FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Santa's Impossible Mission]

Hah, quite the cute little game you got here! It's quite short and pretty rough and janky in a lot of respects, but there was a nice variety of games to keep things interesting, the scribbly papercraft presentation was very whimsical, and in general the game exudes these innocent and wholesome childhood vibes. I was really pleased by some of the charming little touches that you took the effort to put in, like the way failure in the etch-a-sketch minigame has the tablet get shaken to reset it, or the multiple forms you transform into during the sneaking mission, haha!

In particular, this reminds me a lot of games I've seen from ThePeterson, especially in regards to the art style!

[Wallpaper 2.0 Collab]

Hmm, I don't want to be mean as I think the intention is good in making these collabs and there's a lot of great art here. But, for that very reason that there's a lot of great art and artists that deserve appreciation here, I want the presentation that this collab offers to make the art all the more appealing. When looking at this, all I could think of was Gordon Ramsey's famous words: "it's fucking RAW!"

Forget displaying the art in a very creative or interesting fashion that could garner attention, this presentation is the absolute bare minimum that could be done to present the art and nothing more. It is completely lacking any sort of quality-of-life features as well as any bells and whistles to make the experience appealing. Seriously, the official playlist you made for the art is miles above this: at least there you can easily access the artist profiles to see their other works or follow them, as well as being able to see the art itself in a larger view and download it, which makes sense for a wallpaper.

Again, the art is lovely and I love the sense of community and cooperation that comes from events like this: I just think that more effort needs to be put into the presentation to match the large effort that the artists put in when making their wonderful pieces. It's all out of balance right now! But hey, better luck in the future and I hope to see more cool projects like this.

ColorfulCeleste responds:

Honestly I absolutely agree. I really feel like it would've worked better if scratch was only used as a last resort to package it (it really isn't too difficult to build a gallery now and days). It was really an issue of not asking if anybody had an alternative to scratch tbh.

[Add Town]

Cute little arcade game! Overall it feels very fun and addictive, with both a neat concept and a simplistic but lively presentation. The sprouts randomly appearing can be frustrating when it screws over a move you planned out, but for the most part its great fun to try and improvise to the best of your ability to keep everything balanced!

If I were to offer any feedback, I'd say that I feel like the transition between moves is a bit too fast and makes it easy to lose track of elements (especially when combined with the bounce) and that I wish the game was a bit more juicy with more satisfying sound/visual effects when making combinations you've been building up as a reward.

[Planet Orbit]

Hmm, it's a pretty decent arcade-y mobile game: not exactly something that's blowing me away or making me want to recommend it to anyone, but the gameplay concept of planet-hopping and eyeballing angles/trajectories makes for a fairly simplistic but addictive loop, making it perfect for a small timewaster!

I am a bit confused with its design though. For one, the randomization of the planets means that scores somewhat come down to luck: sometimes I get a high score because the game is generous enough to give me a bunch of big planets, and other times the game starts off with tiny planets and I lose early on due to the difficulty of that. Perhaps instead the planets should start off large and gradually shrink? I'm also confused about the bonus point pips that orbit planets as again, it feels like you can only luck into them because if you're not naturally going to intercept them, there's nothing you can do to alter your orbit to make it otherwise.

[Chicken Joust!]

Hmm, I'm a bit mixed on this one!

Overall it feels like the game is rather high-quality, particularly in terms of presentation: the interface is clean and intuitive, there are a lot of nice touches like tooltips and transitions that make everything feel stylish, the characters and world are cute and charming, and the gameplay is classic Joust action: simple but fun! There are some rough edges here and there, such as how the characters feel very stiff (no flapping wing animations?) and the game is rather dry in terms of special effects (no sparks for clashes and hits), but overall it is pleasant and appealing.

However, once I got past the surface level presentation and sank my teeth into the game proper, I found myself somewhat unsatisfied. The combat was just a straightforward Joust clone without anything significant added to it beyond the character abilities which are barely noticeable, and I'd say that while it's decent, it wasn't even quite as satisfying or smooth as the classic or derivatives like Balloon Fight. In particular I was really disappointed with the enemies you fight as they all act practically the same and just become tedious and repetitive to fight: with the way it gives them all stylish team names, I was really hoping each enemy team would have a fun gimmick, strengths/weaknesses, or wildly different AI patterns like you'd see in something like Punch-Out.

So yeah, unfortunately it feels like a classic case of style-over-substance. It's competently put-together and not bad per se, so kudos on that, but at the end of the day it just feels like a clone with nothing unique or satisfying to bring to the table, especially with its repetitive and overly-simplistic combat design. For something like this, I was hoping for something more exotic, like Hammerfight, but maybe that's just the quality visuals here really bringing my expectations too high for the gameplay to live up to.

As a minor side-note, my old man hands quickly got tired with all the mashing to flap: would love it if there was an auto-fire, or if maybe the strength of the flap was increased so the amount of presses could be decreased.

[Summer Game]

Bit of an odd duck because...it really isn't much of a game at all? I kept walking around to see if there were any other zones I could get to, and I kept talking to people to see if there was some sort of quest, but I couldn't find anything, leaving me feeling stuck in this purgatory. I guess it's just supposed to be an art showcase? Don't get me wrong, the art is lovely to the point where'd I'd easily want to commission the artist, and there is some amusing flavor text/interactions that can be found, but yeah, just not sure how to grade this as a game! I wanna say that this should be in the art or movie portal, not the game portal, but I guess there is a certain appeal in displaying the art in this integrated way, so...I dunno! Sorry if this reaction is very common and annoying to hear: maybe if there was something in game to let you know it's just a showcase it'd be a bit more clear (sorry but in my experience a lot of people don't read the descriptions).

[Nefarius - The Last Wizard (Updated)]

Hmm, this one is a bit of a mixed bag for me!

It certainly started off very strong with a great first impression. Overall I feel like the graphical presentation of this game is exceptional and very impressive: even aspects that are typically overlooked like menus, death animations, and so on are high quality. Got some fantastic music as well!

Once we start to get into actual gameplay, though, it starts to fall apart, as while it is a somewhat serviceable Survivors-esque game, it feels very bland and dry which is in stark contrast to the beautiful assets used. There's barely any enemy variety and they are easily exploited by running circles around them to corral them together. The weapons/items on offer are tiny, unimaginative, and give no sense of variety between runs. The act of hitting enemies, collecting experience and leveling up is not exciting at all due to a lack of feedback and juice. Frankly, it's just pretty boring to me and feels more like an early alpha or a skeleton to work from: needs a lot more meat on its bones before its actually fun!

Other points of feedback:

*The volume balancing is terrible with the barely existing sound effects being so easily drowned out by the music. I needed to turn the music down to like 1% and the sound to 100% to make it so that it works better.

*Strange that the game teaches you how to dash from the very start, but it doesn't even start you off with a dash since you need to get boots first. By the same token, it's very strange that the laser power requires you to hit a button for it, but the game doesn't teach this at all: I kept waiting for it to activate since I thought it was a passive!

*Weird that the terrain, specifically objects like trees, bushes, and so on, doesn't block the player or the enemies from moving straight through it. I can understand the game allowing enemies to move straight through them, but allowing the player to move through seems weird as they should be obstacles that require the player to strategize and not get stuck: without that, the world feels unexciting and you can just run around without a care in the world.

*Laser is a bit of a death trap in that, while it looks all fancy, it freezes you in place and easily sets you up to be killed right afterwards as the enemies just swarm you. Maybe it needs to freeze time or something else?

*Main menu is inconsistent with control scheme: the main options require you to use the keyboard, but if you go into the options, suddenly the keyboard is unusable and you need to use the mouse instead? Even weirder is that if you try and use the keyboard while in options, it will still keep moving the main menu around.

*Finally, maybe the most important of all, is that even if everything is fixed up, there really isn't anything interesting or unique about the game that grabs me and makes me want to play it. The world is absolutely awash with Survivors-esque games that are competing for attention with all sorts of appealing attributes, and this needs something special to stand out: right now I'm not seeing that.

Hope this helps and you work on it to create a final version which plays as well as it looks!

Snow-Hex responds:

Thanks for your comment, I assure you that the programmer and I will take into account each of the points you mention, thanks again for your review, this kind of comments is really useful in every way. 🦖

[MEATY MAYHEM (The Full Experience)]

Huh, I was pleasantly surprised by this!

I feared the worst when starting out because this game unfortunately feels very similar to the demo that was posted before: while the world and vibes that the game gave off were very goofy and charming, overall the gameplay felt rather generic and bland, controls felt awkward, sound effects were missing, difficulty was simultaneously too easy while also being too punishing, and so on. Basically, it felt like it hadn't taken any of the feedback into account, so it wasn't the best first impression.

Nevertheless, I pressed onwards into the new content, and felt rewarded for my persistence as around the start of world 2, the game started to get quite interesting and cool from there! Levels started to get a lot of new mechanics like the bounce pads and moving platforms, and overall the game became more of an interesting and challenging precision platformer. In addition, there was a lot more novelty to keep things fresh: there were weird secrets like running into the gorilla, and a lot of great setpieces like the weird ghost levels, the crazy boss fights and the clown chase sequence and so on! Really neat stuff!

So yeah, the controls are still a bit awkward, the game is a bit jank and it takes a while for the game to get good, but when it does, I was quite impressed! If I were to guess as to why this is the case, I suppose it's a classic case of the programmer getting more skilled as the game was developed so the quality of game gets better the deeper you go, haha!

BakethedBean responds:

yeah as time went on i found ways to come up with more robust solutions in less time which gave me opportunities to put more stuff in. thank god for the redemption arc!

[Kid Phoenix Demo]

Hmm, it certainly shows some promise as a cool speedrun precision platformer. The art is nice and the obstacle course you've setup is decent and so on and so forth...but man, the controls just felt not only terribly unintuitive, but randomly inconsistent!

Out of all the control issues, walljumping was the biggest issue. Whether it be trying to jump up the wall or jumping away from the wall, nothing seemed to work properly. Trying to jump up the wall was inconsistent: sometimes I'd jump up as expected, but a majority of the time the character would just stutter and not do anything. Jumping away from the wall felt bad because there is no split-second stickiness when you press away from the wall which means you typically lose height from the brief period between inputting the movement and then the jump command: if you try to input them at the same time or too fast to compensate, though, you end up not jumping away from the wall properly.

The only way I could get walljumping to work somewhat to make it through the game was to awkwardly let go of the wall and then try to jump up or away from that neutral aerial position, as jumping from a wallcling position wouldn't work properly, as discussed.

Other than that, there was just a lot of other awkwardness. The character would end up feeling overly sticky where I'm just trying to jump up between platforms and even though I'm practically going to land on top of it, the character keeps stopping and going down to cling to the edge of the platform instead of just getting on top.

As a side note, I totally forgot that diving even existed as a move: I wonder if someone could be done to make that more important or useful? It was also weird how the water cannons only sometimes shoot water? Dunno why they are so inconsistent: it is intentional, or a bug? Also the torch checkpoints should keep your fire bar maxed as long as you're standing next to them instead of draining: I don't think I should have to walk away and back to refill it.

I want to like this game, but it definitely needs some work between this demo and the final version. Hopefully this feedback helps and it is reborn from the flame with new vigor!

[The Test of Insanity]

Cute game! Feels very much like a successor to The Impossible Quiz, what with its wide variety of questions and minigames, and its focus on mind-bending trickery and lateral thinking. As someone who already played The Impossible Quiz back in the day, I was already very familiar with the tricks this game was playing (for example, the math question where the answer is clicking on a number within the question) so I didn't have too much trouble making my way through, but all in all, it was a nice, enjoyable, goofy adventure!

If there were any complaints, it'd be:

*As said, it might just be because I'm already familiar with this kind of game, but I made it through rather quickly and was left hungry for more, so yeah, it's a bit short! Also it is kind of rehashing a lot of stuff that's come before, so I'm not quite sure if it has its own unique voice or appeal yet: in a way, the game kind of makes you want to go back and play the Impossible Quiz instead of seeing this as the superior version.

*The game felt a little bit dry, especially with no music: could maybe stand to have some more aspects to pep it up.

*I feel like it was somewhat awkward to have the scroll-clicking game as the very first thing you encounter. For a quiz game like this, I feel it'd be better to start with something more standard, like the question about fish, then later on you can get into the more action-y minigames. It's not bad, just made the pacing a bit strange, but maybe that's just because it actually took me a while to figure it out and I'm just compensating, haha.

jacklehamster responds:

Thanks, great feedback!