FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Darkness Revived]

Hmm, this was a rough one for me!

I really like what this game seems to be going for, which is this whole improvisational survivalist combat, and indeed, once I got to the first boss fight and had to scrabble around for ingredients while under constant threat, shining the flashlight at the enemies to buy some time for crafting new weapons, it felt pretty cool!

Unfortunately, while I think it's a good concept, I don't think it is executed that well. As said above, it took until the first boss fight for the game to raise my pulse in the slightest, as before that it was pretty boring, what with its very bland world, sub-par graphics, spongy enemies, and inability to stop the player from easily cheesing or optimizing the fun out of the game by playing in a very risk-adverse manner. Once the first boss was defeated and I saw that it looked like I needed to do more of the same tedious work over and over, I just couldn't work up the nerve to do so.

While I am somewhat harsh on this, I don't think it's all that bad: considering it's a game jam game and it did tickle my brain with a promising core concept that I would love to see have more time to get executed properly, I think you can consider that a bit of a success.

[Losing Sense]

Wow, this was a pretty cool point-n-click game! The whole aspect of having to rely on limited or unusual senses like taste to slowly identify where you are and what objects are around you was very unique and really enraptured my attention and imagination! Not only does it get your brain working to try and get through the game itself, it also makes you think about life and your senses in a new and more appreciative way! The game felt pretty well-paced in that, at least most of the time, I felt like I was able to get a good inkling of what objects were before the game finally identified it for me, and while I feel like I got lucky on one of the puzzles, most of the others felt intuitive.

If I were to give feedback to anything, it'd be that the game can be rather tedious with how you have to just rub your newfound senses over every object in the room over and over: can feel like such busy work, but maybe that's just because I took a break and had to do all that over again from scratch which made it doubly tedious (it'd be nice if there was some sort of save/load system). In a way I wish the game promoted more intelligent use of the senses rather than just brute-force: that's what players do when they're desperate in these games, just combine everything with everything until something works, haha!

Anyway it was all good fun, and goddamn, that ending! I was waiting for the shoe to drop, but it wasn't quite what I expected. I was so sure it was going to be that one or many of the items we thought we had an inkling was would turn out to be completely different once we got our eyes on it, so it was a bit disappointing that it was an object we weren't able to identify the entire time, but still, good stuff!

[Human Hunters]

Wow, pretty cool beat-em-up you got here! Right from the start the game sold me with the way you seamlessly transition from the menu into smashing the gate open: so damn cool to witness! The presentation has a real top-notch cartoon-y quality to it, the gameplay offers some fun mashy goofness, there's a lot of great special effects like the blood which can then make bloody footprints. It just has a great old-school Flash feel to it, reminding me of a lot of the classics like Disorderly!

Having said that, though, I'm a real stickler for beat-em-ups since they're my favorite genre, and there was a lot that I felt could be improved here:

*While the game does a decent job of selling hits with copious blood and knockback animations, it can still feel like you're just flailing and not really making contact. Something like hitstop/freeze would go a long way to making hits feel more satisfying.

*The moveset for the character isn't well-explained and the special attacks like the uppercut and the kick don't feel like they have strategic purpose to them at the moment. Would be great if, for example, the bite can give you health (but takes longer, so you gotta find a big opening to risk using it), the uppercut can lead to juggles for higher damage combos (but at the risk of higher commitment which leaves you open) and the kick can knock down enemies longer or break guards or throw them into other enemies to knock them down (but that power comes at the cost of taking much longer to get to that part of the combo), and so on.

*The controls for running were a bit weird: it felt very difficult to get started running, and then once you do start running, it's very difficult to stop. I can understand momentum and such, but even then, it borders on unresponsive.

*Felt a bit annoyed that enemies are immune to obstacles like the bananas and the bear traps: would be nice if I could get creative and use them against them.

*While the AI for the boss wasn't too bad, the enemies had some pretty bad AI. Maybe it's just because it's the beginning of the game, but it was too easy to corral the dumb enemies into one big mass and then beat them up all at once. Ideally I think they should have a bit more randomness to their movement to keep you on your toes, as well as having some of them try to circle around to your back. Would be nice to see other enemies like the Knights adopt other special forms of AI, like maybe they guard and counterattack if you hit their shield too many times.

*The difficulty of the game was pretty awkward in that there are no extra lives or checkpoints, which when combined with the unfair randomness of health drops and the mashy combat, can be a bit frustrating.

*Bit annoying that you can't seem to hit enemies when they're down, especially when they're the only enemy left on the screen and all you can do is just wait for them to get back up. Would be great if you can kick them, or even pick them up and throw them.

Hoping this can help in its development: it's already showing a lot of potential as a beta, so I'd love to see its final version!

[Cannibal Holocaust - The LCD Game]

Hmm, this is a bit of an odd one! I mean, on one hand, you've authentically recreated a Tiger Handheld Game experience, but on the other hand...you've authentically recreated a Tiger Handheld Game experience!

It's like, you know, it's impressive how legitimate it feels, so kudos for sticking to the theme and the rules that come with the system limitations, but at the end of the day, it's just a very simple game that gets very boring very fast. I wasn't a fan of Tiger games as a kid, let alone nowadays as an adult! The phrase polishing a turd comes to mind. Sorry!

In addition to being a Tiger game, this also feels very awkwardly designed. For example, I couldn't figure out the scoring at first, because it didn't make sense why you need to hit the side buttons an extra time after you've already moved to the side and the food's already in his mouth: maybe if they started with the arm down and hitting it an extra time raises the arm up to his mouth, it'd make sense. Scoring was also compromised by the fact that there is no fire-rate limiter, meaning you can score as fast as you can mash, cheesing it with an auto-clicked if you felt like it.

Deklaration responds:

Just like a proper Tiger Electronic LCD Game! Simple gameplay that are still difficult to understand. I had a Jurassic Park one that I spend like six months saving up for and I never once understood how to play it.

[Dungeon Watchers]

Hmm, it's a rather promising survivors-like! Overall it has a lot going for it: the presentation is cute and polished, there's a good amount of enemy AI patterns like the boo ghosts and the rushing spiders, I like that the two characters on offer have unique playstyles like casting spells or placing bombs, and the gameplay in general has that addictive sense of progression where you're growing more powerful and adding all sorts of weapons to your arsenal.

Unfortunately, while I think that this has a solid foundation, it didn't really grab me with its execution. It just felt rather stale and boring, and I'll admit that part of that might be because I've played so many of these types of games so I'm just fatigued, but there's just some certain je ne sais quoi that's missing. I'm not sure if I can explain exactly what the core issue is, but in terms of other feedback in general, here's some:

*The game's pacing felt a bit weird in a lot of ways. For example, sometimes the character would level up so fast it felt like I hardly got to play the game. Othertimes it would be weird when stronger enemies like the rushing spiders would show up, only shortly later for boring and easy slimes to appear. Also because a lot of upgrades were boring statistical upgrades instead of exciting weapons, it lost its luster.

*Speaking of upgrades, it was really weird how upgrades like bullet size were showing up for the bomb character when they aren't applicable. Why does this happen when the bomb upgrades only show up for the bomb character and not the magician?

*Speaking of the bomb character, i was a bit disappointed that they couldn't hurt themselves with their own explosions like Bomberman. It just makes their gameplay rather boring since there's no risk to it placement: you can practically cheese the game by just sitting on your bombs and letting enemies try and come to you, but they can't because it's too easy to get overpowered in this game.

*The controls were rather awkward in that it felt like the game was ignoring my inputs a lot and I could never tell if I pulled something off. For example, a lot of times I would try to place down a bomb or cast an ice spell and it wouldn't come out, even though I felt like I had spaced it out long enough for the cooldown to be ready, and even though the character acts like they did it even though they didn't.

*Graphics were a bit ugly and inconsistent in how some enemies were very crisp and clear, and other graphics like our character sprite were very grainy, most likely from being scaled down from a much larger original art work.

Anyway, best of luck on further development for this! As I say, I think it technically has all of the foundation necessary to make a great game: now you just need to find a special spice to make this very memorable and fun!

[scaling a mountain using the second amendment]

Pretty neat Happy Wheels/Getting Over It rage game you got here! I'm a fan of these kind of games and for the most part it felt pretty nice: the world had a challenging construction to it and a neat sense of progression with checkpoints and upgrades, the gun being your method of transport was cool, and it was fun to try and master the intricacies of the reload/reset mechanic since it does so when you just brush against the environment instead of necessarily landing.

I'm a bit torn though on whether this is a game I'm going to beat, though. As said, I'm a fan of these types of games, but the goofy non sequitur nature of this makes me afraid that I'm just bring jerked around: that the world and controls aren't as elegantly and fairly designed as its contemporaries and that it's not a game that can be won through skill, but rather random dumb luck. Since there is a volume control for the narrator that can be used to make them shut the hell up, though, maybe I'll keep trying: it's in the nature of these kind of games where they can seem random and impossible at first, after all.

A bit annoyed that the save feature doesn't seem to work: I made it all the way to the third checkpoint and wanted to take a break, only for it to start me all over with zero upgrades...what is the point of the save, then?

crow-seeds responds:

Hmmm, never had anyone have an issue with the save mechanic. Did you make sure to click the save game button in the pause menu? Saving isn’t automatic when you quit the game. Thanks for the review as always!

[Lee's DeLeeVery Service!]

Hmm, a bit mixed on this one!

I do think it has a lot going for it. The animation of the robot is very cool: the tactile feeling of weight as you lumber around reminds me of games like Mechwarrior, and seeing it make it up stairs, pick up packages, stand and crouch, jump and blast, and even getting its head caught on things was all quite impressive. In terms of gameplay, the way the world has been setup tickles my metroid speedrun brain, in that I bet it would be a lot of fun to experiment and jot things down to make the ultimate route to get it all done fast and acquire the best grade.

Unfortunately, I had a real rough time getting into the game proper. While I like lumbering movement in games like Mechwarrior and such, I'm not a fan of it for a game that's trying to promote speedruns: it just felt so tedious and annoying to try and get anything done with how claustrophic the world was, both in terms of the cramped corridors and the zoomed-in camera not allowing you to see far enough ahead to learn this maze effectively. The game also didn't have the best first impression with the text/instructions overlapping each other and making it hard to read.

Basically, I think it's a bit more of a neato tech demo than an actual fun game at the moment! If possible, I'd love to see the mech-based movement of this game be done in a different genre or setting, as it's too cool to be abandoned on the cutting room floor.

[SnakePit]

Pretty neat game! For the most part it's a rather simple versus battle game with Snake mechanics which isn't up my alley, but the game's presentation and style is very peppy and the battles do offer some element of strategy and depth to them through the inclusion of power-ups, body size influencing speed, and being able to bisect enemies and eat their shed body parts. The game also has a decent amount of modes to play. Basically I didn't have the best hopes for it at the start, but it ended up impressing me!

Keep in mind that this review is coming from someone who only played single-player mode, which while I was very happy to see its inclusion, it might not showcase the game at its best. The feedback I'd offer is:

*While the battles were fun at first, I'll admit that I was letdown by the tournament mode since all of the battles felt largely the same. I was hoping that since the snakes were all different characters, they would have stronger personalities and quirks to strategize around like you'd see in your typical fighting games, but it seems like those only manifest when they get powered up which they never have time to do, and it wasn't until the final boss that they had a ever-so-slight starting advantage to try and pep things up.

*The game is rather simple, and while it does try to inject some strategy and variety, it doesn't have enough staying power to keep me playing and just feels like padding. As said before, all of the snakes feel the same because fights never last lost enough for their special powers to come into play, and while the game does have different fighting modes, all of them except fruit hunt feel pretty much the same.

*The way snakes move can be awkward with the way they stutter around: I understand it might be a tactical thing based on body size and so on, but it just felt weird and felt like the game is lagging, with the worst being that sometimes it would make my inputs get misinterpreted or ignored.

[Mars Underground (full game)]

Wow, this is a heck of a sandbox you've created here! The setting is pretty intriguing and reminds me a lot of other visual novel or timeloop games such as Majora's Mask, Twelve Minutes, Indigo Prophecy and so on. Seriously impressed at the amount of interactivity in this adventure: I typically expect the only interactions in there games to be important ones to the plot, but I like that there was effort to add more than just that as it gives a lot of flavor to the world!

There are some slight annoyances to the game here and there, sure. The intro was a bit annoying to have to sit through before being able to access any sort of options menu to adjust volume and the like. There's also a lot of experimentation and backtracking that can get quite tedious to wait through at times to finally get to the choice or outcome you want: overall the game can be quite intimidating!

Nevertheless it's quite addicting to see what you can do, there's plenty of interesting story hooks to keep me motivated, so I'm looking forward to getting to the final ending eventually!

[Off the Grid - Summer 2024 Collab]

Cute art collab! Always neat to see other artists and their interpretations of each other's characters, and seeing all of this art in this intuitive grid layout with all the information you'd want, topped off with some chill vibes and neat special effects like the intro animation, is great stuff!

If I were to have any feedback, it's that I wish I could speed up the navigation at times, like being able to double-click to skip the sloooow transition and just snap to the next picture immediately. Either that or I wish we could actually free-form navigate as well, like dragging the grid around and zooming in with the mouse wheel as we please. It'd also be nice if there was some sort of credits and information window about the event, perhaps. I suppose I'd like if maybe it had a bit more razzle-dazzle as well: it's practically a sterile room with how white and clean it is, haha! But yeah, this is all small potatoes, as it's generally a nice gallery!

alsoknownas1 responds:

Thanks! As always your comments are super constructive. You're absolutely right that the balance here between minimalism and effects was a bit awkward. Not just because of you--of course--but we're definitely leaning towards the razzle dazzle (or at least novelty) in the next few projects. Would be very interested in your thoughts. Stay tuned!