FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Drop Cannon]

Fantastic stuff on display here! Overall it's a very charming game with excellent assets in all areas. But even if you're the big cheese, I do have a few complaints to make (though nothing big enough to kill it for me, haha).

I found it a bit odd that, while the main menu buttons highlight when you hover over them, the world map destination buttons were very lifeless with no highlight (they do have an animation when you click on them, sure, but I'm a strong proponent in button feedback of all sorts, especially highlights). Also, I found that the transitions between phases were very jarring, especially the transition between finishing the assembly and going to the battlefield: would love if there was a fade transition like the great gears transition on the main menu, maybe with a banner that says "Job Complete! To the Battlefield!" or something.

Finally, while I don't mind shooting the drones during the battle scene, I didn't quite like shooting the drones during the assembly scene: specifically, I didn't like how it interrupted the flow to go to a turret section. Instead, I'd much prefer if you would have to shoot stray drones during the assembly: obviously the number of drones would be less than in the turret section lest it be too difficult, but I think it would be a lot more fun to deal with as it gives you even more to juggle. Also, I wish there was a crosshair for the shooting segments, I kept easily losing my mouse during those.

At the end of the day, however, despite my nitpicks, I felt like the game did have a great level of professionalism to it, and I loved how it kept escalating with new mechanics and difficulty to contend with for each level, so nice work all!

[Tricky Keys]

Very nice game! Definitely knocks it out of the park in terms of graphics and overall aesthetic/concept: feels very high quality all-around. Definitely was a delight to play and I enjoyed how the game kept evolving in terms of difficulty and mechanics: had some great, clever puzzles to get through. In terms of gripes, I only have a few minor ones. I felt like the wall jumps were awkward and I had to get used to how they work specifically in this. For one, when you're running into a wall on the ground and you hit jump, it'll immediately walljump, which I felt was really weird as in other games, it will typically do a neutral jump (aka if you were next to the wall and just hit jump with no movement). Additionally, to jump off a wall, you can't hit the opposite direction and then jump as you would expect, because you get detached from the wall too quickly and it eats your jump input, so you end up having to keep the direction held pointed at the wall when you hit jump, which makes your momentum once you're in the air very awkward to control since you're influencing it to go backward in the direction you want. On another side, I like how the virus is animated, but I wish they had some anticipation frames for their attacks, like a telegraph for their punch: the visuals would make it easier to time certain elements like when it forces you to jump, instead of having to rely solely on innate rhythm. Anyway, solid work here!

[Jaded Slasher]

Hmm, it's decent, I suppose, but not my kinda jam. Controls were very awkward to figure out at the start with the way you just teleport around to objects instead of moving around. Feedback was awkward as well: if you don't get damaged at all when you attack it'll play the slash animation, which is nice, but when you get hurt when you attack, even if you hurt them back, it plays the pain animation (I guess it kinda makes sense to have the pain animation take precedence but it makes me think I didn't even hurt the enemy when I did, would love to see damage numbers pop up so it's more clear). Anyway, I can go on with a lot of nitpicky stuff that made the game feel bland, but in the end, it felt like the game unfortunately devolved into endless grinding and boring kill quests where there is no real strategy, just kill until you can get enough defense (which is odd because you need 4 defense to negate 1 damage, dunno why you don't just make it equal numbers so it's more logical for a player) to not take damage and then keep going ad nauseum. Probably an audience for this as there are people who are fans of clickers/idlers/grindy games, but I'm not, so sorry. However, I would like to see more fully fleshed out projects in the future though: all gotta start somewhere!

[Super Mumtaz Bros.]

Cute little game! I like the way it introduced mechanics subtly, like teaching you jumps and movements on the title screen and introducing the story along with the mechanics in one. While the movement was a little weird to get used to due to the fact that you can't jump, it was fun in a puzzle-like way to figure out how best to traverse the levels considering this limitation, so it's like two puzzles in one, what value! I enjoyed my time, but there was definitely some little confusions here and there but nothing major. For example, I thought the geiger counter circle pulse was actually the game just trying to let me know where my character was all the time: I was getting so annoyed until I realized it was trying to let me know a chicken was near, haha! Also, I was expecting that I'd need to pick up the chickens and deposit them at home as well: a bit strange to just have them continue to run around: makes it feel like I'm not done. Furthermore, I was so confused when, after collecting all of the chickens, which was given so much importance that I thought it was the only goal, to suddenly realize that I needed to fix the leaks as well (and the leaks weren't the places where water is leaking like I thought, but rather the missing patches in pipes). All in all, though, I figured it all out and I had a great time!

Extar responds:

Thanks! I didn't want to just make another platformer that wouldn't stand out so I went with the idea of a platformer with no jumping*. Pico-8 only has limited map space so it encourages you to make the levels more dense and puzzle-like. Again, to try and make the game stand out, I thought adding a little story would give it a bit more personality.
I started with the idea of having the player also collect the chickens in too, but I thought it would be more keeping in with the 'but they're actually plumbers' gimmick and say no, they're plumbers, not pest control. Maybe that can be a sequel XD

[NG BBS Awards 2020]

I dunno much about the BBS, but it's always neat to see a nice little community-based thing like this pop-up! Glad to see it survived the transition from Flash. Overall, it's a decent presentation overall with a nice and very interesting pseudo-BBS feel to it. My only complaints would be that it's a bit difficult to read at times (the button text is gold on gold and very small, a dangerous combination for old man eyes like mine haha) and that it could maybe stand to have a little pizazz (perhaps some neat animations for unveiling the winners one-by-one, you know, a little drumroll for suspense and all that? though for people that just want the names immediately, a button to skip the animation would be nice as well). Also maybe make the Menu button say Back instead: think that gels a bit more with common design.

[Kitty in the City]

Decent start, but definitely needs a bit of extra work to make it special! The overall art and music are quite good and the game started off well for me with a nice quirky intro (though it was a little confusing why the intro kept looping until you skip it, instead of just starting once the intro is over). The gameplay is a little rough and overly simplistic though: not bad, but just a little basic at the moment with nothing cool to do beyond jump around slowly. Was a little confusing that you had to jump on the buildings: if the intro didn't tell me I had to I wouldn't, because while the platforms at the start look very defined as something you can jump on, the buildings look like they are background elements and it looks like you shouldn't be able to jump on them (maybe give them a different artistic style so it looks more obvious?). Would love if you made the jumping more satisfying by giving the player not only a cool jumping animation, but also give it a sound... and not a sound just for jumping, but also a sound for squashing mice. As for the physics and such: the rounded edges for the platformers felt very weird in how they could make you slip off a platform if you're at its edges. Speaking of edges, the game would eat my jump input a lot when I'd try to jump from the edge: might help to input coyote time in the game code. Anyway, despite complaints I think there is potential here: would love to see you come back with something bigger by using this as practice!

[OVERDISK💿]

Very solid game! It's simple with not much to it, unfortunately, but what's there felt very polished and satisfying to play! Just running around and slamming the disks into the portal was quite fun thanks to the fluid animation, and I found myself easily getting addicted to it. Interesting design decision to offset the annoyance of the level up ability pop-up by giving the player invincibility during. It's all well and good, my only real complaint would be that I don't like how fast it respawns you after death: I would prefer that it sit at the death screen with your corpse for a bit more to wait for you to confirm with another button press when you want to restart. Nice job on this, as I love some solid arcade fun!

OVERBOY responds:

Thank you for taking the time to write this detailed and kind review !

[UNITRES Dreams]

Pretty neat Sonic/Sparkster style gameplay with its own really weird aesthetic to it! While I sometimes felt the intentional glitchy aesthetic hurt the experience since it made it a bit confusing to tell what was happening exactly, it was funny and I got the gist close enough, I believe. Certainly had a lot of fun using the various movement abilities in tandem with the attacks to create some fun traversal of the world: feedback felt good and everything was overall smooth and interesting, so kudos on that!

Definitely had some weird stuff to it though (and I'm not just talking about the weird dialogue, haha). I don't know why you have to press a separate button to speed up the text than the button to advance the text: I feel it's more standard to have both of those functions on the same button. For me personally, I felt it would be more natural to have midair attacks send you in the direction of the attack instead of in the opposite direction: I mean, you already have it so that attacking to the right in midair sends you to the right and left to the left, so why does attacking up in midair send you down, and down send you up? Speaking of those, I dunno why the midair attacks only bounce you in a direction once instead of whenever you attack: seems confusing to keep track of when you replenish. I'd prefer to have to press the jump button along with holding down to let go of a hanging pole, rather than just pressing down. I also felt like the game was a bit too zippy and glitchy for its own good at times, and also the shield button felt confusing and/or unnecessary to the experience.

Anyway, nice work!

[Breakout]

Yeah, not too shabby Lemmings clone! It didn't leave me starstruck or anything, but everything in this game seemed very decently put-together, and the levels were fun and had a nice sense of tutorialization and progression in difficulty. I actually wish there were even more levels to it with more mechanics to work through: I could see it getting really interesting!

[CHAINSAW DANCE]

I don't really know anything about Chainsaw Man and I don't get any of the references, so I'm just judging this based off of being a rhythm game. On one hand, it seems kind of decent and fun to play: interesting music choice with a cool note chart. On the other hand, though, the game is confusing: why were the letters DFJK used for the arrows instead of just using...you know, the more natural controls, like the arrow keys? If the intention was to make it more challenging by having an awkward control scheme, then I'm not sure why because it seems like the note chart is already quite difficult. But then again, that's built on a falsehood: this game isn't programmed well. The beat detection for ok/great/perfect seemed sketchy to me, not that it matters, because you don't have to actually play competently at all, since just mashing all four arrows constantly is accepted as good when it clearly shouldn't be. Look, I had fun somewhat, but upon further examination, this game is a buncha smoke and mirrors, a barely functional patchwork mess disguised with some memes and neat music: I imagine if I never noticed the problems it would've been fine, but unfortunately I did.