FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Peter the Ant VS Pico]

Haha, fun little game! While it is rather simple in terms of gameplay, I just as well found it rather addicting and fun to get good at dodging the hammers and rack up points to get new characters. For what seems like a joke game, I appreciated the amount of subtle moves (standing up, quick falling) that you could do to dodge skillfully and the energetic/goofy presentation to it all, including the charming dynamic music.

That being said, at the end of the day, the game lost its appeal rather quickly. For the most part, I'm not a gacha guy, but even if I was, I feel like the game didn't provide enough interesting differences in the characters I unlocked (cmon, I got the FunKing and he doesn't even have his iconic sounds, or a derivative thereof?), nor did it have an explosively satisfying unlocking animation when rolling the gacha, to keep me going in that regard. Looking past the gacha, I also found it frustrating that the game didn't seem to reward me for getting further or getting more skilled: I expected to start getting a coin multiplier if I held on for a long time, but I didn't, and that killed my motivation since then it seemed pointless.

Anyway, a good time was had while it lasted. Happy Peter the Ant day!

[One More Hint]

Bit of an odd duck, this game. For one, there was a lot of control issues with this game that really annoyed me. For one, I couldn't even start the game for the longest time since it didn't accept my inputs: for some reason, it expected me to hold the Z key to start instead of just pressing it. From then I did notice that inputs always felt really laggy and delayed, so maybe there's something weird going on at the core for reading inputs. Learning the game was weird as well since, for some reason, despite 'One More Hint' being the primary title game, the tutorial initially teaches you one of the other games instead: why?

Anyway, looking past the initial confusion and wonky controls, the game itself was also a bit mixed. I did like the concept of reading through various clues to find out the culprit, and I liked the little touches like the culprits speaking as you hover over their options. However, and maybe this is just me being stupid, but the clues didn't make much sense to me at times. Mostly they always felt like vague, emotional, circumstantial statements, instead of laws or facts that you can deduce from, and I never felt I could use them to reach a solid conclusion (maybe that's 'realistic' but doesn't make it fun). It didn't help either that the game kept paging away automatically while I was still trying to read the clues, making the whole experience even more frustrating. Would much prefer if the clues would fit on a single page or if we could control when it flips pages. It's kind of pointless as well since if you fail, you can just go back and eliminate the answers one-by-one since the puzzle doesn't change and it'll reward you the same in the end anyway.

[Haccer]

Pretty fun game! I definitely feel like there is a solid concept at its core: the depleting energy forces you to dig as fast as possible to keep it up, but that makes it so that you need to think fast, either avoiding bombs when possible or ensuring you don't trap yourself in a position where you get screwed by a bomb wall/chain reactions. There was some minor confusion at the start where I didn't know why bombs only blew up bombs and me and not the ground surrounding them, but for the most part it was all good.

As nice as the core was, though, I did find myself losing interest rather quickly. Obviously this isn't that bad since it's not the most complex game and nothing lasts forever, but I didn't stay with it as long as I thought I should. I think it kind of came down to the randomness of the game and the lack of a sense of progression. While most games start easy and slowly build up the challenge by introducing more types of obstacles in more complex patterns, this seemed to just be totally random, sometimes starting very overly difficult. And as neat as the screen rotations were, it kind of felt like they should've lead to more, or maybe not rotate at all to change the direction up instead of return to status quo. Second was that it kind of felt like the game switched between modes of whether it was just a rapid-fire action game where you go fast and cut around bombs, or a puzzle game where you get dead-ended by a bomb wall you need to defuse in a careful manner: both were nice, but sometimes it felt like the game leaned on one side harder due to the RNG, making it feel odd when the opposite reared its head, I dunno.

AnderssonKev responds:

First off, thank you for playing my game! The points you bring up are very valid. I think that if I would take the concept and improve it I would work in the progression so it's not a risk of it being filled with bombs early on. Then introduce some visual changes as you get deeper and possibly add some new smaller obstacles so you feel that things are getting different. Also work on the timer a bit so it's okay to stop and "solve a scenario"

[Into King Rabbit's Mansion]

While it took a little bit of doing to get used to the overly simple and unsatisfying controls, where actions like climbing ladders/ascending stairs have been replaced with single button presses, I found that the game did have some rather fun stealth action. Don't get me wrong, I still feel like it's a bit drab in that it lacks more fun controls and wiggle room, but in a way, I appreciated that teleporting up and down ladders/stairs did make it so that the game had no confusion with getting stuck in a half-way state and whether that would make an enemy see you and such. With that out of the way, the only oddity left is the weird decision to have the zoom-out require an energy bar" why not just make it that you can only zoom-out if you're standing still, mayhaps, if you feel like it's too powerful to zoom out all the time?

Anyway, for the most part, the game was fun to creep around the castle, scoping out both patrols and hidden pathways to find the best way through. I liked how it had little touches like being able to see the shadow of patrols when you're inside a hidden passage. I focused on just going for the trophy this time, but I'll be back for those medals!

FadrikAlexander responds:

Thanks for playing and the feedback!! agree on the zooming stuff after trying a lot of stuff I found what I have to be the best option as having it to zoom when standing slowed the game pace and to always be zoomed made the game easy, but I'm still trying to find another solutions to the issue.

[Medieval Cop-S2-E4]

Heheh, as usual I'm a bit lost since I'm not super deep on the lore, so I'm only able to do a rather shallow/surface level impression.

While I'm usually down on how goofy and overly punched-up the script is, it felt like it worked a bit better here: maybe I'm just getting used to it, but I had a few good laughs here and there since it felt like the game just went full-ham with whatever it did. For example, it turned the minor alcohol quip in the beginning into a huge thing which I did not expect.

I did appreciate that this game got to the action a bit quicker than usual: most of the time I need to wait far too long to play at all, but this one was different. That being said, it was a mixed blessing: while I found the various goofy tasks I needed to do amusing, including mini-games like catching the bucket, the tasks were just weird chores and nonsensical. Why the heck do I need to get water from a certain pond in the corner (and why can't I even interact with the well or pond near the well, when I can with the other water sources?) Why not have a puzzle more apt to the situation, like finding the various buildings/landmarks mentioned in the book/live feed around town and triangulating the position of the kidnappers from that, instead of just doing random chores?

[YIIKmas 2021: A Post-modern Art Collab]

Of all the subjects to make an art collab around...well, I didn't expect this. But hey, where else can I see the best assortment of Alex screaming faces?

Pretty decent collab and as usual I always like to see collaborative projects like this. For the most part, the interface is nice, clean and simple with good presentation/framing and backgrounds/music to match. I'm glad to see that there are easy links to the various artists profiles as well.

While it's solid, however, I would've liked if there was a few more features and a more interesting presentation. For one, there were a lot of images which were presented quite small which made it difficult to read the text within them or just see smaller details: would've been great if there was some sort of zoom-in option to help here. I also really wish there was some sort of gallery mode or table of contents: having to go through them one-by-one is a bit boring and annoying if you're trying to find certain ones (and can potentially lead to artists at the back unfairly getting less attention since people might drop off before reaching them). Speaking of that, it'd also be neat if there was a cooler navigation or interaction to the whole thing: for example, if you made a 3D YIIK-esque game where you actually walk around and interact with people/paintings in the world to see them: would really help it stand-out and get more attention than a simple gallery like this. Maybe that's an unreasonable request, but don't let yourself think that an art gallery can't be more than just this basic listing format!

Anyway, cool collab, all-in-all, and merry yiikmas!

TheHauntling responds:

Thank you for your review, if we get a few more devs, we might try some 3D-esque stuff in the future.

[James]

It shows some promise with an interesting color-matching concept and nice introduction, but for the most part, the game ends up being rather bland and uninspired to me, unfortunately.

A big problem with the game was pacing for me. It felt painfully slow to read text in the game from the signs or the boss since it scrolls so slowly and you can't skip or fast-forward. The introduction was crazy as well: usually an intro is either a slow scroll of everything, or a sequence of screens where it stops/starts on the players command. This is the worst of both worlds: it only shows a single screen at a time, waiting for the players command, but its still scrolling everything off so what's even the point of waiting for the player?

Next was the actual gameplay. While color-matching could've been interesting and lead to some improvisational or fast-reaction combat where you need to match quickly and efficiently, all of the combat scenarios were against brain-dead easy AIs that you can shoot from a distance with no risk, and there were annoyingly spongy as heck. I quickly found myself avoiding combat by jumping over everything since it was just so boring to bother shooting all the enemies, and that wasn't a good sign to me that I didn't even want to engage with the system.

The boss fight was also a let-down for me. Not only was it frustrating how easy you can die from a single mistake, the boss fight could've been interesting: maybe you could've had to shoot the enemies it spawns before the boss kills them in order to turn them into helpers that damage the boss. This could've been a good use of needing to get good at color matching fast enough. But no, you can just ignore the enemies and shoot the boss directly. Felt like a waste of an opportunity.

Could be nice and I appreciate the attempt, but at the moment this game just feels a bit thin on content: it didn't take long for all of the maps to just devolve into a boring series of gummys and bear traps that I would just avoid, avoid, avoid. Hopefully it can get improved and I look forward to the full version.

[Potion Mission]

A pretty decent game with an interesting presentation and kooky atmosphere that is kind of let-down by various small things.

As said, for the most part, I think the game had a solid first impression with its colorful, goofy world and premise. While the world didn't blow me away as I kept getting further, there were some interesting obstacles here and there, a dungeon with a boss fight, and a funny ending, so it was a decent adventure all-around.

But man, there were just so many little annoyances with this game that make it really wear on me, death by a thousand small cuts style.

First was the jankiness of the controls. There were a lot of times where my character would get stuck on things in the world that were very odd and strangely placed that didn't feel like they should be blocking me. Firing was weird as well where the game allows you to keep firing, but no bullets come out unless you wait long enough between fires (why even allow us to fire if nothing can potentially come out? it just makes it feel bad and confusing) There were also times that my character would be very unresponsive in weird ways. I didn't like that you couldn't move diagonally, and if you try, it leads to weird results: for example, if you hold left and press up while holding, you'll go up, but if you try and hold up and press left, you'll just keep going up. Furthermore, if you're next to a wall and pointing away, and then press a direction into the wall, your character will not face the direction you point, they'll just keep pointing the original direction (nothing bad, but just strange).

Looking past the controls, the world also just felt kind of bland and repetitive. The game isn't big, there's not many paths or places to go, and none of the screens really offered any interesting arrangements of enemies to fight or puzzles to conquer: most were just very basic and slapdash with only two very simple enemies to battle (not counting the boss). Despite going into different locations like a dungeon, it didn't help either that the game just kept playing the same one song the whole time, further intensifying the repetitiveness of it all.

It certainly shows some promise and is impressive given the time constraints and such: just needs a lot of smoothing out and more interesting gameplay to make it more interesting, to me at least.

[Sub-Uber-Marine]

Cute, solid little game! Definitely a great take on Crazy Taxi: feels good to sub around and try and balance speed and smoothness to get bonuses, and I like that it includes all of the various different modes like the traditional mode where you get time for fares, or the fixed mode where you're just seeing how many you can get in a set time limit, and so on. Everything felt nice and it had a nice bit of polish and pizazz to it.

For the most part, I had a good time, so most of my complaints are just minor nitpicks. The first one was that, while the map isn't anything super maze-like and you can learn it quickly, it can be frustrating at first that the camera is so close and there is no map, meaning you could be following the sonar straightforwardly and not realize you had to go around something else first to path correctly and just get stuck in dead ends. Second, the apps felt a bit superfluous as well since they're already automatically displayed when you drop off a fare so why even bother giving them a button: felt like the app should've had a better use, like locating fares which can be frustrating to find blindly. And finally, for a sub game, I do think it would be cool if the game was a bit more physics-based with a lot of momentum and tank-turning and such that would make you feel like you're in water in a huge sub: instead the game has very simple cartoony straightforward physics which makes it a bit bland and too basic, nothing to really get skillful at manuevering.

Extar responds:

I initially wanted the app to be a lot more involved, like you say for locating fares or something like that, but as the game took shape it ended up going more in an arcade direction. So the app basically got relegated to an occasional extension of the HUD with fun little stats on rather than something that you interacted with.

The handling of the submarine is an interesting one, it started off with much more momentum and slower acceleration which made the handling of it more weighty and realistic I suppose. Gradually, every slight adjustment ended in the submarine being made faster and probably less submariney. I like the idea of heavier sub handling but yeah that wouldn't line up with the arcadeyness elsewhere in the game :)

I always look forward to hearing what you think, thanks for playing!

[Cursed Travels: Flame of the Banshee]

Neat little adventure game! Gives me a lot of La-Mulana or Simon's Quest vibes, what with the hunting around a big world for clues to figure out some cryptic puzzles. The little combat scenarios aren't the best and the puzzles could stand to be a bit more cryptic at times (whereas others were way too cryptic, like how I feel lucky I figured out I could jump on those trees), but it felt like a cool adventure all-around, especially when coupled with the intriguing story and the fast start into gameplay.

If I had any complaints, it'd probably be that I wish the game would've taught me sooner that I could pick up candles and that there were pretty much infinite: I spent too long thinking that I needed to preserve my candles as much like the first five were the only ones I was ever going to have, haha.