FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Chikiana Jones and the Golden Eggs]

Seems like a decent concept that was pretty fun, but a little clunky and confusing with its execution to me. I definitely did like getting past all of the various traps and obstacles and then running back through a more challenging version of them: pretty cool stuff. There was some minor jank here and there with hitbox confusion and such, but for the most part it was fun.

The weirdness came to me with the toolboxes and bridge implementation. On one hand, I feel like I understand the idea is that you can strategically choose what bridges you want to build in order to skip some challenging parts of the level. However, for the most part you are given so many toolboxes so easily that it becomes not a choice, but a foregone conclusion that you can just skip huge parts of the game. I'd prefer if the toolboxes were either scraped altogether so as to make people experience the whole game, or to be either severely limited so you need to make a strategic choice of what bridge to build and what bridge to neglect, letting you only skip one part of the level over another. Additionally, you could make it so that the only way to get toolboxes is from challenging branches of the level: then you'd need to decide if it's worth the risk to go through an optional challenge for a toolbox to make your escape easier, or if you just need to get better at the required parts of the level and not skip them. Just feels like the concept wasn't fully thought out and executed in a positive way, at least to me personally.

Steventus responds:

Hey thanks for your detailed review on the gameplay. I've had hunches on the loose ends on the gameplay but I could never pinpoint on exactly what so thank you for verifying them for me.

The strategic choice of toolbox/bridges mechanic was something I wanted to explore but I wasn't able to explore with my limited level design skills. It is a critical skill that I should focus on more if I were to do more big-picture strategic kind of games.

Appreciate your thoughts alot!

[Sunnyside vs. the Eggies]

Pretty good game! Certainly very impressive from a visual standpoint: the title screen, cinematics, feedback from shooting, all the characters, the HUD and so on and so forth just ooze charm and really create this wonderfully goofy world.

Gameplay was a bit of a mixed bag: on one hand, there were a lot of interesting enemies to fight and the escalation of difficulty definitely hooked me, and there were some cool techniques you could pull off like shooting down during a jump to hover. But on the other hand, it did feel like it was a toss-up on whether the fight was going to be fun or not for each room: some of the rooms actually allowed for a lot of fun verticality with platforms and such, and the enemies were arranged in an interesting formation, but most of the time the rooms were very boring, flat, and cramped rooms with enemies just bunched together in a messy mass: no strategy, just shoot and pray they go down. There was also some confusion with corpses: I actually thought the enemies were jumping at me some times, not realizing that they were already dead and it was just their corpse falling about randomly (maybe consider greying out corpses or having them always fly backwards from the shot).

All in all, its shortcomings to me were quite understandable given that it is a game jam game, and I still did have a lot of fun playing this stylish game!

Stepford responds:

Thanks, FutureCop!

I definitely agree with your feedback and I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to review all these games!

[Embryo Go Go!]

Pretty cool run n' gun game! It's a bit short unfortunately, but I, for the most part, enjoyed blasting my way through it. Graphically, I felt like the game was really solid, polished and cool looking, loved the feeling of feedback from shooting, I thought some of the arena encounters were pretty cool due to the good variety of enemies, and I always appreciate a cool boss fight, so cheers for that!

I definitely did have some small frustrations with the game however. I felt like the camera was way too zoomed in (or perhaps you could argue that the sprites are too large) that it just felt so claustrophobic and suffered from the old Sonic problem where you just can't see far enough ahead to see danger coming (I appreciate that you put the flashy warning signs up, but I feel like the fact that you needed to put this in should've been a clue that maybe the root of the problem could've been solved by zooming the camera out instead). Everything being so tightly packed makes me feel like this game should've been a beat em up instead of a shoot em up, as it's so close-range! I also didn't like the way the camera instantly flipped around when the character turns: there would be times I wanted to back up a bit from enemies on the right so I'd go left, but in doing so the camera would instantly whip around and I'd lose sight of the enemies (and feel a little sick). Also I feel like it barely fits the game jam theme: feels like you just wanted to make a shooter and then made the slighest inclusion of an egg to justify it, but hey, I love shooters so I'll let that slide, haha!

[Cracked Up]

Nice and chill little game! It's a rather simple and basic one with most of the puzzles being easy to figure out, but I liked moving my jiggly body around and solving the various puzzles that came up with all the berry powers, and I felt like it did pretty good at introducing new novel bits as it went on, like having to bounce berry shots off of an angle to make a ricochet shot. It's a little bit lacking in some respects: I didn't like the bland way you just disappear and have some text pop-up when you die, for example, but I suppose it's understandable for a game jam. In the end, you just gotta love the fat lil' chicken and fat lil' fox wigglin' around, haha!

Komix responds:

lol yeah I just yesterday realized that we release the game without a death sound.
Hope you stay tuned for the steam version, that will have much more polish. And later levels of the game will surely add more challenge.

[Scrambled Lines]

Well, it's definitely unfinished like you say, so I'm not sure what I can say about it that isn't obvious and already acknowledged on your end. It certainly looks like it has potential I suppose, particularly with the combat and its various special timed attacks and graphical presentation (though obviously lacking in SFX and VFX, and lacking in feedback on how much damage you're doing and taking). One thing that did drive me nuts was figuring out the controls: I have no idea why you assigned two different buttons, one for selecting a command (enter) and then another for doing the timed action for the selected attack (spacebar), when the most common solution would be to use the same button for both. Anyway, looking forward to seeing what this grows up to be eventually.

[Stargrove Scramble]

Well damn, quite the impressive game! Don't really have any feedback I can say: felt like it was really polished and professionally done in all aspects, and I enjoyed my time playing it. If I did have a complaint at all, it would probably be that the game isn't necessarily anything unique or ground-breaking, just being a simple platformer with mechanics we've seen before (kind of a cross between Kirby and Yoshi's Island), but I still found the game very fun nonetheless, so who cares! Well done on this!

[Phantom Feast]

A decent game, but it fell a little flat to me personally. It's got a good core to it and I liked the way it escalated the challenge every level by introducing new enemies and such, but even with that, I felt it just couldn't keep my engagement and ended up boring me, mostly due to the levels being overly large and empty, being without a mini-map to keep track of the remaining items you might've missed leading to potentially large and frustrating backtracking over empty terrain, most enemies being very simple to avoid, and the levels being very similar and repetitive in basic structure and visual appeal. It certainly did have some parts where it kicked it up a notch: I liked some of the mini-puzzles I encountered where I needed to lure a sliding enemy around so I could get to an item they were guarding, but overall those engaging moments were few and far between and too little too late. Some of the controls were a little frustrating as well: felt like it wouldn't respond to my turns some times. As I say, though, I can understand it might just be me being an action junky and this just ain't my cup of tea, and I still think it has some good construction to it.

[Money Man: Classic]

Quite the interesting game! Definitely has a wild aesthetic to the whole thing and gave me quite the experience with all its weird meta layers to it: the tutorial with the goofy voice-over, the game being within a PC within the game, the strange way the levels are built, and so on. It's like a double adventure, where not only am I having an adventure as the character within the game, but I'm also having an adventure myself figuring out what this game is all about.

I'm a little conflicted though: on one hand, I'm certainly intrigued by the game due to its weird, goofy and janky presentation that gives it a mysterious and amusing quality to it, but on the other hand, I feel like a jank game is still a jank game, and the frustration I felt from the controls and such might be too much for me to get used to. In essence, I'm a bit worried the game is kind of hiding, using goofy visuals and a sense of irony to excuse its sub-par execution of gameplay mechanics. At least a game like Sexy Hiking (which this game says it is inspired by) had a very unique gameplay challenge behind its jank, but this is just a basic platforming game with unresponsive controls at its core. I might be overthinking it though: I plan to continue playing to see how it all ends up anyway, and I still give it points for the wild ride it took me on. Cheers for this!

Also, that was the most blursed rendition of Wood Man I've ever heard, haha

[Rewire]

Neat puzzler! Reminds me a lot of Gunpoint, but I definitely don't mean to call this a clone or anything as I felt it has its own unique mechanics and twists it brought to the formula that really made it stand on its own feet. I got really addicted to playing this thanks to the constant escalation of difficulty and the introduction of all-new mechanics through the well-designed levels. Solid experience all around!

[Fairyland Datura: Egg]

Pretty funny adventure! The dialogue was a bit rough and tricky to understand at times (likely due to the usage of google translate as stated in the description) but I felt like I got the gist of it and found it very entertaining and goofy. Despite most of the game being just dialogue, I was nevertheless hooked as I liked seeing the various antics the hero got up to and the crazy tangents and twists and turns the story went off on. I also liked the way the game would pull the rug out from under you with some surprises like the sword fight with the child: I knew I shouldn't have pressed the button, haha! Anyway, looking forward to seeing the conclusion in the future!

Vonka responds:

Thank you, I will fix everything in the future, I will add it, and there will be a good translation into English)