FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dark Light Swap]

Wow, really interesting concept at play here! It's one of those cool ideas that is rather simple to grasp, but really mind-bending and deep as it keeps going. To be honest, I almost think it's too mind-bendy at times, haha: I made my own system that I think works for making it through the puzzles, but really having difficulty coming to terms with the mechanics at play here, especially when it came to the 'gray' areas that were introduced later on. That's not to say I don't like it, though: this is a doozy that I'm looking forward to coming back fresh and committing all my brain power to (though who knows if that'll make a difference, haha).

[Blind Man Escape]

Uhhhhhhh....not sure how to feel about this one, haha! My initial impression was one of frustration: I had no idea how to control anything and any attempts to walk away from the monster or something with WASD or arrow keys didn't seem to work as I couldn't hear any footsteps or anything to make me feel like I was having any effect. I was just really confused and figured, "ok, it's one of those joke games, haha, very funny, moving on."

Once I learned that you are only supposed to use the space bar, I gave it a few more goes to see if I could figure out how to control anything. Unfortunately, I still don't really have a grip on what's going on, but at the very least, I guess I can appreciate the weirdness of its design? It's still just a little too trial-and-errory and way too confusing, though: part of me wants to write this off as a really stupid game that misses the point of blindness just like games like "The Quiet Man" missed the point of deafness as a device. I would much prefer if this did something interesting with its system like many other games have done insteda of just reveling in its joke, but... I guess it's a weird experiment that can be fun for some and hey, some people will gel with that and some won't, that's just part of the experimental game life.

[MADFPS 2]

Bit of a mixed bag on this one! Feels like it has what could be a very nice core gameplay structure, but it's just encased in jankiness and blandness.

Like I say, I think the core gameplay is quite solid. I like how weighty and satisfying the melee weapons feel: they're slow, but it adds a strategic element and satisfaction to the impacts, which are so crunchy. I also liked how it had some hidden depth with the Morrowind melee system where moving side-to-side when swinging does a horizontal swing and moving forward-back does a vertical swing. Gunplay was cool as well: loved seeing how enemies gibbed when blasted with a shotgun and I thought the system of no ammo display expect when you check your magazine was rather neat. All in all, combat felt pretty cool.

Everything surrounding the combat, however, was really janky and unprofessional. The title screen, HUD, buttons and so on were super lazy and terrible looking, especially with the way the health meter goes into negatives instead of stopping at zero, c'mon! The game doesn't have a working pause menu, where dying while you're in options can end up having the death screen overlap it. There was a lot of confusion with interactables: you don't get any prompts that appear when you can interact with something which leads to confusion on whether it is interactable at all. I didn't like the way the game kept teleporting me constantly to transition levels and it would always face me the wrong way, the durability prompts for weapons don't appear if you drop and re-pick up a damaged weapon (they only appear if you attack someone with it), the block feels really bad and unsatisfying given how much you need to time it (I'd love if it stunned the enemy on a successful block like a parry), and so on and so forth: it's a mess!

Would love to see this polished up to really make it shine as it should: like I say, I think there is something cool in there, but it can be very hard to see at times!

[Madness Roulette]

Not too shabby, but rather shallow in long-term appeal. I know it's silly to complain about it, but at the end of the day it is just a game of rock/paper/scissors and it doesn't really bring or add anything interesting to the formula. For example, it'd be kind of cool if we could customize our own character avatar like I thought we could (especially since it's online), but the rewards are only characters and you need to play for an inordinate amount of time to get anything, so there's no hook there. The game could've been enhanced with some interactivity, but I was really disappointed that we don't even have to click the trigger to make the shot ourselves as it just goes off automatically in a canned animation: I think having that extra click to actually pull would add so much more intensity and immersion to it. The menus and such are also very bland with stock text and minimal animations that could've added some pizazz, and finally, the death animations aren't gory at all: was really expecting some serious brain matter spilling out of cracked skulls: it's Madness after all!

However, that's not to say it's all bad. I do think the game is rather stylish and charming with a lot of nice touches to it. I like that the music gets more and more intense as the odds get more and more risky with empty chambers being depleted, and I like seeing the characters sweat (though I wish they would also increase in shakiness and sweatiness more as the game goes on as well). I also like that there are unique animations for each of the characters in how they take their turn. And of course, it is rather impressive that it has a whole online feature and lots of prizes to get, even if they do require way too much commitment to get since it's all based on luck after all.

spazgunk responds:

yo thank you so much for the insightful review!!! very much appreciated. 100% takin' this stuff into consideration for the next update :]

[Gardengage]

Really cool concept for a game that felt like a bit of a mixed bag for me!

On one hand, I do think that the concept and mechanics for the game were quite interesting: switching back and forth between side-scrolling and top-down mechanics to find the right path were really fun and mind-bendy at times, and then piling on other mechanics like removing breakable tiles by walking over them in top-down to create a staircase you can jump up in side-scroll mode made me feel really clever. I'm only through world 1 right now and I definitely want to continue onwards to see how it shakes out.

It does have a bit of jankiness to it, though, that kind of made it confusing/frustrating to play. To start, the graphics sometimes remind me of a NES game that is glitching out, or maybe a weird kaizo mario maker level or something: just really slapdash and kind of difficult to parse and look at sometimes. Second, the gameplay felt very awkward at times: my character would get stuck or glitch into platforms, I wasn't sure how to attack enemies in top-down mode, I felt like I was forced to make these really tight jumps that the game isn't flexible enough for, and it felt weird being hit by enemies that are in tiles below me that shouldn't be able to hit me (and even then, I feel like I should kill them because I'm above them even if I'm not jumping). And finally, I wish the map screen was a bit better: would love to move around in it like Super Mario World or something instead of just messing with the menus in the bottom corner.

It's definitely a neat game I think: for me, it just needs something like a polishing pass to make it feel more smooth and not so janky. But I suppose, given the kind of glitchy nature of the concept/theme, it kind of fits in a weird way, haha. I plan on trying to make it further in the game nonetheless!

[Epolevne]

Solid puzzle game! Had a bit of a difficulty spike here and there, but overall it felt like a very smooth and fun ride that kept escalating in interesting ways thanks to new, intuitive mechanics being introduced at a good pace. Some initial confusion was there over the jumping distance at times, but later on it felt like all of the puzzles worked well with it so it was just me trying to jump in unintended ways. Before I knew it, I had gotten the envelope...I mean, the epolevne!

[Surviving the Snowstorm]

A nice attempt and I think the heart is in the right place, but I'd say it unfortunately falls short of being a good fangame by missing some critical aspects.

For one, the great thing about Henry Stickman games I find is how animated and lively everything is, and that includes the buttons which would usually play out an animation or a sound when you hover over them: the buttons in this, unfortunately, were very lifeless and stiff with no such pizazz or life to them.

The scenarios that played out weren't that unique or inventive either, most just being a silly one-note gag that didn't really use the whole winter situation to enhance it or have the craziness and escalation that most Henry Stickman gags did. Heck, you had two jack-in-the-box scenarios that were practically identical, and then two phone scenarios that were literally identical as they were just copy-paste!

All this just made the game feel rather lazy: just felt like the list of options was bloated with a lot of fluff: I'd say the only ones I really liked were the the jacket, the load save, the teleporter, the go deeper, and maybe the cheese/bomb/radio. It's not all bad: like I said, there were some decent options in there and I liked the stickman animations and such as they looked very authentic, so I think the heart is in the right place: hopefully I don't sound like too much of a jerk, just want to point out some of the hidden aspects that really could help enhance the experience if you revisit.

BioPlant responds:

Thank you for the thoughtful review! I’m currently working on a remake of this game, so your review is much appreciated.

[An Ordinary Adventure]

Goofy little adventure! Part of me wish it had a bit more gameplay besides just walking around (and the one token puzzle) but for the most part, the dialogue and animations were quite charming and amusing and it kept me wanting to see what oddities happened next, so I'll let it slide, haha. What I might not let slide was the constant janky issues where my character would get stuck walking backwards and I'd need to reset it with a jump: I know you put a warning in the description and all that, but at the end of the day, there's gotta be a better way to actually solve the issue than just making an excuse and expecting everyone to roll with it. Anyway, it wasn't the worst issue to tangle with, so again, I'll let it slide, but just a warning for future since it did hurt the presentation and believe me, you cannot count on people reading the description.

midgetsausage responds:

Yeah, it's a pretty bitter pill to swallow that some people just don't read the description and that the bug... thing is hard to fix.
I wish I could go out of my way to fix em, but my Scratch skills are rudimentary at best, and I don't know if Zach can even fix them thanks to Scratch's limitations...

We're still genuinely happy you enjoy the game, really sorry for the constant sudden moonwalking every now and then. But we're glad (and relieved) that you love the bigger picture!
And yeah, the lack of gameplay was something we were real unsure players on Newgrounds would roll along with, but we were tremendously shocked that they did LMAO

[This is You]

Cute story! I'm not full-on deep into my Madness lore or anything so I dunno how canon or anything any of this is, but I found the world and concept very believable, the artwork very charming, the characters quite interesting with their own unique voices and the story very gripping! Was surprised how easily I got sucked into it: I was worried at first that the game would get too quippy, jokey or memey but it never did, and I admire the professionalism at sticking to keeping it real. Definitely coming back to get the rest of the endings later on: so far I've just got the one where I did nothing, but I'm quite intrigued to see the rest (though sometimes tells me there isn't exactly a happy ending no matter what I do...)

vhsdreamland responds:

oh my goodness thank you so much!!! this is such a nice review, thank you for your time!!

[Dominion Ex]

Nice shoot em up! Overall it felt like the game was very satisfying to play with a lot of cool special effects (especially the shockwaves), and I definitely loved the weapons and how they all had their strengths and weaknesses: you gotta be accurate with the rockets but they have great splash damage, the vulcan is decent all-around but you gotta get dangerously close to not suffer from the lack of accuracy, and the plasma is awesome at insta-deleting foes but it overheats so fast so it should only be a last resort. And then there's even the drive where it passively boosts your speed as long as you have it equipped. All these interesting pros and cons made fighting the great and various array of enemies (who are also weak or strong against certain weapons) super interesting as it keeps you active in searching for the best tool to use in the ever-changing situation: very thrilling stuff! Bosses were quite a cool spectacle as well. I felt like the whole ability to just warp out to homebase whenever you want was a bit confusing to come to terms with at first, but I suppose it allowed for some interesting convenience as some people might want to cash out immediately instead of more traditionally waiting for a level end. Well done!

Extar responds:

I'm glad you enjoyed the differences between the weapons, with the enemy immunities I wanted to make it so there's no one strategy that works all the way through, and so there's always at least one enemy who will give you problems regardless of which weapon you use.

Yeah, I let the players go to the hangar at any point so you can kind of upgrade as you're going, although you get more points if you save up more coins before visiting the hangar. Also, you can go back to the hangar to reset the screen if things are getting a bit too hectic :)

Thanks for the the detailed review!