FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Splat Chicken]

Had a bit of a rough start, due to the weird controls, difficulty of getting the double jump to work consistently, and very harsh gravity/fast movement that prompts a lot of mistakes, but I must say that I did enjoy how the game escalated as it went on with the introduction of all-new mechanics, as well as all sorts of interesting puzzles that build upon previously shown notions: for example, when I saw that you could solve a puzzle by throwing an egg across a spike pit onto a button by bouncing it off another egg yolk half-way through the spike put, it felt like a cool eureka moment among the many other eureka moments I had in my playthrough. I definitely think this game does need a bit of smoothing out as the controls/physics did make it unnecessarily difficult and inconsistent to solve puzzles, but I felt the game was pretty cool at its heart, so well done in that regard.

(Also as a side note, maybe chill on the screenshake and chromatic aberration: I know people think it looks cool but this implementation was a bit overboard and just hurt my eyes, haha)

STANNco responds:

Thanks for the feedback! The controls are as they are by design, but I could definetely have taught them better. I'll try to improve on that for next ventures!! And the RGB split stuff, i'm sorry to hurt your eyes lol. I'll give some options another time

[Swimming Leningrad]

As it stands right now, it feels like a decent alpha prototype for a Fire Emblem/Advance Wars-esque tactical game, but as an actual game it feels severely lacking. The game is functional, but just very basic with no satisfying feedback or special effects to the attacks and other actions (it doesn't even have a victory screen when you beat a level, for example). It also doesn't help that the game is very slow and middling due to the low damage numbers and the small trickle of money which prevents you from being able to experiment with buying other units. There was also a lack of any interesting abilities, and no story/objective to it all to hook me. Again, I think this could be something decent as it has all of the core structure necessary for a tactics game (for example, I liked being able to preview enemy move distances by clicking on them and such) but it just needs more time in the oven to have something special or interesting about it. (As a side note, I am coming at this from a single-player perspective only, and I did not try multiplayer).

ProsciuttoMan responds:

Very fair, I absolutely agree with most of this.
Honestly, if there was more time I think a lot of this would've been addressed (barring plot because I don't think we ever did any work on writing anything), but as it stands I think it was a really fun first step for the crew, since this was everybody's first jam game I believe.

[Into the Deep Web]

Very impressive game! Not much for me to say specifically as it felt like everything about this game was firing on all cylinders: cool concept, charming old-school windows graphics and aesthetic, neat music and sounds, satisfying combat and progression, all with a lot of polish to it that gave it an overall professional feel. For a game where the majority of the combat is technically idle, I felt like it had so much strategy and fun to it nonetheless which really wowed me. Well done!

Having said that, I did encounter a weird bug where my stun dice didn't work on the pill enemy despite working on everyone else: his bar turned yellow and stars were floating above his head, but his bar kept depleting and he was attacking me like usual: not sure what was going on there as I don't think he had a special resistance to it or anything like that.

jontopielski responds:

Thanks for the kind words! I'll look into the bug, thanks for letting me know

[Cloud Bashers DX]

Hmm, quite the interesting game for me that I'm quite divided on. Game has a lot of ups and downs to it: right from the title screen you can tell its a game of contrasts, with on one hand it having a cool announcer and animated hand-drawn logo and buttons to get you pumped up, and on another hand the composition of it all on this bland blue background being a bit of an eye-sore, and that extends to the bland menus as well contrasting with the cool player animations and so on. Gameplay is definitely quite interesting with it being a very active and crazy rhythm to it all with rapid-fire decision making, but man did it take a bit to warm up to it, especially with the clunky tutorial which, while teaching you somewhat what to do with white/storm clouds, doesn't even teach you what to do with rain/hail/etc clouds to fight bosses and such when the time comes. The special mechanics for rain/hail clouds that differed for every level and the unique bosses were definitely cool and novel, but it was a lot to take in and memorize before each level and I might've preferred if the cloud powers were just the same and only the bosses differed in unique ways to keep it more intuitive. I think its an alright game once you get used to it, but I feel kinda lucky that I didn't drop it since it has a real rough start and odd design aspects to it that are difficult to grasp.

[Nest Quest]

Pretty impressive monkey ball clone that was quite fun to play, but ultimately a little lacking in some respects in comparison, unfortunately! Obviously it is still very impressive for a game jam and plenty fun with its levels and mechanics, but I couldn't help but be a bit frustrated at times. The way the camera would flip around was confusing and nauseating at times, especially when you reverse and it does a completely sudden 180 forcing you to switch your movement quickly, the graphics were very muddy and gross for the floors which made it difficult to keep track of everything as it all gets lost a fog, and the physics were a bit wonky with me slipping off or colliding in weird ways, even getting stuck inside platforms at times. Again, still a cool experience and I'd like to see if I can beat it all, but a bit challenging in ways that's not just from the intended levels themselves, I'd say, haha.

[Red Egg Redemption]

Haha, certainly a bit of a nostalgic game for me as I am reminded of a lot of similar flash games from back in the day, but having said that, I felt like this game was decent as a concept, but lacking its it execution here. Again, it's not that bad as a concept, but as it stands the game is incredibly easy and very lazy, especially when it comes to the scrawls that barely represent a victory/game over screen and the lackluster levels. If there was maybe a short time limit for each level which pushed you to search for the egg in rapid fire succession, or if there was more variations in levels like a moving egg that you have to try and hit as it hides behind other eggs, or a red egg hidden amongst a bunch of differently shaded red eggs, maybe then it could be quite fun and novel.

[Puzzle Sigma]

Finally, a worthy successor to Number Munchers! Definitely a really cool concept that is executed very nicely: love the amount of polish on display with the little visual/audio effects for moving around and solving equations, and I love the level design and how it introduces concepts to the player very intuitively and ramps up the challenge and mechanics bit-by-bit to keep the player hooked. All I'd say it's missing is maybe a save system since some of these puzzles can be a doozy to do in one sitting, but in general, this is an all-around grand slam!

jontopielski responds:

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback!

[PRODUCER (2021) - DEMO]

Decent text adventure! Graphics and general aesthetic were very interesting with this weird grungy collage feel to it, though I felt sometimes it worked against itself since it made it very difficult to parse (and the way the font would get chromatic aberrated at times made it physically painful to read). Also while the game has some cool reactivity and variability between playthroughs (reading the letters in a different order for example) it also had some weird consequences if you did things out of order like opening the window/cleaning and such for the apartment. Not to rain on it, but it did ultimately feel a bit lacking to me: not necessarily bad or anything as it was still a positive experience, but it didn't really have anything special that stood out to me that hooked me into playing more. The most special aspect it has at its moment is it graphics, but as interesting as those are, they actually made me a bit conflicted as stated before with its damaging its readability. Without that, its 2nd best attribute is its humor, and while it is not too shabby with its funny dialogue and amusing events, I dunno if it's enough to make it stand out from other visual novels. I understand I might be being a bit unfair and holding it up to a higher standard than necessary based on previous entries from you which I felt were a bit more interesting. Again, though, it was still a positive experience and I am still interested enough to see where this goes a bit more: just not sure how much longer.

By the way, I do wish it also had some quality of life changes, such as hitting a button during a text scrawl to speed it up, and the ability to resize the window to be larger because playing this game now is like playing a game for ants: so tiny, haha!

StuffedWombat responds:

those are valid points!
thanks for taking the time to make them.

the chromatic abberation will be turn off-able in the final release and u can press F for fullscreen :)

(also what do you mean by weird consequences for opening window etc? would be dope if u could DM me the specific thing u found weird, bc i dont really know what exactly u mean rn^^)

[Death's Clutch]

Cool horror game! Thought you did a pretty good job at building up a creepy atmosphere: the surprise at the start, the beating sounds of the eggs as you get closer in proximity, the crackle when you accidently shine your light on an egg, the anxiety of going without your light and relying on the monitors to guide you, the music and how it shifts when the shit fits the fan, all in all creepy stuff! The graphics were decent too, though they could be a bit annoying at times: due to the wonkiness of the way the 2d sprites flatten or rotate in 3d space, it was really confusing at times to tell where things are actually located (I had real difficulty picking up the keycard on a floor for example, and eggs were weird to locate at times). This is a minor quibble, but I did find it a bit annoying that C was the flashlight button: why not utilize F which is the more obvious choice and easier to hit without twisting my fingers off the movement keys? Anyway, I wasn't able to make it all the way through yet, but I'm definitely interested in getting back in as you seemed to keep escalating the mechanics as I got farther, so well done (and thanks for the save/load feature)!

[Enoki - Classic]

Not bad as a promising proof of concept or a vertical slice, but it ultimately felt a little lacking in its current state for me. At its core, I liked the way the character moved around all blob-like, bouncing and deforming and such: had a very satisfying feeling of momentum and squash/stretch to it all. But as satisfying as the movement was, it couldn't keep my attention forever, and the game didn't really offer much else to interest me as I went deeper and deeper. I kept expecting the game to escalate by introducing new biomes or enemies or more obstacles but it never did in all the distance I traveled, leading to me just getting bored. If, on the off-chance it does actually have new events or changes that occur the deeper you go, than I'd say that those events should come sooner as it felt like it just dragged on. Furthermore, I felt like the splitting mechanic was really underutilized as it was only used to just make it through forced checkpoints, and I hated the unsatisfying way you just jarringly reform instantly with no animation to it. I really didn't find the collectibles to be satisfying or enticing to collect at all either. Having said all that, I still feel like there is lots of potential here and I'd love to see it worked on further!