FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Arcane Maiden]

Pretty neat game! I'm not really a fan of turn-based RPGs that much, and while this game can be a bit slow at times, with some long animations and long waits for bar filling, it actually seemed to have some decent strategy in place that I enjoyed: using delay strikes to buy time, deciding whether to heal or save up for a big lvl 3 strike to end it, neat stuff! I still think it is a bit slow and grindy for my tastes, without enough story to keep me hooked, and with enemies that didn't make me have to change my strategy up enough, but overall a positive experience for me.

In terms of feedback, I do feel like the game lacks a lot of information and could do with a more polished presentation to help with that. For example, the skill tree was very confusing for me at first: I didn't realize that the SP next to learn wasn't how much the ability cost to learn, but how much SP I currently have in total. I wish the skill requirements weren't just a boring list you have to read and figure out: I'd like it if when you try to learn a skill you can't, it would make an error sign and highlight the nodes you need in glowing red or something to help the player see. Just all sorts of stuff like that: helping direct the player with more visuals and sounds. Also, I wish there was more info in general: I'd like it if I could strategize my battles by seeing if I could intentionally plan for a level up to get my health back after a fight, but since I can't see my xp bar during combat, it's a no go. Got some weird bugs here and there as well: for example, I dunno why my player name is "<TEXTFORMAT LEADING=", haha! Also, I wish the story would do more to hook me: felt like it petered out quickly and didn't introduce any new info in the grass levels as I went. Also I felt like the graphics were a bit mish-mashed: different graphics of varying quality (like the difference between the MC and their partner) gave it a bit of an unprofessional feel, like it's just slapped together from a bunch of mixed-up asset packs and such (not that there's anything wrong with asset usage, but it can lead to a non-cohesive style).

Anyway, like I said, despite all those complaints that I'd love to see fixed or polished up to make the game even more beautiful, I did feel it had an interesting take on turn-based strategy that I had fun with, so kudos for that as it ain't easy to make me to play RPGs nowadays!

MidNightMaren responds:

You make some very valid points. The Skill trees could use some more indicators that's true, I'll try to make it happen.
Also the 'Exp Needed' on the battle UI was something I realized was missing when I was almost done with the game. I notice a lot of games do have that feature. I'll look into it also.

The <TEXT FORMAT> bug is something related to Ruffle I'm still trying to figure out. On Flash Player while testing locally it works just fine; but I get it that input text on Ruffle is either something not yet implemented, or I'm just calling it wrong somehow.

The story is something I said before. The structure of the game didn't give much room for one. And also, all and all, this game was a try out of a mechanic I didn't have much clue if it was going to be well received.

You can read in the credits this game uses assets from countless authors. I too felt the difference in quality of the sprites was something bugging me to no end. I even resized characters on stage so that the pixels looked the same size. Cut of some in-between frames to make it seem the same frame rate, etc.
Who knows on a possible sequel I can get a couple of artists to help me design some unique assets. And also go and address all the flaws this game presented.

[Throw Rocks At Shit GOTY Edition]

I never thought I'd see one of my favorite games, Root Beer Tapper, come back in shit form! Not to say that this game is shitty: much the opposite, as I had a great time with it! Definitely delivered some classic addictive hardcode arcade fun: loved the risk/reward of building up my super for multipliers and only throwing as many rocks as necessary. Mechanics are definitely well thought out for creating some exciting play, but at the same time, a lot of the mechanics are a bit unintuitive: I thought the big pile was a boss at first so I didn't realize that you aren't supposed to hit it, lest it punish you by not only growing larger, but also taking your super (c'mon, doubly punished? jeez, why don't you just kill me immediately for hitting it while you're at it). And, I didn't realize you could hold on to your super to get bigger point multipliers and a bigger super finisher: without knowing that, it gets bland, which it feels like it would be easy to not know because who doesn't want to immediately use their super? But still, in the end, I had a great damn time flinging rocks!

[Patetfiske]

I didn't get that far because it was a bit too chill of an experience for me, but it was a chill experience I guess so...mission accomplished, haha! Then again, I could be totally wrong about the 'getting far' aspect: not sure if there is a story to this game, but it kind of felt like it as my character went from catching fish to suddenly catching a dog and an amoeba, so I'm wondering if something was building up or if it was coincidence. The experience was a bit surreal and odd enough to hook me initially, what with the weird music and catching fish, but it didn't really hook me for long. I was hoping to be able to examine the fish to see info on them or something, but all they do is just fill up a gallery with icons. Fishing didn't have much interactability either: can't decide where to throw your hook or any strategy like that, you just throw and wait, same thing every time. Bit confused on why the character gives up sometimes: feel its more appropriate for a chill game if he just always waits. I dunno, I know I'm probably not the intended audience since I'm an action junky, but I'd like a bit more from this game. I know it's chill and all, but I kind of wish there was just a bit more life to the world: more little things you can do or more changes happening in the world to watch.

[Heck House - A Chilluminati Adventure]

I'm not familiar with the crew so the inside jokes are lost on me, but it seemed like a fairly decent adventure! Controls were a bit confusing to figure out at first since there were no instructions: I thought there were two buttons, one to examine (Z) and one to interact (X), but actually it seemed like the examine button was also the interact button, and what I thought was the interact button was just...throwing up the horns? As only the one Hawaiian-shirt wearing character? Anyway, gameplay was pretty neat with a lot of examinable items for flavor text, something I always like in games like this. Puzzles were hit and miss: getting the dog for the bone was alright, but I had no idea the table next to the aliens was for putting a pie down on: maybe you should highlight interactable objects, or give a clue, like making the aliens say "oh, food delivery? put it down right there". Maybe I didn't get far enough in the game, but I felt like the character switching was a bit of a waste: they all share an inventory and didn't seem to have cooperative abilities or anything. I didn't like how the game advanced text and cutscenes without waiting for you to hit a button to confirm you wish to proceed: I'd miss reading some text that way. Also I wish I could view my inventory: got an item from the aliens that I had no idea how to use or even what it was. Anyway, neat little adventure: just felt like it could've had a bit more of a hook/concept to really grab me, as once I got lost I didn't have much incentive to go on.

AxolStudio responds:

Each of the characters has one main ability that is used to get past an obstacle in the game.
You can get a hint about them by pausing the game (P) with each character selected.

[Descent (2021)]

Surprised at how challenging this got! I was worried in the beginning with how easy it was being, but hoo boy did I eat my words. Overall it is a bit of a mixed bag for me. On one hand, the gameplay, while simple, is pretty solid and the game does a good job at constantly escalating the challenge with a large amount of varied enemies and obstacles being introduced bit-by-bit. Graphics were pretty decent as well: a bit drab, but with some nice effects like dust clouds for movement and jumps. On the other hand, I did feel a lot of the challenge was not quite from good design, but unresponsive controls, annoyingly obfuscated obstacles, and frustrating physics. There were definitely some times where when I got hit, it was on me, and that's fair, but so many of my jumps were unintentional or delayed because of the controls: for example, I'd try to walk off a platform into a glide, but instead of gliding, it'd treat my input as a late jump right into some ceiling spikes, killing me (I suppose this is the bad aspect of coyote time). Plenty of other times where my jump would just go awry or I'd bump into something and lose my glide for no reason and such. A lot of the obstacles, like the crumbling bricks or especially the falling stalactites were barely visible and incredibly annoying to look out for. Speaking of looking out for, I wish there was a way to look down: I understand that we have a glide, but like a climber does (or a faller in this case, haha), I'd like to be able to look ahead and plan a bit (I understand if gliding is supposed to be a replacement for this, but still). Oh yeah, another big thing that tripped me up was the inability to ride falling platforms: I really wanted to ride on them and jump off, but they fall at a different rate so you end up detached. I still feel like I had fun, I just feel like this game kind of rides right on that tenuous line between fair challenge and frustration.

[The Behemoth Mural Collab]

Hmm, it's definitely a good cause and nice to see collabs like this, but at the moment, the general display and navigation doesn't leave a good impression to me and kind of hurts the experience. Don't get me wrong, it does seem to have some charming art and presentation here and there, such as the notebook paper tilted credits, but overall, it's a bit out of sorts. The mural itself is decent, but the graphics look really mish-mashed and distorted, like they've been scaled in all the wrong ways, and I don't like the way you can move beyond the edges and see into the darkness. Hovering over an artwork, I can't read the pop-up text for the artist because it's plain black text that doesn't stand out from the background art: would really benefit with a white highlight or maybe a text box surrounding it to make it pop. Navigation is really weird: for example, I'd hit play to go to the mural, hit the next arrow to go to the artists list, and then hit back to go to the mural, but it wouldn't send me back, instead it sends me to the credits for some reason (it seems like the back button on each page has a predetermined page it sends you back to, instead of sending you back to the actual previous page based on what the user has done). Buttons are a bit boring and difficult to tell if they are interactable because they don't get highlighted, and the mural HUD is confusing: why is there a pointless arrow key HUD, but the arrows to go back and next are within the art work instead of on the HUD? Also I wish the controls were a bit more intuitive, like being able to click and drag the mural with the mouse, or using the scroll wheel to zoom in and out. And so on. Again, good cause, but I'd like better presentation: the game needs to be as beautiful of a frame as the artwork it is housing!

Mabelma responds:

Thanks a lot for the feedback. A lot of useful points to take into consideration for the future. Appreciate your comment, and your score 👍🙏

[Alpha_Zero]

Pretty neat game with a cool ability it is centered around! It took a bit, but in the end, I felt like I was a Titanfall 2 pilot, phase shifting in and out of dimensions: popping out at the exact position to throw some enemies around, only to pop right back into dark subspace when they start shooting. Felt great to get used to the fast and frantic play, scrambling as I dimension hop, memorizing the enemy positions for maximum effectiveness when I pop back out.

Definitely had a rough start with this game though. The main menu is really drab, annoying to navigate and is confusing with its language. For the gameplay, movement was a bit sketchy and weird, especially with the jumps where, among other things, jumping up through a platform would have you impact with the platform as you pass through it, even though you hadn't finished your jump. Finally, I don't feel like it introduces the concepts, especially the ability, in an effective manner, as I had no idea what it did at first besides make everything dark. The level the ability is introduced in does nothing to explain it: maybe create a level where you're locked in and shot at with no way around normally, but the ability instruction is there, so you test it out and realize you can go past the bullets. Also found it weird that some objects you throw you can keep throwing forever, but other objects can only be thrown once?

I think this game has a really cool concept to it that I'd love to see polished up and fleshed out into a big game: I feel like it's really got legs. Could add a whole story element to teaching the mechanics: maybe you're an escaped experiment or something like that. Would absolutely love to see a Katana Zero-esque replay when you beat a level, where it edits out all the time you spent in the dark dimension so you see what the enemy sees, where it looks like you're just instantly teleporting around causing chaos!

Frogrammer responds:

Hey thank you so much for your feedback.

- Yes as a big Titanfall fan, ability was inspired by time-shifting level, really glad you liked that)
- I agree the menu isn't near as polished as should, didn't have enough time to work on it
- I noticed one way platforms triggering the ground too early too
- Yes sadly mechanic weren't quite introduced, i thought about the level you mean, but didn't want to make the game unbeatable if someone for some reason, didn't know about the ability at all
- After throwing some objects and striking enemy nor touching ground, they can't be grabbed anymore
- Thanks, I may work on it more one day! And also I absolutely thought about teleporting in replay too, really wish had enough time to realize this as well

Thanks for your feedback again, its really important)

[Pico-Raiders]

Hmm, this is a tough one for me. On one hand, I do think it is very ambitious of a game, being a strategy game, to run on PICO-8, and is pretty cool with the way it captures that old-school DOS/Atari/C64 feel and style quite well. Has some neat little touches like the animation for the sinking boats and such, and I did have some fun skirmishing with the units when I could figure out how it worked. On the other hand, I feel it is too ambitious for the system its running on as, while I was able to figure out some aspects, the game just seemed way too complicated and PICO-8 just isn't able to tutorialize enough aspects to get all of the intricacies and rules across (had no idea how many of the units worked, like boats and such, and wasn't sure whether there was a strategy for army unit attacking an army unit, nor if catapults can kill a castle, etc). Controls were a bit annoying as well: so many times I'd select an army dude with the intention to move him: I'd hit move, but since I wasn't holding a direction before I did that, it'd treat it as me skipping and I'd lose the ability to move that unit (argh!). Also, that cool animation for the sinking boat starts to get real annoying once you've seen it for the hundredth time and it just makes the wait for your turn even longer. Anyway, it's a neat game, but it might be a bit too much for me, not being a big strategy fan. Felt like you, unfortunately, recreated everything about old-school strategy games too faithfully, as that included the outdated design bits, haha!

KJScott responds:

It was originally a 48k spectrum game which I tried to recreate and was right at the edge of how much I could put it before I reached the code limit so I was unable to provide any clear instructions (which I knew was going to be an issue). Yeah, I totally agree with all your comments about the controls, instructions, animations, etc, but as your figured I was trying to recreate all the old design choices. The controls was the biggest obstacle as I needed to port over full keyboard support to effectively a controller scheme which I know needs more work but hit the limit of the code to refine it further. I do have a game on the back burner which utilises a lot of the ideas but reworking it hopefully for the modern era but will see when I get time or motivation to finish that off. Thank you for the comments!

[Capuchin Centauri: Station Cohabitation]

Wow, really cool game! I absolutely loved the whole concept of the upgradable suit parts, as well as the cool dynamic between the monkey and their suit as you get parts blown off and need to either try to deal with some parts missing as best you can or jump out to stitch them back on. The upgrades made for some really cool customization and feeling of progression, and the monkey/suit transitions to repair made for some really cool scrambles and thinking on the fly. Overall I thought it was great: only had a few minor complaints. I thought it was a bit annoying that if you pick up a new gun, for example, to test it out, your old gun doesn't fall to the floor so you can't go back if you don't like the new one. Bullets in general felt a bit slow and unsatisfying at times until you get some speed upgrades (which I didn't find many). Levels were a bit drab and repetitive and the map felt too big. Sounds were a bit wonky and too sharp at times as well. Still, really clever game that felt very well executed in general: would really love to see this idea fleshed out into a more polished and finalized version!

[Skeletons and Skulls]

At first, I didn't have the best impression of the game, seemed like a very bog-standard top-down melee game. Once I learned on my own, through no help of the game, that I could summon skeletons, then the game got elevated as it was quite fun to micromanage my little army, which seemed to have decent AI as well! Seriously, you gotta have a tutorial or onscreen instructions to teach about the summoning skeleton business: would hate to see people dismiss the game and not realize it's there! Anyway, the game was quite fun and did a good job at quickly elevating the difficulty level-by-level. Even had some neat stuff like deflecting projectiles with melee, which is always cool in my book. I will say, however, that the game still does have a bit of a boring feel to it with the lack of polish: not much feedback and impact to attacks (I couldn't even tell I was hurting the red imps because the red flash isn't apparent on a red enemy), lack of graphical variation especially for the levels, sloppy graphics with how the player character can overlap walls they should be behind, etc. Difficulty was a bit higher than I felt as well with hitboxes being a bit wonky and everything moving a bit fast and erratic at times. Still, not a bad concept, had a decent time with it and I'd like to see more of this game if you build upon it!