FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[This is You]

Cute story! I'm not full-on deep into my Madness lore or anything so I dunno how canon or anything any of this is, but I found the world and concept very believable, the artwork very charming, the characters quite interesting with their own unique voices and the story very gripping! Was surprised how easily I got sucked into it: I was worried at first that the game would get too quippy, jokey or memey but it never did, and I admire the professionalism at sticking to keeping it real. Definitely coming back to get the rest of the endings later on: so far I've just got the one where I did nothing, but I'm quite intrigued to see the rest (though sometimes tells me there isn't exactly a happy ending no matter what I do...)

vhsdreamland responds:

oh my goodness thank you so much!!! this is such a nice review, thank you for your time!!

[Dominion Ex]

Nice shoot em up! Overall it felt like the game was very satisfying to play with a lot of cool special effects (especially the shockwaves), and I definitely loved the weapons and how they all had their strengths and weaknesses: you gotta be accurate with the rockets but they have great splash damage, the vulcan is decent all-around but you gotta get dangerously close to not suffer from the lack of accuracy, and the plasma is awesome at insta-deleting foes but it overheats so fast so it should only be a last resort. And then there's even the drive where it passively boosts your speed as long as you have it equipped. All these interesting pros and cons made fighting the great and various array of enemies (who are also weak or strong against certain weapons) super interesting as it keeps you active in searching for the best tool to use in the ever-changing situation: very thrilling stuff! Bosses were quite a cool spectacle as well. I felt like the whole ability to just warp out to homebase whenever you want was a bit confusing to come to terms with at first, but I suppose it allowed for some interesting convenience as some people might want to cash out immediately instead of more traditionally waiting for a level end. Well done!

Extar responds:

I'm glad you enjoyed the differences between the weapons, with the enemy immunities I wanted to make it so there's no one strategy that works all the way through, and so there's always at least one enemy who will give you problems regardless of which weapon you use.

Yeah, I let the players go to the hangar at any point so you can kind of upgrade as you're going, although you get more points if you save up more coins before visiting the hangar. Also, you can go back to the hangar to reset the screen if things are getting a bit too hectic :)

Thanks for the the detailed review!

[MADNESS CANVAS INTERACTIVE GALLERY]

I always appreciate these collabs as I think the heart is in the right place in terms of showing these artists some love and showcasing all these great talents, but I have to admit I did feel like this gallery was very lacking.

For one, it's very dry with no real pizazz to highlight or frame the art. It's as basic as it can get with just a simple back-and-forth between bland pages: It think it would be much cooler if the artworks were displayed in a big collage/gallery/poster like what's shown in the description, where you can hover or click parts of the art to see who worked on that part and so on: you know, just something a bit more fancy and interesting to get people to stay.

Furthermore, it felt like the gallery was lacking a lot of key features: for example, you can't click on an artist's name to see their profile, so unfortunately I think a lot of people aren't going to see and follow other artworks from them, which is a bummer because I think the point of a gallery and collab like this is to let people see art and then get to know and love the artist. By not putting an immediate link, you've made it for difficult for people to get connected and show love to the artist when they would want to.

Also, there's no table of contents or index or what-have-you to allow different ways to list, view or search for art that interests a user. By having the gallery be a simple list with only one way and one order, I feel like it unfairly emphasizes whatever you've chosen to be first in the list: everything near the end of the list probably won't be seen or remembered by the usual user as they would get bored or be tired by the time they've made it there, if they make it that far at all.

iamtheangrysons responds:

thank you for your feedback!

[GRiPPY]

Fun game! I found the concept of climbing around with your arms both very amusing and also very intuitive and interesting to come to grips with, if you'll pardon the pun. Felt good to get better and more efficient at moving around, and I loved pulling down the keygates as it felt so satisfying. I haven't beaten it yet but I definitely plan to come back since it was quite fun, though I'll admit that part of me is a little reticent because the game, as fun as it was, sometimes felt a little frustrating and slow to play at times: nothing major, but sometimes it just felt a little wonky to have to climb everywhere bit-by-bit, and annoying to get your hands past certain obstacles.

One part that was a bit confusing was the fact that I wasn't ever sure how far I could move my arms at first: sometimes it felt like they could reach very far, and then other times they couldn't, and that's because I didn't realize I was crossing them over (reaching to the right with my left arm). Perhaps the game could actually have the graphics of the arms overlap in front of the face so it was more apparent that's what was happening, or be more forgiving to allow it.

EDIT: Have now beaten it and had a blast! I appreciate the bonus hard paths that taunt you: always love an optional challenge, haha.

[Wheelbot & Clyde]

Hmm, I felt like this game does have some potential going for it, but ultimately I found it very repetitive and uninspired as it current stands.

There are some good aspects to it, certainly: for example, I like the goofy art and presentation, as well as the feeling of speed and momentum you can get with the player character as they roll around at high speeds. I also like the bumpy feeling of running over the terrain and watching the collected items fly out, haha. And below the incredibly loud music (which had some pretty rockin' tunes) that unfortunately drowns it out, I think I can hear the sounds of a rising pitch modifier being used for the pick-up sound to make it more satisfying.

But for my playthrough, I spent most of it very confused because of the lack of a tutorial that doesn't teach you the controls or the rules. Even when I did think I figured it all out, I found the game very unsatisfying from the way the levels just seemed to repeat the same basic loop over and over without any improvement: collect items, run a few laps, boom, over and over. No challenge, no excitement, no nothing. Again, I felt like it was a bit of a shame because the game looks like it has some charm to it, but without any hook or interesting mechanic, it lost me. Maybe it can come back in a more fleshed out version?

[M-Bot Simulator]

Pretty cute and short little text adventure! Was quite fun to go through the various paths to see what weird references and oddities would come up, and what endings I would ultimately get. As a fan of CYOA books, I approve. The game had an interesting presentation style for showing choices that was equal parts innovative and equal parts unfortunately confusing, so I guess it cancels itself out, haha. Now, onwards to assimilation!

[Clocks of the BBS 2021]

Always nice to see a bunch of art from so many newgrounders, so cheers for putting this collab together. I quite like the main menu which displays all of the framed pieces, and the way you can click on each to zoom in and glean more data on the title and author. I thought at first that you didn't put in any next/previous keys which made it annoying to keep going back and forth to view the next piece, but lo and behold you do have next and previous keys but they are hidden: maybe make those a bit more apparent either with some subtle shading or some arrow buttons, haha, I'd hate to see someone get frustrated thinking that they aren't there when they are.

[PIGBOY]

Hmm, it's a nice little visual treat to see that retro tiger electronic/game n watch aesthetic, but I unfortunately feel like it wasn't that satisfying as a game and might've benefited from breaking free of that limitation: for example, I would've loved if the sprite for the farmer changed to be holding a bucket on the return trip, and if the pig would grow larger with each water, but I feel like you decided not to do that because it would be against the aesthetic (even though I feel you already broke it by having reversed direction sprites right on top of where the regular sprites would be). But even more than that, the main issue I had with the game is that it was very confusing to tell whether you were safe or whether you were going to get hit by a bird: it would be much easier to tell if the birds divebombed straight down in easy to intuit columns, but due to the arcing nature of their movements, I was never sure if I was going to collide. I couldn't glean any logic in how to dodge: at first I thought if I was always behind where a bird is facing, it would be fine as that symbolizes that I'm not in the direction they are moving, but nope, I'd collide with birds facing both ways, so I was at a loss.

[Trailer Trouble]

Pretty fun and goofy game! I always appreciate an opportunity to recklessly weave through traffic like a madman, and this game delivered! But while it was quite fun and gave me a chuckle, there were some confusing and frustrating aspects of it. For example, I had no idea what the health bar was for the game, and felt like the packages in the back of the trailer, while an interesting idea, wasn't that intuitive. Furthermore, I found it a bit frustrating that even the slightest of grazes on another car will cause it to explode/vanish and make you lose a full life point: I feel like it would work better and make more sense if the health was more granular, with the amount of health you lose and damage you cause to another car dependent on how violently you crash into it: if you just bump another car, maybe lose like 5% health and you bounce off of the car, but if you hard smash into it, then yeah, major explosions, car reduced to atoms and maybe lose tons of health. Speaking of all that, as a small nitpick, I found the explosions for cars to be quite unsatisfying: would be nice if they had some more extensive damage, cooler explosions, and left behind mangled wrecks instead of just disappearing in a puff of orange like they do. Anyway, thanks for the bit of fun!

[Gyro Gear Tournament+]

Seems like it has some cool stuff going for it! I quite liked the unique style of combat with what seemed like multiple viable strategies, like go straight for clashes, fake them out, jump to hit them in the body or bounce on their head, knock them out of the ring, etc. I also liked that the stages mixed it up a bit with not only arena combat, but this kind of race combat as well.

Unfortunately, the game overall felt very rough and confusing to play. Don't get me wrong, I like when a game jumps into the action quickly, but this game overdid it by just immediately dumping me into combat without even teaching the controls, and even once I did learn the controls, I never felt like I could tell if I was playing correctly as it all felt so random and the potential feedback for seeing whether my hits were working wasn't visible or it was tucked in the corner where I wasn't able to look since I was fighting. It could definitely benefit from more explanation on fighting techniques and more feedback like damage numbers and maybe color sparks indicating whether an attack worked or failed or whatever (maybe it does this but I couldn't tell).

Not only that, but the AI seemed to be very subpar: eventually the AI seemed to get smart in the later stages and mixed their strategy up a bit, but a lot of the early fights just had the enemy come straight at you like a robot and just constantly clash over and over. I think there is a lot of potential in this game that maybe I'm missing out on just because I don't know the mechanics since the game never taught it effectively: very unfortunate.

rotcivsette responds:

Thanks for playing and for giving feedback! The game's nature is indeed very chaotic, so don't worry. It seems I didn't succeed in communicating the mechanics through gameplay overall very well, but I'll state here some information in case you're still curious: the sparks does indicate feedback (yellow: damage deflected; red: damage inflicted; orange: body hit). And there are words giving more feedback to you above your RPM bar. Thanks again and I'll try harder next time!