FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[International PixelArt Gallery 2021]

As always with these type of collaboration galleries, I think the heart is in the right place, and I do think this gallery does a lot right in providing a very cool and informative look at some great art from some great artists.

But I'd be lying if I didn't find a lot of annoyances in terms of navigation and presentation with this gallery that really made the process more confusing than it should've been:

*The Back/Next buttons can be really weird because they don't respect history/context. Tons of times I would hit next, expecting to go to the next artist in the country I initially selected from the map, only to go to some completely different artist in a completely different country. Similarly, sometimes I would hit back to go back to an artist I viewed previously, only to end up on another artists page I've never seen. I believe this is because the buttons work off of the assumption that you're moving from the context of the artist list, not the world map or the user's history. Very confusing.

*I really wish there was a way to view the artist's name and info page more readily instead of having to page through all their artwork to get to it. Yes, you'll usually get to their profile eventually, but I don't know why their name flashes for a nano-second and disappears before I can even parse it: it'd be nice if their name was always in the corner (or appears if I hover near a part of the screen, similar to the bottom toolbar) and I could click on it to go to their info page immediately.

*I don't know why the artist buttons when you select a nation don't highlight when you hover over them: I wasn't even sure if I could select an artist specifically because of this.

*I don't know why, maybe it's on my end, but there were a lot of weird instances of flickering text and graphics.

*It's not a huge issue, but I wish it was more easily apparent which countries have content within them. Yes, they get 'pinged' by the rotating sonar animation every now and then, but why not have that alongside a natural highlighting of all of the countries with content? It can just make it frustrating to have to hunt and check every country manually one-by-one to find where everything is.

*What the heck is up with the ordering of the artist list? It seems to be pure random, making it difficult to find someone. Shouldn't it be organized in alphabetical order, or maybe grouped by country?

*Some of the buttons can be confusing: for example, I hit 'Credits' expecting to see the info of the artist I was viewing, only to have it take me to credits for the entire game. Similarly, I was just trying to go back to the world map to select something else by hitting 'Quit', only to have the entire game shut down. Yes, it seems obvious in hindsight, but I hope you can see the logic of how this can be misinterpreted.

JamesChapp responds:

Ths for the feedback. yo realy help me to improve the galery last year.

the artist list goes in the order in which they entered the gallery.
the back / next buttons follow that order.

I understand that the gallery is difficult to navigate ... somehow I think I do it unconsciously ... like having an art gallery and wanting visitors to get lost in it.

I think there are many things to improve the gallery. I really appreciate the time you took to give me all this valuable feedback.

I'm going to analyze it and see what things can be improved for next year.

For me, one of the biggest challenges of this project was that the gallery does not obscure, distract, draw attention, annoy the artists' drawings ... but at the same time ... it does highlight and help to find the artists.

Already this week I start working on the 2022 gallery.

I thank you again for the help!

Greetings

[Heroes Quest]

Mmm, I appreciate what it was going for with the whole meta-twist and such, but that's literally all the game had, and it was incredibly shallow and didn't evolve or lead to anything interesting. And without the story leading to anything new or interesting, all it had at its core was a very boring and standard platformer. Basically, this was the equivalent of a disguising a pig with lipstick to look like a hot girl: you jangled this shiny meta stuff in front of our face to distract from a very boring game.

Don't get me wrong, the game did have some nice things to it: I liked the goofy death animation ragdoll effect and will admit that the story was intriguing enough to make me want to play until the end to see what it would build up to. But I found that what it lead up to was...nothing interesting, so that made the disappointment even more palpable. Again, I understand if you feel this could be a bit unfair: back in the day a metanarrative twist like this, as simple as it is, would have been applauded for being so unique, but nowadays this is really old and well-worn territory and has been done way better.

I just felt so disappointed that it didn't do something like have the glitches form new platforms for a different route or introduce new glitched enemies or have you battle against the author more or something like that: instead all of the levels are just exactly the same boring levels as before except dipped in a really painful to look at chromatic aberration filter. You can't even choose to kill someone different to make your own choice for potential multiple endings: you can only do what you've written out for us.

Also as a further nail in its coffin, the game was very glitchy (in a non-intentional way, that is). For example, I had times where my corpse got punted too far to the right that it ended up spawning me farther ahead than I had gotten without any music playing anymore.

To quote Yahtzee on SuperHot: "Metanarrative-style fuckabouts is like the backstroke: if you start doing it before we're immersed, you just look like a twat."

[Get in Santa's Pants]

What a cute little game (well, in so much as a game about committing adultery can be cute, haha)!

There were definitely some small annoyances with the game at first, such as how the weird way the interact system was made can easily get you stuck in loops where you keep repeating dialogue when you're hitting the button just trying to get to the end of whatever they're saying and close out, and how you can't interact with people across the table they're sitting at and you have to go all-around, and other nitpicks like that. But once you get used that, I found it was a rather fun collecting/trading game with some light puzzle elements (like figuring out how to lock Ms Claus in the closet, haha). I did wish it had some more niceties like a better inventory stuff and such to keep track of it all, but I loved all the charming characters, dialogues, and wacky concept behind this.

[Peter the Ant RELOADED]

Well, it's a joke game and doesn't have much to its core, but I gotta give it credit for having so much bombastic flair over something so silly, so well done there, haha! Happy Peter the Ant day!

[Pengu Saves Christmas original]

Argh, this is a tough one for me: I do really like how charming this game looks and feels, but damn did I just find it frustrating.

There was a lot to like in the game: the levels were very cool and intricate with not only secret stars but also multiple routes and little hidden caches of candies, and there was a lot of challenging obstacles to get through with skillful use of the slides and jumps. And of course, the art and presentation of the game was very charming and bouncy.

But as hard as I tried to enjoy it, I just couldn't get into it as levels would quickly devolve into me constantly ramming into obstacles I couldn't see coming in time, slipping down unclimbable slopes and having to restart to try again, getting frustrated at never being able to stand still on tiny platforms since everything is slippery, and so on and so forth. I wanted to elegantly slide and maneuver through the cool levels and feel the rush of speed and smoothness, like you can in other fast-paced platformers like Fancy Pants, but it was impossible to do it here without having to annoyingly go through so much trial and error.

I mean, c'mon, it's been decades since Sonic came out and we still haven't learned that having a character move so fast and a camera being so close is just a recipe for disaster since you can't see obstacles ahead? And then you add to that already disastrous mix with an entire game themed around the most annoying level in every platformer: ice levels. Well, then again, everyone else seems to love Sonic so maybe I'm just an old impatient fuddy-duddy, haha.

Again, it definitely has a lot of potential and it was cool to see the game constantly getting updated and such, but at its core, it just felt like a very outdated platformer.

Stepford responds:

I definitely agree. My counter to ALL of your points is that the levels are so short, that you learn those elements pretty quickly. So you just retry and retry, getting faster and faster times. I do understand that the first time you play the level, it is frustrating, annoying and sometimes a bit of blind guessing.

Most people played the game for the speedrunning on the highscores, but if you goal is to only beat the level once and move onto the next, I could see how only the downsides of these mechanics would show. So I totally agree with your points!

Having the camera pan out based on speed should've been something we did, for everyone's sake. I have the same issue when I play Sonic and I also hate that game, but the levels are a lot longer in Sonic than in here, so :shrug:

Thanks so much for taking the time and writing out this thoughtful review! Love you, Futurecop! <3

[Tether Buds]

Wow, really nice stuff here! Felt like an all-around solid game in terms of both having an interesting concept/mechanic that was explained well and just being solidly constructed and fun to play. Excellent presentation, with both gameplay elements as well as the title screen/intro being very smooth, juicy and professional looking which gave an excellent first impression. I had a good time trying to scramble both players simultaneously to beat the clock, and I was a little surprised to see that the levels looked to be randomly generated on replays, since it felt like the obstacles were always crafted with purpose and intention, so kudos on that algorithm (or maybe I got lucky RNG, haha). Speaking of replays, that would probably be the only downside of the game at the moment, in that due to how long games can potentially get, it did kind of make me adverse to play it multiple times since it was so arduous to get back to where I got previously, especially since it felt like a game which could've been fine level-by-level with a set amount of time each instead of a survival where you need to build up time. But hey, the game was a great experience nonetheless, so nice work!

JauqGames responds:

I appreciate all of this feedback Monthly Reviewer Man, thanks for writing a nice and long review. Levels are, in fact, procedurally generated (I find it easier to make many levels this way, especially when a 48 hour game jam time limit is at play). I will admit that the gameplay is a bit slow considering the fact its a highscore-type game, but I felt it was a good pace for the more puzzle-y gameplay presented. Still the gameplay does lend itself better to a level-by-level system something I will definitely consider in a potential sequel.

[Trial of Temptation]

A pretty funny and goofy game! A little letdown that it wasn't much more than a visual novel/choose your ending, and that it didn't attempt to make any real non-obvious tricks that you could potentially fall victim to (Earthbound did this type of trial way better for example), but it was still a funny experience. Not to say that it doesn't justify being a game or anything, as I liked how there was stuff like secret endings being influenced by walking away from it all and the like which were fun to find. I also appreciated that the game offered little niceties like being able to skip the intro which helps you unlock other endings on replays without fuss. Short and sweet, but I can't help wishing it was a mallet-based platformer where you dodge temptations that I thought it was going to be at first (but I guess that's my fault, haha).

[Had]

Not too shabby: certainly not a bad game, but I have to admit I felt a little let-down compared to other Kultisti games, as unfair as that is to influence my judging. I still had a pretty good time and found the game sufficiently polished/juicy and a with a decent amount of mechanics, but I really had to force myself to finish this one since it just felt like a less interesting version of these small platform Kultisti games I've seen many times before (I know it's not exactly the same but it's just similar vibe and aesthetic). It didn't help either that I found the jumping frustrating at times since it was difficult to keep track of the characters shadow and position due to how dark and tiny everything was.

At the very least, it was interesting to see it tie back into epolevne: is this the start of the kultisti cinematic universe?

[I Wish I Were the Moon (remastered)]

Quite the interesting puzzler! Was fun to try and figure out the hidden interactables and mechanics behind this weird little game to solve the clues that were put forth. It's like an interactive painting: a nice, cute, short and sweet experience.

[ART TELEPHONE: Holiday Edition]

A bit of a weird experience. I mean, it's a nice art gallery, I suppose, but I felt like it didn't do any work to establish what the context for all of this was, it didn't present itself in an interesting or cool manner to show how it transitioned (maybe fades on top of each others drawing would've been better than slides), and I'm not sure why this is even a game instead of just a single collage art piece on the art portal. At the end of it, I just felt confused, like I was seeing someone else's inside joke. It's like, I was hoping I would get to play Newgrounds version of Gartic Phone, not just see someone's else single set of results: I'm sure everyone who participated had fun, but...