FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN']

Pretty funky game! Certainly fun to play and very impressive with the stylish graphics and the way everything bops to the beat. Love all the countless little touches to the game, like the cool menu and the way the characters get frightened by lightning and such.

As a long time rhythm game player, however, there are some frustrations. I really want to see how well I'm hitting the notes and what my current combo is, but they are only shown for a moment on the girl in the background instead of the center of my note chart, so they are difficult to read (also the 1 looks like a 7 so the combo counter is odd to read in general as well). There's no results screen at the end either with any sort of grading or scoring so it's not easy to tell how to improve or how you're ranking: for example, how many misses, goods and sicks you got.

In general, as well, the note charts felt...very loosey goosey at times. It's difficult to explain but, this felt like a game where I unfortunately had to rely on my eyes instead of my ears, because the notes weren't directly correlated with the music consistently: sometimes they were, but other times not. With tons of songs in other games, I can close my eyes and still hit the notes because the arrows are aligned with the music. With this, however, if I were to close my eyes, I'd end up not hitting Sicks or straight up missing notes since they are misaligned. I dunno, maybe there's something else at play, and I understand that maybe I'm being unfair comparing it to things like Stepmania and DDR, but take it as a compliment that the game is cool enough that I want to.

EDIT: Weeks later and just wanted to note that in general, I'm loving a lot of the changes that have been made! Still feels a little tiny bit clunky in some respects, but overall I feel much more confident with the note charting and general play, and I love all of the new options and touches like the lore cutscenes for Senpai and Tankman and such (though they are so cool it does just make me wish we had them retroactively for everything else, haha, tough crowd I am huh). I definitely do think this game has a lot of heart, style and infectious fun to be had that easily overcomes my minor gripes from comparing it too more polished existing rhythm games. Well done once again and best of luck with future development!

also if it hasn't already been said, the music kicks major ass

ninjamuffin99 responds:

lov u futurecop

[Deck Adventurers - Chapter 1]

Enjoyed my time with this! I liked the feeling of progression as you both slowly work your way up the map and how you walk through a level over the corpses of those you defeat, challenges escalated bit-by-bit along the way. Was impressed at the intuitiveness of the combat: I only suffered some minor confusion with one of the defense sharing goblins, while for the most part had a great time since everything was so easy to read and click on for further info. Combat was a bit slow for my tastes at times: sometimes I would find myself trying to grab a card but having to wait for the deck to shuffle everything in, and sometimes I wish I could somehow speed up the animations, but it was all good. But it felt like a good adventure nonetheless.

[The Flower Arrangement]

Had a lot of problems getting this game to run unfortunately. For some reason, if you let the text run to complete a page, and then go to the next page, the text won't appear for the page. What I had to do is hit a button to skip/make the text fill out the page, and then if I went to the next page, it would appear. It added a lot of stress to the run, especially since some pages are actually blank and I thought they just weren't loading, haha. Also, it was a bit clunky at times in other ways: for example, I tried to go back on a choice page and I got stuck on previous pages which the choice still being up for me to click, but not being able to go forward. Once I got used to the clunkiness, though, the story itself was quite charming and funny, especially since it had a lot of interesting interpretations of this kind type of theme and how spooky it can be, despite hunkiness. Art style was a bit odd at times with how it fluctuated between styles constantly (one second it's very beautiful, then suddenly it's a comic, then suddenly it's anime, then it goes back to beautiful art, haha), but eh, overall it was nice and got across what it needed.

waffrus responds:

Man. After I adding in looping music, it DID get a lot clunkier. I'm sorry it was such a pain to read. I added in the link to the game on my itch.io account bc it seems to work better there. I did notice that after running through the scenes once, they loaded better the 2nd time but... that's a real pain to have to do. I'll try tinkering around again, but I'm trying to mostly move on to the next project lol.

Thank you for your thoughtful review! I'm glad the story itself was enjoyable even if the shifting art style was a bit of a hit or miss. Tbh, I did consider keeping it all in the sort of painterly style... but then this would have taken even longer to release and I wasn't sure if some of more comedic scenes would have even worked with that style. Oh well, live and learn haha. Thanks again!

[The Hit On Hallows' Eve]

Hmm, this one is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, it's a little clunky: graphics are a bit uninspired with having to go through the same rooms over and over, your character is...weirdly animated, and the constant clicking and hit sounds can get grating after awhile. However, on the flipside, the game does have a lot of nice touches to it like allowing enemy bullets to graze you without actually hitting, dash invincibility, and some genuinely fun level design with cool monster arenas and ambushes to battle through as you start to get up to floor 4 and beyond. It's pretty nice, could be nicer but it's a good start!

[Hexplore]

Pretty neat game! Graphics are very charming as well as the goofy characters and music, and it was fun wandering around and seeing everything the world had to offer (including all the violent deaths haha). Was a little bit confusing at times: sometimes it was difficult to tell if you were highlighting something since it was so subtle at times and it was a bit annoying to pixel hunt for clickables. Some of the puzzle logic was very odd as well: having to wait after giving the hamster a carrot and giving moose a flashlight for him to stomp (and then to use the batteries on a tree?) were some real WTF moments. But, I suppose figuring out that weird puzzle logic is part of the fun of these games, so...yeah!

[ROOM ROOM]

Love this game! Very creative and clever concept and I love the way the game slowly introduced all the mechanics in a very cool mind-bending way. Once I realized that I could actually go back to a room by intentionally hitting it and I'd have to do that to get all the orbs, man that felt cool, like my brain had just imploded. Loved the puzzles too, felt like little Warioware games how they have these little clues to try and figure everything out while you're dancing around trying not to die. This might've been a short game but it was very sweetly put together: great work!

[Closed Circuit]

I dunno if I'm missing something, but this seemed like a real disappointment for me: a classic case of good graphics, animation, music, and sound...but no gameplay. It's just running down a corridor and shooting people while they shoot you. No strategy, no ducking or hiding or anything: it's just mash fire fast enough to kill them before they can kill you. You can aim in all these directions, but you never have to point anywhere but forward. Don't get me wrong, I know game jams are tough and such, lord knows I can't do 'em, but I think this missed the intention of game jams by focusing too much on the presentation and not enough on interesting gameplay.

[International PixelArt Gallery 2020]

Very neat gallery; great to see many different artists all over the world. I felt like the navigation was a bit clunky however. There's always a bar at the bottom which can obscure some of the art: would prefer if the bar hides itself and pops up when you mouse close to it. Similarly, I wish I could get the artist to pop up if I would hover my mouse at the top. Hitting back/next at the bottom is a bit clunky and awkward: would prefer if you could just click on the screen anywhere to move to the next picture, or maybe click the sides of the screen to go back or forward (sometimes I think it does this but then doesn't for others?). Wish the res marker in the upper left would go away so I could just view the pieces without outside interference. There was also some clunky overlapping text and graphics in some locations, just giving it a bit of an unprofessional design, taking away from the ease of viewing the art. Still, hearts in the right place!

JamesChapp responds:

Thank you very much for the feedback.
All these suggestions I will take into account for the next update of the gallery.

Thank you very much for taking the time to share your suggestions.

P.S. don't forget to follow your favorite pixelart artists on your social media.
Greetings.

[Manorvania]

For some reason, my initial impression of the game wasn't that great: not sure what it is, maybe the player movement or the camera didn't feel that smooth or the sprites were too tiny of something (I'm getting old lol). But whaddya know, I found myself addicted to the game once I kept going, so nice work on that! It just has such a charming atmosphere both in the way Vlad and everyone else bounces around so animatedly and the way they talk. It was very fun to learn more and more about the manor as you collect more and more powers. Got some small annoyances here and there but nothing major. Was a bit of a bummer because I made it through a good portion and then turned it off, hoping it saved my progress, but it didn't, so now I gotta start over. Would love a save system, but hey, it's a charming enough game that I'm fine playing it from the start!