you animate the principal wagging when he says he is wagging) and lack of features like save/load and text speed. But overall, I still found the game very amusing to play and I plan on going back to check out the rest of the endings, good or bad!

immadametal responds:

Thanks for the input. As for most of the bugs, this was made for a project jam of sorts where we only had a single month to work on it. Some minor things have and still might be worked on getting fixed when it is feasible, but I hope that helps with understanding our limitations.

[Bogden, Who Throws Axes]

Seems like a pretty neat little platformer, but at the moment I found it a bit too buggy and confusing to play.

The pieces are all here for a decent game: the character was cute and felt smooth to move around, controls and gameplay were pretty intuitive, and the world/concept was comical and intriguing to explore. Overall I'd say that I had an alright time, though I'll admit that nothing about the gameplay really grabbed me as particularly unique or memorable: just servicable. But still, quite decent.

But the game just felt very wonky in general. In particular, the axe physics were crazy and unpredictable and were no end of frustration to me. So many times I would be throwing the axe out, the same as every other time, except the axe would suddenly behave in a different way, bouncing off of the air for no reason, suddenly ping-ponging around in strange angles, or just not even moving farther than a few inches from me despite flying way farther on previous throws. It may not sound that bad, and indeed, it was a bit funny to see how crazy the axe could be, but when I can't count on the axe returning to me in an expected timeframe, it can really screw me over in combat when I need the axe right that second for another throw. I'd really love it if the axe was more straightforward and consistent as a projectile: ricochets are ok but not necessary if they cause this level of wonkiness.

There were also some other slight annoyances, like how I wish when you hit the button when someone is in the middle of a sentence, it would skip to fill out the end of the sentence, not skip to starting the next sentence. Also I didn't realize I could break apart torches for items since they blended into the background so well I thought they were just decoration. Furthermore, I found it frustrating that there were no checkpoints, especially when I interacted with something that really looked like one.

For a demo, I do think it has a lot of promise, so I hope that this feedback and help get everything ironed out and ready for a full version!

[Ruby Heart Matchmakers]

It's a decent match 3 game with some good potential in the date angle it has, but at the moment I feel like the game is in such a rough state that I would consider this more a prototype or proof of concept. (Hopefully it's not too obvious to say that, given that the game has literal stick figures and MS paint graphics, haha)

As functional as the game is, it is very basic and doesn't stand out in any special way, mostly from how it is lacking in any juice: no pizazz, no pep to it all. Yes, the scenarios were funny and yes, the game did have a little bit of juice to it, in that Agape and Sophia sweep down for a moment if you get a combo or a 4-5 chain, and the date animations alter themselves to be more lively as well, but those were mere droplets in a desert: I was dying for more!

For example, I wish there were several more animations for the date that increase in intensity the bigger the combo/chain you get: you've got the 3 chain make them awkwardly chat, which is good, but anything else bigger played the same animation where they are a bit more lively. I want it so that if you put in the work to get something huge, like a 5-chain or a big combo, you get an even greater animation where the lovers are all over each other! Either that, or it would be nice to see them get closer and closer to each other the more you get closer and closer to meeting the score quota, and even closer if you blast past the quota! And so on and so forth.

Furthermore, the juice isn't just for adding some pizazz to the game, but also making the game more readable and intuitive. For example, I found it really unsatisfying how fast the game deletes my pieces and collapses the board when I make a match: I barely had time to see how many points I got or what was the full effect of my match. I'd prefer if it would slow down, maybe play a short animation of the blocks glowing and disappearing in a shiny explosion or something, and if its a combo, do those for each set in the combo instead of collapsing them all at once: that way I can take my move all in and see the full effect. I'd also love it if there was some sort of alert, like a short sound or the board pieces shaking, when you're on the turn before the board throws the bottom row out.

Again, the code and mechanics seem solid and everything works as expected, so it's good in that respect. But as much as one might say that graphics aren't everything, I'd say they are still very important in making a game lively and fun to play. Still, this is a great prototype!

[isle]

Wow, quite the interesting game! Wasn't sure what was going on, but it was pretty neat to explore the island and fish up all sorts of note tracks to challenge myself with. Was seriously impressed at the system you have in place: the transitions between fishing and rhythm game were seamless and smooth, and the note charts seemed rock solid in terms of timing despite them starting at any time. Whatever trick you used to pull that off was really cool.

That said, I found it difficult for the game to keep my attention for long since it felt so directionless. I mean, it was fun to try fishing in different spots to see what new tracks would appear, but in general I just didn't know what the point was and what was going on. I can understand that maybe it's a mystery that you need to find out yourself by talking to people as the days go on, and maybe it's a bit of a slow burn, but jeez, throw me a little bit of a bone at the beginning to hook me why dontcha, haha. Maybe it's because I'm already pretty proficient at rhythm games so I didn't feel any escalating challenge from certain fish that a novice player would have in their journey? I dunno.

It's definitely a pretty neat and chill game that fuses two genres quite well: just feels like it needs a bit of a hook at the start to keep a player engaged (get it? hook? like fishing? ah? eh...)

[Doors: Paradox Demo]

Wow, really impressive stuff on display here! Loved the game: the dioramas were very pretty and fun to investigate, scavenging around for clues to solve the various puzzles. In particular the controls felt great, especially for spinning the diorama around and doing various click, hold and drag actions for opening chests, flipping books, spinning wheels and so on: that incremental process of slowly opening something or whatnot felt so tactile and satisfying! Everything was just so fluid, smooth and had a professional air to its presentation: solid work all-around!

That being said, I did have a few issues to point out:

One was that I would occasionally click somewhere on the screen, and then the camera would suddenly spin the stage around to focus on something that was obscured from my sight. It was very confusing: basically even though an obstacle was in the way and blocking sight of the interactable, the game treated it as if the obstacle didn't exist and therefore didn't block my raycast of interaction.

Two was that I found the game very inconsistent with what it would want me to just click and what it would want me to click, hold and drag. Most of the time it was fine: click to pick up an item but drag to open a door or a book or what-not. But, there would be times where I would go to, for example, open the lid of a chest, expecting to click, hold and drag the lid open, but this time, for some reason, the game just wanted me to click once and the lid automatically pops open of its own accord. C'mon, the drag actions are the best part of the game and it didn't let me take part for some reason, haha! Just made it quite confusing and annoying to have a double-check what it wants constantly.

Three is a bit of a minor and silly issue: for some reason, I wanted the ability to, say, when flipping the page of a book or anything other drag action, to be able to go back and forth. I don't know why exactly but...I don't mind that once I flip the page completely that I can't flip it back, that's fine, but when I'm in the middle of the action I wanted that ability to go back and forth for some reason: it just felt unsatisfying that I couldn't play around, I guess.

Hoping maybe this feedback can help with the full release of the game, but even without it, I think you got something nice here already, so best of luck with your development and release!

Snapbreak responds:

A huge thank you for the feedback💪🏻✨ We'll discuss these moments with the team!

[360 Degrees]

Pretty rad game! Definitely quite the juicy game with tons of wild music, crazy animations, and all of it with a cool analog control scheme that is unique, intuitive and feels neat to get used to, much like learning how to skateboard. Going for the bonus objectives was a fun challenge as well and brought me back to those Tony Hawk days. All in all, very fun stuff: love the character's totally tubular animations, even as he smashes his balls for the hundredth time!

Now, with that good stuff out of the way, let's get into the problems I had, haha:

The control scheme is a bit frustrating to get used to. Don't get me wrong, I think it is very neat how analog it is, but I found myself many a time doing circles with my mouse, expecting it to do a kickflip, but all he'd do is wiggle the board slightly: it was only then that I noticed my mouse had trailed off to the side and, while it was making circles, it wasn't making them around the player character. I would much prefer if the controls made the mouse locked within a certain radius of the player so that you can't trail off. Or, at the very least, it'd help if I could maintain visibility of my mouse cursor, but I found that really hard without the game providing a virtual cursor. And that brings me to my point below:

I do feel like the game is a bit too loud (color-wise and sound-wise) and overly animated at times: it's juicy, but this is to the point where it is visual and audio chaos and it makes it difficult to parse what the heck is happening at times. A contrast is needed: if everything is loud, it just becomes the norm, a mush where nothing stands out. At the very least, I'd love it if the background was desaturated or blurred, or you only use bold outlines on characters and interactables: any of these changes would help make the critical elements pop and maintain visibility. I also like how you use the pitch shifting sounds and screenshake and other such techniques, but it is used in such over frequency with so many things that it loses any impact.

I didn't like how when you complete a combo, it just disappears instantly: I want the combo I made and the points I earned to stay on screen for a few seconds so I could see what I achieved. The combos disappearing so fast made it feel ultimately pointless: at least maybe have an animation showing the points swooping up to the total score or something.

The tutorial was decent, but I didn't like how I couldn't control the pace of the instructions it gave out: it moving at its own pace meant there were a lot of times where I just had to sit there waiting, or I was frustrated that it went by when I was still practicing.

There's a couple of other minor issues, like how you have an animation for charging up an ollie but it doesn't make any difference on the height you gain, and how some of the rails drop you too early before you'd think they'd end, but I won't harp on about it because at the end of the day it was still a fun game and my issues, such as the control schemes, were possible to get through with practice. Thanks for putting this together and it's cool to see the collab power on display with all the graffiti and such: ingenious!

Oh, by the way, there's a bit of a weird issue where, if you never click on the game to focus it in the first place even if it is already technically loaded, it will just be loading forever: hopefully everyone clicked but I'd hate if someone just left thinking it was taking too long to load, haha, it almost happened to me!

As another side note: this isn't an issue with the game, but rather an issue with me where I had a hard time going for combos in this because I was always against using manuals as a means of extending combos in games like Tony Hawk. I don't know why: something deep in me back in the day always felt it was a bit silly or cheating or inelegant or something to extend combos through manuals, and now I have a weird mental block against them. Wonder if anyone else suffers from this?

Jacob responds:

Excellent review! Can't personally address most of it, but there's an option which draws a line to your cursor's position.
I also struggled before turning it on.