FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Beneath the Branches - demo]

Not too shabby! Game certainly had some spooky atmosphere built-up with the unique hand-drawn art style, and it had some really interesting events to get through like the water girl boss fight, reminiscent of the Faith boss fight. One part that I think needs a lot of work is the sound-design, which I think is critical to getting people immersed into a horror atmosphere. I think it could use a lot more atmospheric sounds in general, and I feel like the sounds used for the wooden bridge creaking and the water girl splashing needs big help: they were clearly just the creaking of a bed frame and the splashing of a bath tub: really took me outta the experience, they need to be a lot of swampy and spooky. It also had some other parts that kinda took me outta the experience, like how the water girl boss fight was a bit too hard and clunky when transitioning between screens (leading to too many retries which dulls the threat of death) and some of the art being too repetitive. Still, not a bad start as it has some pretty memorable moments, so looking forward to more!

[Geometrica]

Really cool puzzler with a unique concept! It's a bit confusing to get used to at first, and the controls can be a bit tricky (for example, I was expecting to be able to click and hold, drag to another light and release to form a connection, but it looks like it requires you to click twice, and later on I'm not sure why I kept losing my hold click when trying to delay a connection) but the game does a lot to help you along with tutorials/intuitive design so it was alright and worth it to get into the unique puzzles. Even more so than the puzzles and gameplay, I gotta give props to the general design of the presentation and UI of the game: it just felt so professional and crisp. The graphics are simple but have tons of little touches like outlines and animations to give them life, levels and pop-ups fade-in and out smoothly, you can preview connections you're forming before you actually make them, death and level completion states have cool animations with neat effects, and so on and so forth: all of these little touches probably won't be actually noticed, but I think they are subtly felt and help really elevate this game to create a top-notch experience!

[Pain Reaction]

Very cool action-packed game! Game is packed full of that satisfying Prox276 game feel I've come to expect: some good ol' explosive pixely fun! I love how the screen-shake is used to effectively signal the most important events, being an enemy being hit (so you know you aimed correctly) and an enemy exploding (so you know you need to look for revenge projectiles), which felt like an improvement over other games more haphazard screenshake. I like how the levels ramp up in terms of difficulty with new and interesting enemy types and other difficulty tweaks, though I wish the boss would also improve in some aspects as well. I wish the rocket would only appear in your hand when you're ready to fire: its a bit confusing when it looks like you should be able to fire but you still can't, and only showing it when you're ready would help, I think. I got a bit confused when enemies were dying from their own buddies projectiles: in a way, its neat, but it felt a little unsatisfying to me that I didn't get to take them down myself, but that's just me (probably because it doesn't screenshake when this happens?). Solid game all-around!

By the way, I love the goofy drooly face the basic imps make when you hit them, haha.

Prox276 responds:

Thanks! Your thorough and constructive reviews are something I think of from the moment I start a new project and it's one of the things that motivate me to do my best and create something that improves on my past games! I really appreciate it! :)

[tempO]

Decent arcade game! I love the cool and satisfying effects in both visuals and audio that the game has to it, such as with the slow-mo during aiming and the explosions when smashing through other marbles. I felt like the game wasn't playing to its strengths though: with how large the map was and all the walls in the way (which were difficult to see since they weren't distinguished significantly), it felt like I had to go looking for action myself instead of the game providing a steady stream of it. It might work better to actually have the player locked in an arena with enemies that keep popping in: that way you'll never be lost looking for a fight and you'll be able to pull off cooler chain-combos in a more enclosed space, for example.

[Monster Casino]

Very interesting and quirky game with a unique take on poker! I feel lucky that I learned enough poker to be able to play this as the tutorial chip didn't really do much to help, haha (actually it seemed to only play the tutorial if I fought them multiple times? the first time it just played out like a regular match). The presentation is kinda of equal parts unique and frustrating: while I do like the interesting 3D/2D diorama look to it all, other elements like the text and UI elements can be difficult to read and glitchy at times. I really like the concept of recruiting different party members to let you use cheat abilities to swing the game in your favor, but unfortunately the game seems to do everything in its power to not let you use them and force you to just play regular poker: good for people who like poker, but for me, its a bit boring. The security level just rises so fast and drains so slow that you barely get to use any of your cool stuff, which takes away what I think is the primary charm of the game. I dunno, maybe I just got unlucky (it is poker after all) but I just kept getting all-in-ed by enemies and other stuff like that and didn't get to do much, just kept counting on the dog to give me money from slots, poor dog.

[Puzzle Crafter]

Game does kind of have a clunky look and feel to it with the simplistic visuals which aren't professionally tiled/spaced in any manner along with a general lack of juice, but it is still somewhat impressive how intuitive and neat the level editor is, along with the decent variety of levels and mechanics shown in the adventure mode. Game could be helped a lot with some better visuals and FX, just some minor things like glass shard particles when you shatter a glass block, for example, and maybe giving the finish block a classic checkboard finish-flag pattern on it. I also think that having the game elements be tiled/on a grid would help with designing the levels as it would make placement of elements more uniform, leading to more consistent physics simulations. Adventure mode was a bit lacking in that, while it had coins and such, it didn't seem to track them in anyway to have you try for a par/perfect score or anything like that, especially since if you don't get them all at the end it just shuffles you to the next level anyway instead of letting you retry for a better score. Also the boosters need some help as they blew out my eardrums when you had that level where a box was constantly triggering their sound, haha! Basically, its a bit rough at the moment, but I think it has some decent potential!

larrynachos responds:

Thank you for the review and suggestions! I've been meaning to give it some TLC updates but I'm actually working on two new games right now! I'll definitely take your suggestions into consideration when I hop back into this project though!

A grid system for the editor is something I've wanted to try but couldn't implement with the current setup. The adventure levels are the same way because of that. I think there's only 1 or 2 coins that you can't ever collect, most of the coins are there to show that you're still on track, even if you bumped something and changed your direction slightly. It's more of a guide tool if anything.

Yeah that boost level needs some changes, but at the moment you can knock it off of the boost with the ball that's sitting above it. That's something others have said too, so I'm gonna make sure that gets fixed next update!

Thanks again for the feedback, it's very helpful!

[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.