FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pico Rubber 2024]

Hmm, not much of a fan of idle/clicker games in the first place, so feel free to take that into consideration, but I found this to be pretty subpar. Typically I feel the most important aspect of idle/clicker games is for it to, almost like a slot machine, dazzle the player with feedback that's so juicy and satisfying that it gets them addicted, and this has absolutely none of that (especially since it doesn't even default to having the sound on!)

Basically, it currently feels more like an alpha that's not ready for public consumption yet: it's functional, sure, but it doesn't have that special sauce to make it entertaining yet. As you mentioned in the description, ElRandomGMD's version of Pico Clicker has a bit more juice to it, but it's missing the innovative rubbing feature you have, as well as the other options: if only you could combine your powers to create a super version!

ElRandomGMD responds:

Sorry for your bad experience :(

[Blue Vortex]

Nice arcade game you got here! It's rather simple, sure, but it's got that fun and addictive quality to its gameplay mechanics and slick presentation that makes you wanna play more and more, similar to other arcade classics.

If I were to have any complaints, it's that I was a bit disappointed that the game didn't seem to evolve its difficulty in any way by introducing new obstacles or mechanics the longer you go: instead it just stays the same, meaning if you get good at it, you just stay playing until you get bored, I guess, haha. Also the hitboxes for the player felt really weird and I could never get a grasp on them: there were loads of times I thought I smashed into something only to keep on going. I guess it's nice that it's so forgiving, but still!

Augh, I've been playing too long that my eyes are doing that thing where everything's warping around!

[GOOB]

Great short and sweet puzzle platformer! The game's got some cute vibes, and the mechanics were quite interesting and much deeper than I expected, with the levels doing a good job at slowly introducing those hidden intricacies. In particular the bonus levels were a fantastic challenge with some real mind-benders. Nice work!

As a side note, I liked how the puffs that appear when you jump, while seemingly innocuous and just a throwaway bit of special effects that's in every game nowadays, did a great job at making me realize how jumping height is increased by the amount of legs making contact with the floor: clever stuff!

[sequenced]

Decent little boss-rush bullet-hell game! While it's a bit basic, I found it to be somewhat fun to battle through the various waves, and thought that the whole weapon preview system was pretty neato (though I found it odd that, while it will preview bullets speeding up, it won't for fire rate speed up).

I'll admit that it didn't keep my attention for long, though, as the mechanics and presentation were quite simplistic and bland, and the bosses lacked variety and started recycling the same existing three (crab, ghost and cube) over and over in different combinations. Still, was ok.

[Power Solenoid Demo]

Whoa, this was quite the experience! Game has some immaculately trippy and weird vibes that pervade the entire experience that I think hit the right balance where, despite being a tad confusing, the game overall remains surprisingly intuitive and intriguing in a way that makes you want to delve deeper into the mystery. I certainly enjoyed my journey both through understanding what was going down and the various gameplay genres you've got, be it pinball, shmup, boss fights, and so on! Consider me hooked and looking forward for more!

In terms of feedback:

*The game can be a bit rough and glitchy at times. I got crushed by a block horizontally and upon respawning from death, I was nowhere on screen, yet the game kept going (think I was outside the boundaries?) I also phased through a barrier with an orbit smash that I don't think I should've been able to, especially since it didn't work on another similar barrier: probably just wonky collision physics at play.

*I found the orbit smash a bit frustrating, as I wasn't sure if I was understanding what its purpose was: is it simply a dash, or is there more to it? I mostly avoided using it because the charge-up time is unbearably long.

*Text can be very difficult to read due to its small size and whatever grainy filter or compression you've got. I don't mind a bit of visual flair, but readability should never be sacrificed.

By the way, the damage sound takes me right back to Marble Madness: was that an intentional homage?

jupitron responds:

Thank you so much for your time and video, was really helpful. I'm happy that you could see through all and still enjoy the game. Hope we meet again in the future.

[Kart Kollab]

Pretty neat art collab! I very much enjoyed that you found an appropriately creative and fun way to present the art rather than your bog-standard slideshow, and I thought the loads of options and features you had (including links to artist profiles) were good. Nice stuff!

In terms of feedback:

*I wish the default view was much larger in terms of screen size as right now, the carts are so tiny and compressed by being shrunk and crammed into a small screen that it makes it difficult to see finer details: rather than clicking on a kart because I think it looks cool, I'm clicking on them to figure out what I'm even looking at, haha.

*I wish camera control was a bit more freeform with you being able to scroll to zoom and click-drag or use arrow keys to move the view around, and that it would be possible to still click on carts even during the camera view.

*When you click someone and then go back to watch the races, it'd be nice if it preserved whatever the race looked like when you clicked, that way if you had someone else in mind that you were going to click on next, you wouldn't have to look for them all over again.

*While it would be awesome if this could always be a fully-functioning kart racing game, I understand that's a tall order. Something I would like to see which might be a bit easier, however, would be for the racing simulation you've got going to be a bit more interactive or elaborate: for example it'd be awesome if you could rig some sort of AI race and maybe you can gamble on the winner of a race or something.

[READY YOUR RUDDER]

Hey, this is a really fun and cool survival arcade experience! I really love the charming and lively vibes coming off of it, and I enjoy the core concept of every power-up you accrue coming with a new enemy being introduced, where sometimes that enemy is a direct counter to that power-up. It's a bit of a shame that whatever strategic value there would be to picking or not picking certain power-ups is inevitably lost once you get them all, but still, it's neat and I found myself getting addicted to weaving my way through the chaos and surviving as long as I could, especially since the game feels very fair and generous with its hitboxes.

Obviously I'd love if it had more meat on its bones because its got such a good core, whether it be new content or some sort of randomization to increase replayability, but for what it is, especially considering its a game jam game, it's solid.

I was a bit curious about the way the pirate keeps asking for gold, especially since we never seem to accrue any. Maybe some sort of cut content, like maybe it was planned that you needed to get gold that appears while dodging threats, but now they just assume that you come across a gold piece every wave despite it not being visible?

Was also curious about the crows nest and what its penalty is: I think it was doing something with the hitboxes, maybe increasing them in size a bit? Couldn't tell for sure.

FishDev responds:

Thank you for the compliments!! I'm thinking about expanding the game somehow, but in full honesty, I'm not totally sure where to take it. At a certain point, stuff would just get too chaotic, and more importantly, the upgrades that provide the controls -- which are the most important ones design-wise -- would get lost amongst any new upgrades I come up with that, most likely, wouldn't provide new controls. I'm honestly still chewing on it, well after release haha.

There's a few super minor QoL changes I have planned (e.g. making it so that the player can't accidentally skip the ending wanted poster if they happen to be pressing Z when they die) but I want to hold off on releasing any updates until the itch version gets its uploads unlocked, to keep the 2 pages in sync. One of the game jams this was submitted to is still having the judges look at the games, so I currently can't upload anything on the itch page.

The gold thing was sort of a mistake/oversight on my part. I wanted to give the character a lot of charm and thought "pirates love gold lol" without once thinking "I literally never give the player gold..." Maybe I could drop a gold coin on the player or something? Not sure yet lol

As for the crow's nest -- yup!! Sort of hard to telegraph though. Basically, every so often, a crow lands on it, and increases your hitbox by a pretty large margin (hence "bad luck"). The original plan was for there to be a few potential debuffs, like speed loss or increased spawn rates, and there'd be a bit of text going "Speed Down" or "Enemies Up" or something like that, but that ended up being too distracting amongst all the chaos on the screen so I cut it. For now, it's just the hitbox increase, I try getting the player's attention with a white flash on the hitbox when the crow lands, but admittedly I know that still isn't enough. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!!

[Pico Skate]

A decent little arcade game with a cute presentation: fun for a run or two but gets boring rather quickly due to very simple mechanics, a lack of juice and no significant sense of progression or evolution to the experience. Just feels like it is lacking the addictive hook and depth of other classic arcade games. I suppose it's ok for a 'my first game' programming 101 project, but needs a lot more meat on its bones to impress beyond that.

[Portal Patrol]

Game certainly has some stylish presentation to it that got my hopes up, and I do think the basic gunplay is rather juicy as well as the whole concept of recruiting AI partners potentially interesting, but it feels like the game shows you everything it has to offer in a few seconds, and without any sort of sense of progression or evolution through new enemy types, new partners, boss battles, or other changes, it just feels like a rather boring, repetitive, and simplistic game.

I'm bummed out because it looks great on first glance and made me think of greats like Portal Defenders, but really doesn't have enough meat on its bones for a satisfying and addictive experience: real style over substance case here.

Doesn't help either that managing the AI partners feels very frustrating in how weak they are: I'd much prefer they be invincible, even if it made them much weaker to balance it.

Tyler responds:

Appreciate the feedback my dawg. I live for FutureCopLGF reviews. I agree with everything you said, we want to make an updated version. Your feedback is valuable.

[Citizen Pico: Pico's School IV]

Hmm, it's a decent little point n click adventure pico fangame that certainly has a nice sense of nostalgia to it and an interesting future storyline, but I couldn't help but feel rather underwhelmed by it!

The storyline has a lot of potential as an interesting sequel...but it's over before you know it and barely makes any sense. The world is large and it's got a lot of nice environmental interactions like opening lockers and turning on faucets...but none of it feels particularly meaningful as there are no fun easter eggs or flavor text, leaving the world feeling empty.
It's got puzzles...but it reuses the box moving twice for no reason and having to shoot the skull pile makes no logical sense (why not move the skulls out of the way like the boxes?) It's got a cool final boss fight...but it's a very dumb and simplistic DPS race that's way too punishing as it makes you play the whole game over if you die.

As said, certainly has some potential, but it just felt rather short and unsatisfying to me. Good attempt, at least! Oh yeah, one more thing: the music is way too damn loud!

Kolumbo responds:

Pleasure reading your review, thank you!

Most of the negatives you listed I agree with, they're a product of poor planning and cutting corners to make it on time. Not an excuse, but it is what it is.

On the bright side, if I do another one sometime down the line - or something similar - I now know how much time stuff takes, so avoiding these issues should be easy!

Thanks again