FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Peter's Quest]

Oh man, this is seriously driving me crazy. I want to love this game so bad, but the way it starts off...oh jeez...

Ok, to start off, this game is incredibly well put-together. Much props to building such a solid and sleek interface: everything about it felt so smooth, be it scrolling around the map, dragging and dropping items, hovering over items or attacks to see their tooltips, all of which had very intuitive wording and imagery, and so on and so forth. Really professional-level stuff. The only issue I had with interacting with the game was not being able to exit a treasure chest by clicking on open air. Other than that, it made for some great adventures. I could argue that Darkest Dungeon did all the heavy lifting for you and you just copied their homework, but I won't be an ass about it, haha: it's great, and I think it's something to be proud about!

There are some minor nuisances here and there: for example, I don't like how fast the combat is, as the combination of enemies attacking so fast with such minor animations, along with the numbers quickly leaving the screen, would barely give me enough time to process what even happened. And speaking of that, I didn't like how lazy the animations were: c'mon, when I do finger guns as Pico, I wanna see finger guns, not just see him nudge the enemy with his idle stance! Hopefully you can take that as a compliment that I was surprised to not see that, considering how much effort and skill was put into the rest of the game.

But the biggest issue, the hugest problem I had, was the fact that the game only starts you with one character. Why, god, why? You've built an entire combat system where the best part about it is jockeying for positional advantages and building a great formation that can modify itself to meet the various challenges you face. But in the beginning, all you get is one character, which means all of that potential strategy goes out the window: all you can do is mash attack while the enemies mash attack right back at you. It's completely brainless and a waste of the system, regressing to the worst RPGs of yesteryear. Even worse, you start with Pico, who, while having no problem with attacking the front rows, has no interesting stuns or other abilities, and is completely at the mercy of back row enemies, as his only recourse is an attack which only hits 1/6 of the time: miserable. I mean, you got three slots, why don't you just start with Pico, Nene and Darnell, it would be a match made in heaven! Maybe you do get them eventually, I hope, but it just makes for such a bad first impression. I keep reloading the game hoping it just glitched out or something and it intended for me to get a full party, but to no avail.

I mean, I understand if I sound a little bit overbearing, but seriously, I would consider finding however had the idea to start with one character and accuse them of deliberate sabotage of this potentially great game. I want them tried in The Hague! It's a war crime that I don't like this as much as I should!

But yeah, cool game, hope it gets even better.

SlickRamen responds:

Thanks for the in-depth review!

[Bunbun's Delivery]

Bit of a mixed feeling on this game! Overall I'm very positive on it, but I was let down by some elements of it.

In general, I found it to be very solid and charming: the graphics, animations, sound and altogether general presentation were very cute and wonderful, giving off a really professional feel. Shooting was fun and had a little bit of strategy to it with switching between the two weapons (though I did find the second weapon to maybe be a bit too weak to make it useful), and there was a nice variety of enemies to fight all with memorable patterns.

The biggest issue I had with the game were the normal combat segments. Usually a SHMUP does their best job at making these parts like a cool interactive movie, where there are all sorts of cool waves and patterns of enemies and obstacles that form a series of standout events that all create a great flow, a story of combat. This game, unfortunately, didn't have any of that. Yes, it did have some interesting enemies with unique moves to them, but all the game did was constantly recycle the same waves, over and over, even after passing the checkpoint and transitioning to a new zone: just more and more of the same. It didn't take long for those parts to get incredibly repetitive, which was unfortunate.

The boss fights were a whole different story, however. This is where the game really shined, with a very cool boss fight with fun patterns to get good at dodging around. It wasn't all perfect: I didn't like how the boss constantly 'no-sell'-ed being shot, and would've preferred them to react a bit whenever they got hurt. And more importantly, I wanted more, more boss fights! I was so bummed out that the game ended after saying 'level over' since it made me believe that it implied there were gonna be more levels! Basically, I'd love to see more of this game.

...also as a side note, I think it's SHMUP, not SCHMUP. Unless maybe that's a new acronym? Haha, anyway, it's all good.

ShortCakeCafe responds:

Thanks for the solid criticism!
The level flow was done last minute as more of an afterthought since this game was made in a week and i barely got it done in time.
But if I do ever do more with this game, I agree that the level design should be optimized a lot or just cut entirely for a sort of boss rush type of game.

(also the schmup error is because i've never played a shmup in my life so i didnt know how it was spelled, gamer moment)

[Piece by Piece]

An interesting little experiment! I found the game to unfortunately be a bit shallow at it is: while building up the ship is very interesting in how customizable it is, and the game did have some great feedback for shooting enemies and a cool missile swarm special, it felt a bit hollow because the game never escalates or progresses in such a way to really require you to modify the ship in the first place. Yes, I still enjoyed building a ship for the sake of building a ship, but all I could do with it was live in this small fishbowl, fighting the same boring enemies over and over for a slow trickle of gold. The game was also a bit confusing at times with its feedback: the way enemies that crashed into my ship would burst into hearts made me almost think that they were dropping health for me, not that they were hurting me. For me, this seemed like not a good game, but a great proof of concept of this modular ship building and how satisfying it can be: would love to see a full game make use of it to create a grand adventure! I could easily see it being like a fish game, where you go to a universe, beat enough enemies to power up your ship to challenge a harder universe, and keep going onwards and onwards!

YaenGames responds:

Thank you for your detailed review & ideas. I always like to read about your perspective on things. I agree that it gets a bit dull after a while and there is too little content to back up the lengthy balancing. Hard to make much more in so little time ^^
More enemies and maybe even unlockable ship parts would certainly make things more exciting over the course of a run or maybe even multiple runs... This is essentially more of a prototype than a finished product as it stands, due to how it was made. But I agree that there's potential here!

Thanks again and have a great day!

[LOVE and KILL]

Not too shabby! I enjoyed my time with this adventure as I found it pretty creepy and immersive. The gameplay was solid, going around and investigating, and I loved the way the characters interacted with each other, both in the focused dialogue scenes and the little quips as they walk around: felt very nice to see them build a rapport. The game did a good job with building a creepy atmosphere for me through the visuals, sounds and pacing, and I loved some of the stand-out events like the mannequin room.

It's definitely a little wonky: the translation is super rough so it was hard to get in the mood since it was confusing to understand what they were saying sometimes, the use of stock sounds for things like screams were really bad and ruined the moment, there were glitches like the camera panning so hard the text went off screen and I couldn't read what they said, and the ending was a bit abrupt and a let-down (I just shot the guy and it was all good?) but I still did like the adventure leading up to it, so I think that you definitely got some chops for building these stories, and I'm looking forward to the next one!

[Warper]

Wow, this felt like a really solid puzzle game to me! I love how well-paced it is with introducing new mechanics and building great challenges at a steady difficulty curve, along with having a creative and intuitive core mechanic which is easily understood thanks to the clear tutorials and helpful assistance of the grid layout and preview of your teleport destination. The only pain point for me personally was the odd rule where teleporting into an object will still move you as close as you can to your destination: I kept forgetting I had that option because it didn't make much sense for a teleport to go half-way, considering it should usually be all-or-nothing. Still, the game was fun enough that I couldn't help but get addicted and learn it so I could continue blasting through levels!

[Nearverse]

Not too shabby, but as it is, I'd call this more of a generative art showpiece instead of a game: fancy in function, but not necessarily fun or with long-lasting appeal.

Don't get me wrong, I had some good fun with it as the effects are nice and juicy and there are a decent amount of variations in enemy attacks to get through. But for a game that is procedural generated and has a big to-do about having so many galaxies of combinations, it feel like I was just playing the same game over and over. Yes, there were differences, but I felt like there were incredibly superficial changes, like how glowy my lasers are, or what new Rorschach ink blot test the enemies look like: at the end of the day, no matter what way the graphics changed, the attack patterns or enemy AI or what-have-you ever evolved to create a new experience like other games could do. And it doesn't help that it's a shooter game, which is already a dime-a-dozen in the 'my first game as an indie dev' box. I could see this being pretty neat, but I'd need to see some cooler and significant core gameplay changes come from the randomization that you can see other contemporaries do, particularly in the roguelike sphere.

Also that default glow is absolutely nuts, haha! Feels like a classic case where a dev wants to make their game flashy to juice it up, and overdoes it on the filters. Thank god there was the option to turn it down, but I tried to respect your vision and left it on high.

HealliesGames responds:

As I stated, I had a bigger vision of this like more weapons, more sub-type of enemies, AI and shoot patterns to create even more variety. Also a kind of link between your played matches, to unlock more stuff would be cool.
I ended up focusing a lot on the artistic aspect of the game and then opted for a classic shooter arcade formula which (at least for me) always work.
Still, I'm not excluding that I'll take my hand on this project again.
Thank you for review!

[T.O.F.U]

Hrmmm, this one is a bit tricky. I like what it's going for in terms of being a challenging precision platformer with a cool concept of building off of corpses, but as it is right now, I found the game a bit too janky for me to have confidence in it.

A particular sticking point for me was the fact that corpses ragdoll, meaning that the gameplay has an inherit feeling of randomness and luck to it, which I feel should be the antithesis of: it should all be about player skill and consistency. Considering that the game said it would 'skewer' corpses on spikes, I found it frustrating that corpses were more keen to bounce off of spikes and roll around: 'skewering' should imply that they should get stabbed and staying stiffly in place at the point of impact, no? Because of this ragdolly and slipperiness to everything, it just made the game a bit of trial and error annoyance at times.

Apart from that, I found the game to be a bit boring in terms of graphics, with many levels looking the same and being overly brown. There were plenty of cases where the ragdolls would screw me over, my character would just get really glitchy, wonky or stuttery when colliding with corpses or turning away from walls and in general the slipperiness of the character got in the way, and so on. That's the real crux of the issue: while I think the game has some cool levels and such, a difficult platformer needs to ensure that its controls are buttery smooth and consistent so that every mistake feels like it is the player's fault, not the game, and with this, I just couldn't have confidence in the game, and that makes it not challenging, but unfair. But that's just how it is now: with some polishing up and potential changes to the mechanics, I think this game with its alright well-designed levels could end up being quite the fun game!

[PixelGrounds]

Very cute game! I'm not too familiar with Picross, but I easily found myself getting addicted to this game and going through puzzle after puzzle. I did find it a little silly how some of the puzzles would resolve (really, those two dots and a line is Pico? it could be anyone!) but it was all in good fun. And what a huge amount of content to go through! It's almost intimidating how much there is, haha!

My only major complaint would be that the controls can be a bit confusing. For example, I want to use the mouse because it's more intuitive to not only click squares, but click the big buttons on the right to change forms. However, using the mouse can be bad because it doesn't let you do tricks like being able to hold the button to paint in succession like keyboard allows: you need to click each time, and that doesn't help my carpal tunnel. So, I use the keyboard, but then I have no idea how to change forms because the shortcuts are difficult to remember: call me dumb if you like, but it'd be nice if maybe the keyboard shortcut letters could be right next to the form buttons as a reminder.

Other minor complaint would be that I feel like it could use a tad bit more juice: you know, make the title screen a bit more animated and so on, and that there were some typos here and there, but overall it feels good. Well done with this one!

EDIT: yayyy i finished my puzzle at Hard #44, thank you very much for that

Pomegranite responds:

you can pause anytime to be reminded of the controls

check out level 44 on hard--you might be like it ;)

edit: the original version was animated, but caused performance issues for weak hardware

[Olive's Art-Venture]

Wow, super impressive game on display here! Hell, even if it wasn't a game, I'd already have to give this game massive props for the amount of charm through overall presentation: the game is a wonderous display of great, expressive and animated characters (like how Olive scribbles in her book when you're drawing, and how the lobbyman always has a new quip to deliver and keeps track of your stats) and just tons of little touches that give the world so much life and feedback to it.

The gameplay was a blast as well though, equal if not better than the charming presentation! I not only loved how fun and unique the concept of drawing attacks was, I liked how it also had a lot of good strategy to it, like the various enemies and their diverse attack patterns, and how you might think that using the square spell is always the best so you're shielded, but that ends up locking you out of your most powerful attack spell, the diamond: I love being rewarded for playing risky and aggressive like that! Top-notch stuff that I wouldn't expect from a game made for a jam, essentially!

If I was to have any complaints, there'd be the obvious big one: the image recognition logic used for the drawings. Now, as a programmer, I understand it's probably super hard to do something like this, and lord knows I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, so much props to you for even attempting something like this, as it is a secret genre I've always loved: drawing sigils and shit like that. But I found it disappointing that I couldn't draw freeform and had to use the strict outlines: bit of a shame as it made it so I always had to be focused on that side instead of the combat and felt so limited in expression to do shorthand or something like that (ironic for an artist, no?) Even accepting the outlines as the way to do it, though, I still had tons of problems where a circle would be treated as a triangle or a diamond, and that could be the difference between life and death, as I would be trying to do a cheap spell like circle instead of an expensive spell like diamond but not have enough mana, and it'd unfairly cancel it. Luckily the game is good and fun enough that I treat it as part of the challenge to get good instead of unfairness, but it's a tight rope that maybe some other people won't be as forgiving.

Other than that, there would some minor quibbles like I don't like how the intro cutscene and the tutorial proceeds at its own pace without waiting for my confirmation: I missed a lot of tutorial text on my first visit because I was experimenting and didn't notice the guy kept gabbing onward, and it's a pain that the only way I could see what I'd missed again would be to start all over and wait for that part to come up again.

Again, epic stuff on display here!

Stepford responds:

I'm glad that you enjoyed your experience with the game, Futurecop! All of that charm has to go to Andyland for his wonderful animation skills and Milkypossum for creating the perfect OST for every highlight and moment.

Hearing that you found the gameplay exciting and addicting just makes me so happy. I know the shape recognition isn't the best, since I have never attempted anything like it before - and I was very scared of trying to develop it; but knowing what I know now, I think I could program a much better system than is currently in place. Hearing that you are equally as intimidated as I was just thinking about the implementation of the mechanic makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs, "YES!!!" because it was a very intimidating undertaking, but I am so glad that I tried it.

Even if it works 90% of the time, instead of 100%, I went into it knowing that it wouldn't be perfect. Just thinking about other games that do it, none of them are very complex or they are also known for not being the most accurate. Realizing that, I gave myself a bit of a break and just swung the best I could. I am super happy with the final product and this will be a project I will show to people as my primary portfolio piece.

It's one thing to gain appreciation from players, who see assets go into one hole of game development and an entire game come out the other, but it's another to hear such praise from someone who understands the intricacies of what's happening behind the screen.

I hope playing all my joke and birthday games to tide the release of THIS game was worth the wait. <3