FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Relic Guardians: Arcade]

Very impressive game! Clearly has a lot of heart to it, which is evident with the interesting battle system and story/characters. At the moment, however, it has a lot of things slowing it down. I feel like the tutorial (which is kinda hidden should be more front-and-center), while it does get the points across, is a bit too long and could stand to be shortened where possible, perhaps by making the it more interactive/image-based instead of text-heavy. Cutscenes also are unskippable, and you can't control the speed of text, leading to impatience and/or not being able to read everything. Having the level chosen to be random was very odd and I'm not sure of the purpose of having that: even if it does have a purpose, I don't think its worth the user confusion and frustration. I'd also love it if the combat was hyped up a bit more: it's pretty cool now, but I'd love it if the enemies had a bit more personality through animations/taunts/poses. Definitely has a lot of potential to be incredible!

[NG BBS Awards 2019]

Cool to learn about all these peoples. I think the only one I knew was Cyberdevil, so I've got a lot to get familiar with. Cheers for spreading the love!

[Listeria Wars]

Pretty cool game! I feel like it hits a home run in terms of core structure as the gameplay, graphics, sound, music and so on feel great! While the swipe controls were a little confusing at first, eventually they create a good feeling flow to the strategy of moving your units around. The only issue I have at the moment is that, while it does do well at introducing new units and such each level to keep the pace going, it takes quite a while to introduce any cool story elements, and then the flow is kinda disrupted by the difficulty spike/need to grind. With some minor balance tweaks, however, I think this game would be incredible!

MrRubel responds:

Thank you!

[Maze Slider]

Pretty cool game that has a lot of interesting pieces to it, but is kinda haphazard and all over the place! The game introduces so many elements at the beginning that every level is a very easy tutorial for a new mechanic, until suddenly there is a huge difficulty spike near the end where the puzzles get really hard. If possible, I feel like the order for the levels should be changed to flow better in terms of letting each new puzzle mechanic breathe and slowly crank the difficulty up bit-by-bit. I do appreciate the challenge and the variety of mechanics, however!

[The Goodest Boy]

Cute story! Short and sweet, and it reminds me a lot of those old adventure games like Heart of Darkness or Out of this World. Had some issues with jumping from edges, and felt like the rising lava at the end should be a bit slower as it felt like you were guaranteed to die a few times, and I feel with a story like this, actually dying takes you out of it: you should have the fear of dying, but it shouldn't be hard enough to actually kill you unless you really mess up, as retrying takes you out of the 'movie-like' action flow and replaces it with frustration of trying again and again. Then again, that can depend on a lot of factors, and I felt like it did a good job delivering the story nonetheless. Loved the way the bird saves you at the very end: nice setup!

[Rush Grotto]

Kinda split on this one! On one side, the presentation is super polished: graphics, sound, music, animations...everything has a really smooth and professional feel to it! The gameplay itself though, I feel, is kinda working against itself, and it leads to some boring and repetitive segments over time. If I were to address it in a quick way without reworking the whole game, I would suggest either:

1) Get rid of the randomness of the cards and just keep the four actions available at all times. Then, speed up the game really fast to make it so that the player has to make really quick and reactive choices to stay alive for as long as they can. Basically, it would give it a kind of 'Crypt of the Necrodancer' vibe to it!

2) Get rid of the randomness of the level creation and instead make a series of hand-crafted levels, intentionally designed with a puzzle in each that the player should think through. This would help avoid the scenario where the randomness currently has a chance to create boring, empty levels, or levels with nigh-impossible scenarios to get through. You could also script the cards in such a way so that the player always has an 'ideal' way to get through the level without being hurt, and reward them with gold if they do so, but they can always get hurt and just get a bronze/silver instead.

[Spore Wars]

Short and sweet! Has a very interesting, goofy and unique aesthetic to the whole thing that kinda reminds me of games like "Let It Die". The combat was a bit of a bummer, however. It felt like there wasn't any meaningful way to flex on enemies: the bullets they fire are too fast and they stay locked on to you so tightly that you can't dodge or anything fancy, so it just devolves into them draining your health and you trying to drain their health a bit faster than they can. Movement was a bit awkward as well, with me getting stuck on geometry a lot. The boss was pretty cool though: with that fight you could actually strategize and feel smart understanding his pattern, but in the end he was such a bullet sponge. The game looks like it has a lot of heart though and I'd like to see future projects!

[Dying In Dungeon]

Slayed my way through to the end and had a lot of fun! Felt like it almost put too much emphasis on the whole dying mechanic when really that's just a side objective you utilize when you don't think you'll make it through the primary objective, which is getting to the end. But then again, it's natural to want to get to the end and it's a bit funny as an unspoken objective, so maybe it's really good like that. Felt like the bonus moves for each weapon were actually worse than the default, and I wish the dungeon changed in some way as you go deeper, or kept track of how far you've gone. Anyway, nice work on this!

[TRACTRON 2020]

Really nailed the aesthetic and delivered a clever twist to an old-school game! I feel like it's a bit too difficult too fast with no real difference as you go up in levels (then again I didn't make it that far), but I did appreciate the challenge. Cool design as you are compelled to blast through to the enemies in the back to get the powerful guns. Tractor was a little confusing as I thought it was something you'd hold the button to keep going, but it all got sorted.

[Economical]

Wow, really impressive on all fronts! Great music, graphics, animations and sound, all polished with a staggering amount of levels to go through! I enjoy the concept and the use of dynamic difficulty by letting the player decide how much they want to optimize each level. I did feel like some of the levels were a little out-of-order in terms of difficulty, as well as some levels repeating themselves with similar geography/concepts, but all-in-all I had a blast!