FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[PARALLEL PAN!C]

I can spot a Tombdude game from a mile away, and it ain't because of that iconic 'uh-hee' sound effect neither. It's because the game exudes charm from every pore of its existence: while most games focus on just the gameplay itself and leave stuff like menus, title screens, transitions and so on as an afterthought, a Tombdude game makes sure to put its best foot forward and has menus, touches, and concepts as wacky as the gameplay itself.

And speaking of the gameplay: it's very addictive and fun! Quite the combination of genres, and it can definitely be a bit tricky at times, trying to park cars perfectly while dodging bullets and watching them drift out of place, but it never felt unfair or frustrating: I loved the challenge and all the various bonus scores to go for, like watching out for cones or grazing bullets. Levels were good as well in that they kept escalating the challenge with more complex bullet patterns and parking spaces.

Only complaint I can really think of is that I have no idea what the focus button did: expected it to be bullet-time or something but it never seemed to do anything. Oh well! Oh, and I felt like getting damaged should be a bit more pronounced: I didn't even realize I was getting hurt at times, despite the little 'hoot'. Also I thought the game could be a little too forgiving with parking spots, allowing me to park huge cars in spots clearly meant for the tiny cars. Also that there's not a cute little story or ending, just levels. But eh, its all no-biggie: all-around solid work!

Tombdude responds:

love your reviews, man! You're totally right about the focus, it's never really explained in game: if you hold it, it makes you move slower.

[Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion Demo]

Nice, goofy little adventure! It ain't the most complex or ground-breaking or anything like that, so it can be a little unexciting at times, but the world is so charming, animated and endearing, filled with all sorts of crazy characters to talk to and papers to rip for questionable reasons and things to explore and piece together, that I found it kept the pace up and kept me wanting to see what the heck would happen next. Definitely a solid top-down adventure game all-around.

If I was to give it some guff, it would mostly be for minor things, like how the graphics can be a bit wonky at times: for one example, I found it weird that I was clipping behind a poster nailed to a tree that I was standing in front off, and for another example, I didn't like how some of the graphics were just crudely scaled up, like the water droplets from the watering can or the first pig boss (which was also a bit lazy as well, essentially being a scaled up normal pig enemy with no big differences).

Looking forward to playing the full version!

[Newgrounds Winter Worm 2021]

Pretty cool art collab! I definitely appreciate the unique presentation: as compared to more basic collabs, I think this one, due to its looping, continuous nature, really hooks in the viewer and makes them want to view the entire piece, which has the side effect of giving all of the artists their due attention! Also appreciate the small touch of being able to click on an artist's name to see their profile.

As nice as this was, and I hate to be a stickler, but I did feel like it wasn't as interesting of a loop as I'd like. When I see a long art piece, I like to see the adventure, the story it creates from how it transitions and flows slowly like a gradient, but here it felt like, while not all of them, there were plenty of pieces where they didn't flow smoothly into each other: they were just jarring, being separated by hard lines or illogical blurs. Basically, it made me question if this started as a loop collab at all, or if this was just a bunch of different pieces, and then someone just used the blur/smudge tool inbetween each piece and went 'see? it loops!', haha! But hearts in the right place and it was nice to see this anyway, so well done.

DieterTheuns responds:

worm

[Shal's Game]

Haha, kinda torn on this game, for what I hope is obvious reasons.

Basically, the game...isn't that good: it's incredibly basic and plain in terms of graphics, mechanics, and so on. The controls are wonky and unexplained (had no idea how to use magic to the point where I thought it was a joke) and the levels go back and forth between being incredibly boring, to either having a bit of fun challenge to them (that part where you jump up into safe spots while the enemy patrols below) or a bit of bullshit challenge to them (those pixel perfect jumping sections where the coyote time, which is supposed to help, can actually screw you over since it lets you fall slightly which makes it impossible to reach the height needed).

However, it does have a bit of intriguing charm to it with the goofy narrator: I had to admit that I wanted to keep playing to see what would happen next, and I liked how variable the narrator was in that, for example, it had a lot of different voice lines it would play when you die, for example. However, even the narrator wasn't that great in the end as I didn't like how it would repeat lines, overlap lines, or not have lines for what I thought were significant events, since it kills the illusion and just makes it feel as badly programmed as the rest.

At the end of the day, I still think it's not that good despite the narrator hook, but, I think it's a good example of making the most out of something small, and is very clever, so I gotta give a little credit and say it's not too shabby in that regard.

[FLUCTUOID]

I feel like the game has a lot going for it, both in what I played and what I'm seeing on the gifs: the shrink and grow mechanics look to be used in a lot of interesting ways for tons of cool puzzles. While that may be the case, however, I feel like I had a real tough time staying with this game, as it felt so incredibly slow at times, especially in the beginning.

Where in the time most games would introduce multiple mechanics and expand on them through its levels, this game just kept having overly simple puzzles with one mechanic over and over. The beginning levels felt like such a slog to get through, and could definitely stand to be quicker or shortened, in my opinion. It didn't help either that the game felt a bit janky in some respects, like having unresponsive controls (though credit where its due, there are nice control touches like coyote time jumps) and that weird way you fall off the map when transitioning between levels.

That being said, I did feel like the game did a good job at, without words, subtly introducing new mechanics and teaching them in intuitive ways. I also liked the way you would return to the hub and see how much the water has drained: was a nice way to show progress and get excited for the levels to come.

Again, I feel like this game does have a lot of smart design and potential to it: I just feel like it might've lost a lot of people due to some of the slowness and repetitiveness of it all at times, as well as being perhaps too chill and minimalistic to the point of being confusing, especially in the beginning, where hooking people by exciting them is most important. I like where the game is going now that I've gotten to at least world three, but I'm surprised I got there in the first place with my short patience, haha!

[Shake Art DELUXE]

Cute little art app! I like how intuitive it is thanks to the tooltip pop-ups when you hover over, as well as the preview of the line intensity and color based on the current selected settings. Placement of lines and such felt good as well and I didn't feel like I suffered any confusion in making some fun shaky art, apart from a few instances where I couldn't erase a line for some reason (dunno why the eraser just couldn't target some lines on rare occasions) and sometimes the undo wouldn't work properly (I accidently paint bucketed the entire canvas and couldn't undo it). Record output functionality worked well for me as well. Well done all around!

[Terramino]

I think the game has a really neat concept on display here with some great puzzles to think through, but the execution did feel very rough to me. Not too bad once I got used to it, but I feel like it definitely could've used a bit more smoothness to it.

Just learning the games rules at first was pretty tough. The game does teach you to use the arrow keys and space bar, but it never teaches you the existence of the restart key, which is critical because if you mess up block placement, you might never know that you can restart to place them again. You'd think that dying would restart you from the block placement segment, but for some reason it starts you from after you placed the blocks: I understand why, as perhaps you just died from a bad jump while placing the blocks correctly, but it just felt so unintuitive to me to not restart from block placement automatically.

Once I got over that hump, the game was going pretty well for me. But there were still slight annoyances here and there that hurt my experience:

While I appreciated that you could see a queue of blocks you'd be able to place, it annoyed me that I could only see a few at a time, instead of all of them, as it made it so that I'd always need to place the blocks twice, with the first time being a sacrifice so I could learn the full pattern they'd come in for my second attempt.

Learning the purposes of new blocks was tricky as well, as the graphics weren't always intuitive. Additionally, I found the mechanic of rotating a block to destroy parts of it to be confusing and difficult to pull off consistently.

This might just be me, but I also found it kind of unnecessary to have the placement of blocks so rushed by having the blocks fall automatically: feels like the game could work just fine by allowing you to manually control the blocks, and that would reduce stress and trial and error. I understand its emulating Tetris blocks, but it just sometimes felt like an unnecessary hassle that got in the way.

Overall, I also found the game very muted and lifeless. While the character and other graphics were very cute, I wish the game had a bit more special effects, visual and audio wise, to it all to make elements like victory and block placement feel more satisfying.

Again, it's definitely a really neat concept, and if possible, I'd love to see a more polished and expanded version of this!

[MARINARA QUEST]

Haha, quite the wild adventure! Was fun seeing all of the various endings you could get and the sheer amount of weird characters and references were worth many a chuckle. The pacing did confuse me at times here and there: for example, while it mostly went at a very fast pace in general, jumping from one absurd moment to the other straight from the start, sometimes it did get a bit too slow and bogged down at times, like all of the introduction into Abalone's army: it wasn't a major problem or anything as it got right back into wackiness shortly after, but I just had a bit of minor whiplash as I was wondering if the game had shifted into seriousness or something all of a sudden, haha. It sometimes did get a little too juvenile or a little too reference-heavy at times for me (my god, the Half Life and Metal Gear gags were delivered like a sledgehammer haha), but all in all I had a lot of fun.

[Lost in Firefly Forest]

Woo, I made it out! Goddamn, what an adventure! I really enjoyed my time with this: puzzles felt great and addictive, with every clue I got constantly pushing me forward to think and solve more and more until I got all the way to the end. It was definitely pretty tough and I almost got myself trapped a few times doing foolish things (like trying to brute force the minecart), but I'm glad to say I got through it all on my own power. Puzzles felt like they were balanced well: they were tricky but always had a good sense of logic to them, and it felt great to understand some of the subtle hints or tricks. Reminded me a lot of great puzzlers like La-Mulana and the like: well done! Between this and Cursed Travels which I've also played, I feel like you definitely have a knack for these adventurous puzzlers!

[Adventure of Leek]

Not too shabby, but a bit rough around the edges here and there!

Overall it was a pretty cute game. There was a little bit of getting used to the controls at first: everything felt like it moved so fast and so snappy, but it wasn't too bad once I got used to it (though some jumps in tight places were annoyingly tricky because of this at times). Enemy variety was pretty decent, and I appreciated the little touches here and there like the volcano flowers not hurting you if you touch them, and also having visible telegraphs to let you know when they're about to attack. Bosses were cool as well and it was fun to see the various worlds to go through.

The game did have a lot of wonkiness to it, however. Hit detection for the water balloons could be very annoyingly inconsistent at times: I would have times where I would break a block that was right behind a block in front of it, or even worse, sometimes I would hit a block that an enemy was standing on top of or next to instead of the enemy itself! Even worse, I would have times where I would try to shoot a water balloon downwards from the double-jump to hit an enemy below me, only for it to hit the wall I'm next to instead which makes no sense, and would lead to me falling down and dying from hitting the enemy I tried to shoot! It was real annoying to try and account for this weird hit collisions by giving a wide berth and staying away from walls and such.

There was some other minor nitpicks like how it seems to lack a save system and that it didn't really have great VFX/SFX for pizazz which was a bummer, but I shan't harp on, haha.

While I found the game to be a bit too overly simple and without some real meat on its bones to keep me hooked, it nevertheless was a pretty decent little adventure and obviously impressive to get it done for Pixel day, so well done in that regard!

As a side note, I found the controls introduction a bit annoying: I'd prefer if instead of flashing through the controls in a loop, you just display all of the controls at once with different colors for each so I can read at my own pace. Also, for some reason, I can't proceed if I hit X, only if I hit M! How odd.