FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hoop Hopper]

Surprisingly pretty fun! It's a simple game, but something about the smooth, snappy movement with the way the ball zips to each hoop and the hypnotic way the hoops grow and shrink, I found myself getting into a trance, unfocusing my eyes to take in the whole board and keep that combo going! Love playing on the expert board where they are practically no safe spots and you just need to keep your eyes open to look for the paths in a constantly shifting world! It's already pretty solid, but with some extra juice to make it even more exciting, like rising pitch-shifted sounds as you get higher and higher combos and some explosive fx, this really could be something great as I think the core game is already there and fun!

[Curly's Chase]

Hmm, between two minds on this game! On one hand, it's a very cute game, and it is kinda fun and challenging to puzzle out the ideal route since you need to compensate for your turns in advance. But on the other hand, the controls were quite difficult any annoying to get used to at times: there were a lot of turns where I was just stuck and I wasn't sure if it was the games fault or if I was just confused on what the heck to do. While most of the time the turns were smooth and nice, other times the turns just felt clunky, and also the teleport was unreliable on how far it'd send you back, and sometimes it'd spawn me inside a cloud block for some reason! Feels like the teleport was maybe just a cheat, an easy way out of not fully designing the movement properly: for example, the turning might've benefited from other aspects being redone to compensate, like zooming out the camera to give you more room to compensate, or being able to shift half-way to do an s-curve and such. Basically, a mixed bag, but a very interesting experiment!

aeveis responds:

Thanks for the feedback, some good observations there!

[Sauve Mouton]

Cute little game! Very cute and charming with the goofy art and sounds, and it's very intuitive with the simple instructions and the way the wolves preview their angle of approach and bark to signal they're coming in. Very fun to move the sheep around and try to go for a high score: my best was 14! Would love it if the timer and score pop-ups also had the same handdrawn font to keep everything consistent instead of using the system font, but I understand.

[Disc Us]

Pretty ambitious and impressive to get all of this setup! Unfortunately it was just a confusing experience for me, both because there was barely any way to learn what the heck to do in the game and because the online experience seemed pretty glitchy (countdown timers getting stuck in an infinite loop that goes into the negatives, people not voting and not knowing what to do and pressing buttons and such randomly, the game keeps putting me into chat mode when I'm trying to move around, etc). But I suppose I'm not the intended audience as I've never played either Disc Room or Among Us, so I was totally lost as the game didn't provide much instruction since it assumed you already knew how the game worked. Still, I think I started to understand how everything works after awhile (maybe) and did have some fun and I think it does have a lot of potential: just maybe needs to slow down a bit!

keybol responds:

Yeah I have presumed players have idea on how to play Among Us and other social deduction games. The instructions aren't clear also for both teams, which items go where and how traitors will actually win. Though with games like these, I feel part of the game is to try the game many times to actually understand it (the same is said by Secret Hitler designer in his GDC talk).

[Dead Estate CLASSIC]

Pretty cool game! Definitely is very professionally crafted and oozes charm from every aspect. Love all the art, characters, the menus with their highlights and pop-ups, and...and everything, everything! Gameplay was solid as well, though I would argue that most of the enemies felt very unchallenging while also being very spongy, so it kinda turns into a slog that makes replaying not as appealing as it could be, since it just takes so much time (maybe it's because I was playing as the trucker, maybe the handgun is just too weak?). Would love to see the ability to hover over the weapons/items in your inventory to see what they are: sometimes I'd pick up an item too fast to see what the pop-up description said. Also would be nice if it prevented you from wasting a gun by picking up another one without confirming whether you want to discard (or i'd be nice if the previous gun would drop to the floor instead of poofing away). I wasn't sure what was going on with the psycho that chases you: he's not really a threat as he can easily be danced around, and I was shooting him for a good chunk of time without him dying, so long I thought he was invincible, I dunno, I guess he's kinda supposed to be a Spelunky ghost or something when you're taking too long? Wasn't sure what was going on. Anyway, still solid overall and good to see another cool game from you lads!

[GUNWYRM]

This was a bit of an odd duck for me! On one hand, I think it looks great and is a really interesting concept! Presentation is great with the wibbly-wobbly letters, the menus, the transitions, the pop-ups and the HUD and so on all looking great! Gameplay is pretty solid as well: it took me a bit too get used to it and to use the dash more often, but once I did, I was making good progress and it was neat to get a gunwyrm going with all sorts of guns and abilities. But on the other hand, I don't feel like I had as much fun as I should? There were a lot of confusing aspects of the game: there aren't any cool effects when you dash like glowing or turning blue or blurry to let you know you're invincible; while there is a 'ding' that lets you know when your dash is ready there's no bar that fills up to let you know dash is on cool down in the first place (nor is there an error sound if you try to dash without it being ready yet) leading me to thinking my dash was malfunctioning; and there was a lack of feedback in general. It just didn't feel satisfying for some reason: enemies die without much fanfare and the guns fire so slow and nothing sounds powerful and the levels and enemies get really samey quickly. I mean, when I die, I get a big, crunchy explosion, but when enemies die, it's practically nothing. I think some juice and variation to make the gameplay not only more satisfying, but more intuitive by giving more information, would help. But still, rather solid for what it is!

THXsprites responds:

Hey! Thanks for the feedback, I totally agree with what you have to say about the game lacking "juice", I would love if there was more user feedback and things felt better to do. Sadly, due to the constraints of the jam we didn't have time to polish the game as much as we would like, thus there isn't a ton of wave varieties nor did we get around to adding things like a bar for the dash as we just didn't have time to think about it.

Thanks for playing! :)

[Contract Rush - Halloween Dress Up]

Not too shabby! I'm not one for dress-up games, but I was impressed at the sheer amount of options, like the ability to move objects up and down layers and even draw your own stuff in. Would've loved to see the option to dress up even more characters: but of a bummer that you can only dress-up one of the characters. Also targetting was a bit funky at times: when you've got a lot of clothes on someone and you want to adjust, you can end up clicking the wrong thing: might be nice if objects get highlight so you can tell what you're about to move.

[That Dream Again]

Man, I reallllllly want to love this game, and I still had an alright time, but man, it just felt a little bit too glitchy and hard to control at times, and that really killed the fun for me. The progression was really cool: learning the map and getting new powers bit-by-bit was great, all to an interesting surrealist theme. The issue was that a lot of my runs felt down to luck due to the incredibly sketchy controls: the hook especially, which never worked when I wanted it to, and then sometimes the bounce wouldn't work either or I'd try to float after a swing but it wouldn't preserve my momentum properly. It also sucked that whenever you hook, you're stuck in the initial hook swing arc: you can't rock left and right to build up momentum. I dunno, I felt like the hook shouldn't have relied on sketchy auto-targetting and instead used manual controls like the mouse to control where you shoot it at. Like I said, I still like the game, but it was a bummer since I wanted to go all flying around like bionic commando but it just didn't work fluidly for me despite my attempts.

[Yin and Yang]

Awesome concept and great execution! Really solid game and I got so into it: loved figuring out each level. If I had any complaint it might be that some of the levels were a bit out-of-order in terms of difficulty and that it kinda didn't introduce any crazy new elements in the later levels, and the 'muted' version of the music can be a bit grating for some reason (I dunno, despite being muted it's kinda piercing and hurts? i'm old lol), but eh, I didn't care as I had a great time nonetheless!

[My Hat]

Fun goofy little game! These minimalist games can be quite interesting to figure out what the heck is going on by experimenting with everything: felt really clever putting the pieces together bit-by-bit. I was totally lost for a good chunk of time on the whole flying mini-game: didn't understand why balloons hurt to get, and the way the plane crashes into you is so forced and weirdly animated since it sticks to you like glue. But once I figured it out, everything was cool after all. Game can be a little glitchy: the sound was doing some sort of glitchy multiplicative layering that was destroying my speakers after a while because I kept failing the flying minigame. Animations can also stop/start when not intended, like if you use the squirrel when the plane is bringing the hat back and such. Still, a nice experience to puzzle out!