FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[/tilt/]

Wow, pretty cool game! A little wonky to get used to controls at first with the way you need to wiggle for speed, and the way you lose control in the black zones (despite dying in the real game, which is a bit inconsistent), but it didn't take too long for me to love the challenge of balancing my direction with the speed needed to clear these tricky shortcuts for faster and faster times! Everything about the movement just felt very slick, and speaking of slick, I also really liked the intuitive and slick story progression that the game had, with the cool cold-open that throws you right in while teaching you the controls, and the inevitable time-out that points you to retrying the levels quicker to have more time to spare for the levels you have yet to beat. Couple that altogether with the cool and somewhat mysterious presentation the game had, where it has these fast-paced bumpin' music racing interspersed with the brooding atmospheric music galaxy map, and you got a heck of a game!

If I had one complaint (beyond that the game is currently too short and I want to keep playing, haha) it's that I do wish that it was more satisfying to get a new record time on a course: would love if it did something cool, like showing your previous record bar and cutting off or shattering the difference you just shaved off of it in a nice animation/sound. Other than that, most of my complaints are minor, like the boost is a bit confusing to use (can you only boost once?) Great stuff here!

[OVERDOSE (0.38)]

Pretty cool game! It definitely tickles that Hotline Miami/Ruiner/Katana Zero/Madness/etc part of my brain where you can just get in a satisfying, haphazard yet efficient trance-like state of crazy violence. Love the insistence on speed from the bloodlust mechanic, love the cool and stylish techniques you can pull off like dashing, deflecting, grabbing guns and so on. Game also had a pretty neat gritty aesthetic and charm to it all for the most part.

Of course, while I did have fun, it wasn't all sunshine and gumdrops. Here is some feedback, categorized for major and minor:

Major---
*As fancy as the effects are, I felt like the game is currently overdoing it to the point of hurting visibility and making combat more difficult than it has to be. The constant overall blurriness, the camera being so zoomed out that everything is so damn tiny, the long flashbang effect that happens with every hit and blinds the player, the disorientating camera zoom-in when picking up weapons, it all makes it hard to keep track of everything and reduces critical information that the player needs in a twitchy game like this.
*Incredibly difficult to see enemies and gun pickups in the level both due to the environment/colors being too dark and the aforementioned constant flashbang effects and zoomed out camera.
*Lack of threat indicator as to where the closest enemy is to keep the chain up (technically I think the eye next to the player is this, but its so tiny and difficult to keep track of, would prefer to scale this up or instead use an arrow on the side of the screen or something more easily apparent). Also would like an arrow to where the exit is too.
*Character movement/physics was a little wonky: didn't like how it had this weird slow acceleration to it.

Minor---
*Would like if the game gives you a different death when you time out instead of dying from an enemy so its more clear.
*Would like ammo counters for weapons.
*Would like if the reflect was a bit more consistent in how it works: would prefer if I could better aim where the reflects go, or if the reflects would just go back in the opposite direction they came from.
*Would like if the dash effect was more prominent, like having a different animation or creating a line or afterimages for it, instead of just a puff of smoke where you were. Without a more prominent effect, sometimes I wasn't sure if I even dashed since it barely looks different.

Hope this feedback helps as I do find the game to be really cool in concept and I found myself getting addicted to it nonetheless despite my complaints, so I look forward to the final version!

EDIT: Already loving some of the changes that have been put into place since my first play!

POLYCEPHALY responds:

thanks! yea all the stuff u suggested makes alot of sense and im planning to implement alot of that, the game was tested in a fullscreen mode so when things are shrunk down on the newgrounds player things are way too small and unreadable, im going to increase the scale of everything to compensate. also gonna increase the acceleration alot too and downscale the strobe effects or make them more subtle. ammo counters, dash effects and a different death for timing out are also planned as well!

[Perpendicular Monkey]

Not too shabby: a decent puzzler! I felt like the game did a solid job at introducing the concept of moving around while the level rotates around, which was neat to experience and get good at working around. Game also had a good variety of mechanics to spice things up that were introduced at a good pace to keep engagement up. I also like the cute animations for the main character, especially the touches on the victory animation.

Having said that, it is a little bit bleh in some respects, some of them being minor (no keyboard shortcut for restarting a level, graphics a little bland) and some of them being major (symbols for trampolines are strange and look like buttons instead, confusing as to why trampolines you step on grow while all others shrink which seems to imply that they've changed somehow when they haven't, trampoline physics inconsistent in how far they push the player between levels, confusing as to why being pushed by something counts as a 'move', etc). Game can also get a bit monotonous at times with the levels eventually just being the same size and with the same assortment of obstacles pasted around: different, but looking very similar nonetheless. Basically it's just a bit wonky: understandable since it was a jam game, I suppose, but still, it is a bit of a bummer that it is holding back a pretty neat puzzler. All around solid job though!

Biebras responds:

That's a really good response and we really appreciate your feedback! Thank you for playing the game.

[SooZ]

Interesting little game! Bit tricky to figure out how everything worked at first: for example, I had a lot of confusion with health, where I didn't realize how I was recovering health, and I didn't even realize I was getting hurt when I ran into different colored blocks because the explosion seemed so 'positive' in its satisfying feedback, haha. But once I figured it out, I appreciated the whole strategy of trying to minimize your routes effect on the map so as not to block yourself out when you switch colors: try to not create too many new blocks, try to use the gray zone to eliminate blocks, if you have to take a hit try to take as many blocks out when you can, and so on, and in general just try to improvise all that when going for the randomly appearing goals. Can be a real brain-teaser!

Having said that, though, it's not quite got enough meat on its bones to keep my attention for very long: at the end of the day, it wasn't the most exciting game, and I felt like it was a cool concept, but maybe not iterated upon enough to find the best form of it. For example, maybe it would be best if it was a puzzler with definite solutions instead of the random nature it currently is. I'm wondering if it would be better if it had some sort of Tetris-style preview of where the objective will be in the following round so you can try to plan it out a bit better, since as much as I tried to plan things out, it always felt like there was only so much I can do and then it was just up to luck. Of course, that could just be me in general not having the patience for this type of game, haha. Solid for what it is and how fast it was made, though!

amidos2006 responds:

Thanks a lot :) sorry for the confusion, the game originally was designed for GGJ in 5 hours then I expanded it a little with some fixes for additional 5 or 8 hour of development.

I wrote the rules as description text which might not be read by everyone. The game have a perfect strategy for the easy mode that some people figured it and got scores in 400 still the hard mode maximum was 70 something. I agree with you that having more goals and building on top of the concept might be interesting but I think the game stands by itself as interesting brain-teaser where you need to think not only about the next seed but the overall structure of the board. I can see where it can feel a little random and your strategy is not sufficient this could be improved. Btw, didn't get the tetris style preview thing. I always show where the objective will be next but not longer than that because it becomes really complex to see anything in the level.

Thanks a lot for the feedback :) Glad you tried my game and left a constructive feedback :)

[Medieval Cop S2-E5]

Another crazy chapter: what more can I say!

[BallFrog Demo]

Pretty fun game! Certainly a fun core movement concept that reminds me of foddian/fumblecore games where the whole fun is getting better at the exotic control scheme. The controls are a little wonky to get used to, especially since it doesn't seem to explain anything, but I found myself getting addicted to the gameplay, enjoying the process of getting more efficient with the controls and being able to tackle the more bizarre obstacles like chaining grapple points. Game also had a lot of nice goofy touches (beyond the obvious goofy frog) like skeleton bones in the background pointing the way.

If I were to have any complaints, and I know I'll sound shallow in saying this, it's that the general presentation is very bland. The game's graphics and style give off, if I were to sum it up, a very 'my first Unity game made with a bunch of free assets' to it. The levels are mostly boring rocks, The HUD is lackluster and layered weirdly where some elements overlap when others don't, the game lacks satisfying visual and sound effects for moving around, the tongue HUD remains even after you die, the death effect is a boring white circle (sphere?) and the death text is a bland system font, etc.

And it's not just the graphics either: the game was clunky in other respects, like how there is a weird and overly punishing pit in the first level that sends you all the way back, giving you the awkward choice of killing yourself to respawn where you were before you fell in or venturing all the way back unnecessarily. Also there was no real charming story or objective to the gameplay to keep me interested in progressing. All of these little things just added together to bring the game down a peg: make it seem unfortunately unprofessional. Again, though, the core gameplay is really fun, so if the other side of the game were to pull its weight a bit more, I think it'd be a match made in heaven!

rhys510 responds:

Thanks for playing and the critique. This is just a demo and some of these concerns have been fixed / updated in the main steam version and some are just artistic choice but we will improve on these in future games, thanks for the review! :)

[CFrogger!!: Arcade Mode]

This is a bit of an odd duck. I do like how authentically it recreates that arcade feel, what with the pixel graphics (except for the weird frog on the start, the titular 'carge' I suppose), attact mode, inserting of coins, and so on and so forth: very neat stuff. Gameplay was solid and recreated that classic Frogger feel as well, with nice touches like being forgiving on making the final step (you can kind of clash with the walls and it'll still count you as making it all the way successfully).

But at the end of the day...it was just Frogger. I was really confused, as I expected the game to change things up a bit with the gameplay, remix it or something, but it didn't. I mean, it's not bad or anything...but that's because it's literally Frogger, so...I dunno, I'm never quite sure how I'm supposed to feel about this situation. I mean, obviously it's impressive and nice that the game was recreated so accurately, with the minor twist of having a new character involved and maybe being a bit more difficult, but am I supposed to give points for doing nothing but just recreating the original? There's a subtle line between making a game in a similar genre or with similar mechanics and then there's this. I dunno, maybe I'm overthinking, haha. It's still good work.

AtreyuGilbert responds:

I wish I clarified, but carge has slightly different stats from Frogger himself. He just hops a bit faster. Also, this is a demo of what'll be the "Arcade Mode", and the final product will have a lot of neat shit. Arcade Mode kinda just compresses everything... Thanks for the feedback!

[Puk]

Neat little adventure! Quite the spooky game in some sense, being put in the position of monsters/cryptids, but it was funny and friendly to interact with all the others around. Game has a lot of charm to it, what with the various funny dialogue and events found about the woods, as well as the quips and such that would appear from hunters and upon game over, among other places. I liked roaming about and solving the various puzzles, like forcing the monster to remember how to hide and so on, as well as setting up my first human kill. Quite the adventure with a lot to explore.

Game was a little bit confusing at times: I had no idea how the float powerup worked since it seemed to just freeze me in place, with me only realizing way later I had to have a head start. It was a bit tiresome to have to keep going into the menu to swap abilities around. Game was also a bit aimless at the beginning with just the vague idea to get livers from humans, though once I died it all made sense to collect various powers. There was also some weird issues with movement, where walking into a wall would kind of have you slightly bounce off it or something? Also it's a damn shame that the game doesn't seem to have a save feature: it's probably not the longest game, but still, when a game has a task list, I think a save is critical, haha. Achievos were also a bit fincky: for example I definitely got the map, but it never gave me the achievo for it.

One sticking point for me that was a little interesting to think about, was the fact that I was able to kill a human and take their liver without any extra power ups. I was tempted to see if I could get away with doing this for all of the livers, but I decided against it because 1) it didn't seem like what the game intended and 2) it probably would've been quite boring and grindy, potentially making me unfairly dislike the game. I wonder if it would be better if the game was more forceful to make you get powers to get the intended, smoother experience, or if it's fine to allow them to potentially crash and burn with no powers? Perhaps its a strength that it lets you approach it however, ala what BOTW is lauded for? Anyway, not really a point against the game or anything, it's just a thought experiment I was rambling about, I guess, haha.

[Super Pickleball Adventure]

Wow, what a great adventure! Game is knocking out of the park with everything: not only does it have some solid pickleball gameplay with intuitive controls, simple yet complex strategies, creative challengers to fight, and satisfying feedback for hits, it also adds on a wonderful, cute story and world to explore with all sorts of comical characters to meet and items to collect in order to solve puzzles and such. Loved all of the crazy events that would happen, like getting forced into a doubles match with a lazy partner, as well as the sheer amount of optional interactables and flavor text scattered around the world: really helps liven it up and is a wonderful thing that is never noticed when it's there, but the effort has to be appreciated since missing it can really affect how alive the world feels.

If I were to have any complaints, it is missing the ability to hit a button mid-text to speed it up to completion: there were times when I talked to someone to see if they had something new to say, saw they didn't, and was disappointed I couldn't mash to skip forward. Other than that, great stuff all-around!

[Picokaiju]

Wow, this one really surprised me! When I saw that is was going to be turn-based, I was worried it was going to be way too slow for me and not satisfy my kaiju demands, but I was surprised at how fast-paced it was! I love the graphics and how satisfying the effects for crushing buildings and such, and the powers you get for blasting eye lasers or snatching up people/vehicles to eat or throw were so intuitive and fun. There was a lot of fun strategy too in deciding whether to throw or chomp enemies, finding time to roar to regen health, dealing with different enemy types and so on: challenging stuff!

There are still some slight annoyances here and there: being turn-based instead of full action, there is the awkwardness of having an enemy spaced just far enough that you can't walk up to it without being attacked, and the game can get a bit bogged down with constant menu usage once you get a lot of enemies surrounding you. There was also a bit of minor confusion with the attacks only highlighting the tile directly in front instead of all the tiles it would effect. But for the most part, I found this game to be very fun and very impressive for a Pico-8 game.