FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[Creature Mixer]

Cute little gadget! Love the crisp, professional and intuitive design of the HUD/menus, and appreciate that even though it's a tool, not a game, it still has some slight hints of juice to it like how the character reacts when you make changes. The export options are wonderful as well, especially with them being in so many flavors. I had a bit of confusion with the tool in terms of colors being a bit confusing (why do some hats use one color while other hats use another) and the weird cropping if you try to move some of the elements around even the slightest bit (why even make there be a move option with so little space), but overall it was nice. Many thanks for making a neat little tool for people to use like this: makes me want to abandon my top-down game and start working on a platformer immediately just to keep playing around with this, haha.

[CCMMYY]

Wow, this one really surprised me! I'm not a big fan of Sokoban games, and I also found it quite difficult to remember what colors could interact with other colors, so I thought I was in for a really frustrating time. But lo and behold, I ended up getting really addicted to making my way through these puzzles! Much kudos to the level and puzzle design in creating a great sense of progression and wonder at what was gonna happen next: kept me hooked with an iron grip!

[Drillionaire]

This is a bit of a rough one for me.

On one hand, I really like the look and feel from the game. I like the way it points you towards the guide at the beginning, I like that the menus are very smooth and crisp with tooltips and easy access to help everywhere, and I think the drilling gameplay can be quite addicting. Yes, there are a lot of grammar mistakes and the guide can be a bit wordy, but overall it gives off a solid, professionally put-together vibe.

On the other hand, I felt like the game could be really overly grindy and unsatisfying. The game kind of just throws you in the deep end at the start: it tries to help by giving you buildings one-by-one, but the guide is very haphazard in the way it delivers information and can really overload you at the start. I found it tricky to figure out how to even start getting money, since I figured I might need to save stuff for crafting drill bits and other confusion. Drilling felt very unsatisfying at times: as fun as it was to move it about, the combination of rocks being so tiny and haphazardly placed along with your fast moving drill makes it really difficult to pick up anything in a run. I just think the game would really have a better, smoother, onboarding process in terms of learning the mechanics and building up resources bit-by-bit.

I think this is one of those games that a lot of people will like, people who can stomach the slow grind and buildup: I just don't quite have the patience for it nowadays, haha.

[Neon Souls Demo]

It's certainly visually interesting and has some nice elements to it such as a cool (if a bit suspect) boss fight as well as decent platforming, but it didn't really leave me hungry for more from the full game.

For one, the paint mechanic seemed a bit underbaked. While it was certainly neat to see an invisible world come to light through paint splatters, it rarely added much to the game apart from visual pizazz: for every level, all you need to do is just spam double jump and bam, everything's painted and you're just left with a very basic platformer. It's basically just smoke and mirrors: apart from a few occasions where you need to use paint as a bit of a scouting tool, in the end it just felt like busy work before we can actually play.

Apart from the paint mechanic, I wasn't really seeing any hints of other potential abilities, or anything else for that matter that intrigued me and got me thinking about what the later levels could be, since it already felt like levels were just repeating themselves now in this very demo: just paint everything, jump past few spikes, bounce on a few dudes here and there, repeat ad nauseum with minor token shuffling of those elements to try and make the levels feel different.

I still had an alright time playing it, but for a demo, I just felt like it didn't hook me enough to consider getting the full game.