FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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! :)

[Roller Riot]

Pretty groovy game! Starts out a bit slow, but I loved, despite its simple controls, how challenging and trance-like it could get when you're dealing with all sorts of enemies coming at you. The art is cool and it feels quite slick to beat the crap out of everyone, and I definitely appreciated the sheer amount of enemy variety that kept increasing as the waves went on.

The only downside I would say at the moment is that the game felt a bit dry: don't get me wrong, it does have a kind of cool neon aesthetic to it all, and it's very addicting to beat up everyone, but I would love if there were more juicy and cool visual/sound effects to the combat to really make building up a combo feel satisfying. It just felt like the game was rather muted in terms of feedback: there was no feeling of rising pitch as you get closer to frenzy, no significant change to your attack effects while in frenzy, and no cool feedback when hitting a rocket or projectile back at enemies, among other things. The game was also a little clunky in terms of controls: trying to punch after missing would eat my inputs a lot even when I thought I waited long enough to recover, and target prioritization would mess up at times like when I try to hit a rocket and a person overlapping (and it doesn't go for the rocket). Also, and this is a bit of a personal one, but I didn't like the inclusion of these weird superfluous micro-transactiony details like powerups and some sort of weird daily reward spinwheel: I don't feel like those are necessary at all and just detract from the experience and balance.

Overall I still think the game is quite fun and addicting, but just feel like it could use a bit more, pardon the pun, "punch" to really sell it and make it feel even more enthralling.

[GuraQuest(Tako Takeover Update)(Also Old)]

I already really liked the first edition of GuraQuest, and this just builds on it with even more content including all-new obstacles like the water zone and mechanics like the pizza slice, so just like before, I had a blast! I especially like that it is a really solid precision platformer that doesn't rely on its hololive affiliation to carry itself, as the core gameplay is solid, varied, challenging and above all else, fun!

[Peeing Strawberry Clock]

Well, it's a goofy little gag game, so I can't say much about it. I did find it a bit confusing in some aspects: I thought I needed to wait till the animation of peeing was done before I can click again, but it looks like it counts every mouse click you do no matter what despite it not giving you immediate feedback that is the case. Also, I expected to be able to click on the toilet itself to flush, but instead you need to click on the text prompt. Got a few chuckles out of it due to the interesting trophy hunting.

[PIPIKO]

Pretty neat game! In general, I like how it feels for the most part: shooting was fun and satisfying with the knockback and other feedback, movement felt smooth and I liked the variation in enemies and interesting bosses. There were some confusing aspects like how it never tells you that you can reload with R, shooting wooden creates have them explode with satisfying gibs while enemies and spike blocks just lazily disappear, and I had no idea those weird loot chests were chests in the first place. But overall, nothing too major to gripe about in regards to the core gameplay feel: felt good to blast through everything.

Where the game kind of fell down for me was the design. It didn't take too long for the levels to feel quite repetitive: I thought they were actually randomly generated at first until I replayed to notice they were hand-crafted. While I did say I liked the enemy variety, it started to feel a bit superficial since every enemy could be easily stun-knockback-locked by gunfire, even when they look like they shouldn't (such as the rhinos). Among other things, this led to the levels feeling much the same, with the only major difference between worlds being the background art superficially changing. It didn't help either that it felt like I could never get any neat weapons or power-ups to spice things up, since they either a) rarely dropped, b) barely had any notable effect or c) were too expensive to get from the small amount of money you can acquire (and the fact that you can feel forced to spend the money on health since you only have one life, trading possible fun for boring survival). And while we're on that, not to mimic AVGN, but seriously, "one life? no continues? what were they thinking!?"

I still think the game overall has some promise and is on the right track, but it just felt a little lacking: not a great game, but a good game. Feels like a case of a game that has been stretched too thin compared to what its content can deliver in order to artificially extend game length.

[Punch It]

It's ok as a prototype for a simple Simon Says/Bop It game, but unfortunately I found it very lacking. The gameplay mechanics are technically there, sure, and there is some fun to be had in looking at the goofy visuals you've setup for the successful attacks. But as it is now, this game is just too dry and gets old really fast. C'mon, this is Newgrounds, home of beating up people games, and if you're gonna have someone get beaten up, you've got to give it more satisfying feedback: where are the explosions of blood and teeth for every punch that splatter in all sorts of directions, where is the piled-up damage as their face warps from bruises and black eyes and the wall behind them gets painted red, where are the variations in sound, reactions and attacks? Not only that, but where is the personality: we don't even get a reason to hate this Howie Mandel looking guy through a brief intro or some quips/sass while beating him up, and we don't even get a chance to maybe dress him up to match someone we do hate. Beating up Zeus in God of War felt great since there was a lot of build-up and juice to it: this doesn't have any of that for me. Maybe I'm thinking about it too hard, but I just felt like this game could be so much more: for me, you gotta juice it or lose it (a good video about game feel to watch sometime).

WeirdRikert responds:

Thanks for the pointers. This was mostly an experiment with getting an RPGmaker game to work in browser. But, I definitely want to take all the feedback and update the game :)

[Teleport Jumper]

Another solid puzzler as usual! Ticked all the boxes for me: neat concept that is enhanced by the introduction of new mechanics and obstacles at a good pace, steady increase in difficulty with some neat stand-out moments, intuitive design through visuals and sound: well done designing this! You've heard it all before, but what I can say, you do some consistent work.

[Pipe Skull]

A nice little puzzler! Felt like it did everything that a great puzzler should do for the most part: had some interesting mechanics as a concept to work off of, with levels that slowly increase in difficulty and complexity, all while having some interesting eureka or gotcha moments. Man, when it started introducing those spin tiles and such the game really made me pause to think, haha. Only negatives I could think of is that it felt a bit annoying that you can't move with arrows or WASD as a possible option from clicking on every tile you want to to move to, and I did feel like the need for a tile that you stand on to build was a little vestigial or unnecessary: not bad or anything, but I just felt like it would work fine if you could just build no matter what tile you're standing on. Solid work overall!

[SMUGGLER (30XX)]

A little bit of a strange game to grasp, but in the end it was a fun, goofy little adventure with some hidden depth to it! On first glance, while it was fun to go around and talk to all the various weirdos occupying the station, laughing at their dialogue, it did feel a bit pointless as it all boiled down to just grabbing the erdium and skedaddling to face-off against the checkpoint guard. But lo and behold, it turns out there are actually a lot of interesting endings you can acquire by typing in responses you learn from clues all around the station. Felt quite clever figuring that out, but I do wonder how many people stick with it enough to notice all of them since it can be a bit unclear (though I suppose that is the appeal). Anyway, this game was a pleasant surprise! By the way, as a side note, many kudos for implementing text skip if you hit a button during dialogue: always like it when a game includes that little touch!