FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Nightmare Arena V:1.7.4]

Pretty impressive from a tech-demo perspective, but I found the game a bit dry and boring at the moment. Again, lord knows I couldn't make an online game like this with servers and all that hoo-hah, so kudos on getting that all setup. But looking past that and playing the game, I just found it to be quite boring.

Don't get me wrong, I did think there were some nice touches like the emote system, and there was an attempt to make some cool combat through various levels and an assortment of guns and power-ups. But in the end, combat always just felt like it came down to just shooting at each other in really simple, unexciting ways: there weren't really any fun abilities you could use to outskill your opponents in clever ways, no satisfying explosions or feedback for gunfire, and the levels didn't have any cool environmental hazards, setpieces or unique charm to them. Felt like the game was overall very janky as well, with weird staticy sound effects and such.

It does look like you are still updating it, however, so maybe it'll keep getting improved upon and I'm jumping the gun: best of luck!

GlarkerGames responds:

Thanks for the feedback! :D It helps a lot ill try and make the game more exciting and unique. Im working on new unique guns. I think my game needs a good revamp.

[Falling Fox]

Not too shabby! I thought the gameplay felt smooth and the mechanics were simple yet complex in a fun, addictive way. At its core, it's a pretty decent score attack game. My main complaints would be that I feel it could use a bit more pizazz and polish to it, as the presentation felt a bit lazy. While the art is cute and there are some nice touches like the wind gusts and such, I felt really disappointed that the fox doesn't even move: he just stays stock-still like a t-posing statue as you move him about. C'mon, the game says he's running, so code in a running animation! And while you're at it, put some falling and other animations in: you've made him blink, while not add some more than that, it's so drab without it! And another thing, it'd also be nice if the platforms were a bit spiced up as well: you could make them like floating islands or whatever, no reason to keep them as really boring planks. Basically, it's an alright game, but it's dry and could really use some juice to help pep it up.

[Kobold Siege]

Bit mixed about this one!

For the most part, the game is quite charming: love the cartoony graphics and animations, the goofy story, and the big world to traverse. Definitely does a lot to get me hooked: I wanted to get all them upgrades and make it all the way to end to shoot the heck outta that chef, haha.

But on the other hand, the game did feel rather janky and frustrating to play at times. My issues with the game were never anything major, but it's kind of a death by 100 cuts situation where a lot of little oddities just made it feel unpolished and I couldn't trust it. I didn't like how stiff, laggy and stubby the movement could be, particularly along with shooting and the lag before being allowed to move again. Jumping was weird and inconsistent with how, if you hold the jump button when landing, you'll sometimes end up jumping again and yet sometimes not. If you hold up and shoot, the character will only shoot up on their 2nd shot for some strange reason. I found it odd that you couldn't shoot down when in the air, I didn't like the push back recoil, the checkpoints would sometimes be ignored and teleport me way further back, etc etc.

You get the picture. Along with all that, I also thought the game was a bit overly generic under the charm with no real selling point. But still, I feel it is an admirable attempt at a nice little metroid game with a goofy premise.

[¿Squid Game?]

Simple and addicting score attack game! It's overall quite basic, but the controls felt intuitive and fun to use, and the game had a good amount of juice to it that made everything lively. There were a few slight annoyances like I felt that the hitboxes were a bit too big (tons of times I'd blow up a mine when I was not even touching it) and I didn't know why the squid gets slower when you hold the button down for long, but it's all good.

I haven't watched the show either.

['Tower of the Missing Sock' - DEMO]

Cute game, but a little bit bland once you get past those cute graphics and play for awhile.

Don't get me wrong, I think the game is quite cute and endearing with the style and animations, and the game does have some really neat aspects like the boss fight at the end, which was a definite highlight for me.

But in the end, it felt like the game was merely decent, being a very simple zelda-esque game without any interesting gadgets or puzzles or setpieces: just incredibly basic combat against the same enemies over and over, and the combat was very frustrating at times due to the sluggish movement and attacks coupled with the enemies not being stunned from your attacks. Also, this is a nitpick, but I didn't like the lazy animation done for the door/stairs transitions: just looked unnatural, especially for the stairs in particular since it didn't have the shadows to try and hide it.

The goofy story and style was enough to hook me, and I'm glad since I got to fight that neat boss at the end, but it did feel like this could've used more meat on its bones, if you'll pardon the pun. As a side note, it is cool to see you experiment with all these different genres!

Butzbo responds:

That's a fair point, I took this one as a bit more of a challenge of making a game of this kind, so in terms of gameplay there's nothing I could consider particularly new. Still great to hear that other bits were fun including the boss fight, I'd like to keep going trying out other genres and hopefully adding something new next time ;) Thanks man!

[Grandpa's Minigun]

Fun little game! Loved the goofy story and concept to it, and had a blast mowing down enemies like I was mowing the lawn. All the little touches to the game were great: the feedback from blasting enemies and the corpses they left behind, the little speech bubbles, the way the music amped up when a wave transition happened: really cool stuff. I especially liked the element of having your attack slow you down significantly, as well as turning being very slow: really sold the weight of that minigun and added a cool strategic element of choosing when to attack and when to run. In that regard, I almost feel like you shouldn't have had the dodge roll since it ignores the weight of the gun, but eh, I'll allow it since it was fun, haha.

There were definitely some minor nitpicks to be had: for one, I have no idea what the heck that minigame all of a sudden was, two, it was a bit difficult to tell when I would be hit and when I wouldn't since the hitboxes could be a bit vague (is the minigun and the crown part of my hitbox? is it just one of the kids, and if so, which one? etc), three, it was a little annoying how difficult it was to pick up souls, and four, the game did get a little boring in that I found you could easily just get in a circling pattern to avoid attacks, slowing the action down. Also I was hoping for more gibbing variety: little disappointing that the enemies didn't have more variety in corpses and splatters and such, but as said, that's pretty minor.

jefvel responds:

Thanks for the thorough review! I agree that the dash might not fit in super well with the heaviness of the gun, but it was so fun so I left it in. I had planned to have it more like a drifting mechanic, so you could sort of swing the minigun, and the crown would act as a morning star club, but that might have made the controls a bit too difficult.

Yeah, the minigame comes in super quickly, it was tricky to balance between having a flow that matches the music and giving the user enough time to understand what's happening.

Exploding monsters with a ton of gibs was something I wanted to have too, but didn't have time for adding, maybe they'll be in a future game. And yeah, both siblings have a hitbox, a circle around their feet, it's not very clear at all, didn't think about that. The splatter system was written very haphazardly, which made adding variety to it pretty tricky, but it's something I might improve on in future games :)

[Crush the Industry Demo]

Wow, pretty impressive demo! You frontloaded by saying it wasn't gonna be polished or anything, but I felt like what was shown was already quite polished: animations and graphics were very lively and cute, combat system was deep with a lot of interesting strategy and characters to choose from, and so on and so forth. All around it just felt very well put-together, with the thing I liked the most about the game was how intuitive the interface was: while I felt like the initial tutorial was a bit too much to grasp at first since it just dumps everything on you at once and I feared I was gonna miss something, it was great at how helpful the game was in letting you hover your mouse over practically anything to get a tooltip to see what it was. There were some small things that could be fixed up here and there, such as how sometimes the effects from combat would happen too fast for me to realize the full effects that just occurred, but from seeing how it's already going I think you're on a good path. Looking forward to the full version!

As a silly side note, I hope you're having a good time developing and that the whole toxicity aspect is just for fun and not to be used as a shield against criticism or anything like that: it can be rough out there but I hope you're able to stay with a healthy outlook and sort out the good feedback from the bad. I just don't want this to be a "oh you didn't love my game? whatever, you're just a hater" thing instead of realizing what might seem likely overly critical feedback deep down is trying to be helpful...eh, I'm overthinking things.

CognogginGames responds:

Thank you! And I'm having fun with it. I wouldn't want a shield against constructive criticism -- it is essential to helping me improve the game. The character core skills update that just went live was something that I was motivated to do after reading feedback here.

[GRUNGE]

Wow, really cool game! Definitely has all that and a bag of chips: cool graphics, sound and music, interesting combat mechanics, satisfying feedback and effects, good enemy variety and progression, all packed with a humorous and wild story/aesthetic. Found myself getting super addicted to this, making it all the way to the final boss on my first go!

I'll admit that my first impression wasn't that great: I actually didn't know what to do on the first level as I didn't realize I just needed to keep fighting through the wave till it ends (it took so long I thought the enemies wouldn't stop spawning and I needed to go down a path or open the door but couldn't figure out how). Glad I stuck with it though, but maybe could use a bit more direction or signals?

If I was to have a small nitpick, it's that one, I feel like the debris from broken items should be darkened or something to let you know you can't pick it up anymore, and two, I found the health system a bit weird at times: I'd throw an enemy at another, always expecting both the one I threw and the target to die on collision, but one would always remain. Don't know why that annoyed me so much, haha. Throwing enemies and objects was awesome though, especially if you shake 'em up first.

Speaking of that, as a side note, I also found it weird that the game seems to try and dissuade you from shaking the enemies up before a throw, since I found it really fun (not sure if it was meant to be taken in earnest?)

(also I do have some beef with how the mid-boss-fight-cutscene where your boss shows up to give you a weapon ended up getting me killing during his drop-off)

[Apocalypse Of The Damned (ALPHA)]

I think this shows a lot of promise, but it's definitely quite rough at the moment. Understandable of course, since it is an alpha, and hopefully I can provide some nice feedback so it becomes better in future!

For the good, I liked the whole Scott Pilgrim-esque graphics and animations: very cute and bouncy all-around. I think it showed some solid fundamentals for a good beat-em-up, as I really like the hit-freeze and feedback from punching enemies, as well how you worked in some strategic elements in the moveset, where you can use the punches for combos/damage while using the kick as a spacing tool.

For the bad, I'll admit, there was a lot (though again, it's an alpha):

The worst was probably the enemies, which felt very boring, brainless and generic: they mostly just felt way too spongy and moved way too fast and straight-forward instead of having any personality or interesting patterns to them. Groups of enemies were a problem as well since the game seems to not let you hit multiple enemies with your attacks even if they are overlapping: I can understand if this is intentional but it felt very unsatisfying and frustrating.

Next was the animations and controls. Again, while I generally liked them, there were a couple of stinkers like the kick attack. Also while the controls were alright, there was some stiffness to it and just general jank in the actions/reactions that could be smoothed out. I also spent a long time in confusion in just trying to play the game, not realizing that the controls weren't interchangable, but supposed to be one for one-player and another for two-player (I was trying to use the numpad as player one).

Feedback was another one. While I do like most of the feedback as said before due to the great effects and hit-freeze, there were some oddities like boxes/trash cans having a bloody hit mark/sound for feedback when it makes no sense and having infinite health meaning I couldn't destroy them, and there were also some weird cases where I could hit an enemy that was in the process of dying/exploding (feels like those attacks should whiff).

Again, looking forward to seeing how this shakes up as a huge beat-em-up fan!

[Dubstep Raven]

Another great RatThing game with that distinctive goofy yet gritty/grungy style and straight up action gameplay!

I gotta say though, I did feel like this was one of the more weaker RatThing games lately. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed my time with this: the powers were cool, it felt really satisfying to chain together shooting and possessing, dodging bullets in slow-mo was neat, and as usual the story and bosses were neat. I'd say its core is very good and polished.

I just felt like the levels were a bit repetitive and ended up dragging on for me: the enemy variety wasn't that great and the enemy formations you tackle as a player felt very haphazard, practically randomly generated. I say that because it didn't feel like the difficulty curve was well-designed: you can get some tough formations at the beginning where you gotta get to the shielder first though some crazy bullets, then suddenly you can go through several levels with no shielders and really easy enemies. Just felt all over the place, and it didn't help that the backgrounds weren't changing and it wasn't introducing any new enemies either. Again, it was still fun, but it's just near the bottom of my RatThing ranking as it were, haha.