FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Guitar Munchers]

Pretty cool game that I think has a lot of heart in it! I love the arcade aesthetic that reminds me of games like Burger Time and Pacman, especially the goofy cutscenes you get as a reward for every few levels. Feel like the graphics, music and design are top-notch, and I loved my time with the game once I grasped it and started setting up combos and such. Only problem is it took a long time for me to grasp the game, and I doubt a lot of people will have the patience for this: heck, I almost dropped it myself plenty of times! The first few levels are really hard where the enemies just home into you and destroy you: felt like the later levels were easier actually since the enemies had less relentless patterns. Munching can be frustrating at times: sometimes I'd be trying to do the final bite on a string only for the game to think I'm biting the pixel next to it, leading to death. The combo system is neat, but really unintuitive, explained oddly, difficult to reproduce because of the above munching placement issues, and introduced too late and then the game doesn't explain it further. This is one of those games that toes the line between being 'satisfying hardcode retro difficulty' and 'frustrating and unintuitive': I came out alright, but could definitely use some help to make it shine for everyone else like it deserves for all the work you put into it!

LeSam responds:

Hey there! Random comment after ten months but I just got around to fix (I think) this problem you had in your video :

> Munching can be frustrating at times: sometimes I'd be trying to do the final bite on a string only for the game to think I'm biting the pixel next to it, leading to death.

Previously what it did is that it destroyed according to the biggest segment around the bite. So if you were eating a string on a part that was on its last life, but you were also just a little above another one with full health, it first destroyed the one with full health. Now it should only do that if you're really on that full health segment (which should be a bit more intuitive, so hopefully less frustrating)

Just woke up this morning thinking about this and was like "Why did I never fix this?" :D Anyway, happy new year ;)

[Sticky Sam]

Trippy little game! Had fun navigating the puzzles and was pulled in by the peculiar aesthetic this game has. A little confusing at times, though obviously that was intentional and part of the appeal. My character changed colors to orange and red and then back to white: not sure if that was just random or a signifier of 'lives left' since it did happen after deaths (in which case it did kinda stink that it made me replay a bunch of levels I already beat). Bit confused at the ending: it rolled credits and then interrupted it with something, but then went back to credits. I was confused because I wasn't sure if I missed something like a cool boss fight. Still, was a neat little experiment and not too shabby for a slider puzzler!

[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!