FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Duloga]

Really love this game (well, love it as much as a game that makes me feel like crap and question how the world operates can, haha)! Even though I was able to guess how the game was going to end up, what with blue being labeled "cops," but yellow being labeled "yellow," not "crook," and that gets even more tenuous as the quotas increase and the labels get more and more confusing, I nonetheless loved the progression, especially since it was baked into the gameplay itself, not just told to you explicitly. The gameplay putting you into this role of being some kinda judge, jury and executioner, and not even being allowed to fight back by reducing the time limit, can really get under your skin and make you question what are you supposed to do. My journey through the game was quite a ride: first I went along with it, next I fought back by timing out but it punished, I tried to keep cheating it however I could by eventually I went along with it with morbid curiosity, knowing that my player would be next on the wall (I was very close to being compelled to just shut the game off half-way as some sort of moral victory). Again, very impressive narrative that is built not through words, but gameplay mechanics that really get you into the role and helplessness and shared responsibility and morality and intimately think about this stuff.

[Factions]

What a neat little game! I appreciate the simple premise and controls as I'm usually pretty bad at these type of games, haha. That said, some of the controls were a little confusing: not sure why I wasn't able to click on a single unit and instead always had to highlight-square for selection, and I'd prefer if slo-mo was a toggle instead of a hold-down. Game was very charming with it's graphics, sound and 'music' and had a great assortment of aptly-named levels that slowly escalate the complexity of the scenarios that you face: initially victory is almost always assured but the later levels where you need to face off against grander forces than you can be really fun! If you'd believe it, I actually had the game's song stuck in my head for a while after.

[First Job: Mars Power Industries]

Very cool puzzler, and an interesting remix on the original Mars Power Industries game. I like the new mechanics of absorbing crystals into the homes and then having quotas to build certain tiers based on that. As usual, the levels had a great sense of pacing and design as it introduced all sorts of tutorials and new challenges intuitively, all wrapped in a wonderfully professional design. It was around maybe year 10-ish or so that it did get a little bit repetitive in terms of pacing: it was still doing alright and it was introducing some neat concepts like the land shifter devices, but I dunno, something about the game just screams for a bigger picture to get the player invested/hooked or something. I mean, the whole concept of building homes on Mars could make for an awesome narrative about pulling together and surviving for the sake of mankind so that we can start a new life. The move from the previous game's industrial buildings to now homes could really make it even more emotional since it's transitioning from the initial terraforming to now be about families coming to Mars: maybe each level shows you the names of families that move in and so on, just little quips and stories about them. Maybe it could even get a bit political or dramatic as the game goes on with housing planning mechanics fostering inequality in regards to the game quotas that allow some houses to get more crystals than others: maybe there are multiple ways to meet quota with a puzzle where the a harder more hidden solution satisfies families more than just coldly meeting quota, like a bonus objective to not wastefully upgrade a house to 4 when 3 will do, etc. I dunno, take it as a compliment that the real polished and slick design to the game as well as the chill atmosphere and music just makes me want even more in it to get players really invested; think something like Frostpunk, if you've played it. Anyway, I still had a great time, so keep up the great work!

Rarykos responds:

Thank you very much! Oh, these are very interesting thoughts! It would be really cool to make something like Frostpunk, thanks for the awesome tips. I'm a fan of these dramatic-strategy games, but I didn't think about Mars in that way. Yeah, very cool ideas! I'm really happy you enjoyed it, and that you cared to play it. It's nice to see you again, thanks!

[Super Shout]

Very interesting experiment and delivers some good fun, but it kinda feels a bit half-baked on execution at times. Detecting the microphone in the first place was really troublesome for me because I have so many mics (webcam, oculus, actual mic, headset mic, etc) and I had to figure out how to get it to work. When I got the mic in though, the game didn't seem to utilize it as fully as I thought or make it ingrained with the mechanics: it seems to operate on a binary system where any sound does regular speed, when I thought it was gonna be a gradient where whispering=slow-mo and yelling=regular/fast-mo, with degrees of volume inbetween. The microphone also has an annoying lag when transitioning between modes and can be really touchy. Taking away the microphone, the gameplay seemed a bit frustrating too with awkward hit detection, way too small and way too fast characters, hard to determine reload timing, and some of the controls were really difficult to get used to even in an ideal scenario, like the walljumping (especially since if you're not loud all the time, it can stutter and misalign your inputs). I still had some good fun and made it all the way to beat the boss, but it could definitely use some polishing up.

[Picowars]

Pretty cool recreation of Advance Wars! It's not my favorite type of game (I never get far in these type of games when they start to turn way too challenging, haha) but it seemed fairly well put-together and impressive. However, I feel like the game is missing a lot of quality of life which is necessary for people who aren't familiar with Advance Wars (especially since it's not 100% guaranteed that the game will work exactly the same way even if you are familiar). I know it's a fan-game, so you could argue that people should expect to be familiar with the game and not need a tutorial, but even taking that into consideration, the game could really use a way to see a unit's info to figure out what are their properties and strengths, and its missing crucial HUD read-outs like range-targetting for artillery and projected damage for when you do an attack, and so on. It's probably difficult to put all that into a pico-8 game, but it's absolutely necessary for this to work. Still, it's a very good core game you got here nonetheless.

lambdanaut responds:

Thanks for the review! I agree it's missing some pieces, and a tutorial would really be ideal.
Range is there for ranged units though. Hold 'X' on them to see their range :)

[[BTNverse] Prep-school horrors]

This is a really, really, strange game, and I of course mean that in the best way, haha. Love the really weird environment, kooky battles, and mysterious nature that permeates it which shocks and disturbs you constantly. Who says that all horror games need to be these first-person low-light no-weapon run-away games? This does a great job at building an unsettling and mysterious atmosphere, while simultaneously also being action-packed and fun with its great soundtrack and weird combat. The obtuse mechanics can be a bit of a double-edged sword at times: while its fun to get lost in the bizarreness and try to piece together what the heck you're even doing, some of the weirdness can be frustrating to figure out. For example, the pathfinding of your allies can be really, really bad, making you back-track to try to keep them all together or to make them pick up weapons (thankfully though, it seems that the game assembles all of them for a fight no matter what, so why even have them wandering around and getting lost instead of just putting them in your pocket like other RPGs if it just confuses you in the end?) The combat can also fluctuate between challenging and fun, way too erratic and unpredictable to realistically fight, to just braindead if you have a bunch of allies that just annihilate the enemy before it can even show you its moves. Basically, the game is a really crazy game, which makes it very interesting as an experience, but it sometimes works against itself with how crazy it can be, haha! Made it to ending 1/8 (lost the engineering headmaster) and will try and see if I can go for the others!

adriendittrick responds:

Thanks a lot for this thoughtful review, and I'm glad you had fun in my little existential dread of a universe :)

[Gravity Hook]

Fun little action game! Had a good time going for a right score in this as everything is so explosive and chaotic. The game does have a lot of juicy aspects to it like squash-stretch and screenshake which makes it feel nice, but it might be overdoing it a bit, particularly with the screenshake. When I first played the game, I died because I didn't even realize I was being damaged: this is because every action in the game shakes the screen intensely, which makes it so getting damaged, which shakes the screen, doesn't stand out from the rest of the shaking. Either the intensity of the shaking needs to be lessened in general to make the damage shake stand out more, or damage should elicit another reaction from the game, like a brief timepause or a red flash or something. I also felt the damage invulnerability was a little too short as you can get wombo comboed and lose all three hearts in an instant if you're not careful. Mechanics can also be a bit confusing at times: sometimes I'd hit the wall behind an enemy and dash into them (for example, when you hook behind an enemy while they're spawning), but that counts as me getting hurt even though it should be similar to hooking the enemy directly and dashing into them. Still, solid game that felt well-put together for some quick fun!

[STOP]

Awesome puzzler! This really hit it outta the park for me: great, professional presentation with nice polish like squash and stretch animations and transitions and so on, great platforming with subtle gamefeel inclusions like coyote time and rounded edges for clambering up, great pacing with the level design and steady introduction of mechanics and increasing difficulty, and very creative and fun puzzles! I'd love to see even more puzzles in this as I just wanted to keep playing more and more; you got me hooked! Only complaints I had were minor: one, the rounded edges for platforms is a double-edged sword since, while it makes it easier to get on a platform when you're jumping up to it, it also makes it so you can slip off a platform if you're standing on the edge of it, which shouldn't happen, and two, I felt like maybe the door puzzles should've been put before the bullet puzzles because the bullet puzzles were like the cherry on the sundae which maybe should be left for last as a matter of escalation (but then again, they say you should put your best stuff forward, so maybe having the bullets early is a good hook).

[Box Factory]

Neat puzzler! Got pretty tricky at times, but I had fun solving the puzzles. The difficulty curve was a bit all over the place however, where you finish a really easy stage, then suddenly a really hard stage, and then it's back to easy, and so on. I guess it did keep it fresh somewhat, but I'd prefer a more gradual increase in difficulty (though I know that can be tricky to determine). For example, as early as level 4 there was a really tough level to solve considering it was still in the kinda tutorial period! Controls were a bit frustrating too: because of the diagonal view, sometimes it tricky to tell, for example, where pressing a direction will actually send you to. Obviously not an issue if you use the touch controls in the corner which are angled appropriately, but for keyboard arrows, it gets confusing. Anyway, at the end of the day, I had fun with the puzzles and it was put together very nicely in all aspects, despite some difficulty bumps.

[Cerbirds]

A cute goofy game from an art and presentation perspective, but kinda lacking in gameplay for me. The game just has a really janky feel to it, and I'm not talking about the cute way the birds bob up and down, which is adorable. Moving around was really odd and bumping into stuff was nauseating with the way it jerks the camera and player around: ramps cause all sorts of weird jank to happen where you'll be suddenly falling or sliding down. The hitboxes are all over the place as well: birds differ in size so sometimes switching in certain places gets you stuck and breaks the game. The powers didn't seem very creative either: most of the time you just switch to the bird that fixes the obstacle right in front of you and that's it. They do have some hidden powers, like gliding, but I was hoping the level to have more challenges that require you to use the birds in ways you might not think of immediately. I think there's a decent core here, and the idea of switching between birds for powers is novel, but the game needs a lot of smoothing to help reduce the glitchiness of it as well as some extra meat on its bones to become something great.

DantonSlip responds:

Thanks for that really complete feedback! It's always nice to have those ones!

This was my first gamejam game in solo and I was afraid to think too big and since I didn't knew my engine very well, I wanted to keep things simple at first, to have things working (which is, as you can see, more or less achieved but imagine if I had made a bigger game hahahaa) and have some basis to work on later. : ) I'm glad that I had such feedbacks, it helps me to point out things that weren't that well (even in a that small project) and seeing some people playing the game gave me lot of informations of how to make Cerbirds more comprehensible.

I'm currently working on a more complete version. First of all, I enhanced the colliders in order to not frustrate the player. I have some little enhancement to do in a core code side to clean up everything and solve some little hiccups that can be annoying. I also have multiple ideas to make those mechanics used in a better way (which will end up to some puzzles solving by using birds abilities) and a real level design.

Thanks again for your feedback, I really appreciate it!