FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[(Old) Newgrounds Arcade]

I really want to like this as I think the intention is cool and there's some real elbow grease in there, but overall I had a bad time with this. The presentation is all over the place: I knew I was gonna have a bad time from the very start when the title screen, the thing that's supposed to sell you on the game, didn't have any effort put into it: basic system fonts, terrible formatting, haphazard layout, inconsistent design (why on earth are the config buttons highlightable and not the main play button?) and badly scaled images (why is the title graphic so small?) which have all this pixelization on them. Just an overall lack of presentation which I'd like to overlook, but it just reminded me of old Geocities sites that people make fun of, it hurt my eyes, and more than that, it was difficult to tell what did what and how to get around. I was hoping that, even if the graphics were bad that the gameplay would win me over, but same issues were had in all the games as well with bad, lazy HUDs, graphics and gameplay: it was cool to see the variety, but I would prefer one great game instead of a bunch of shallow games which get old in seconds, if they even work. Again, its a great concept and a good effort given the amount of content (even though it is overall not so great content), and I think it's a really neat collab opportunity, but I think it needed way more time in the oven: I'd like to think some patches can help but it would have to be a pretty significant overhaul for me.

larrynachos responds:

You're absolutely right on every account! I just can't seem to force myself to tidy up lol. I'm working with artists to slowly rebuild the visual aspects of the game, including the main menu! I'll definitely be revamping the minigame HUDS as well, I just don't have a lot of assets at my disposal :\

I hate to disappoint you, but I just plain suck at art direction lol. Like most of my games, the graphics are a combination of pngs from the internet and assets downloaded from opengameart (this time with the exception of the art contributed by icy64 and others!) just cobbled together. I could spend a whole day just fiddling with the graphical aspects and end up with an equally sloppy product, cause I can't really close my eyes and envision what I want, and when I try it usually evolves out of my capabilities and limited art assets.

I appreciate that you again took the time to do a more in depth review via youtube video! Can I ask what your computer specs are? It appeared to be running quite sluggishly (which is why the recoil in Madness Arena was so severe, and the physics games were running at a snail's pace). It's usually a matter of cpu. I'm using an i7-9700k (throttled at 50% cause I've been having overheating issues), and it runs fine for me (late game madness arena can always get a little laggy though, if there's too many enemies shooting you at once).

In terms of gameplay, I plan on adding more engaging minigames and refining the old ones with better features (for example, I want to replace madness zombie survival with a sort of animated on rails experience like time crisis, but that's something that requires an animator). The upcoming 1.4 release will include a new Line Rider minigame/level editor so you can make, play, and share levels :D

[Ranata the Frog and the Broken Forest]

Oh man, I really wanted to like this game, and some part of me still thinks its quite charming, but I had such a bad time with this, haha. Like I said, I think the overall concept and graphics are very charming and cute, and the game does have some nice touches like the tutorial which allows you to experiment with the controls before actually playing. But the game itself is just so frustrating for me. I really want to jump on flies but it's practically impossible to do so because you can only jump down on them, not up, and branches are constantly in the way to stop you. I really want to move around efficiently and save time, but the frog drifts more than a fast and furious muscle car on NOS. I really want to get this fruits down, but these two fruits are right next to each other and I keep cancelling the first shake by shaking something else, like what sense does that make? I want to deliver this fruit, but whenever I pick up the fruit, my previously carried fruit falls up and right back on top of me and makes me pick it up, and also the witch takes an hour to say I delivered the wrong fruit when I already corrected myself and am trying to deliver the right one! It was quite the adventure, and I did laugh at my mistakes, and maybe I just suck, but I still gotta say that I think the game wasn't designed in the best way possible: good attempt however.

Omael responds:

Thanks for playing. Next one will be better :)

[Dots: Revamped! Expansion]

Simple game, but pretty cute and cool overall! Was really impressed at the overall presentation of the game with the colorful and responsive menus, UI, and HUD: those elements are forgotten by a lot of indie game developers and its nice to see so much work put into them as it really helps give it a sense of professionalism. Game is a little overly simplistic for me: only having rainbow mode as anything special, which doesn't do that much in the first place, last too little and take so long to charge can really make some of the levels monotonous at times, but I will say that once you get deeper into the difficulties and the balls really start to stack up, it gets quite fun! I do wish the screen and game elements were a bit bigger: can't really see the cute faces on the dots, and I also wish the UI was a bit better in some regards to intuitiveness with, for example, the rainbow bar being, well, actually rainbow colored to denote it instead of blue. Still, quite nice!

Starblinky responds:

Hey thanks for the thoughtful review and the compliments + feedback. Appreciated!

I agree with pretty much everything you said. Especially with the bar being rainbow colored. I did consider new special types but I found it too hard to balance when enemies were 1 hit kills. And I didn't want to change it too much from the original 2008 game.

And by the way, since this was the browser version I had to make a lot of cuts for performance. The original game is 60 fps, a bigger game screen and has slightly increased visual effects. The original version is on Steam for free if you're interested!

https://www.dotsrevamped.com/play/

[The Year After]

Quite surprised at this one! It's definitely a little clunky with constant graphical glitches and stuttery unresponsive walks, but it wasn't quite enough to take me out of the experience which I think was really well done! I loved the subtle environment storytelling with the little breadcrumbs and hints of what's going down, piecing everything together bit-by-bit. Just the way I could walk through the house and see the different furniture to see how their lives have progressed was really cool. Was so intrigued by the whole underlying 'what am I doing? am I influencing this family? has this already happened? who the hell am I, other than this really weird ninja?' plot along with the other family plot. Very impressive stuff considering the minimalist presentation.

[Wrath of Nightmare]

Hmm, I haven't finished it yet, so I can't judge it for sure. The intro is pretty neat and does set up some good intrigue, and the graphics and scale of the world is quite impressive. However, that same scale ended up making me just get lost, and not in a good way. Without villagers repeating the objective or any sort of note/journal system, and with not much guidance in the beginning, I wasn't sure where the heck to go and just got sick of it. If the world was a bit smaller, maybe a journal/note system wouldn't even be necessary. It didn't help either that, as big as the world is, it seemed fairly lifeless: I was really hoping I could examine bookshelves and other things in people's houses to learn about them or myself, but I couldn't interact with anything. If I can keep track of what the heck to do, I think it would be cool: maybe I'll retry in the future.

TheEnkian responds:

I think you've made a few good points. Things I'd like to add:
- Objective screen.
- More clear directions/signposting of areas.
- Interactive bookshelves.

Thanks for playing!

[Erebos]

Pretty neat game! It's a little bleh: a lot of the graphics like the corpses are pretty bad and kinda take you out of the experience, and the ship can be really bland as well, with different floors not even having some different colors or wall patterns to shake it up at least a little bit. But, for what it's worth, I did have some good spooks and the story was cool in that it had multiple endings (though it really sucked that I got an ending unintentionally and then it didn't save the checkpoint so I could retry). I also thought you missed some possibilities: I tried to use the bridge computer before even learning about self destruct and suddenly my character is trying to arm self destruct like he knows about it, and I felt it would've been cooler if he just drives the ship to a planet and ends up dooming everyone in his ignorance as an ending. I also thought there were some times where having the examine button and the interact button do separate things didn't make sense: when I first came across Seuss I examined him first, which had the character calmly state that it was Seuss: then I interacted with Seuss and now suddenly my guy is screaming! Was pretty funny, but yeah, I think examine and interact shoulda done the same thing there, just like how you have it do the same thing with beds.

thesteamknight responds:

Thank for playing and for the feedback!

[arachnowopunk]

Neat game! I haven't beaten it yet, but I plan to because the game just seems to ooze charm and professionalism in its design and presentation, and looks to have a lot of depth to the gameplay mechanics as well! I like the little touches like the speech bubbles, the way it pauses after a pop-up, the way it previews your direction for a jump, and so on. It's not without its issues, however: the fact that the spider moves so smoothly but is technically on a grid can really screw you over as I had so many times where my spider moved one extra step too far even though I told it to stop, or stopped one step too early. Some of the instructions were a bit out-of-order as well: kinda wish the game told you about the ability to cancel your jump/stop much earlier than it did (though to be frank, its easy to guess that down is to stop since its the opposite). I'm assuming the maps are all smartly built for it, but it can be frustrating how far you have to go just to get your spider to turn around at times, especially when you misjudge and end up turning yourself the wrong direction since you didn't plan multiple steps ahead. Maybe it would be worth it to just have two buttons at times instead of forcing everything into one button to ease up the difficulty, haha. If the second button turned direction it would also prevent the issue where you try to make a jump you thought you could but didn't know you couldn't, and now you're probably stuck in a situation where you're gonna walk into spikes, haha. However, I understand that the whole complexity to turning direction is intended, so it's probably a no-go. Also, while I like the fact that the game waits for you to ready since you need to switch from mouse to keyboard when closing a pop-up, maybe closing a pop-up should be possible with a keyboard press in the first place to make it a non-issue? Anyway, while I do have some gripes, like I said, this game does seem to have such good construction to it that I'll definitely want to revisit it.

[Medieval Cop 9 - Song and Silence (Part 3)]

I'm definitely not the ideal audience for this as I haven't played the previous episodes or anything like that, so feel free to disregard. Nevertheless, from the little bit of time I played the game I had some minor feedback:

1) It would be really helpful if you could save in this game at any time so you could take a break, but it looks like it's impossible to do so when characters are talking (which is a huge portion of the game). Therefore, it'd be helpful if there were more gameplay segments interspersed throughout the game to give the chance for a break.

2) The game seems to have a really heavy tone to it with the dialogue and themes, but all of the tension is undercut by the incredibly simple cartoony/anime graphics, sprites and sounds which I assume are the default rpg maker assets. Could really stand to have some custom-made assets to more accurately capture the mood you're going for. I did like the picture of Arc and Dregg: something like that seemed to be custom-made and quite effective.

3) C'mon, even the Doctor said so at the start: keep the introductions short, haha!

[Magirune]

A bare-bones dungeon crawler that, while not impressing anyone with visual flair, does still have some rather interesting design to its dungeon! The game doesn't have the best first impression: aside from the lackluster graphics, drab sounds, boring font and no music, the warning about not using keys led to me being constantly afraid about when to use them, so I'd much prefer if the game itself did the work to prevent an unwinnable situation from ever occurring, if possible. Furthermore, the warning about reduced exp from repeat kills had me believe that I should only kill enemies when necessary, such as when they block my path, but this worked against me since the game requires you to kill enemies to get exp so you can kill bigger ones (but there's no strategy to this because you can just respawn when you die for no penalty, so what's the point? maybe a separate difficulty would fix this?) There is a silver lining to the fact that I was so cautious from the start, however: I do like how the dungeon is designed in such a way that, unlike a typical dungeon where you go floor by floor, this dungeon actually lets you visit practically all of its floors from the start, upon which you can then work backwards to design an ideal route to get out. That's such a unique concept I haven't encountered before and though I haven't beaten it yet, I think it will be fun planning this route to get out!

[Arcade Wizard]

Pretty neat game! Seems to have some real professional design to it, especially in regards to the level transitions and UI. Combat is pretty satisfying as well: feels good to hear the sound effects chain together as you blast a big group of enemies. I haven't played though it all yet, but I've mostly enjoyed my time with it. I do have some gripes though. Damage feedback can be a little confusing, particularly for the player: I'd have a lot of times where I thought I narrowly dodged an enemy but I actually didn't, so I think it would help to give a more dramatic signal when you get hit, such as freezing the game for a brief moment or blinking the entire screen red instead of just the player sprite or knocking back all the enemies from the player or whatever. Combat was getting a bit repetitive as well: even though the enemies were changing in terms of sprites, every fight could be beat with the same strategy of just camping the spawn points and then running circles to corral them all into a big group you could hose down. The groups got bigger and the enemies spongier but I'm hoping there is more variety than just that to add more strategy. Also, not so much a complaint but maybe something to consider: I think it would help to adjust the deadzone for the mouse cursor as if you move the mouse slow enough, your character will vibrate in an annoying way as they keep stutter stepping, haha.