FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Defend 'Till the End]

Solid arcade fun! It's a simple game to pick up and understand and it feels quite satisfying to blast asteroids away thanks to the juicy effects. It's also quite exciting to see your options and weapons build-up bit-by-bit. Was also really impressed at some of the effects such as how when an asteroid hits the planet, it models a crater on the earth at the exact point of impact: so cool to see that as it spins around, it's like Doom Eternal level of visible damage feedback. It's not the longest lasting game as it does start to get a little repetitive, but it's a solid and fun score-attack while it lasts.

Only major issues I had was that I feel like the ammo counter shouldn't be overlayed on top of the weapons: it just turns it into a graphical mess that is hard to parse (for example, it made it difficult to see how many bullets were being used for each weapon). And speaking of that, it was difficult to figure out the weapon system in the first place and keep track of unlocks since the pop-ups for them come and go so quickly. Oh, and I did have some confusion when the game would auto-switch back to the machine gun when I run out of missile ammo: I always expected to have to switch back manually so the automatic nature actually caught me off-guard.

KJScott responds:

Yeah, totally agree with the ammo counter (I wasn't happy with it myself). I tried multiple iterations and at the time I hadn't figured out a good way of resolving that as of yet. If I do an update I'll focus on that to try and fix that. Maybe a new ammo bar and fixed max ammo cap might help?

I messed about with the message speed and how long they last. I found adding an extra second or so obstructed view too much and I did have a feeling that the current level was too short. Again, if I update I will have another look at that. The main reason why it's too quick is that due to the ongoing "research" I would have had to added extra code to handle multiple messages at the same time. Looks like if I update I'll need to address this issue.

With the auto-switching back to the machine gun, I found during playtesting by myself if you had to manually switch back by the time you realise it's not firing you have pretty much lost the game as the half a second to second to realise and make the switch meant you were dead. So unsure about changing that.

[Newgrounds Burger Quest]

You know, for as low-effort and goofy as the game looks, there's actually a decent little adventure in here. I liked wandering around and picking up clues from the various denizens to figure out how to get all 5 dollars for whatever a Newgrounds burger is. I also liked all the little touches that the game had, such as the cool shooting animation (and ending animation, speaking of), the ability to blast everyone, the hidden fishing minigame, and of course the funny dialogue and sounds. So unlike how it looks, there is some intentional design and effort put into it here and there, and it is quite charming in that respect.

But at the end of the day, it definitely was a pretty janky and short game. Now some of the jank could be excused by it being true to the design and goofy aesthetic, but some of the annoyances like the vague hitboxes, delayed shooting animation, random spawns and so on could just be plain frustrating, leading to unfair deaths.

And I gotta say that you did commit a game design cardinal sin in my book. If you design a dialogue system with text that gets typed out, a player should always be able to hit a button to have the text immediately fill to the end (and not skip to the next line until another press). This game does not allow that, and for that, you will burn in heck for you have damned so many players to waste so many seconds waiting for the text to fill out: so many seconds!

plufmot responds:

Thanks! Also you can press and hold Z or M to speed up dialogue!

[Pee Man vs the Monkeys]

Well, putting aside the initial pee-remise and all of its strangeness, this game had some really solid, simple, fun arcade action! Love the whole retro arcade graphics, love how it gets to the action quickly, love the juicy (maybe bad word choice?) effects, love the exciting yet janky music that matches the tone, love the strategy of having to aim your shots as to not waste your pee and gather resources to get pee back, and love the secret hard mode! Certainly had a good time playing this game for most part: was surprised at some aspects like how short damage-invincibility lasts, but everything was mostly intuitively designed. Game can be a bit confusing at times where I couldn't tell whether levels ended when some invisible timer was over or when the enemies were killed (most likely both have a factor). I also got screwed over once when it froze projectiles on a level transition which caused me to run into it (I expected them to keep going). Would love if the game had a little bit more to it, but it had enough for a short and sweet adventure.

[NG STARS]

Hmmm, this one is a bit rough for me and unfortunately a case of style over substance in my opinion.

On initial impression, I think that the game is very cool and impressive. The game definitely has a professionally-constructed feel to it, what with the very animated and lively menus, title screen, and seems to have a lot to offer with its huge character roster. And indeed, I did have some good fun going through and seeing how each of the characters played and catching references and such: I could easily see some people having fun going through and building a tier list and other such things.

But at the end of the day, once the novelty of checking out the roster is gone, all you are left with is a game that is a shallow as a puddle. I found the characters to be terribly unbalanced, the combat to be overly simple and unsatisfying, and there were no unique systems or level terrain or strategy or any sort of hook to work with. Now, I'm not saying it needs to be some super complicated fighter with guard-breaks and astral finishers or whatever: games like Divekick and Footsies and Fantasy Strike are excellent games with very limited movesets. But those games, unlike this, have an actual deep system and strategy to their seemingly simple combat that acts as a hook. Or, if a complex system is not the way to go, at least the game should have some sort of wacky party elements like a Smash Bros or Mario Party game that shake things up.

The menus were also confusing and complicated at times: for example, had no idea why the game wants me to have to right-click to disable a character choice instead of just letting me left-click on a new character no problem, and why does it not automatically assume that 1P has already joined and instead make me have to join manually every time? And let's not even mention that it doesn't even teach you how to play (as funny as whatever the heck that video was...)

I definitely do love the idea behind this game and think a NG artist brawler could be great. If this was just to serve as a proof of concept for an upcoming version which has more content, online play, actual fighting systems, and so on and so forth, I would absolutely love that!

So far I feel like Peti might be the best fighter?

Stepford responds:

Fair enough! This game was more of a love letter to our friends in the community than anything else. Just a bit of fun! <3

[SHRIMP-OS]

Wow, blown away at the level of content, charm, and sheer polish in this bad boy! So much to do and so much to see: after quite a long while, I thought I had found a goodly-sized portion of what's on offer only to see so many achievements left unlocked still! Definitely had a good time not only searching through this Hypnospace-esque scavenger hunt and seeing so many funny things, but also had a blast checking out the various apps and the games as well! The games, jeez, they'd be enough for a submission itself, but to see these games within games, I seriously need to give props to the developers to have the guts to have these really intricate games be hidden within another game where they might not even possibly be found (but I certainly hope most people do find them)! Goddamn, I absolutely loved the new Bimsy, that by itself deserves 5 stars and I find it crazy that it's not available standalone!

So for the most part, I had a great goofy experience with this and plan to revisit it to see what else I can find. I definitely love it a lot. But, if I had to nitpick some stuff in here, well, here are some nitpicky things:

There were some occasions where apps would be a bit of a let-down or their functionality would be odd. For example, I found the paint app really pathetically simple and was disappointed it had barely any features and no save/print option (and if I were to re-open a picture I was working on, it would corrupt the colors). The music listener was really difficult to manipulate the timeline slider: it's like you'd have to click at an odd spot and sometimes it wouldn't accept where I'd place it. I could go on, but I feel silly saying all this as it's all very minor stuff that never really broke or bothered me: for the most part I was impressed with the apps. Again, it's all very understandable and fine for some slight jank since there's just so much in this OS, but it's just a bit unbalanced where some apps, like the music maker, are so great, while others really don't add much. Take it as a compliment that this game really raised my expectations that I kept expecting so much greatness.

Unfortunately I found the Ugby Mumba game to be really not my taste. It's a shame, but to me, it's a bit of a style over substance thing: I really, really want to like the game based on how smooth and juicy and professionally looking the game is, clearly there was a lot of effort and love there, but at the end of the day, the gameplay itself just seemed very repetitive and boring and I could barely bring myself to finish 2 levels. Bit of a shame since the game seems to put such importance on it to not only make it fullscreen, but to not even let you quit out of it without resetting the entire OS!

There were some other minor kinks like the help pop-ups not staying long enough/waiting for confirmation before leaving or having some where you could reference them once again if you forgot the tip. I also didn't like how the game couldn't find a solution to scrolling except to keep badgering you to hold a button when you scroll: surely there could've been a more elegant way to solve this as I know I've played games before they accept scrolling without scrolling the web page as well? You can't blame the user for expecting something as simple as this to be in place.

At the end of the day, cheers for this great piece of work: definitely a very impressive collab!

[Nova: Cloudwalker's Tale]

Wow, nice little surprise here! I didn't think I was gonna get into it as much as I did since it had a bit of a slow start, but the cool art, slick presentation, chill aesthetics, intriguing story, and eventual way the puzzles started to pick up in complexity ended up getting me addicted and wanting to keep going! Only real complaint I could think of is that maybe the sound effects and feedback were a bit too muted for my taste to the point where it could be difficult to tell if you're even doing anything (maybe the clouds should react a bit stronger when you select them in some way, among other things), and that it could maybe start things up a bit faster and deliver some more story nuggets as well as mechanics at a more rapid pace to keep my interest maintained, but some of those decisions are understandable given the chill artistic nature of it, so it's all good.

[Porb Dressup]

Decent little dress-up game! Dunno what the heck a Porb is, but hey, it's got nice art, a unique setup, a good assortment of goofy clothes, expressions, backgrounds, music, and so on, and I'm not seeing any obvious bugs or anything, so I ain't got much to complain about! But then again, I'm not a big dress-up game kinda person, so maybe the real fans can deliver better feedback.

Only thing I thought was awkward was how when you click on an item, it will automatically move to center itself instead of just staying in place: not a bad thing, but different than I expected and can make it annoying if you're just trying to make slight adjustments to an already placed object. Oh, and I wish there was a way to wipe the HUD completely to take easier pictures (you can get rid of most of it, but the buttons still remain) and in addition to that, it would be cool if there was a built-in feature for saving screenshots of your personal Porb.

TappyWara responds:

HOLY SHIT...

[Lava and Aqua]

Another solid puzzler! Gotta admit, this was another one that I didn't think I was gonna like that much, dunno why exactly, just didn't have faith in the lava/water mechanic and thought it would be too annoying and random to track, but something about the way it just builds up the complexity gradually with great levels that teach as well as challenge won me over as usual and before I knew it I was just playing one level after the other!

[Curseball]

Cool game! It's a simple and intuitive concept to start with that gets built upon with the curses to lead to more and more crazy fun, and it's all helped by the smooth controls and graphics with juicy feedback. I liked the inclusion of the helper characters and their little funny dialogues here and there: made everything a little more peppy and lively. I also liked the fact that you bounce off of the curse ball when you hit it: I felt pretty slick when I used that bounce to also simultaneously dodge a curse obstacle. Definitely a fun and addictive experience.

Only major complaint I had is that I felt like it didn't hook me that much to make me want to replay it: without a story or some sort of end goal to strive for (that I know of), I didn't feel that compelled to start all over again to make it further and further. It was fun and yes I could go for a high score, but it's difficult to start all over again with zero curses when I was having so much fun with how hectic it got. Also I was never sure what the purpose of the doors were? Did they lead to different curse wheels? Oh, and also the feedback explosions, due to them being X's, would confuse me sometimes on whether it was positive or negative feedback.

[Pico Pizza Frenzy]

Not bad! It ain't the most complex game and it's over rather quickly, but what's there is some decent beat-em-up arcade fun! I think what really helps the game is how great and juicy the presentation is: love the feeling of shooting and whacking enemies, love the little dialogues that pop-up at the bottom, love the graphics and animations, love the goofy/frantic mood and music, and I just generally love how the game cuts to the chase and gets right into it! Easily found myself replaying it a few times just to beat up more losers and go for a higher score (though I dunno if it's even possible to get 25 pizzas, don't they spawn at a schedule I can't do anything to influence?).

Only major complaint I could think of is that, while the mortar robots do have an animation for launching a missile into the air that corresponds to the markers on the ground, it's not very noticiable and without an actual projectile, the two actions seem disjointed and not apparent of the connection.

Also there's sometimes a weird bug where I can't get the game to focus and hitting space just makes the web page scroll down: dunno why exactly.

Just-a-ng-dummy responds:

Thanks for the review Futurecop!
I'm really glad you enjoyed the short premise of the game! The pizzas spawn based on a timer and if you collected it, so if you collect a pizza, a timer starts and when it ends a new pizza spawns, then the cycle repeats. During the half way mark, the time decreases, so you just need to roll your way to pizza town!

I think the markers issue can be fixed by adjusting the z-index and a visual animation, which is quite easy to do, but I'm currently doing a lot of stuff rn.

Idk about the bug though, I think the game only focusses if you click on the game, so a "click to start" prompt would be more easy-going to the player.

Cheers on reviewing this month's games!