FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sporelunk]

Creepy as all heck, but in a good way! Definitely an interesting aesthetic twist on dig-based gameplay: despite the simple nature of the game, I did like how crazy it got in terms of obstacles and weirdness the deeper I got. I would really like to beat this, considering I got so far (200+) and I'd like to see if there is an ending, but I'm a bit conflicted: part of me did feel that it was largely up to luck with the way the layout was generated that I got that far in the first place, making me wary of making another large time commitment if I'd die from some RNG. I might be wrong, though: perhaps the game is more fair than I believe, but I just wanted to share my general impression to give you an idea of player retention. All in all, though, it was quite the notable experience!

[Laser Push]

Once again, another nice puzzler with a great concept that fleshes it out in a fun way through its very well crafted levels that teach and escalate the challenge bit-by-bit! In terms of feedback: maybe it's just my inner child speaking, but considering they are lasers, I wish there were a bit more cool, a bit more animated: would be nice if the lasers were a bit more glowy and pulsating, and maybe have some more satisfying sounds when they connect. All in all, though, solid game!

[Grapple Tongue]

Pretty fun game! Love the challenging climb with its escalation of obstacles and plenty of bonuses to go for, as well as its charming presentation and music. It is a little clunky in some respects: I kinda hate how aiming and moving are on the same keys instead of separated, it has some big and awkward difficulty spikes in my opinion such as the first introduction of the moving blocks, and there was some glitchiness to the game where sometimes I phased/teleported through walls when I was moving too fast. But luckily for me, I just found it to be a cool challenge and had a nice time trying to get good at it, so well done!

[Scott's Quest]

Hmm, seems like it could be an interesting adventure, but at the moment I was just too overly confused in trying to get through it. I'm coming at this as someone who is not familiar with Scott the Woz, so I'm trying to just be straight and evaluate it as a game first and foremost. I had several times where I glitched through the boundaries and ended up walking on top of the ocean, and I was stuck at the beginning for a long time as well because I didn't even think I could jump the gap (top-down games usually don't have jumping in my experience, shame that the only jump tutorial wasn't until way later with the drones). Even when it wasn't glitchy, a lot of the game felt a bit, I dunno, vague or sketchy, like how I wasn't sure how to dodge the drone bombs with confidence or how to fish or where to go, with a lot of the time spent getting stuck at dead ends only having to backtrack. Didn't help that the graphics were quite drab as well, in terms of repeating tiles, simple Paint graphics and not much variation. Definitely quite impressive in terms of scale and I would like to see if I could finish the game, but it might help if the game was polished a bit more and maybe had more guidance with NPCs and maps, and tutorials to teach controls, among other things.

Nomron responds:

Hi, thank you so much for your feedback! I agree that there should've been more thorough explanations on many mechanics-- it was difficult to implement everything with a proper tutorial in our timeframe. As for difficulty exploring, the fast travel system was added to make that (or at the very least, backtracking) a nonissue. Thank you again for your very articulate review :)

[Pico's Arcade]

Pretty mixed bag here, both in terms of games and feedback! I can certainly appreciate the hustle in creating so many mini games, but I'm more of a guy who prefers quality over quantity, and while some of these games were pretty nice, most of them were missing some crucial bits. For example, while I enjoyed the Madness Fruit Ninja game, I felt it was lacking that crucial slash feedback: the way the heads were chopped was not based on how you precisely slashed them, unfortunately. Having said that, I like the creativity in how many of the games have been minified, like how Friday Night Funkin became a simon says game instead of a rhythm game: I felt it worked very well. As another note, I wish the menu/HUD/interface was cleaned up a bit: the buttons and layout could be improved to look cleaner and more reactive with highlights, and there is a lot of color text and icons, like the title screen text, that gets swallowed up and becomes difficult to read because it's placed over a background of a similar color: it'd help if the text or icons were given outlines or some sort of bubble to have them stand out, mayhaps. It may not have blown my socks off, but again, I can appreciate the effort and heart for making so much for a nice cause and improving over time, so keep it up.

[Occupied]

It's embarrassing for a man of my age, but I gotta say, this game gave me the giggles...for glory! I really enjoyed myself with this game as I've always had a fondness for point n click adventures with a lot of interactables and flavor text, and this game delivered that in droves. Heck, there's a tracker and achievements just to let you know if you interacted in all the many ways you can! Absolutely loved the amount of things you could do that would affect the ending in so many ways, and loved the little touches like how pulling your pants down slows your movement speed. Pretty much a point n click take on the text parser "Dont Shit Your Pants" game and while it shares a lot of the same DNA, I still had fun and wouldn't necessarily consider it a rip-off or anything like that. Cheers for the laughs!

[RetroMMO]

Certainly quite the impressive undertaking to make an entire MMO, and while I can certainly appreciate that, it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I only played it for a little bit, so perhaps I haven't done enough to get a good impression of it, but that was pretty much my main problem with it, that it doesn't really make a great first impression. While I enjoyed the old-school feeling of getting some gold, buying some basic equipment, and fighting some mobs outside town to level up, it didn't take too long for it to become stale. Everything is just a bit too old-school for me: gold and levels just come by so slowly and the combat is very basic, slow and with minimal abilities or exciting VFX to it. Not to mention that there doesn't seem to be a story or any sort of quest to guide or motivate me: I know one might say that the game is just about leveling up and wandering around to fight bigger monsters, but the combat just isn't fun enough nor the world interesting enough for that to be an incentive for me.

I haven't tried any group play yet, so I don't have anything to say about that, and perhaps that is my problem with not having much fun with the game. In that regard, however, maybe there could be something that could make it easier to group up? Instead of making people that get into fights vanish on the world map, maybe you could make a battle icon appear where they are, and if you click on it, you can jump in as a guest to help them, and maybe party afterwards? Again, would love to see some fresh new ideas to set this game apart from just being a straight old-school recreation in MMO form.

Again, this is definitely very ambitious and impressive despite my gripes, and I wish you the best of luck in adding to this game further and further. Perhaps I'll revisit later on!

EvanMMO responds:

Thanks for playing and providing such detailed feedback! Most of your requests are planned features.

[Rat Game: Roaming of the Wretched Rat]

Pretty neat game! Has some interesting and impressive old-school presentation and gameplay that, while simple and not very long, does have some decent strategy to it in the character classes. In my warrior run, the strategy just involved whittling the enemy down while timing my blocks. However, in my witch run, it was more about trying to utilize the magic wand as little as possible so I could save it up to burn the ogre boss down at the end (since I had no defenses).

While I had fun on my runs, and I do think there is some strategy, I do still feel like the gameplay is a bit shallow with very few decisions to make, and I'm a little bit worried that it's too overly reliant on RNG. I feel like the only reason I was able to make some runs work is completely down to whether I got some drops I needed from chests, and whether I didn't get overly unlucky from potions. I always prefer games to be more skill-based than luck-based, and this felt a bit more on the luck side, unfortunately. Perhaps there is some systems in that try to always give you the items you need? It's difficult to tell though because it can be tricky to tell what an item even is, since you don't get any descriptions or names when they drop from chests.

There are some elements to the HUD that are a bit confusing to parse, especially because of all the blur and scanlines making things difficult to read. For example, I had no idea there was a turn counter for the enemies because it's so tiny, dark, and crammed in the corner: something that strategically important should really be made more prominent, I think.

LeviRamirez responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm meaning to do a semi-large update for this game that'll fix most, if not all of these problems, but I'm busy with finals weeks and moving rn. Come back and try it again in like a few weeks hopefully!

Glad you liked it for what it is right now!

[Gun Orphan]

Nice one! I love me some fast-paced chaotic action, and this definitely delivered! The game felt very fluid to control and very satisfying to dash and dodge through bullets while grabbing guns and blasting away. There were a few occasions where I started to get a little bored of the repetition, but whenever that happened, the game was well-paced to introduce a new enemy type, like the cool tethered enemies. A highlight for me was definitely the boss fight at the end which had a lot to its patterns.

In terms of feedback, it's not really problems per se, but just really wanting even more to the game. I would've loved to see some more enemy variants to fight. For example, I felt like the mind ray power was really underutilized, which I felt was a shame because it makes fights that much harder and intense when you use it instead of guns. Would've been cool if there was an enemy type that's bulletproof so you have to mind explode it instead of using guns. Maybe there could even be a difficulty where you only have the mind ray and no guns: could be a fun challenge! Would've loved to see more phases to the boss as well: it was definitely fun, but I was also disappointed when it died because I thought it was over too quick. Again, I hope you take this as a compliment: I just want more more more!

[Don't Get the Job]

Pretty cool game! Reminds me of stuff like Shin Megami demon negotiations where you have to get a grasp on the person's likes and dislikes and then answer appropriately. The three interviewers were set up cleverly in terms of difficulty, with the first being easy (just answer badly), the second being medium (reverse it and answer correctly instead), and the third being a more difficult wild card. I liked how you could gather a lot of clues on their personality not just from the questions and dialogue, but the posters and such around them as well. Definitely was a lot of fun to figure it all out!

For minor feedback, I did find it odd that, for the actual gameplay, the buttons were nice in the way they get highlighted and react when you hover over and press them, yet the buttons on the main menu are static and boring.

I must admit, my first playthrough was a bit confusing, despite me liking the game overall. I felt like I grasped exactly what needed to be done in terms of answers, and I think I only had like one question go wrong for Angelo and two for Greg, and yet I still had them head over heels for me. On my second playthrough I did the same general approach but did it more perfectly and that worked out as it should: I dunno, just felt confusing that the game is so overly difficult it pushes you to be completely perfect for a good ending: might be better to have some wiggle room or a middle ground to let the player get a few wrong without outright failing, or know they're on the right track. For example, instead of Angelo loving me despite getting 99% of the questions wrong, maybe have him say 'well, you did pretty bad, but eh, there's something about you I liked in the end, so I say we hire you'. More gradient variations in dialogue, essentially.

YaenGames responds:

Thanks for the in-depth feedback! I agree with you, we accidentally made it too hard: Reason being a slip-up when changing it from the game jam version. Originally we had 12 questions per interviewer and since people said it was too long and repetitive, we decided to reduce it to 10. However, we accidentally reduced it to 8, giving you fewer chances to get your score low enough.
More gradual ending statements would surely have been great but would have required more poses and we had no time to do more when we made the updated version. But I agree, that would have improved the game further for sure!

Thanks again and have a great day!