FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[ULTRA FORCE: OBLITERATION]

Really felt conflicted on this! On one hand, the game looks and feels very stylish and cool: the intro was really neat as were the slick door transitions between screens, the graphics were low-fi but had good icons and general presentation, and in terms of gameplay, the guns felt very punchy, the enemies were varied with interesting attacks, there were neat power-ups like the extra drone and the planes felt so smoothly animated and controlled.

But on the other hand, I felt like the intro went by way too fast for me to read and could benefit from some voice overs to punch it up, the door transitions were oddly muted and would benefit from a satisfying bzzz-ka-chunk-vrr sound to give it some extra oomph, the graphics were incredibly bland and boring at times with repeating the same background over and over and enemies being so sparse to not allow for the usual fireworks, the power-ups were unsatisfying as most of them were just stat increases that are barely noticeable or only noticeable if you luck into getting a certain gun, and most of the enemies felt boring and badly paced to fight as there were not put into interesting waves or formations to fight. In general, it felt like while the game has a good and slick core look and feel to it, it just felt like the gameplay overall was very boring, slap-dash and had no sense of progression to it, making it all feel meaningless in the end.

Looking at the constraints of the jam now I can understand that maybe it was unfortunately hamstrung by size limitations, but I just want to give my opinion coming in as someone who isn't aware of that. I'd love to see this or another shooter by you all come out that is more fleshed out since this does show a lot of promise!

Stepford responds:

Cheers, Futurecop! I do agree that the game is a bit slow at times and the upgrade system can be frustrating due to how niche they can be at times - but yeah. We wanted to add different backgrounds and level variety, but we ran out of time and filesize.

I appreciate you taking the time to play all these games. <3

[Ann]

Reviewed this back when it was just a demo and I played the piano level. My thoughts back then were a bit mixed: I felt like the game was quite good in terms of presentation, as the cutscenes and graphics were quite impressive and the game had some good scares and atmosphere with an interesting little story, but I also felt like the game leaned too heavily on trial-and-error death sequences where you unfairly just have to die over and over to get through as there was no way you could prepare for anything coming, and that not only feels frustrating, but makes the game significantly less scary since death becomes so moot.

Now having played this, I went through chapter 2 with the sculptures and I was a bit more positive on my impression. I thought the chapter had some interesting story elements, a cool puzzle to solve, a neat chase sequence with some new mechanics, and overall a better case of feeling like I could potentially go through it without dying once since most of the death traps and obstacles are better telegraphed (meaning that even if I do die, it doesn't feel as unfair). Overall I do still feel like the game has already been compromised by leaning too heavily on deaths (and not even making the deaths varied and entertaining), but I can begrudgingly accept that maybe it's just not for me (after all, people love games like Ao Oni and such) and I do think there is some good effort put into this, and I'm tempted to go back and finish the rest to see if it keeps improving.

[Louie Loudmouth]

An interesting concept, but not much to see at the moment. I was a little confused at the start since I didn't even realize that there was a speech cloud mechanic to work with, which ended up getting me stuck and frustrated. Once I did find that out, though, I thought it was pretty neat and enjoyed making it to the end as it was quite the challenge and had a charming aesthetic. Unfortunately, it felt like it a) was over too fast before it got really interesting with its mechanics and b) got too difficult too fast what with requiring very precise edge jumps and such right at the start instead of letting the player warm-up (bit of a case where it felt like the game was made unreasonably hard to stretch out its short amount of content haha). Still, would like to see this come back in a more polished, expanded version!

[BIMSY DREAMS]

Oh man, I had a blast with this! I got so addicted to playing through the various microgames you've set up, and why wouldn't I: I felt like they were so varied in terms of novelty, intuitive to grasp at a glance while still being challenging, and above all else, incredibly charming and comical in their presentation and outcomes. Just couldn't help but play with a big smile on my face, especially when I saw the endless shuffle levels at the end. The only thing I'd say that it's lacking is difficulty: at the moment it unfortunately seems like the games only differ in speed and not any other aspect like changing/tightening the variables, which could make it a bit repetitive in long-term. Still, kudos to making this!

Also I keep getting to like 99 in Bimsy Remix and then losing, argh I want that damn medal!!!11

[Isometric Room Collab]

Pretty cool collab! I not only like travelling through the collection of art on display here, but I also like that you try to spice it up with some minor side objectives like a scavenger hunt and other cool niceties like the map screen that keeps track of your current location. Overall it is quite nice, though I did feel like there was some sort of unfortunate damages done in creating the collage as some art pieces look to have been damaged/pixelated when being shrunk to fit or whatever, which along with some of the animated characters sticking out like a sore thumb gave it a bit of a clunky uncoordinated look. I really wish there was a zoom function as well so I could look at the art more closely.

Other than that, there were some minor confusing aspects, like how due to imprecise hitboxes you can hover your mouse over the top of a room (but still within it) and it will think you're hovering over the room above it. I didn't even realize I could click on animated characters to have them talk. The rooms are a bit oddly titled as well, for example, saying "floor 3" when it is still the 2nd floor (more accurately you'd probably say "room 3, floor 2" and so on). Also, I wish there were some more controls to allow you to navigate the art, like maybe being able to click/drag or to use mousewheel to scroll/move instead of only being able to use the arrow keys.

progamer09 responds:

glad you enjoyed it

[lineoff]

Quite the nice, simple game! It's not the most complex or long-lasting game or anything like that, being a rather simple score-attack survival game, but I felt like it was very intuitive, challenging and addicting, mostly due to the smooth game feel and animations, particularly the satisfying squash and stretch of jumping! The only downside I had was that it felt a little frustrating at times to pick-up the dust, as the hitboxes were deceptively smaller than I expected, and I also wish that the results screen would give you a bit more statistics, like letting you know your previous high score and how long you lasted.

[Sinister Rites]

Always nice to see a little point-and-click adventure like this. Seems like it could be quite interesting, but I felt like it was a bit overly linear without much exploration or player choice to it from what I saw, and the story didn't hook me with anything substantial at the beginning, so it didn't keep my attention for that long. Characters and their dialogue were a bit odd and comical at times too which kind of hurt the horror mood, again taking me out of the experience. Still, not so bad while it lasted and it was a bit of fun to read through all the various lore that comes up.

[Moomoo's Maple Mishap (First Demo)]

Seems like it had some potential, but I found it a bit rough currently. To be fair, some of my complaints could be attributed to it being a demo, so apologies for that.

I found the player character quite charming with its great animations and good feeling movement: rolling to gain speed and go up slopes as well as jumping to crush enemies felt quite good and satisfying. My favorite part was the boss fight at the end: felt like the boss was quite intuitive and had a lot of cool varied attacks which felt good to counteract. Unfortunately, while some of the enemies actually had nice animations to them similar to the player, other enemies were incredibly bland placeholders with no animation or even art from what I could tell. The world both in terms of physicality and story felt quite bland as well with everything being so blocky and just floating in space.

Overall my major complaints go to the overall design of the game. I felt like the most unique aspect could be the rolling mechanics, but it never felt there were many good opportunities to use it, as the vast majority of the levels consisted of constant jumps and pits which made it too dangerous to roll. I felt confused at how you only allow the player to have a single heart and force them to collect while giving them all three hearts for the boss fight: feels strange to force such a difference and frustrating to start with such a deficit. While I think that the world has some interesting obstacles to contend with, it just felt very slap-dash and random without much flow to it, with the different routes just making me feel confused at where to go. And for the most part, I didn't feel like there was any sort of unique or defining concept that really made the game stand out to me with an identity. At the moment, it just feels like this is a mish-mash of several aspects that don't really gel with each other: hopefully in a final version you can decide what aspects to focus on and what to cut.

[Pewt 'em Up!]

I think there is a pretty decent game buried in here, but it felt like it really got off with a bad start to me and was difficult to continue from that. There definitely is some cool aspects to the game: the music can get everything pretty hype, there's a neat story element flowing through it, and the visuals, while basic, do have a bit of a nice flair to them with explosions and such. I always appreciate a shooter, so I really wanted to enjoy myself with this.

But man, I just hated, in terms of visual and sound, how slow and bland the ships fly around the screen and fire bullets. I know this is how some games work, like Gradius or Raptor or whatever, where you start off as very basic and build-up your power bit-by-bit. But while I can accept it in those games because the gameplay is still fun and exciting straight from the start, in this game it just felt unacceptable with how limp and weak you start as a player, and how tedious of a grind it is to get up to the point of feeling good. I think its a crucial example of how the journey needs to feel just as good as the destination.

I appreciate that the game tries to entice the player through the escort mission: a friend appears and shows not only how cool your ship could get, but what epic fights you could eventually be happening. I feel though that it took way too long for that to happen in the first place, and the feeling doesn't take too long to dissipate, as the missions before and after that are incredibly slow and boring, with the vast majority of time spent shooting rocks instead of having cool dogfights with enemies. I dunno, maybe you can call me impatient.

Also, as a minor side-note, it would be nice if the upgrade menu could have the info for items pop-up when you hover over them, instead of having to click on an item just to see the info for it, and then back out if it isn't what you want after all.

Kitadashi responds:

Thank you for your feedback! 🍀

[Radiance Hearts]

Pretty cool game! I quite like the whole coop nature of the gameplay where you are two characters helping each other out by either splitting up or combining your strengths. I especially loved the tutorial sequence where the gameplay and story are intertwined with the narrator simultaneously teaching you the game while introducing the characters and lore: charming stuff. Definitely my favorite part was the boss fight: felt like it had a good variation of attacks that were fun and satisfying to battle through. The gameplay did feel a little repetitive at times and could use some more interesting set-pieces and new mechanics to vary it up, but I had a great time and would love to see the continuation of this and see how it develops.

The big downside for me was the lack of sound effects! There was such a lack of sound in this game that it was always incredibly jarring when it would show up, like how it plays a sound when the boss slams down but not for its various other attacks. I'd almost suggest that the game should just have no sound at all and only have music instead if you're going to be that lacking, but ideally I would say you should have sound effects more prominently for the various actions you and the enemies can take (movement, jumping, attacks, etc). Other issues were some minor things like controls where I would have difficulty getting a rising lumi (super jump) to go off consistently despite my best efforts, and that the combat could be simultaneously too hard (difficult to dodge the waves of bullets from normal enemies, and way too difficult to dodge the boss when it spins multiple times) and too easy (why dodge bullets when you can easily swing your sword to stun-lock all enemies from being able to attack).

Yword responds:

Thank you so much, FuturecopLGF. Sorry about the audio and control issues, and thanks so much for the feedback! :)