FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[sillinder's somewhat uneventful tuesday noon]

Oh wow, this is some amazing stuff! Really feels like a NES hidden gem with the way it pulls off the aesthetic so authentically with fantastic visuals and audio, and the gameplay is wonderful with how good the movement feels, how interesting the levels are to explore with loads of neat secrets and new mechanics being introduced like shroom power, and so many other great things like the crazy boss fights (seriously, that second boss is like something straight outta Cuphead). It just feels like a damn good adventure and practically drips with charm from every pore!

Again, it's amazing stuff that you should be super proud of, but if I did have some feedback, it'd be:

*Curious about some of the aspects like the cockroaches that fly away: are they some sort of bonus speedrun objective, like you need to reach them fast enough to hit them before they fly away? Also curious about the little baubles you pick up: they get sucked out of you at the end of a level, but I was never sure if I was having any sort of effect with how many I gathered: does it matter?

*The map can definitely be a bit confusing to navigate at times. Plenty of times I'd walk to the side of the screen thinking it was a transition point but it wasn't, and plenty of times I'd walk where I thought it was ground but was actually a ledge or other such things. But at the same time, I feel like I'd always find the right way to go without too much issue, so hey, it still flows well in the end.

*My biggest issue with the game is that it doesn't seem to have a save/load system: got really bummed out when I got all the way to the third level and wanted to take a break, only to come back and realize I'd have to do everything all over again from the start. Maybe the game isn't technically that long in reality, but c'mon, some checkpoints between levels would be much appreciated.

sillylittlepyro responds:

very glad you enjoyed and very flattered!!!

that is indeed how the cockroaches work, however i havent yet added a reward for getting all of them so theyre just kinda there for funsies right now.

the bits absolutely 100% do not matter and will be of absolutely no importance in the full release.

i dont know how to do saving in html so i just didnt bother, but there will definitely be saving in a full release.

[FIDEOS]

Holy mackerel, this is some amazing stuff! I don't even know where to start: everything about this game just felt immaculately and professionally crafted, what with its incredibly stylish and juicy presentation/gamefeel and its incredibly unique arcade gameplay. There's so many subtle details I want to gush about, like how the music ramps up as your score gets higher, but I don't want to be here all day, haha!

It's definitely a lot to take in at the start, especially because the short wordless tutorial is a bit tricky to fully comprehend, but thanks to the tips that appear on death, I slowly started to grasp this bizarre sport of eel spearing and before long I was having a blast! It may be a simple hi-score arcade game at heart, and not everyone is about that life, but I loved playing this over and over to get a higher score, learning to balance the various factors of pointing my board, aiming my spear, transferring to a new eel, and so on and so forth. Reminds me a lot of one of my favorite games of yesteryear, Mirame.

If I were to have any complaints, it would likely be that I found it annoyingly up to luck on whether I'd be able to transfer to a new eel: I swear that sometimes they just stay away or only poke their heads in for a brief moment that I can't possibly get a full charge in. Maybe there's some technique I'm missing: I dunno.

[Heatstroke Hustle]

Seems like a decent little fast-paced food management game: it's ok, and quite impressive for being made so quickly, but ultimately rather generic, lacking any sort of significant pizazz or special quality to it. Well, that's not completely correct: it does have an interesting risk/reward system where you can carry a lot of items around but at the risk of tripping when you carry too much. It's a decent idea, but I didn't like the execution of it being a random Smash Bros Brawl trip: c'mon, everyone hated that mechanic! Would much prefer if it was something like having heavy loads weigh you down so you move slower, or having to keep it balanced and not tip over by moving slowly or from side-to-side: in that way you could actually get skilled at handling heavy loads and not just gamble on luck whether you trip or not.

[Skatorio]

Oh man, this is a tricky one. It's weird, and I like weird, but maybe it's a little too weird for its own good!

As said, it's a pretty fascinatingly weird game that took a lot of time to try and figure out. Having to freeze enemies by grazing past them like a bullet hell or Y's bump combat, avoiding going back on your own ice to not break the combo while also trying to cover the ground with as much ice as possible, and so much more: it was quite unique! I like learning about scoring systems like this, and being incentivized into getting high scores to unlock new levels like its Mario 64 was right up my alley.

Unfortunately, the game was very confusing and not only did it take me a long time to learn the mechanics, I actually still don't feel like I have a good grasp on what I'm supposed to do. For example:

*For the longest time I thought the 'combo breaks' were referring to chaining freezes in rapid sequence, not avoiding going onto your own ice: yes, there is a small X reaction for your character once they start sliding, but I didn't even notice it at first, let along connect the two together.

*I found it very strange that for a game that seems to be scoring you based on time, it was rather annoying that one of the scoring goals was filling up the map with as much ice as possible: a goal like that just inflates every attempt with so much annoying busy work to redo. I get that it's challenging how the two goals of not breaking the combo while putting as much ice as possible are opposed, but still, it just felt tedious.

*I kept getting confused at the scoring results: I'd get an S in combo breaks and an A in ice coverage, and yet my total score was B or C. How does that make any sense? You'd think it would average out to be A at the very least. That made me think that perhaps my time was influencing it the total score, but if that's the case, why don't I get a letter grade for time? Because time doesn't have a letter grade, you'd think it would be a separate goal, which does match what it says in the description, but then what's going on with my score?

So yeah, I like how weird and unique this is, but man, I just got lost and didn't feel like I ever got my feet under me. At the very least, good on you for trying out something weird like this: always down for some experimentation over just more of the same!

dreamcastgh0st responds:

Thanks for the review! There's definitely a lot of places where the scoring system could be more clear, and that's my biggest regret with this game. I've been meaning to do a little write up in response to one of these comments to clarify it for everyone, so here we go--

Percent iced is pretty self explanatory, and you're right, combo breaks is based on how many times you stepped back on your own ice. I was hoping the little indicator that pops up would help make that clear, but I guess it wasn't enough for a lot of people. (Side note: The UI in the top left 'shatters' and changes colors too in order to indicate your current combo break rank! This isn't really meant to help with tutorialization, but if you're not sure if you've broken your combo yet, you can just check up there and it'll show you. The color of the meter indicates your percent iced rank, and the color of the background behind it is your combo based rank. The best color is, of course, icy blue-- the others all match up with the colors of the rank icons on the level complete screen.)

As for the total rank, there's no excuse for this one, it's super unclear. Time isn't taken into account at all-- it's a totally separate metric, just so that people can go for speed once they've reached a level of mastery of the game. I was hoping that would be more obvious since it's the only thing on the ranking screen that didn't have its own rank associated with it, but honestly, I should have left it off of that screen entirely. I think literally every single person who's played it has gotten confused by that, whoops lol.

Basically, for every rank below perfect either element is, you'll go down one rank. That sounds confusing, but it's basically like... S+S is a perfect rank, each A moves you down by 1, B moves you down by 2, C by 3, etc. So an A+B => C, since it moves you down three ranks. This system, for obvious reasons, sucks, and honestly I might patch it to fix it. But unless that happens, I figured it was best to leave some sort of comment so curious players could figure out how it actually works.

Anyways, thanks for the thorough review! Gave me a good excuse to talk about all this, and I'm glad you enjoyed it despite some of the flaws!

[Train Man's Rude Awakening]

Wow, this was quite the manic puzzle matching game! It's kinda crazy the way it just throws you into it with no explanation, but it's pretty intuitive and fun to just start making matches based on color, and little by little you start to notice things like how the steam tiles make stuff rise up to the top either naturally or from getting clues in the upgrade menu. Overall it's a very cute and high-energy game that I had a great time with, and I was surprised at how challenging the last level could be when you'd think the game would just let you overpower it with the upgrades!

That being said, I don't necessarily want to gloss over its faults, so here's some feedback on that:

*As said, it does kind of just throw you into the deep end with no instructions. Sure you can just match colored tiles, but I had no idea what tiles were good to match and which weren't. For example, I wasn't sure whether the green tiles were actually powering the train or if there were just clutter I needed to get rid of: the way they were called 'recycle' made me think they were just to 'recycle' the board with better power tiles.

*I think the biggest issue is that the feedback is quite lackluster. It's very difficult to pay attention to the tiny map on the bottom or the tiny stats to the left while you're playing, so you can't see how much power you're getting from matches or how much time is left when you need to be. I wish there were more satisfying effects when you make bigger combos, like some speed lines and a big gust of wind: hearing the same sound effects for all combos made it feel so pointless and ineffectual. I also wish that there were some alerts that would happen in the center of the screen, like an alert when you've got 10 seconds left, or a chime that plays for every station you pass, and so on. It felt like all I could do was try and make matches blindly since I had no way of procuring data to make optimal choices.

*The sense of progression was a bit awkward where I couldn't tell at first whether the game had an end goal we needed to reach. The lack significant punishment for lateness made me also feel like getting good at the game was pointless since perhaps it's all about being forced to grind for upgrades. Once I played long enough I realized most of these were false fears, but I had no idea it was the case initially.

*As the game went on, the controls just started to get really fiddly and annoying, with me trying to click on something but it ends up targeting something else, or trying to link everything together but it ends up doing it in the wrong order I wanted, or the nuclear upgrade that lets you chain to other different powers being an annoyance you actually might want to avoid. Quite frustrating!

It's definitely got some rough spots, but for a game jam game, it's a fantastic effort with a solid foundation. Nice work!

[Trivial Trivia: OpenTDB]

What can I say, it's more great trivia from the Trivial Trivia guys, so if you like trivia, you can't go wrong!

Having said that, though, I will admit that I think this might be the weakest entry so far. It's not bad, per se, and sure, there's a lot of content due to the novel idea of using user contributions, but it just can't compare with the more bespoke entries from the OG team:

*For one, the questions don't have those cute little hints you would get for a wrong answer, instead being replaced with a generic 'incorrect' message.

*The packs don't have the menu option to review the questions you've encountered. It's not totally necessary, but it was a nice thing to have.

*There seems to be a lack of quality control for the questions. For example, there is a question about Darth Vader's famous line: most people mistakenly quote it as "Luke, I am your father" when the actual line is "No, I am your father." I knew this and answered appropriately, but it said I was wrong. I even checked the movie afterwards to be sure!

*Achievements don't seem to be working properly. I got the achievo for loading up the game, sure, but I'm not getting my medals for scoring bronze/silver/gold.

[Dragonsweeper]

Wow, this is a tricky one! Certainly a very interesting and novel combination of two genres that creates a solid first impression that caught my attention!

There was definitely some confusion at the start, what with strange rules like how you can attack something that reduces you to zero HP but that doesn't kill you for some reason. Once I got used to that and all the other rules, though, there was some cool strategy at play where you really need to pick fights in a certain order so that you can optimize the HP you get back from leveling up to make it further and further, among other things.

I gotta admit that I was a bit split on it though. As much as I like it in theory, it always felt like I got to a point where it was just blind luck on whether I could get any further since I didn't have enough intel to know where to go next, or that I just didn't have a good enough start to make headway with what's on hand. I just couldn't ever be sure whether it was me being bad or if the game wasn't always winnable with the boards it would generate. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume I'm just bad at it, haha!

It's definitely a bit of an odd one: I keep getting my butt kicked and not making much progress, but something about it fascinates me so much that I don't get frustrated, but just want to give it another go! Kudos on pulling off that balancing act, I suppose! Maybe it'd be neat if it had separate difficulty modes, like you can start out on easy with a less populated board before the challenge the original.

[CAR GODS]

Whoa, this is a pretty cool game!

It reminded me a lot of my favorite arcade classics like Lucky and Wild, and I found the control scheme of having to manually operate the elements of the car very novel and fun to master. The physicality of rotating the wheel and pulling the reload handle down was very satisfying, and it was quite challenging to juggle the fact that you can only operate one thing at a time. The bosses were nice too, having a good variety of attacks which all had very intuitive telegraphs. I had a blast!

If I were to have any complaints:

*I found the whole shop mechanic rather superfluous: it really didn't feel like it added any sort of significant variety or replayability to the game.

*The cramped/zoomed-in camera can look rather stylish with the way it moves around, but it can also be a bit of a bummer since you can't see the boss fully when you're shooting. I suppose you could argue its part of the challenge, but I just felt like I was missing out on all the neat animations and expressions.

*But my biggest complaint would be that I'm still hungry and I want even more, which I think is the best compliment you can get for a game jam game!

[Solar Complex!]

Hmm, I really want to like this game, but it just didn't grab me as much as I'd like!

As said, the game makes a solid first impression. The presentation is pretty and lively, and the gameplay reminds me of arcade classics like Qix where you slowly fill in the grid while being able to trap enemies in squares for bonus points. It can certainly be good addictive fun to fill in all the grids, and the game keeps things interesting by introducing new enemy types like the black clouds which erase your progress.

It all sounds good on paper, but something about the execution failed to grab me despite being a fan of hi-score arcade games like this. I'm not sure, but there are a few factors that I think contribute to this:

*While it does a good job at escalating things with new enemy types, there are times when it strangely deescalates and suddenly gets rid of the dark clouds. Makes me feel like I'm just spinning my wheels instead of getting anywhere.

*A lot of levels have the grids too separated and small to be able to setup any squares to eat up enemies for big points. There's no real time pressure or scoring incentive to challenge yourself to keep up the flow either, especially since the combo resets after 10 lit panels. Without any sort of scoring goals like that, all you can really do is just fill up all the squares, and it just turns into feeling like busywork.

It's neat, but I think it's just lacking a cool scoring system to keep me interested. Not too shabby for a game jam though, and I think it can still satisfy fans of cleanup games like Powerwash Simulator!

[_sheld[ON]]

Wow, this puzzle game really surprised me!

It's easy to think of it as just another little sokoban-esque puzzler, but man, I got super addicted to the way the game just keeps progressively getting more interesting mechanics to play around with. it never felt like it was just spinning its wheels as so many creative additions and twists just kept coming, like being able to dislodge plugs from sockets, splitting power to multiple sockets, pushing a plug into a plug into yet another plug: very creative stuff that I haven't seen done before!

Of particular note is the level design, which is absolutely sublime with the way it intuitively teaches you all the tricks you need to know while also being quite challenging! Every time I encountered something that confused me for a bit, like the energy not just being movement points but also needing to be used to power the sockets, the levels clued me into all that naturally. And all that with some charming and goofy art and music: top shelf stuff!

If I were to have any complaints:

*Speaking of being surprised, I found it very strange that the game initially starts you on some random level that's very far ahead: you have to quit out from it to get to the level select menu where you can go to the proper first level that teaches you the controls and such. Makes for a weird first impression!

*Not a big issue, but it would be nice if once you beat a level, it takes you right to the next level instead of taking you back to the level select: just feels a bit unnecessary! I guess it's nice to keep seeing your progress, though...

Again, this is some great stuff! I wouldn't think it was a game jam game from how elegant the execution was!