FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[octopus (oubliette #5)]

Um...maybe it's good? I have no idea what the hell is going on. As best as I could tell, maybe the objective is to collect the coins in that thingy, but since the trash is constantly filling up the world and blocking off paths, you need to strategize and improvise the best way to collect coins: do you race to grab them before the trash blocks you off or do you instead block the trash at the root with a block to keep the paths clear in the first place? Or maybe you just wait for the water to rise and get coins in a new sector when it's accessible? Is, uh, that what I need to do? I gotta admit, despite the game being incredibly aimless and frustrating to play at times, it was kinda interesting to figure out what, if anything at all, is happening? I think a lot of people will just walk away from this, but I'm a little intrigued to go back and figure it out. I dunno though: as much as maybe this is something that is probably intentionally vague, it might not be for the best. I mean, there's something to be said for at least giving us a general goal or explaining controls: as much as this game might want to be all minimalist and artistic and such, I've seen a lot of other games do a better job of being minimalist while not alienating the player by at least designing subtle directions into the gameplay. I dunno, it's a headscratcher and it's making me ramble, so cheers for that, haha!

[Mina Miner: Dig Deep!]

Hmm, I want to like this game, but at the moment, the gameplay wasn't selling it for me. I do like the general presentation of the game: has a very charming and goofy aesthetic to it with lots of nice little touches like transition animations (though it looks really bad how the slider bars clip in front of those transitions), and I like seeing the character react to the various events that happen in gameplay, so kudos on that. The gameplay itself, however, felt really bad for me. Don't get me wrong, when it's going at a good pace, it was pretty fun: as said before, it was enjoyable to get combos, see the reactions and rack up the points. However, more often than not, the drill was getting stuck in an incredibly boring loop of bouncing side to side (sometimes literally in an infinite loop that I was only, by the grace of god, saved from by an earthquake), reducing the game to a terribly slow pace. Not only that, but it felt like I had no control over where the drill went, so levels would last forever because how am I supposed to ever hit those specific gem blocks that I need to? I think there is something good in here, but I'd like to see more abilities introduced to help the player control over aiming where the drill goes, as well as balance changes to make it so that the drill bounces at good angles that keep the pacing going. Good attempt though so far!

[Dice Mice]

Interesting strategic game that was deeper than I expected! It was a bit confusing at the start: couldn't even figure out how to roll the dice and a lot of the elements were confusingly named, such as the attack core not being to attack the enemy (that's the heart core to do that), but credit where credit is due, the game did supply a good help menu to figure everything out. Once I got used to what I was doing, I was surprised to see some deep combat where fights are long because that gives more of an incentive not just to keep mashing their hp down, but go for pairs or triples to debuff their attack and defense and such. Couple that with some neat items to acquire after a fight as well as a nice escalation of challenge and it was a neat little adventure!

Elastiskalinjen responds:

Thank you! I know some parts needs better guidence so thanks for sticking with it!

[SUPER IZZY]

Man, I really want to like this game, but at the moment, it's simply too janky and glitchy for me to have a good experience with it. The game does seem to have a lot of potential: I love the coop nature of the game, switching between the two characters and using their respective powers to solve puzzles or do cool team-up attacks and such, and I love that there are some neat bosses with multiple moves and phases to battle through. However, it was just confusing to play. I couldn't figure out how the buttons and moves for the characters work: for example despite the dog not having a wall clutch animation (a glitchy wall clutch animation) like the mouse, he can still wall jump off of his nose or something? Boss fights would just devolve into a weird mish-mash of objects appearing and disappearing, animations glitching and not looping properly, attacking and damage just happening with no reason or feedback, and many times it would look like the boss would die despite it being my health that was depleted, only for it to wait for a few awkward seconds until it respawns me and I have to do the fight again. I think there is some neat stuff in here somewhere but at the moment, it's just lost in a raw, undercooked mish-mash of weirdness. If you can fix this up, I'd love to see a remastered version of it!

[Platfoban]

Surprisingly great! The initial impression wasn't that great: graphics were clearly recycled assets I've seen used everywhere and the presentation was a bit bare-bones and lackluster. But I pressed on, and I'm glad I did, because the puzzles in this game were a lot of fun! Game had a very unique concept (though I have seen it used in some games like Toodee and Topdee) and it used it to great effect: slowly building up the challenge and mechanics bit-by-bit, explaining just enough that you get the gist, but allowing the player to connect the dots and have some incredible revelations. Like I say, some of the general elements like graphics, sound and music are lackluster, and the controls can be a bit wonky at times, which drags the game down a bit, but the game design here is very solid and impressive: would love to see it revitalized with some polish!

[Rain Fall]

An odd experience, but certainly a unique experience! I was definitely lost when I started: was confusing why the umbrella was so much higher than where my mouse pointer was to the point where I thought I glitched the game, was confused why I had to hold the umbrella to where I wanted to go instead of above my character (wouldn't they want to hold it above themselves to block the rain?), wasn't able to figure out I could flip the umbrella till my second playthrough, and so on. Also there was a lot of oddities like the snail and player just clipping straight through cars (I understand you don't want to show anybody dying, but cmon, why even have it then?) So there was definitely a lot of confusion. But I mean hey, like I just said: I didn't drop it, rather I felt compelled to do a second playthrough. The game was weird and interesting enough, and the graphics and presentation were so charming and chill, I had to play it a second time just to see what else I could do in it, and it was interesting to figure out how to solve the mini quests like dumping water on the flaming hair and so on. So yeah, the confusion garnered from the minimalist presentation actually did lead to an interesting journey so...good job, uh, I think, haha!

Tarhack responds:

Thank you so much for your time and kindness to our experience, I'm glad you kept playing :) Have a lovely day~

[Flanet]

Surprisingly addicting and smooth! It's a complex game and it took me a bit to get used to the controls and everything, but gosh, once you do I just had so much fun with this! It's just so fun to swoosh around the planet and crash into enemies by jumping into them (I didn't realize at first that you could just jump into them, I thought I needed to Mario jump on top of them, maybe change instruction wording to say 'crash into them' instead so its obvious?) while managing your resources: makes for a frantic fun time! It's not without it's problems: I didn't like how there were 4 different forms of currency to keep track of: the game is way too busy and there's no way to actually plant for certain flowers, so in the end I'd just mash buttons in menu to see if I could buy something. Feel like it might be more intuitive if there was just one currency, being flowers in general. Anyway, this is a really fantastically unique concept with some crazy gameplay that really sticked the landing for me!

Elastiskalinjen responds:

Thank you for such a review and I use that feedback when I create more games!

[Flavouride]

Bit weird to figure out the mechanics to this game at the start, but once I did, I actually had a blast combo-kicking enemies into the sky and then flying around (good work at having those tutorial holograms around inside the levels, felt like they explained it better than the tutorial practice room)! Certainly a very unique and interesting concept for both combat and traversal, and very fun to style around with! Once I got used to it, it felt pretty cool to race through levels, keeping the momentum up while looking damn cool, though I still did suffer some issues. Despite feeling like I got the hang of it, there were still times where I though I was going to hover after a combo but it didn't happen (or there were times where I hovered but I didn't want to, and I ended up getting hit because it kept me hovering). Also, I hated the first boss: I kept trying to lure him into the volcano but it felt like it was just up to randomness on whether the boss would lunge at me when the volcano was actually erupting. Please, please change it so that the volcano is just constantly erupting there, haha! The second boss was so much better in how you would control it directly by kicking up the spike ball to it!

HealliesGames responds:

I was contemplating about that.
When I tried to speedrun the game, the first boss seemed the major obstacle due the randomness of alignment.

Updated it, thank you.

[The Guardian of Olmec]

Hmm, bit of a mixed-bag with this one. On one hand, it doesn't have a good first impression with a very ugly-looking thumbnail/title screen. Also, it's a bit confusing to figure out how the game works at the start with no instruction or anything. I gotta say though, once you actually get into the game, it is actually a bit fun to roll around crashing into things, setting up combos and such! However, unfortunately the fun didn't last too long as I suffered a lot of glitches: pirates getting stuck in geometry so I couldn't kill them which blocked me from beating the level, music would randomly stop playing, the intro sound effect for each level is ear-screeching loud, and so on. I think the game does have a certain charm to it with the unique clay graphics and the like: if everything else was polished up it could be a solid game, but at the moment, it's a bit too clunky for me.

[Chessformer]

I was really worried about this one: I have a big time grudge with chess and I thought that maybe I'd find the concept of a chess puzzler too annoying to go through. Surprisingly, I actually felt like this might've been one of your more engaging concepts yet! So many interesting puzzle designs, level after level! I do have some minor complaints though: for a mouse-controlled game, I would much prefer if interactable elements, such as the UI buttons and the chess pieces would animate when you hover over them to show they are interactable, y'know, grow or wiggle or highlight and such. Without that, it's a bit confusing to figure out how the game works initially. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this one: nothing beat going through level after level just to hear that satisfying *snap* when you knock the enemy piece away!

Rob1221 responds:

There is a highlight effect for the buttons, but I have that disabled on mobile by checking for touch support. I guess you're using a touch-supported PC then?