FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Outta Juice!]

Pretty cool puzzler with a decent concept that I think stubs its toe a bit with the design. I like the whole idea of building an ideal route to make it through a level with limited resources: for example, do I go risk going the wrong way to grab the juice power-up, or do I have enough to go straight to the end with my current juice levels? The problem was that, since the levels are so large and the camera so zoomed-in, you aren't able to plan these smart decisions: you end up just needing to trial and error these dead-end trap routes until you figure out the proper way. The limited visibility reduces the game from a smart game to a guessing game: did you pick the right route or not, who knows, whoops it was a dead end! When you get the partner who mirrors your movements later it gets even more frustrating since they can move off-screen and you have no way to keep track of them, you just have to memorize everything from previous runs! Basically, even though I had fun, it was frustrating and I had a lot of issues making it through the levels: I think it would work so much better if you could just see the entire map. Also, it wasn't until one of the later levels which seemed to be absolutely impossible did I realize you can move diagonally: would be helpful if the game could let you know you have those options in a better manner since they don't seem to work with the initial concept: maybe have the character sprite surrounded by eight-directional arrows at all times?

[Farting Strawberry Clock]

Decent variety of farts on offer, with some crazy medal unlocks! When I first saw the game, I thought it was gonna be something like a Flappy Bird game except you flap by farting: shame it wasn't, but eh, a decent fart soundboard nonetheless.

[Forgecore]

This was a real surprise hit for me! From such a somber, dark atmosphere the last thing I was expecting was a goofy physics rocket platformer, but man was it fun and totally fit! I absolutely love the way the game delivers its story through the rising challenges brought forth with every new game mechanic: moments like trying to get to the top of the mountain through the snowy winds were absolutely intense and memorable! I also really like the subtle way the heat gauge gain slows down a bit just when you're about to overheat: very user-friendly and just adds to the intensity of pushing the limits. This game definitely delivers a great and unique experience though difficulty and gameplay, similar to games like Getting Over It. Only complaints I could see would be that maybe its a little too hard (obviously subjective) at times which could lead to the intensity of the story being lost and the game being abandoned from frustration. For example, while a level like 'the city' is fairly dynamic with the player struggling against the enemies however they can, other levels like 'the mountain' kind of require memorization of traps from previous failed attempts to pull off a perfect run (since you need to know the exact timing where you should build up enough heat to last through the period where you should no longer touch the snow and stay airborne from then on). I could be wrong on this though, but anyway, I had a really great time with this, so kudos on a job well done!

morazor responds:

Thank you very much, I'm glad you've enjoyed it so much!
The mountain was a surprise to me, I didn't realize it could be so hard, probably because I completely overlooked the most intuitive strategy that most people tend to use. Sometimes it's hard to put yourself in the shoes of a new player that doesn't know all the tricks.
Anyway I understand that some people enjoy having a more relaxed experience and focus on the narrative aspect of the game: in that case having a difficult challenge can merely feel like an annoying obstacle. With the game already released, changing the mountain level would feel unfair for those who already beat it, so I've slapped together an easy difficulty setting to give a overall more approachable version of the game.
These are for sure some valuable lessons to be learned. I'm thankful to everyone that played the game and shared their experience, hopefully this will make my next games better <3

[Bonkers]

Super solid game here! The entire game has a really professional feel to it in all aspects: art, sound, music, UI, animation, so on and so forth, it's all top-notch! Gameplay is great with a nice feel to it in general, along with a nice variety of mechanics and levels that get more and more intense as you reach the climax, which was a boss fight with an awesome master-hand-esque moveset! I love that the punches serve a double-feature by not only being a fighting technique, but a movement technique as well: its a little wonky to get used to at first since you can end up flying around all over the place but it felt great to master them and move through the levels effectively. I did have some minor issues with punch movement initially: I did notice that the fists blink for a second to indicate that they are usable again after touching the ground: it might be a bit better if the fists grayed out or something to indicate they are disabled, and restore regular color when they are usable once again: nothing major, just a minor nit-pick as I loved the game. Another thing is that the game did recommend to use a controller, but unfortunately my PS4 controller didn't work when it does work on other games, dunno why. Anyway, all that aside, my only real complaint would be that I wish I had more levels and bosses to flex on!

Also you kept me hanging on for so long with that credit text, haha! I'm a sucker for bonuses like that.

[Giant Bacon Factory]

Short and sweet, just like a strip of bacon! I like the quirky and funny setup that the game presented and it was a fun challenge to get through. This seemed like one of those games where, to make up for the short length, the difficulty was intensified to the extreme: I'm fine with that sort of thing, but for others, I could see it being more preferable to have the game be longer and more spaced out to allow a gradual difficulty increase. Controls were a bit confusing: why was A/D used to move left and right initially, only for it to be removed immediately in favor of moving to wherever the mouse is pointing? It might work better to just have the mouse click power the jetpack, but you still move left and right with A/D, or just start the game with mouse movement anyway. The thing that killed me in this was the whole mash to recover mechanic: it wasn't explained very well and isn't immediately apparent since the numbers are hard to read both in that they blend into the background and rotate with the player, sometimes going upside-down! Also because of the tight nature of the game, you would be forced to mash like crazy to recover and that kills my wrist to click that hard and fast: this game could give you carpal tunnel along with a rage quit because of the difficulty, haha!

Also, the plural of bacon is just bacon, I think, not bacons. Or is it?

[Karoshi Portal]

Pretty cool game! A nice variety of mechanics and smart puzzles to go through in this kept things fresh and exciting, as well as some funny joke levels. It was a little confusing though: for a game called Karoshi "Portal", at the start and throughout it barely used the portal mechanics at all and instead was introducing other mechanics in a real haphazard way: one level you'd be using the portal gun for some cool, difficult and clever puzzles and then the next level would introduce bombs, only for bombs to be unused for the next several levels as it goes back to other mechanics and braindead platforming levels? Basically the pacing, difficulty and level order was all-around the place and it felt it could've been designed for a better flow and curve, but maybe some people like the haphazard level variety: guess it can kinda make it feel like a Warioware game, haha! There were also some minor bugs with the game but nothing too major: for example, if you shoot the portal gun at a wall, then shoot it at a box (deleting it), then shoot it at another wall, you'll create two blue portals (though they operate like an orange/blue pair instead of causing some sort of resonance cascade)!

[Sticky Sam 2]

Quite the solid game! Had fun going through this to the end at it kept the pace up with a good level of difficulty escalation with new mechanics bit-by-bit. Most of the mechanics were great, but I did feel like the arrows were a bit frustrating at times with how fast they would get: would've loved if the arrows froze when you start to move so you don't need to compensate for your travel time, but I understand if doing so is part of the intentional difficulty. Also would've loved to see more puzzles involving the whole 'blocks covered behind you' mechanic as that seemed to be abandoned early, but it's all good: since had a fun romp nonetheless!

[Sarlacc]

Pretty neat flappy-type game which I think has a cool theme to it, but has a rough introductory period where you need to get used to the absolute noisy chaos that is the graphics and audio of this game (I had a headache when I played this game and it didn't help, haha) both at the same time getting used to the controls which seemed overly sensitive and made me crash like crazy. I did eventually get used to the jetpack and made it pretty far, but the stigma left from the intro remained and the game didn't seem to change significantly no matter how far I got into it (not sure if it's possible to escape). It's certainly got some unique visuals, but for me, they were a bit of an eyesore and didn't evoke the sarlacc pit in a good way: if I didn't see the screenshots of the game in the description below, I would've assumed my game was glitching out. Speaking of glitches, there's a weird glitch where if you go beyond 2000 points, it trims it to be a 3 digit number for some reason: it does seem to only be a trimming instead of actually reducing the number, though.

[Bulldozer]

Solid game! Fun, fast-paced destruction that has a good variety of levels to go through, offering both some tricky puzzles and dynamic obstacle courses. I wasn't expecting the bulldozer to go so fast considering it felt so heavy with turns and such, but it did give an interesting feel to it like an old Marble Madness type game where you battle to stay on track, and the speed did allow for some fun ramps. I did have a few issues: sometimes the physics would go a bit wonky at times with how barrels acted, there were a few levels where you could get a barrel stuck in a corner and not be able to get it out, and the spike hitboxes were a bit larger than that looked. For the most part it was alright, but there was just a slight overall wonkiness to the movement/controls/physics that caused some frustration at times.

[Pullfrog]

Really neat idea and an interesting game to play! Definitely has a nice feel to it with a lot of love shown in the various aspects of its creation, and I had fun figuring out how to play the game and deal with the chaos. Has a weird mysterious element to it as well which serves as another nice hook. I did get a bit confused on the execution at times, however. My initial expectation when playing was that I would shoot my tongue at something, it would attach and freeze the block, and then I would press a direction to indicate where the tongue would move the attached block to. However, it looks like the only thing the tongue can do is pull it towards you (when it works, which seemed sketchy at times), which I felt limited it greatly (for example, you can't pull a block to the wall because of this since you'd get squished). Because of this, I found myself relying less and less on the tongue pulling and more and more on the tongue being able to destroy blocks, which I felt was way less appropriately frog-themed. Basically, I think the tongue pulling is the most iconic feature of this and it should've had a lot more usability given to it to make it the best, instead of having it compete with the destruction mechanics which I feel might've been built to compensate and reduce frustration from the tongue being bad. Still, had some good fun nonetheless!

afk-mario responds:

You are totally right! we try to compensate a little the fact that you can't push pieces on to the walls spawning more pieces there, but I understand how it can be frustrating.

The pulling feels like it doesn't work at times because we try to have at least one block of distance between you and the piece so you don't get squashed more frequently it's not the most elegant solution and we have talked about different ways of dealing with it, but maybe now that the conditions for it to work are more clear it makes it less frustrating :)

Thanks for playing and the review!