FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Stealth Optional]

Pretty cool game! It's like Hotline Miami but if it had stealth similar to something like MGSV with its 'reflex' system where you have a crucial moment between being seen and the alarm being sounded to take care of them. Bit of Splinter Cell thrown in there as well with the lights.

Anyway, for the most part I had a great time! The game had a good amount of juice which made actions very satisfying and smooth, it did a great job at introducing the mechanics intuitively, and it addictively evolved the challenge over time with lots of interesting arrangements! Loved the panic of trying to scramble and chain kills to keep the cascading alerts from getting me into trouble. If I were to have any complaints, it'd be that I think the camera is way too zoomed-out, and that I wanted even more levels because I was really getting addicted to this and then suddenly it was over!

And the font ain't that bad! It just needs distinctions between the letter A and R, because right now they look the same: can't tell whether the musician is named 'SPIRALFLIP' or 'SPIAALFLIP', haha!

[Pillow Fight]

Wow, this game was fantastic! I'm not typically one for these roguelike deckbuilders, but I got absolutely sucked into this and really enjoyed myself! The presentation and concept is very charming and cute, the tutorial and interface were very intuitive with great use of tooltips to figure out everything naturally, and I loved how the complexity and strategy of the game evolved over time with all sorts of new tokens and rules. I was worried at first that the game would feel too luck-based and screw me over, but I always felt like I could improvise my way out of any pitfalls as long as I played carefully with my moves and cards. All in all, it's a grand slam on all facets and was a great short and sweet adventure!

Can't think of much feedback besides a minor nitpick that confused me at the start, being how it animates the rounds resolving. I know now that the tokens it picks to contribute to the final count are arbitrary, because the scoring is purely population totals pitted against each other, but because it picks a token in a certain position, I thought that there was some sort of significant importance to which one was picked and thus perhaps I was missing a rule about positions. This was probably just because I brought in background knowledge, like the black and white reminded me of reversi so I thought similar rules would apply here.

[Lightning Katana - Gaiden]

Hmm, pretty neat game you've got here! I was a bit worried at first since I'm typically not a fan of these old-school Wolfenstein 3D-esque games, but the fast-paced and skillful killing frenzy you can get into this game was pretty cool and very akin to games like Anger Foot, Mullet Madjack or Hotline Miami! I really enjoyed all the various ways you could style on enemies: kicking doors into them, comboing abilities one-after-another by targetting colored enemies, parrying and dodging: it can get pretty deep and expressive!

As much as I enjoyed it though, it's certainly a bit rough in some aspects, and I'm not talking about the obvious stuff like how the death animations all reuse the same default thug sprite: that's probably because it's just a work-in-progress and those are placeholders. Moreso I mean something about the game was just off or inconsistent at times which led to confusion. Sometimes I couldn't tell whether I got hit or not, sometimes I couldn't tell what the significance of whatever sounds playing were, sometimes I would swear I picked up a power-up only to have nothing and therefore ruin my planned combo, and so on: just these awkward moments that didn't feel like they were necessarily my fault or anything.

If I were to nitpick something else, it's that I don't like the whole aspect of some enemies being immune to swords because they have this aura assigned to them: if you must have something like this, I'd prefer it be a new enemy type which carries a riot shield or whatever that consistently has this property instead. Oh, and I was disappointed that there is no foot animation that comes with kicking: c'mon, ain't you ever seen Duke Nukem's big boot? We need something like that in here!

Hope you continue to work on it because I think it's got some good potential!

FCPXAV responds:

Thanks! Hotline Miami and Anger Foot definitely played a part in establishing some of the pacing and game feel!

You're right and the game is still a work in progress, and I'm gonna be implementing a cleaner and more clear UI for some of the more confusing things like seeing how much health you have left, where you were hit from etc.

I'm working on some art for more animations like the kick and gonna expand on it so that you can kick enemies and objects in the environment as well, and hopefully add more enemy types if my budget allows for it!

[Stickyfoot]

It's simple but fun puzzle arcade madness! With so much bite-size content on offer that is progressively adding new innovative mechanics over time to keep things fresh, as well as some great juicy gamefeel and amusing touches like how the character vibrates angrily to reset the level, I couldn't help but get addicted to going for the gold! It's not exactly blowing my mind or anything with something I haven't seen before, but it's just all-around a very solidly constructed and executed game!

If I were to have any feedback, it'd just be for minor stuff, like how it'd be nice if there was a ticking timer during gameplay and a preview of what award you're currently on track to get: in this way, if you see the gold switch over to silver, you could tell whether you've already failed at acquiring the gold and restart immediately without having to go through the entire level to check.

platformalist responds:

Thanks for playing, FutureCopLGF! Glad you enjoyed the little touches.

If you pause the game with Enter and select Show/Hide Timer, you can toggle on a timer! Based on your feedback, I added two little colored lines on the existing timer that change color based on what trophy you're currently able to get. Hopefully this is helpful for you! Thanks again for playing and for the detailed feedback. :)

[Politics.]

Hah, quite the amusing game! Certainly has a lot of charm to its presentation and flavor text, and the rhythm gameplay ain't half-bad as it felt pretty intuitive and properly timed. While I would've liked for the songs to have a bit more variety in terms of mechanics, such as hold notes or more doubles, the game had plenty of fun songs to try and get high scores in. Solid stuff!

Perhaps I'm holding it up to unreasonable expectations, but while I did have a good time, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed with the core gameplay, mainly with how it feels so disconnected and not integrated with the politics-based humor. While you've got all these funny jokes in the menus and text and all that, all the actual gameplay has is just farts. I would've loved this game so much more if the levels were more like something you'd see in Rhythm Heaven, Parappa, or Elite Beat Agents, where every level has a themed story animation or music video where your performance affects how well it goes. That would allow for so much more pointed political humor! But as it is now, every single level just feels the same and is so drab without any sort of reactivity. Again, I know I'm asking for a lot here, but the game's professional style just gets my hopes up!

[Vine Game]

Hmm, not quite sure how to feel about this one! I suppose it's shaping up to be a platformer and it does have a decent foundation in that regard, but I'm just not sure what it's core appeal or hook is and it is rather unfocused, glitchy and bare-bones at the moment, being an early alpha.

I do have some decent fun jumping up the vine and dodging through enemies and all that jazz, so again, that's looking alright. But all of the other elements like shops and so on just seem to superfluous, though perhaps that's just a consequence of the game currently being so short that they don't have time to generate value and strategy around them that you see in other games like Downwell. I suppose the vine growing and generating platforms is kind of neat, but in a way, it really is just fancy set-dressing and doesn't look to be some sort of innovative or fun core element to the traversal.

There are a lot of confusing aspects to the game. Enemies are inconsistent in how or if you can even damage them, lots of interactions like with shops are unclear on how to proceed, why you need to time a double-jump on an enemy instead of just landing on them, bosses either seem impossible to hurt or way too spongy, and so on. There are also some minor bugs like still being able to jump/dash after dying or completing a level, as well as just awkward hitboxes, getting hurt while spawning into a new zone, and strange physics that made me bounce off of stuff or just wonk out. But worst of all was the tutorial which gave a terrible first impression due to a jump that's impossible to clear without dashing, but dashing is only taught after you clear that jump!

Hopefully the game shapes up into something cool: trying to help as much as I can but I'm a bit lost since it is so early in development that I don't know what to say or focus on yet.

[Grot]

Wow, pretty cool old-school shooter you got here! Really takes me back to playing Wolfenstein 3D or other FPS before mouses (mice?) were commonplace. I worry that the control scheme might be a bit outdated and awkward for most, but I enjoyed the challenge and nostalgia of re-adapting to it, and I think the combat and challenges are built around its limitations. Furthermore, I liked some of the unique abilities you introduced like the dashes and slow-mo dives to help add some more depth to what could've been an overly-simplistic game, even if I do unintentionally trigger them by strafe-dancing sometimes.

If I were to have any complaints, it would be that I feel charging should have more feedback to let you know you're doing it, like having your arrows glow or your crossbow start to vibrate, as without that feedback it can be unclear whether you're doing it right. Also it can be a rather simplistic game at times in terms of weapon/enemy variety and world design so is prone to losing a players attention, albeit I found it still fun overall.

[Bug Ball 3D]

Pretty cool game! Even before the game starts, I was already impressed at how lively and animated the presentation is with the title and menus, and I was glad to see that same energy carried over into the fast-paced gameplay! While I did have a bit of a rough start (I selected medium instead of easy which made me skip over the tutorial), it didn't take long for me to get addicted to trying to speed through these courses for higher ranks. Switching between bug and ball mode was pretty interesting and I liked trying to set up right-angle ricochets off of angled walls for maximum efficiency.

I will admit, though, that I'm a bit torn about the game:

*Speed is fun, but the sheer amount of speed you can generate is just too much and can easily lead to either chaos or being too scared and forgoing it to carefully putter around instead, made all the more annoying by the camera not allowing us to see far-enough ahead: maybe the top speed should be reduced, or the camera should zoom-out as you get faster? I know it's part of the challenge and you can get used to it, though, I suppose.

*As said, I really liked to try and bounce off of angled walls since the game's courses seem to be built around that being the most efficient route. The problem was that this requires the player to immediately switch direction when they bounce off of the wall, otherwise the angle gets screwed up and that throws off subsequent bounces and everything goes to hell. You could argue that there's a bit of skill the player needs to acquire in timing their inputs, I suppose, but it just feels really annoying to have to be so precise and delicate. It almost feels like the game should be a golf game instead, or adopt a more tank/car-esque control scheme where up is go forward/accelerate, instead of up being, well, go up, as those controls would allow for more precise angled bounces to be consistently achieved. Maybe the player could have a limited amount of slow-mo, or they can use slow-mo but it doesn't slow down the timer so eventually they wean off of it? I dunno, just spitballing.

*Also it's a small nitpick, but some of the graphics would irk me slightly with how awkward they'd look, like when you fall down a pit or into a hole, but your character keeps going and generating dust clouds as if they are still active and above the ground: basically the 3D is kind of fudged where I guess you're just shrinking the character instead of making them actually go downwards.

StaggerNight responds:

Big fan of the monthly game vids you do! Thanks for the review

[Portal Re:/ Flashed]

Woof, this was a really rough one for me! I love me some Portal and I love me some puzzle platformers so I was totally down to have fun playing this, but it was not a good time and needs much more time in the oven before it's really for public consumption, I'd say.

While the graphics aren't that bad, the game overall is incredibly dry and lifeless: I know it's a lospec jam so maybe you're not allowed to be too fancy, but jeez, I'm dying for some special effects here, especially sound!

Controls were incredibly unintuitive and hard to learn, especially with no tutorial integrated into the game itself. Doing the simplest of things in the game was incredibly tedious and annoying, especially aiming. And who the hell puts the fire button on the down arrow key? Makes way more sense to me to have the Down arrow key be for switching portal colors while the X button be for firing.

I could forgive the dry presentation and weird controls if the game was good, but it seems absolutely busted. Physics were inconsistent and produced awkward results, like where I'd jump down into a portal but it wouldn't preserve my momentum coming out the other end. I also got stuck between two portals and into a wall, with no way to get out besides resetting the entire game: could really use a quick-restart button here.

As said, I'm hoping this game can get fixed up into something great, but right now, it's hard to get my hopes up!

[Trivial Trivia: The Newgrounds Collection]

Pretty neat quiz game! For the most part it seems pretty well-put-together, and I was impressed at the sheer volume and variety of questions: sometimes those questions would be a bit too hyper-specific for my liking, but I suppose I've always been terrible at dates, times and all that jazz, and I'm sure some people appreciate the challenge.

In terms of feedback:

My biggest complaint would be how dry the presentation is, which is weird because it actually starts off with a decent first impression: the game's title screen and menus are quite lively with animated buttons that react on hover, smooth transitions, and the music is cool (once you turn it on, dunno why it starts turned off). However, once you go into the actual gameplay, all of that is lost and everything is so static and lifeless! Would love if it just had a bit more pizazz to it: you know, a bit of fanfare and confetti when you're right, boos when you're wrong, get the animated buttons back, stuff like that! Right now the game is like taking a test at a government agency when I want something like Jackbox!

Another aspect of the game that I found a bit rough was that when you guess a trivia question wrong, it just says you're wrong and nothing more (and displays your answer in a button for some reason, as if you could select it again). I suppose I can understand that you don't wanna give the answer away and keep the pace of the game up, but I found it to be an awkward design decision. Ideally, I'd like it so that whether you guess right or wrong, it would show you the right answer afterwards, as well as maybe some fun bonus factoids to go along with it. I know you've got a menu where players can look up the question/answer sheet and it even has links for the player to learn the answers themself which is pretty cool, but it's just so weird that this information is so separated: this stuff should be integrated into the game itself!

Oh, and I was honored to be featured in one of the questions! Cheers for that!

ElRandomGMD responds:

Thanks for the Review :)