FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Skele Magic]

Quite the nice puzzler! I felt like the mechanic was rather simple but fun to utilize, just like how I liked the simple yet fun way the skeleton squished and stretched as I jumped around. Difficulty curve was a little awkward at times where I felt it dipped down to too easy in the later levels after making you go through some head-scratchers in the middle, but overall it felt quite pleasant to play. One thing to note is the fact that the puzzle does not reset upon death is both a blessing and a curse: I found it nice when I made a stupid mistake that I could fix and I didn't have to do everything over again, but when I did make a stupid mistake that I couldn't undo and there wasn't a way to reset from that, well, that was a bit of an annoyance. Definitely not enough of an annoyance to make me stop, however, since I found the game quite addictive to get through: well done.

[ITAZURA MADNESS]

Well, I finally got around to seeing what the fuss was all about, and it seems well-deserved as I really liked this game! In particular I found the game oozing with charm: every new screen (even the death screen) was a delight to witness as they all were so lively, animated, stylish and unique from one another: absolutely a feast for the eyes! Gameplay was fun as well, combat being reminiscent of punch-out with a nice mix of simple mashy fisticuffs alongside some subtle strategy of dodging, feints and comboing. I liked how there were a lot of interesting weapons to get, all with their own sound effects that they bring to the table. All that with a weird story, wacky characters and some groovy bosses make for quite the game!

However, it ain't all sunshine and rainbows. As much as I liked how simple and mashy the combat was, I found a large part of it very repetitive and too overly simple: I imagine it ups the ante as you get farther with more feinting enemies and such, but maybe it should do that faster to keep the pace up. And as much as I liked getting new weapons and seeing/hearing their new effects, they never really made me feel more powerful and I could never tell if they were making a difference: sure, the store SAID they were powerful with bigger numbers, but I never got any satisfying feedback from that in combat. I'd love if maybe the enemies would get more bloody or dented as you hit them as a sign for how low in health they're getting, or maybe damage numbers would appear or make bigger damage sparks/screen shakes/blood splats would happen with the more damage you're doing. Speaking of damage numbers popping up, the game puts a lot of emphasis on the combo meter, but does the combo meter do anything? It might've been in the tutorial but I might've killed the guy before I could read it maybe, and I don't know how to get back to the tutorial, but again, it didn't feel to make a difference. And while we're on damage feedback, I'd love if there was more ways to tell when you as a player are getting damaged, like a red screen flash, since whenever I died it felt like I didn't realize how it happened.

All that does make it a bit rough around the edges for me and miss the mark slightly, but I still had a pleasant time with this and look forward to making it farther up the tower: well done overall and I look forward to future works!

[Pixoul's Tower]

Solid and fun one-button game! Even though it was short, I felt like this was a fun little adventure with some really challenge to it despite the simple controls: the level design really went all-out in creating a crazy obstacle course to run and jump through, and actions like wall-jumping felt very smooth. I felt like the art and animations were rather charming as well, especially the death/respawn animations. I initially thought holding down jump was to charge up a bigger jump, but the strategic purpose was instead to wait so you could dodge turret fire, which added some interesting depth.

It definitely could use a bit more polish: felt like the hitboxes for bullets and spikes were a bit wonky and unforgiving at some times (when a spike and a box are side-by-side and I'm on the box, I don't think I should be hurt by the spike until I've fully stepped off the box completely), my character would float around sometimes instead of using their run cycle animation, the camera would spaz out occasionally when respawning, and I felt like the game went from very easy and forgiving with tons of checkpoints to suddenly way too hard (most likely the product of building such a short game and wanting to stretch it out). Also, and this is just a personal thing: even though I agree with the strategic element of holding jump to wait, I hated doing it because it made me commit to doing a jump after I was done waiting and that made frustrating to contend with.

Overall, I felt like this had a lot of promise and if possible, I'd love to see more of this game expanded upon with even more content to go through!

[Strewn Runes]

Arrgh, I really want to like this, but damn if the game just didn't feel uncomfortable and slightly annoying for me to play, and that ended up ruining the experience for me! At its heart, it seems like a solid Megaman Battle Network/One Step From Eden kind of game: the choice of different decks with certain playstyles was really cool and added a lot of variety, the combat is promising with lots of enemy types and abilities to strategize through, and so on. But man, it just felt really clunky and unsatisfying to play to me: everything just felt so weak and janky and stiff. I hated how weak and slow the basic attack felt (I know it's not supposed to be your main method of attack but jeez I think you overnerfed it), I hated how some of the enemies moved so erratically or stayed at the back the whole time (making it super annoying to get close enough for my sword deck to hit them), I hated how the game wouldn't pause properly for drawing cards, and I hated how unresponsive and stiff movement and abilities felt with long travel times, especially since these games are usually known for their smooth, fast/instant moves and attacks. It definitely shows a lot of promise and I want to try and revisit it, but yeah, but of a bummer on my initial impression.

[GuraQuest(New Characters + F&F B-Side Update)]

As much as I love this game based on my first initial encounter with it and my other encounter with it again in its Tako Takeover update, I had to admit I was little annoyed seeing it pop-up again. I got so many other games to review and this little Lees-pic upstart is trying to triple-dip with the same game three times in a row? Ohhh, they better have a good excuse for this...

But what do you know, this update not only introduced a bunch of cute little characters to play as (though I don't think they always fit as well, like with Ina jabbing a book into a wall, how does that work), but a whole new B-side that introduces all-new challenging mechanics and fun levels to play through, especially for a veteran like me. And the new mechanics actually are designed quite well, built with forgiving inputs, and explored fully in these creative levels. So you got me, you magnificent son of a bitch, you got me! Damn you and your goddamn fun game that just keeps getting better! You can't keep getting away with this!

[Ludicrous Text Adventures: Worthless Dirt Boys]

Rather amusing and charming game! Certainly kept my interest by going through a lot of ridiculous scenarios with all sorts of wacky choices and results (seeing the baseball meter constantly go into the negatives was an amusing twist).

However, I do kind of feel like the game was a lot longer than I expected, especially given that usually these games with multiple endings try to be short to encourage replayability: with such a long game, I don't think I'd have the patience to go back and replay the whole thing for a chance at another ending. Also, another point that I feel damaged the game was the lack of anything to pep up the text, such as visuals or sound effects: maybe I'm overthinking it, but because this isn't a book, rather a game, I wish it would do more with that fact to make it more exciting: doesn't have to be anything extreme, maybe just a background image for each type of event that happens, and maybe a sound effect when stuff happens, like a punch sound if you pick a violence answer, I dunno, just anything rather than nothing as it got really tedious to just keep staring at that same background with the same music over and over.

[Crystal Wizards]

Not too shabby of an idle game! Was interesting to play in a kind of ant farm sort of way where you just put the wizards down and watch them go, occasionally intervening to smite an enemy. It did feel a little repetitive though and lost me after awhile: that could just be down to it being an idle clicker game which just isn't my jam, so that's fair, but it did feel like the game just wasn't that active and engaging (all you can do in the downtime is sacrifice mages which felt kind of silly and weird to do; I would prefer being able to do something else more naturey like summoning clouds to water the plants).

Also there were some confusing aspects like wizards wandering around aimlessly and not doing anything, and wizards not having a good death animation to signal that they've been attacked since they just disappear (would prefer they scream or something, and maybe have a skull or angel float up to signal you of their death). Felt really weird that the game was great at special effects for some actions like summoning wizards, but not so great for other actions like wizards dying or trees getting necro'd. I also wish the game would have a better HUD and title screen: in particular I wish the game would highlight buttons, especially highlighting whatever time button you've hit (pause, 1x, 2x) to let you confirm what you're currently on.

[Blaster Hazard]

Pretty interesting game! Had a wild mix of first impressions with this one, haha! In terms of presentation through the title screen and menus, it was stellar: loved the attention to detail and pizazz with all sorts of animations, pop-ups and so on. It really put its best foot forward! In terms of the gameplay, though, I found it frustrating at first: felt like the screen was way too cramped and the enemies way too spongy. However, thanks to the game's professional design and overall energetic feel, I kept giving it a shot and ended up really enjoying myself with the incredible variety of enemies with all sorts of crazy attacks, interesting patterns/waves to fight through, and crazy boss fights! Definitely a really neat experience I'm glad I stuck with!

[Last Slice]

Haha, I came in expecting a driving game with maybe some pizza cooking mechanics, but instead I was bludgeoning gamers with a keyboard Hotline Miami style: quite the surprise, but a welcome one to be sure!

Gameplay was pretty cool: maybe a little basic and fiddly/floaty at the moment in terms of feedback/impact for both you and enemies, but it's a work in progress and I think it has a decent core to it that allowed for some fast-paced smackdowns. I did especially love that certain weapons had different effects like how the guitar actually makes a musical sound when you hit people with it: I'd love to see this expanded upon with all weapons making unique sounds and effects (and vary it for whiff, hit and throw hit), like for example have the keyboard make a plastic-y impact sound and scatter keys around the floor. You could also maybe bloody/marinara up or damage the weapons as you use them as well just for even more feedback. Also as a side note, I liked how you made the text fast-forward if you click it midway during dialogue.

In terms of feedback, I only have a few complaints. The title screen is a bit confusing because it asks you to press something and doesn't count mouse click, despite the thing you actually need for the main menu is the mouse, not the keyboard. I also wish the menu of receipts for the level select would actually show you what is coming up next on the button itself: I should see the lock icon on the next button, not when I actually page over to it. I found the game a bit frustrating to play since the actual gameplay was in such small bites between long dialogue segments (could just be because it's the beginning of the game, but still I just want to let it breathe a bit more). And of course, there was some slight jankiness to the gameplay that could be polished up: I had weird enemy detections through walls they shouldn't see through (and they can hit you through walls as well!), and I found it weird that the wrench plays the stun sound effect that you'd expect from throwing a controller despite it outright knocking enemies out in one hit like the bigger weapons (basically if they get knocked out, don't bother playing the stun sound effect). And in general I'd like a bit more impact and strategy to the combat as it progresses, the amount of damage the player takes from hits seemed difficult to determine (maybe just make it one hit deaths?) and I found the powerups you get between missions silly and unnecessary and could be removed or reworked (sorry that's vague).

Looking forward to see this get improved on: overall it was quite charming with an amusing concept, along with some great core gameplay, so I think it could be a real grand slam!

[Game and Watch: Madness]

Hmm, not bad, but not great either! The Game-and-Watch or Tiger Electronic aesthetic is pretty amusing to look at: I like that authentic look where you can see all the possible sprite positions at all times, though I was a little disappointed that there were so few, as usually these games will have their screen jam-packed with all sorts of sprites, like you could've had some for enemies getting smacked to the side, or for game over with the clown crying, or something. The gameplay was alright, but it got repetitive rather quickly and wasn't anything to write home about, being a simple timing game.

I do have to give you credit though: a lot of these 'game and watch' games seem to be quite lazy and just use the graphics/aesthetic to carry it, but for this one, I actually liked that there was a decent amount of challenge in the patterns and waves you gotta deal with. It still wasn't that deep or addicting in the long-term, but it was more than I thought was gonna get, so not too shabby.

Taka responds:

Thanks for the feedback :3