FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Alpine Alpaca]

Hmm, bit of a mixed bag, this one!

On one hand, I think the game is presented beautifully: everything just feels very professionally put-together. It's not just that the game looks slick and well-animated, it's that the way it presents itself makes the mechanics of the game very intuitive, such as with things like previewing your route with understandable symbols, having a blip on the edge to show your next destination, animating the cards being drawn, and so on. The concept is also quite the interesting take on combining skiing with a card game: taking a usually fast-paced game and slowing it down to allow turn-based strategy.

That said, while I did have a fun time at first, the more I played seemed to make the design more confusing. I expected that I would need to try and hit every gate unless I get penalized, which would promote very exciting, risk-taking optimal play, but in retrospect, it seems like you can skip gates with no penalty (apart from not getting points, of course). I could be wrong, but I felt like this might be because the game is too random with its generation of obstacles and dealing cards to ever always have an ideal path to puzzle out, and thus needs to give you an out by allowing you to skip gates. Maybe I'm overthinking it or not explaining properly, but in general it just felt frustrating that my score was kind of up to luck, and I never felt like the small concessions it gave, like getting a different deck every few gates, really allowed me to control the odds. Obviously it probably wouldn't be great if there was always an ideal solution since then it would just be a solved game, but then it's like what is any score but just dumb luck...I dunno, haha, definitely overthinking it.

I dunno, at the end of the day, I think I just would've preferred a skiing game where I control the skiing more traditionally, counting on my own skills and reflexes to get me through a tough patch instead of the luck of the draw. Cool experiment, though, and not to say it couldn't work: could just be me not accepting it for what it is, or maybe it could have some slight tweaks to change it up!

[Parallelogram Man Orders Takeout!]

Hey, nice stuff! I love me a boss rush, and this delivers on that quite excellently along with some very goofy presentation and humor that reminds me very much of a @tombdude game. The concept of killing your opponents not by attacking them, but rather by demonstrating how ineffective their attacks are by styling through them to the point of embarrassing them to death is some really creative stuff: love how it promotes diving head-first into danger, similar to games like Doom or Burnout. Some of the bosses are a bit cheeseable here and there and it can be frustrating at times which can be bad since it promotes boring play, but for the most part I felt like they all had very interesting patterns to battle through and I had a blast.

In terms of feedback, there's the obvious one that the tutorial can be a bit confusing in that, while it does technically explain all you need to do, it is still nevertheless confusing and I wouldn't blame some people for dropping it thinking it's just a joke you can't pass (though I imagine I'm wasting my breath since that's probably a badge of honor for you, haha). Similarly there are some typos as well (some that even bizarrely auto-correct themselves as it goes) but I imagine those are intentional as they add to the humor. Other minor complaints are that I wish text and cutscenes and such would move forward at my own pace and be able to be skippable instead of just auto-playing. A larger complaint is that I do wish this game had a save/load feature: it can be a bit of a doozy and it'd be great to not have to do everything over if you run out of gas on the later harder bosses. Oh and it never saved my score despite me finally beating it!

Anyway, great stuff! I almost chopped my keyboard in half facing perfect circle man but eventually I got into the zone and it felt ecstatic to finally put him down. And if that isn't the ideal experience for a boss rush, I dunno what is, so kudos on that!

LeviRamirez responds:

Thanks for the feedback! A lot of the minor stuff could be fixed but I’m kinda just done with this game. It’s whatever it is now and I like it, it’s supposed to be a game you beat once in one go, it’s frustrating I know but it’s no sweat off my back.

I’m glad you liked it though, this game was very experimental for me and I took a huge page out of the @Tombdude and @Plufmot book and made something wild! We’re all buds so I assume we all just rub off on each other :-)

Anyways, thanks!

[Le Chat Fonce: Gnome Cafe]

Decent little scavenger hunt game!

It didn't have the greatest first impression on me: I felt like the tiles/color were too similar everywhere, the camera was too zoomed-in, and without any map, I was positive I was going to get lost or miss a single coin in some corner somewhere and get frustrated.

But truth be told, I didn't end up having that many issues getting to the end, and was surprised at how many 'landmarks' I noted despite not even paying attention that much! Something about the way you built the map must've hit that sweet spot where it isn't too complicated to create too many long-lasting branches, instead sticking with short branches that keep the pace up, so well done!

It's definitely still a bit rough in some aspects: really wish it had coyote time for jumping, for example, but overall I had a better time than I thought despite it's simplicity.

Boy, was I really scared when I had $4.99 and had no idea where the last cent was: luckily I collected all the gnomes, got the red key and made it to what I assume is the secret ending? Or I wonder if it's all a troll and that's the only way to win?

[DreamShock DEMO (2022)]

Hmm, it's really rough at the moment, but it is a demo after all, and I did find the game's goofy and cartoony aesthetic very charming and the music was cool, so I think there is a lot of promise here! Hopefully I can give some good feedback to improve it for a final version:

*Combat was a mixed bag. On one hand, I found the death animations for the player and the enemies pretty cool, especially with how the world goes slow-mo on enemy death. But for everything else, however, it felt incredibly unsatisfying as there was practically zero feedback for hitting someone. When you attack someone, they need to react in some way, like being pushed back, playing a hurt animation, flashing white/red, playing a sound effect, producing a hit spark, anything! Would also love if you do the air attack on someone if the player would bounce off of them.

*I liked the player expressions in the corner of the screen to indicate health, but I wish there was a bit of a health indicator on the player itself as well. Would love if they, when low on health, had a different idle animation like they are clutching their shoulder, or at the very least have them pulse red or play a heartbeat sound or something.

*Lot of controls aren't intuitive: I assumed that my dash was like most games where I just have a normal single forward dash, but was surprised to see way later on that it was a multi-directional double dash. I also found it confusing that when you attack while holding forward you'll go stock still, yet if you move forward and then quickly let go of movement and hit attack simultaneously, you'll attack while sliding forward instead of going still. I would prefer consistency, leaning towards keeping the player's momentum when attacking instead of cutting it.

*I was a bit frustrated that you can't access the long range slash when you're in the air, instead only being able to do the spin attack. I'd prefer if you could do the long range slash in the air if you do a neutral jump, but do the spin if you're moving, or maybe do the spin if you press down+attack or something, I dunno, up to you.

*Navigation of the levels was very confusing: too many blind leaps of faith required and I ended up getting stuck at this gray door with red highlights that would beep and make it snow whenever I touched it.

*Would love if things that you can interact with would have a little interact icon pop-up above them when you're close as sometimes it wasn't clear what was interactable.

[Dinogen Online]

Pretty cool game! Was surprised how easy it was to skip all that registration junk and get in a server and just have some dumb fun shooting dinos with a bunch of guys with all sorts of guns and equipment! For the most part the game feels very professionally put-together: both the menus and gameplay feel very slick, intuitive and exciting and there seems to be a lot going on to really sink my teeth into!

While I'm overall pretty positive on this game, I gotta say, though, and maybe it's just me being old, but I felt like it was a bit tricky to 'read' the game, both in terms of menus and gameplay. For menus and display, I feel like the game uses an overall faded white for lettering and such, when combined with the faded gray boxes it lives in and the small size of the text, makes it very difficult to read. Feels like everything has the opacity turned down way too low and it should be cranked up for higher contrasts that make things pop for better readability. Gameplay has a similar issue where everything is just too small and zoomed-out that I can barely keep track of anything or see any of the animations to give me feedback on what's going on, like reloading or melee or whatever. Furthermore, dinosaurs just move so fast and both bullets from my gun and projectiles from the spitter dinos travel so fast it just feels like there is no strategy, no change to dodge or counterplay, just blast each other mindlessly. I dunno, maybe I'll figure out more of the strategy if I play more: maybe there is some sort of cover system or something but the tutorial didn't give any inkling.

[Magirune 2 - Demo]

Hmm, bit of a mixed bag that's a bit rough at the moment, but that is the point of a demo, so hopefully I can give some feedback to make it better!

*Overall I found the game to be pretty bland and lifeless in all aspects. The story was pretty drab and unexciting with no real big goal (though walking outside to see how desolate the world is was pretty neat), there was no animations or cutscenes which made events like dad falling down or the mayor running away confusing since they just vanish, there was barely any music or exciting sounds or effects, and the directions were pretty vague with no journal or anything to help keep track (don't get me wrong, I don't want a line or marker to follow as I like exploring, but sometimes it wasn't clear what's going on).

*There were plenty of typos and odd phrasing: felt like the script was badly translated from another language and could use a proof-reading pass.

*Controller controls were pretty bad: I had no idea how to navigate the inventory menu with the control and access other tabs. Felt like I was forced to use the mouse to access things like inventory tabs when everything should be possible with just controller. Perhaps it was because I'm using a Playstation controller: some games aren't built for it.

*I didn't even realize that I was being hurt when engaging in combat because, unlike the enemies which have good feedback to being hit by shaking and the slash mark effect, the player stands stock still and doesn't react. Even disregarding effects, though, combat was pretty boring and devoid of strategy (though it was kinda cool to get flashy kills when you level up enough to one-shot them).

*I felt like the whole way that enemies respawn when you reenter a screen was really annoying and punishing. I felt like the game could have a survival horror aspect to it where you really gotta plan whether fighting is worth it, but plenty of times I was forced to fight without knowing I'd end up going the wrong way, and it felt frustrating to go back and refight everything, especially considering I don't get exp from it. Just feels like it leaves too much up to trial and error and luck.

I certainly think that it has some interesting ideas and could shape up to become a grand adventure, so hopefully my feedback can help somewhat!

FluffyLotus responds:

Thanks, there's some good feedback in there. This will make me focus some of my time in directions that I wasn't thinking to much about.

[Ben Stiller's 3D Tour of Hell]

Bit of a mixed bag for me: felt like it had a lot of potential in some respects, but didn't make the most of it.

For something that looks very low effort, I felt like it has a lot of nice little touches in there, such as being able to fire each gun in the dual wield independently, being able to be noticed for staring at cock, some funny signs and voice samples, and a really clever puzzle level where you need to jump up on Ben Stiller to go out of bounds and find the key. All in all I feel like it could be a fun little adventure with each level having its own theme and puzzle to it.

But that's just it: I felt like there was only one really clever level in there that tried to do something interesting, while a vast majority of the levels were just the same thing but with a different paint job: wander around and click E on everything till you win. There was an attempt at having some variety: finding the android phone in a sea of iphones was a fun modern take on the "needle in a haystack" dilemma, and yes, some of the ways the E interact levels did differ were funny despite it, but it was just really minor stuff with no challenge to it. I actually made the lust level a lot more fun for me by jumping from bed to bed and treating the floor as lava: why couldn't the game do something like that instead of me having to invent my own fun? I was also disappointed that there wasn't more humor in there: just having Ben Stiller be a character isn't a joke, and while you're at it, c'mon, at least throw some voice lines in there, I liked him in Royal Tenebaums! Also how, how could you miss not coding the game to recognize the possibility of shooting Ben Stiller as an easter egg in the gun level, c'mon (yes I played the game twice to verify that)!

Anyway, I do hope that this does serve as a learning process and you can make an FPS in the future like you mention, haha.

[Witchcraft Tower Defence]

Hmm, quite the interesting twist on tower defense! It's a lot to get used to at first with the whole merging system and learning what towers do what and dealing with randomness and the positives/negatives for wave rewards and so on, but there was a certain fun and addictive novelty to seeing all the crazy towers you randomly get and what the next level of merge is going to be and then just blasting away and enjoying the chaos of your various towers wiping through waves!

I gotta say, though, that at the end of the day, I didn't find myself getting that far. I do think the idea is novel and that there is some fun to be had, but I just ended up getting bored quite quickly due to the lack of variety and feeling of not being in control or needing to strategize. Don't get me wrong, I think there is some level of strategy in here that can be done, interesting improvizations and saving up to then pick a 100% spawn wave to do a big merge and such, but it just didn't feel substantial enough compared to a typical tower defense where you have all your tools and there are all sorts of different layouts and enemy units and rule changes you can puzzle it out. I also wish I knew how some of the skills work, like fear and Xx damage (what does fear do, and does Xx damage affect other units or just the unit in question, and so on). I could definitely see other people having a lot of fun with this though, and I still had a good time while it lasted!

[Pixel Dash]

Huh, this felt a little half-baked and lacking in content for me. It reminds me a lot of the game Qix where you keep drawing lines to form squares and in doing so you fill out the board bit-by-bit, with the challenge being that you have to be careful of bouncing balls on the board colliding with the lines while you're drawing. The problem with this is that while there is a challenge and strategy to Qix, this game has none of that. I found that I could easily just place blocks whenever and wherever I wanted: I didn't need to time my placement or anything like that as the bouncing balls avoid getting caught, and even when they do, it's a non-issue to free them with no penalty. Without needing to be careful with how you place blocks, and with a way too generous time limit, winning is a foregone conclusion in this and it just becomes an incredibly repetitive affair of placing blocks as fast as you can to get a pointless high score. It's a bummer for me especially since you need to click on each block instead of being able to hold click and drag, and that easily flares up my carpal tunnel. Even worse is that there's only a single level: I was really hoping that the first level was just a tutorial and it would keep adding new challenges and such, like maybe a level with multiple green zones where you need to catch a certain amount of balls within them, so you need to strategize and time splitting the herd up and such. It certainly could be promising, but this is barely even a prototype in its current state for me.

blit-blat responds:

Sorry to hear about your carpal tunnel man, the click & drag method sounds interesting, though I think that would just make it even easier to be honest! I am working on a follow up with more levels & challenges so watch this space!

[Hop Owl]

Nice little game! It ain't anything crazy, but it's a solid and well-put-together short and sweet experience: the controls are intuitive, the animations are subtle but smooth and bouncy, and the game does a good job at keeping the pace up by introducing more and more mechanics and mixing them up in interesting ways. The game is even generous enough to have a whole new B-side as well! The only nitpick I could think up at all is that sometimes it did feel like a few levels were out-of-order in terms of rising difficulty, there were some minor physics glitches like being able to trigger a dotted-line box without actually going over it but instead bumping into a nearby wall, but really it's very minor and everything feels great!