FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[SwingShot]

Fun and addicting! Game has a lot of polish and pizazz to it: love the little touches like smoke trails for the bullets, coin magnetism, blood splatters, etc. Felt like the slo-mo could use a bit more of a signifier that it's on, like a full-screen blue blur/vignette effect or something, since I'm not able to take my eyes off the enemies in the center to look at the mana bar tucked all the way in the corner. Could maybe use some sort of indicator when another shot is ready to be fired. Also you might want to make the 'next wave' more prominent and different of a button than the 'replay' to give it the focus it deserves. All-in-all, the gameplay is simple and intuitive with some interesting variety that makes you want to keep going blasting away, bit-by-bit.

[Biker Hero]

Not too shabby; it's a fun and goofy little prototype that I could see growing into something big! I actually felt like I liked the game better before I discovered that I had the ability to shoot. When you can shoot, you can just blast away through everything, but if you can't shoot, you have to dodge around the interesting bouncing enemies you've set up, which is a lot of fun and very challenging. Maybe make it so that the bike transforms into gun mode only at bosses, but for everything else, it's in speed mode where you just dodge through enemies. Obviously it could use some polish: animated sprites, smaller hitboxes, more special effects and such for pizazz, etc, etc, just don't lose those sound effects, haha!

BobbertOC responds:

Thanks for all the feedback! I think you're right about the shooting making it too easy, and I like your idea about the bike transforming at boss stages. If I pick this up again, this is definitely something I would consider adding. :)

[Resizer]

Another great puzzler! Felt like there was a good variety of obstacles and some cleverly designed puzzles. Did feel like some of the levels could be rearranged a bit to make the difficult curve a bit smoother as there were some spikes in there, but people's mileage may vary. Also while some of the mechanics were introduced very well, such as growing big allows you to bypass arrow panels, I felt like squishing trampolines while big wasn't introduced effectively enough since it didn't stick in my mind and made me stuck on a puzzle for quite a while. Still, all in all, everything felt pretty smooth and I enjoyed my time with it!

[Bogus Roads]

Pretty cool game that delivers fast-paced fun! Felt well-constructed in all aspects: graphics, sound, music, and a good variety of obstacles to contend with. The low-fi graphics do make it a bit difficult to identify some obstacles at times since everything is so blurry: I also feel the big yellow hump and the green bump could use some more shading to let you judge their distance better for being able to jump over them. I like the time power-up in how shiny and animated it is to establish it as a beneficial item: I feel like the boost power-up and ring power-up should also be shiny and animated to make it consistent. I'd love to see more levels as I felt like it was over too soon!

[NEO:YORK:KNIGHTS]

I really want to like this game because it seems to ooze style with its cool art and aesthetic, and I love robots. It really makes me feel like I'm missing something, because at the moment it doesn't feel like you can do much in terms of combat. If you try to hit the enemies, they seem to hit back at you no matter how hard you try to hit before them. I try and outrange their swing with a backstep or whatever and they still hit me. Throwing your sword, while cool, just seems to lead to you getting dogpiled with no weapon. If you manage to survive and upgrade to a gun, then it's just a mindless slaughter as you gun them down without any challenge. If the combat system was reworked to have a bit more style and allow the player to control the situation more, maybe add some levels or something, this could be a robo Katana Zero in the making. I think this game has a lot of potential and I would love to see this worked on and come back in a more extended form!

MoeAnguish responds:

Thanks for your input! I'll keep this in mind if i work on this or any other platformer/fighter kinda game!

[Blooming]

Holy moley, you expect a lot out of your players! This game was super confusing, unintuitive and frustrating: a lot of the time when concepts were explained to the user, they were done with vague graphics, and those graphics weren't even visible at the moment you needed them! However, once you wrap your head around how the game works, this game had some crazy mind-bending puzzles that really challenged me and blew me away! Can't get over what a unique and interesting experience this was, and I'm glad to say I was able to beat it. It's not all sunshine and rainbows though: I felt like the dogs were a bit annoying to deal with due to their weird AI, and the boss was a bit of a letdown after the initial thrill due to how much health it had and how little time you had to pick a flower to strategize through the obstacles it sent your way. I bet a lot of people will bounce off this game, and you should work on that, because I want more people to see how great this game can really be!

HealliesGames responds:

No matter how hard I try, it seems that creating an easily understandable game is really against my nature.

I think it is partly due to my experience with videogames;
games like Another World or Contra took me hours, if not days, to figure out how to get through a part.
I want to convey this, apparently failing.

The dog AI is actually simple: they follow the linear path until the character is inside of their range. Then start following you. A circle showing how much distance to keep should solve the problem!

As for the boss instead, I should be able to resolve simply by removing the possibility of making consecutive attacks, since the moment you are dead you don't have the physical time to collect the flower.

I really hope I can improve this aspect in my production. This thanks mainly to user feedback, as well as thanks to your work of reviewing complete with gameplay.
I wait to see how you played it!

[Fish Canon (Prototype)]

Pretty cool prototype that I'd love to see more from! At the moment, the game seems a bit too slow to get going: takes a long time to build-up money to be able to actually have some control over your flight with power-ups, and then they are only one-use and gone, leaving you to build up more, unfortunately slowly and randomly. I like the goal system, but they didn't seem to reward anything at the moment once completed: if they did, that'd be a great way to give the player some orbs and get them to the fun stuff quicker. Having said that, it would be nice to have the player control their experience a bit better all the time: maybe a more zoom-ed out camera when going fast so you see ahead and plan manuevers, along with the ability to always slightly manipulate your movement even without items by rotating in certain ways (or maybe just replenish items for free)? There's a lot of ways this could be built on and I'm looking forward to it: hopefully my suggestions help but it could be the core idea that the game is intentionally supposed to be a bit random and not player skill-based, in which case you can disregard my rambling!

[Dr. John Black Smith]

Great game! Loved the concept and the goofy visuals/sounds, especially the people "talking", and I especially liked the clever multi-choice ending on how to deal with the final customer (though the small, odd font did make it difficult to read). As much as I liked it, there were some awkward elements to the game, such as how you have to make yourself wait for the gauge area to jump around after a hit so you can safely hit again: I think it should move right after you raise the hammer for another hit so you're ready immediately. The money in the bottom left seemed arbitrary as well: perhaps a discarded left-over from the jam for a potential score-attack/endless mode? Would love to see this game expanded upon, with maybe a new mechanic being that you have to apply an oil to the sword based on what type of monster the warrior says they are hunting!

[Closing In]

Takes a bit to get going, but it has some creative gameplay to it! Very confusing start to the game as everything is a square and the game is a bit too minimalist. The concept is alright, but it could definitely use some polish to add some pizazz to it, as well as some more obstacles or other elements as the game is very drab at the moment. The game does have some cool polish to it, such as the transitions between levels: would love to see similar things applied to the game over screen. All in all, in the later levels the difficulty ramps up and its fun and challenging to make calculated and efficient jumps to get everything you need and escape, so not too shabby.

[Broken heart's technical service]

Very creative idea and well-executed! I loved the difficulty progression as lots of interesting variations of obstacles were added as you got close to the end: did not expect to see that much from a game jam game. The art in the game is very cute as well: gives me a bit of a Leisure Suit Larry vibe at first, haha. The HUD is cool and stylish, but maybe a bit too busy: not sure what the girl in the upper right is doing (besides being well-animated and cute), and the main screen background might want to be faded a bit to increase visibility of the actual gameplay elements. I like how the guy slowly gains his composure as you make progress though, which is a clever way to represent the heart meter and keep it centered on the main screen!