FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[TIMBER]

A decent, simple core game, but could really use a lot of polishing to it to make it shine. The game in itself is fun: stacking things is challenging and intuitive, the game escalates the difficulty well by introducing more and more varied shapes, and the rules are solid with the few seconds grace period to make sure structures hold. But while the concept is good, and while graphics aren't everything, the game is very dull and confusing at the moment due to the lack of graphics. Presentation is poor with bog-standard font/buttons and no frills, leading to a poor first impression. The lack of HUD makes it very confusing to determine what block is going to be used next: I initially thought my next shape would come from the right side of the queue on top, but instead it comes from the left, so it would be very helpful if there was an arrow or something pointing to let you know what the next shape is. Similarly, it would really help if the game would show an outline at your mouse cursor of how the next shape will be placed: it would make judging how the block is placed more intuitive, instead of just having to guess (for example, when you want to put it as close to the top of a previous shape). The game could also just have some more excitement to it: some tense music when you've built the tower and are waiting to see if it stands, some fanfare and explosions when you win, etc: it does have some decent sound effects for these but it could just be more.

[A Game of Cups]

Surprising game for me! I initially though the whole cup gameplay was just a ruse for some sort of creepy scare/subversion that was going to happen, but lo and behold it actually just kept up the cup gameplay and escalated by throwing in some crazy shuffling tricks into the mix (though there was that spooky ending bit, so my intuition wasn't completely unfounded). Part of me does still think it was a rather simple game altogether, but still, it did have a smooth, polished feel to it all and did some cool narrative tricks, so it did stick in my mind.

[City Escape 2]

Solid game! Had a lot of fun playing this game, feels like it has a nice smooth core to it with neat mechanics for gaining speed and transitioning between street level and the rooftops with vaulting and springboarding. I especially love the touch of having to jump on a train at the end of the level: feels so much cooler and stylish than just running a certain distance and getting a victory screen. I did feel like the game could have a bit more content and style to it to make it great though, and stand up against some of the more famous runners like Canabalt and the like. For one, I kinda wish the levels got a little bit more complex and varied as they went on since I felt my interest waning from repetitiveness around level 3 or so. Would've loved to see new cop units in the later levels, maybe ones that shoot bullets at you which you have to dodge, or have shields that you can't vault over, you know, riot cops, to show that they're done playing around with you. Instead, the game seemed to go for quantity over quality: increasing the distance you need to cover and the amount of cops blocking you, which made it annoying since a lot of the time you want to vault them but can't because you'll just bump into a cop immediately behind them. Other than that, I'd love if the game was a bit more graphically impressive with more animations and such. I'm not saying graphics are everything, but the animations were very bare minimum in this, and I think cool animations could really increase the stylishness of the gameplay: c'mon, I want to see me do sick flips as I vault over a pig and watch them slam face-first into the pavement in slow-mo with cool sounds and fanfare!

[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!