FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pent's Wacky, Zany Road Trip to Adulthood]

Wow, this is quite the departure from your usual grim and chill horror vibes that your games typically deal with, but hey, it's a welcome surprise nevertheless!

Overall this is a grand ol' adventure that I enjoyed very much, filled not only with a variety of challenges from mind-bending puzzles to deadly obstacle courses, but also loads of goofy characters and amusing interactions. There's just so much wackiness crammed in here that you just can't stop!

It's not without its frustrations, of course. Driving the car through those cramped corridors can be particularly annoying with how wonky and punishing the hitboxes are. I don't like how weird the save system is. I wish I had a sprint button for all this backtracking. The humor isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, and for those it is, there can always be some hits and misses (for example, I'm down for references to Trumpet Guy, but it might be played out for others, haha). And I spent an embarrassingly long time on the first line-drawing puzzle only to realize how easy it was eventually (I blame the hint guy psyching me out!)

But in spite of all that, I'm glad to have cleared that puzzle and got the adventure going!

[THE SUBSPACE EMISSARY COLLAB]

Pretty neato art collab! I was pleased to see that I got exactly what I expected looking at the title/thumbnail, being a very Smash-esque trophy/gallery view with all the neato bells-and-whistles I could want, from the authentic sounds and 3D rotating art, to various quality-of-life features like clickable artist profile/social links and the different categories for viewing. I can always wish for more, like being able to click on the art and be able to rotate it around as I like, or an actual subspace emissary game where you collect the art, but what is here is perfectly acceptable. Nice work, and nice art!

ElRandomGMD responds:

U are a legend :D

[LITTLE ADVENTURE FANTASY LAND]

Goddamn, y'all are nuts sometimes, you know that? In a good way, of course. Don't you dare go hollow!

Game is certainly quite the wacky experience and boasts some impressive quality on all fronts: not only is the concept of traversing an environment by strategically scaling up body parts very unique and very fun to get skilled at managing, but the game has so much energy, charm and depth to its presentation with loads of voice lines, special effects, challenging enemies and level layouts, secrets, and so on and so forth. Like a good comedian, it's one of those weird games where it's so funny that it feels so natural, like no effort was put in, but clearly a lot was. A fantastic experimental game jam result all around!

It was certainly very memorable, but I'll admit that it wasn't all good memories. The game can be quite frustrating with how random and janky it can feel, mostly from the ragdoll limbs constantly getting stuck in places and throwing off your intended plans. And speaking as an old man, the high energy that this game boasts can be a bit too much at times: the ever-forward momentum and traps and screaming and augh I need to take, like, a week-long break before I try and play again!

[[ROOOM]]

Hrmm, I think I understand what this game might be trying to do, and it's certainly rather unique and experimental, but I just didn't enjoy myself with this, unfortunately.

From what I can gather, the core conceit of it is that you're uncovering tiles to try and find the exit, but every tile uncovered has a chance to be something else: sometimes it can be helpful treasure, other times it can be deadly enemies. In a way, I could see it playing around with risk/reward a lot: do you just try and speed through to find the exit while ignoring enemies, or do you play very cautiously? If you find the exit, do you risk uncovering more, hoping to find treasure before continuing? The spin the wheel modifiers, new enemies and tile types, and so on also add some excitement to the mix.

Unfortunately while that sounds decent enough in theory, the execution left me bored and confused. The scenarios I posted above don't work because there aren't core elements like a timer or score to provide any sort of motivation or guidance to take risks. Many of the enemies were unthreatening statues, and many of the power-ups like omni-vision just completely delete any sort of fun as they are a get-out-of-jail free card. I dunno, I just couldn't get into it as it all felt pointless.

If that wasn't bad enough, the game also just had a lot of annoyances getting in the way. For example, it's cool if you pick up a gun like the railgun where you can blast enemies and clear big swathes of the map, but lord have mercy if you pick up a damn telegun: you're begging for a button to switch back to your fists as you're left uncovering the map at a tediously slow rate until you finally run outta ammo.

As said before, it does feel like an interesting experiment which is good for a game jam, so kudos for taking the risk: it just didn't work out this time for me.

[Bastard Aliens]

Wow, what a fantastic little arcade experience! Feels just as fun, juicy and addictive as any of the classics like Tapper and such, and I enjoyed the simple yet fast-paced typing action!

If I were to have any complaints, it'd be:

*Sometimes you get unlucky enough to have brothers constantly getting sucked up and you're just kind of sitting there twiddling your thumbs. Sure you're gonna get points for it, and perhaps it's necessary as something to keep you on your toes, but still, kinda wish the algorithm always keeps me in action, or maybe you could press some sort of button to push the brother up faster, like how you can stack tetris blocks faster if you want, haha.

*As the waves go on, there end up being a lot of UFOs that blow up at the end and it can get so loud it hurts my ears. Might be nice if the programming was changed so that if multiple explosions (or sound effects in general) happen at the exact same time, it just plays one explosion sound effect.

*And the biggest complaint being that I wish it kept escalating even more with harder words and more elements to look out for to keep you engaged and fighting for your life!

[Striving Perfection: Scalable Dreams]

Huh, quite the interesting game you got here! The whole concept of matching bullet sizes to enemy sizes made for some interesting and intense combat, and I loved the goofy world you've built with so many amusing characters and interactions, as well as little secrets for the observant. Overall I enjoyed myself and thought it was a nice short-n-sweet adventure!

First impressions were a bit rough though, I'll admit, as the game starts out with a combat scenario that's already pretty hard, but which is made all the more difficult because of the player only having one heart (because they haven't been taught the chimichanga mechanic yet), enemies appearing from off-screen to insta-sneak-attack you if you wander too close to the edges, and other small annoyances like bullets hitting obstacles when they look like they shouldn't.

Speaking of the chimichangas, I didn't really like that whole aspect of having to gamble a consumable for health. It's certainly unique and I like that exploration is rewarded, but since you're never sure when the game is going to end, most people will inevitably hoard them and inevitably get frustrated when they can't pass a fight without taking a single hit. And if you do gamble on using them, it feels so bad when you didn't even need it and thus feel like you wasted it, or even worse, if you lose the battle and then have to try it again without any because they're lost forever!

Small thing that I only noticed in retrospect: because of the uncapped fire-rate and the ability to still hurt enemies with any type of bullet, it can actually be way more efficient to kill everyone with tiny bullets instead of, you know, playing the game as intended. It's nice that the game provides some wiggle room in damaging enemies, but I don't feel like it was balanced well.

[BABEL]

Pretty cool game! Reminds me a lot of other escort games like Gyromite, so I had a natural affinity to this concept. Overall, I enjoyed myself and was impressed at the juicy effects like the musical transitions. Only real complaint I had was that the game ended right when I was getting into it! But hey, leaving the crowd hungry for more is pretty much the ideal result for a game jam, so well done in that regard!

[UNWORTHY]

Hmm, this feels like an unfinished draft for a Hades clone. There's some interesting ideas in here, but none of them feel like they got time to coalesce into anything.

For example, the combat could be interesting, but right now it's too easily exploitable with the way you can snipe enemies from afar with impunity because they are too dumb to pathfind their way to you, and even if they could, it begs for more art-related mechanics, like having to draw symbols or encircle enemies with paint to attack.

I don't feel like the whole aspect of having to draw a picture while going through the maze is well-integrated either. There are some token attempts at having godly powers operate based off of ink levels, but that doesn't compel me to draw anything, especially when I doubt the game has an accurate judging apparatus at the end, and when the drawing tools feel bad and only work when you move the mouse slowly.

With a bit more time I'm sure this could've been something nice, but I suppose them's the breaks for getting too ambitious with a game jam prototype. I admire the chutzpah, at least!

[ZAH'S REVENGE 3]

I'm never quite sure how games like this are going to turn out! My instincts scream at me to not bother because it's just gonna be some weird low-effort style-over-substance nonsense packed with in-jokes, but another part of me is a hopeless romantic who hopes to see some enchanting outsider art like Cruelty Squad or EYE Divine Cybermancy or what-have-you.

Well, I gave it my best go, and while it did surprise me at the start with how much I got into it from all the secrets and goofy interactions you could find, eventually it just got a bit too repetitive and weird for me to bother continuing. Didn't help either that it hurt my eyes to look at it! I think the straw that might've broke the camel's back was falling down that toilet pit where there's no way out except to restart the game. Fear and Hunger can get away with it, but not this!

[A City Capture]

Huh, this is quite the interesting one! I'll admit my first impression of it isn't the greatest: the controls for both the player and the frame are very finicky, the stage layouts are very intimidating at first with so many ways to go but with a tiny time limit, there are lots of frustrating obstacles that get in the way like barely-visible spikes and seeker drones that come from off-screen, and I don't like having to go through a forced tutorial before I can set my options or replay the game.

Nevertheless, in spite of these myriad issues, I thought the concept of racing to find a matching spot on the map for a picture was very intriguing and somehow found myself getting addicted to mastering the controls and beating level after level! In a way, this is a pretty good game jam result, in that while it's very rough in terms of execution, there's definitely some gold buried underneath here that's begging to be mined and polished so that it shines brilliantly in the sun!