FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Politics.]

Hah, quite the amusing game! Certainly has a lot of charm to its presentation and flavor text, and the rhythm gameplay ain't half-bad as it felt pretty intuitive and properly timed. While I would've liked for the songs to have a bit more variety in terms of mechanics, such as hold notes or more doubles, the game had plenty of fun songs to try and get high scores in. Solid stuff!

Perhaps I'm holding it up to unreasonable expectations, but while I did have a good time, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed with the core gameplay, mainly with how it feels so disconnected and not integrated with the politics-based humor. While you've got all these funny jokes in the menus and text and all that, all the actual gameplay has is just farts. I would've loved this game so much more if the levels were more like something you'd see in Rhythm Heaven, Parappa, or Elite Beat Agents, where every level has a themed story animation or music video where your performance affects how well it goes. That would allow for so much more pointed political humor! But as it is now, every single level just feels the same and is so drab without any sort of reactivity. Again, I know I'm asking for a lot here, but the game's professional style just gets my hopes up!

[Vine Game]

Hmm, not quite sure how to feel about this one! I suppose it's shaping up to be a platformer and it does have a decent foundation in that regard, but I'm just not sure what it's core appeal or hook is and it is rather unfocused, glitchy and bare-bones at the moment, being an early alpha.

I do have some decent fun jumping up the vine and dodging through enemies and all that jazz, so again, that's looking alright. But all of the other elements like shops and so on just seem to superfluous, though perhaps that's just a consequence of the game currently being so short that they don't have time to generate value and strategy around them that you see in other games like Downwell. I suppose the vine growing and generating platforms is kind of neat, but in a way, it really is just fancy set-dressing and doesn't look to be some sort of innovative or fun core element to the traversal.

There are a lot of confusing aspects to the game. Enemies are inconsistent in how or if you can even damage them, lots of interactions like with shops are unclear on how to proceed, why you need to time a double-jump on an enemy instead of just landing on them, bosses either seem impossible to hurt or way too spongy, and so on. There are also some minor bugs like still being able to jump/dash after dying or completing a level, as well as just awkward hitboxes, getting hurt while spawning into a new zone, and strange physics that made me bounce off of stuff or just wonk out. But worst of all was the tutorial which gave a terrible first impression due to a jump that's impossible to clear without dashing, but dashing is only taught after you clear that jump!

Hopefully the game shapes up into something cool: trying to help as much as I can but I'm a bit lost since it is so early in development that I don't know what to say or focus on yet.

[Grot]

Wow, pretty cool old-school shooter you got here! Really takes me back to playing Wolfenstein 3D or other FPS before mouses (mice?) were commonplace. I worry that the control scheme might be a bit outdated and awkward for most, but I enjoyed the challenge and nostalgia of re-adapting to it, and I think the combat and challenges are built around its limitations. Furthermore, I liked some of the unique abilities you introduced like the dashes and slow-mo dives to help add some more depth to what could've been an overly-simplistic game, even if I do unintentionally trigger them by strafe-dancing sometimes.

If I were to have any complaints, it would be that I feel charging should have more feedback to let you know you're doing it, like having your arrows glow or your crossbow start to vibrate, as without that feedback it can be unclear whether you're doing it right. Also it can be a rather simplistic game at times in terms of weapon/enemy variety and world design so is prone to losing a players attention, albeit I found it still fun overall.

[Bug Ball 3D]

Pretty cool game! Even before the game starts, I was already impressed at how lively and animated the presentation is with the title and menus, and I was glad to see that same energy carried over into the fast-paced gameplay! While I did have a bit of a rough start (I selected medium instead of easy which made me skip over the tutorial), it didn't take long for me to get addicted to trying to speed through these courses for higher ranks. Switching between bug and ball mode was pretty interesting and I liked trying to set up right-angle ricochets off of angled walls for maximum efficiency.

I will admit, though, that I'm a bit torn about the game:

*Speed is fun, but the sheer amount of speed you can generate is just too much and can easily lead to either chaos or being too scared and forgoing it to carefully putter around instead, made all the more annoying by the camera not allowing us to see far-enough ahead: maybe the top speed should be reduced, or the camera should zoom-out as you get faster? I know it's part of the challenge and you can get used to it, though, I suppose.

*As said, I really liked to try and bounce off of angled walls since the game's courses seem to be built around that being the most efficient route. The problem was that this requires the player to immediately switch direction when they bounce off of the wall, otherwise the angle gets screwed up and that throws off subsequent bounces and everything goes to hell. You could argue that there's a bit of skill the player needs to acquire in timing their inputs, I suppose, but it just feels really annoying to have to be so precise and delicate. It almost feels like the game should be a golf game instead, or adopt a more tank/car-esque control scheme where up is go forward/accelerate, instead of up being, well, go up, as those controls would allow for more precise angled bounces to be consistently achieved. Maybe the player could have a limited amount of slow-mo, or they can use slow-mo but it doesn't slow down the timer so eventually they wean off of it? I dunno, just spitballing.

*Also it's a small nitpick, but some of the graphics would irk me slightly with how awkward they'd look, like when you fall down a pit or into a hole, but your character keeps going and generating dust clouds as if they are still active and above the ground: basically the 3D is kind of fudged where I guess you're just shrinking the character instead of making them actually go downwards.

StaggerNight responds:

Big fan of the monthly game vids you do! Thanks for the review

[Portal Re:/ Flashed]

Woof, this was a really rough one for me! I love me some Portal and I love me some puzzle platformers so I was totally down to have fun playing this, but it was not a good time and needs much more time in the oven before it's really for public consumption, I'd say.

While the graphics aren't that bad, the game overall is incredibly dry and lifeless: I know it's a lospec jam so maybe you're not allowed to be too fancy, but jeez, I'm dying for some special effects here, especially sound!

Controls were incredibly unintuitive and hard to learn, especially with no tutorial integrated into the game itself. Doing the simplest of things in the game was incredibly tedious and annoying, especially aiming. And who the hell puts the fire button on the down arrow key? Makes way more sense to me to have the Down arrow key be for switching portal colors while the X button be for firing.

I could forgive the dry presentation and weird controls if the game was good, but it seems absolutely busted. Physics were inconsistent and produced awkward results, like where I'd jump down into a portal but it wouldn't preserve my momentum coming out the other end. I also got stuck between two portals and into a wall, with no way to get out besides resetting the entire game: could really use a quick-restart button here.

As said, I'm hoping this game can get fixed up into something great, but right now, it's hard to get my hopes up!

[Trivial Trivia: The Newgrounds Collection]

Pretty neat quiz game! For the most part it seems pretty well-put-together, and I was impressed at the sheer volume and variety of questions: sometimes those questions would be a bit too hyper-specific for my liking, but I suppose I've always been terrible at dates, times and all that jazz, and I'm sure some people appreciate the challenge.

In terms of feedback:

My biggest complaint would be how dry the presentation is, which is weird because it actually starts off with a decent first impression: the game's title screen and menus are quite lively with animated buttons that react on hover, smooth transitions, and the music is cool (once you turn it on, dunno why it starts turned off). However, once you go into the actual gameplay, all of that is lost and everything is so static and lifeless! Would love if it just had a bit more pizazz to it: you know, a bit of fanfare and confetti when you're right, boos when you're wrong, get the animated buttons back, stuff like that! Right now the game is like taking a test at a government agency when I want something like Jackbox!

Another aspect of the game that I found a bit rough was that when you guess a trivia question wrong, it just says you're wrong and nothing more (and displays your answer in a button for some reason, as if you could select it again). I suppose I can understand that you don't wanna give the answer away and keep the pace of the game up, but I found it to be an awkward design decision. Ideally, I'd like it so that whether you guess right or wrong, it would show you the right answer afterwards, as well as maybe some fun bonus factoids to go along with it. I know you've got a menu where players can look up the question/answer sheet and it even has links for the player to learn the answers themself which is pretty cool, but it's just so weird that this information is so separated: this stuff should be integrated into the game itself!

Oh, and I was honored to be featured in one of the questions! Cheers for that!

ElRandomGMD responds:

Thanks for the Review :)

[Golf Escape]

Fantastic short and sweet adventure you got here! It's got all the hallmarks of a great game: a clever and intriguing gameplay hook, intuitive and responsive controls, an addictive escalation of difficulty, slick and smooth gamefeel, and all with a charming and juicy presentation! It's the complete package and I am gobsmacked that this wasn't winning prizes immediately right when it was submitted: truly buried treasure we got here!

Davbo37 responds:

Thank you so much for your kind words! Glad you enjoyed it and all those aspects came through 😄

[Booliards]

Wow, what a fantastic gem of an arcade game! Not only does it got the retro vibes down pat, it's got a fascinatingly unique set of game mechanics and is so dang juicy and polished! Sure, it was a bit of a struggle at first to get used to the controls, but with a bit of practice, I was addicted and saw the genius behind them (particularly the usage of the vacuum suck)! Can't believe the style system is so robust to recognize fancy shots like banks and sinks: really makes me feel appreciated and wanting to get more into it! I have no idea how this got past over: seriously an underappreciated gem! I can't stop speaking in exclamations!

[Dream Punk]

It's that dream again! No, but really, I knew I recognized this: it's the sequel to That Dream Again from years ago, except now it's been polished up and expanded into a grand ol' adventure! It can certainly be frustrating at times, requiring so much focus and control to navigate such treacherous and bouncy areas, but it's just such a charming adventure with an addictive sense of progression with each gadget you unlock that wins you over. Really neat stuff you got here: can't believe it got past over and didn't get the initial appreciation it deserved compared to the prequel!

I gotta admit though that I did have some confusion over this though. One was that I spent a long time using the arrow keys to move around, only to find out that the glider doesn't work with that, only WASD: very strange! I also had no idea I could press spacebar to talk to people: I assumed that I needed to unlock a talk action similar to how you need to unlock everything else. And I still can't figure out how to get past the glider challenge: I get stuck in there and try to make my way through the course to hit all the buttons so I can get out, but I can't figure out how to proceed past the wind tunnel section. I wanna see the rest of the game!

[DECK FURY (Alpha)]

Wow, I was pretty impressed with this! It's got some rough edges here and there, sure, but as a fan of games like Mega Man Battle Network and One Step From Eden, I like the direction that it's going, and I really loved how smooth and intuitive the game felt, what with its excellent usage of tooltips, target previews, tutorials, icons/symbols, and other great UI/UX elements! Heck, for an alpha, it's already practically got the core loop settled and is a complete experience! Cool stuff and I feel like its got a lot of potential from this great first impression!

If I were to have some feedback, I'd say:

*I got really annoyed at how short the energy cooldown was: kept giving me whiplash with how much it keeps stopping the fight to reload the same cards over and over, and it made fights too easy with how much I could just spam cards with little to no consequence. In my opinion, I feel like cards should be a much more precious resource and you should really think of how best you use them, as if you blow them, you'll be stuck with just your puny blaster for a long time and not be able to handle a desperate situation, like getting cornered by drones with no push card. I found it much more entertaining when I pretended that my energy cooldown was much, much longer because of this: made it much more intense and strategic, and I loved scrambling and improvizing!

*Sometimes the aiming can be a bit odd and throw things off. It's like, if you're above an enemy and aiming downwards, but you're a little bit off, it can end up going to the side instead. It might be preferring certain angles? It feels like if you're aiming SW, it'll keep you pointed S properly, but if you are even slightly aiming SE a bit, it'll switch you to aiming full-on E and miss a shot.

Deltakai responds:

Hey appreciate the feedback and glad you've been liking the game so far!

Your two points of feedback are really interesting and they're both issues I've been grappling with since the game's inception.

Regarding the first point, I actually modeled the base energy cooldown off of MMBN's energy cooldown, which is 8 seconds. Now personally when I played the MMBN series I actually found this to be too slow and for me it actually created a bit of an awkward break in the gameplay where I use my cards too quickly and then have to sit around doing not much until my energy came back. The most fun part for me was when I was actually in the card selection, thinking about my next plan of attack and then trying to execute it while I have the cards loaded.

The main way I made this faster was adding the Amber Pearl starting item which refunded 10% energy every time you killed an enemy, as well as refreshing your energy each time a new wave was spawned. That being said, this is definitely a balance point of the game that I will have to keep an eye on, and a possible solution would be to make the base recharge time longer, but increase the benefit of Amber Pearl to reward players for killing enemies efficiently with their cards.


The second point I knew about as soon as I first built the aiming system - the issue becomes most apparent when you're close to the edge of the screen and trying to aim towards the edges of the screen where you can't move your mouse too far out and thus resulting in the aiming reticle to be a lot more sensitive to changes due to the close proximity of your mouse and character. I do however think this would be less of an issue if the game was fullscreen and you have more space to move your mouse about.

The way I tried to solve this was by adding the "Relative Aiming" option in the Gameplay settings which would instead clamp the cursor to the player character rather than moving independently. The feature is still a bit buggy but give it a try next time and see if it helps with the awkward aiming.