FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Madness: Sierra Nevada (Halloween UPDATE)]

Mom, can we get Hotline Miami?
We have Hotline Miami at home.
Hotline Miami at home:

Ok, that makes it sound kinda bad, but honestly this does feel like a Hotline Miami clone, and I mean that in both a very good way (and a slightly bad way).

I mean it in a good way because it is quite fun, delivering that classic fast-paced gory action that we know and love, but in a fresh Madness flavor. I had a blast going for big kill combos, switching and throwing weapons on the fly, and all that jazz. I was astounded at some of the new inclusions, like being able to reflect bullets with a sword! It's also quite impressive that you included a level editor!

But on the other hand, I do mean it in a slightly bad way because it does feel like a somewhat inferior bootleg version of it: sure it's got the essentials, but there a lot of subtleties to it that are lost. The biggest example of this was the doors: it cannot be overstated how disappointed I was with the doors when I tried to burst into the first room and not only have the door not knock anyone down, but swing in the completely opposite direction! It was also really confusing to figure out where the next floor stairs were, and where you are supposed to exit the level without any sort of guidance. I didn't like that the scoring system seemed like a complete afterthought as well as it doesn't give us a breakdown or even seem to save our high score. I could go on about other nitpicks such as how throwing a bladed weapon should kill, but in this it only knocks them out like a blunt weapon.

Don't get me wrong, it's still very impressive and fun, but there's just some roughness to it that made me a bit uncomfortable here and there. I'd definitely love to see a more polished sequel of this!

[Madness: Sheriff's Compound]

Pretty cool FPS you got here! I really enjoyed making my way through this, with it feeling really cool to be all careful and tactical with clearing rooms and corridors due to the lethality of the enemy weapons. It was made all the more satisfying with the way the enemies reacted and ragdolled to getting shot and whacked with a bat, and I loved all the little extra touches put into the game beyond the bare basics, like enemies surrendering, including the little birthday boy! I liked how the enemy placement was slightly randomized too in order to keep you on your toes. The twist at the end caught me off-guard too. There's just so many neat things in this little adventure!

I will admit, though, that on closer inspection, there's a lot of rough spots to this. The enemy AI is both easily exploitable and acts oddly, sometimes completely phasing through walls next to doors, for instance. It's frustrating that you can't cancel the reload animation with a weapon switch or melee attack like you can in other shooters. Zombies were a cool twist but they were much more boring to fight than the starter enemies. And overall there can just be some weird stutters and minor performance issues. Oh, and the sound of the AK was pretty weak.

Anyway, it's certainly a very promising game and I'd love to see a sequel to this!

[Deckerware - Eggbug Party Games]

Hmm, seems like a rather cute little Warioware-esque microgame collection you got here! Not too shabby, especially considering it was for a gamejam, but ultimately when taken out of that context, there not only isn't enough microgames on offer which makes it take no time at all for them to start feeling repetitive, but the microgames also don't speed up or have enough variety to them within themselves to keep things interesting for long. Basically it feels like a good rough draft or prototype in its current state, but not enough as a full-fledged game, which I would love to see if you continue work on it!

As a side note, I'm not familiar with this whole Decker interface: maybe it would be best if it was hidden to avoid confusion, thinking it's necessary to mess around with its controls? I also found it weird that the game starts with the music disabled: not sure why!

sysl responds:

Hey, I've left the controls visible so people can see how it works and play with it.

I would love it if more people played with decker.

[FRANKLIN’S BOUNTY DEMO]

Damn, I dunno if I'm missing something or not, but I didn't have a great time with this game, unfortunately!

I really wanted to like it as it made a stunning first impression with an absolutely wild sense of style that exuded from every single aspect of the game's presentation. I'm also a huge fan of boss rush and fighting games so I was really down for hunting down the bounties that this game setup!

Unfortunately, once I got into the actual gameplay, I was just absolutely confused as to how I'm supposed to play. I seriously tired my best to attack and block where appropriate, look for exploitable gaps in the enemy pattern, and all that good stuff, but it seemed for naught as all of the fights seemed to devolve into a confusing, messy mashfest with no rhyme or reason, where you just have to hope you luck into winning. To make it worse, the game barely seemed functional at times, with my hits that look like they should be connecting with the enemy whiffing for no reason, controls being unresponsive, special moves not coming out, and so on.

I was really hoping for something like Punch-Out meets Street Fighter or something akin to that, but I didn't get that here: it just seemed like all style but no substance. To be fair, fighting games are very hard to pull off and I'm quite critical of them, so maybe you just bit off more than you can chew with over-ambition: it happens to every developer, and I can at least admire the chutzpah!

[Anti Terrorist Rush 2]

Hmm, I have to admit that I'm not usually a fan of these type of idler games where success is guaranteed as long as you just invest time, with player skill/involvement being practically unneeded. But I'll also admit that I can see the addictive appeal that this has, and I do think the game has a rather slick, intuitive and polished look and feel to it that helps elevate it. And heck, even though it is largely automated and is just a time-waster at heart, it still throws me a bone by allowing me to use the abilities at key moments to get some more mileage out of a run! It's ultimately not for me, but I could certainly see it being a fun and simple mobile game for lots of people!

If I were to have some feedback, it'd be that I wish it was more clear when the player character is taking damage. It's strange that enemies will react to being shot with spurts of blood and such, but our character is just a unflinching, unfeeling brick. I couldn't tell, for example, whether the molotovs that were landing behind my character were counting as hitting them or not.

[Boxed Boxes]

Wow, this was a really neato game! Not only does it have a really unique and cool puzzle mechanic which it does a lot of interesting tricks with, it's also a very well-constructed game in practically all respects, with great levels that subtly teach the mechanics and raise the stakes, along with great visuals and animation, and a general sense of smoothness and polish to it all!

Usually this is where I would go into feedback, but I can't really think of anything significant to say: it was simply top shelf stuff!

Damn, looking at the date, it looks like this wasn't appreciated in its time. This would've been a shoo-in for best of the month!

[DEAD DETENTION #3 (Rescribbled)]

Nice to see another entry in this series! For the most part, my feedback is the same as before, in that it's a pretty slick and cute visual novel, but I'll admit that the story is a bit too young adult/anime for me, there aren't enough interesting branching decisions or failures for minigames, and I'm still unsure on what effect the character stats will have. Basically it's nice, but I wish it had a bit more to it in some respects.

In terms of brand-new feedback:

*I had no idea that you could click on objects in the background while reading text and it would unlock these secret, what were they called, plot tokens or whatever? Wild stuff: not sure if they are important at all, but yeah, caught me off guard since I clicked on the radio completely by accident.

*I liked that this was going for a lot of emotional moments, but I felt like they really didn't work because of the game's overall goofy and light-hearted nature. For example, when you have to kill the teacher and it's supposed to be all emotional, it ruins the moment when a comical 'WHACK' appears and suddenly the teacher's head is exploding with a geyser of blood. Some crazy dissonance between the comic-book visuals and the emotional music playing.

*In a similar fashion to the above, I was a bit disappointed with how the student council president was handled. I felt like there was a lot of potential with what could've come of his character: for example, with the prez possibly losing his mind and unreasonably swearing revenge on us for killing Red and becoming a new villain that hounds our steps. This could've been his Joker moment: one bad day changes everything! Instead he just immediately becomes a zombie and now we're able to delete him for the story, killing him without any sort of moral dilemma, in a comical fist fight to top it all off.

Anyway, looking forward to the next chapter!

[Landmine Cube]

Huh, this was a surprisingly cute and fun little Minesweeper-esque arcade game! I was worried it would be too trial-and-error, but it was rather fun to slowly and carefully go across the map and figure out where all the mines were while collecting all the trinkets: maybe I'm part robot, but something about combing levels over and over was somewhat meditative. Sometimes it can be a little frustrating when mines are too close together and you just have to take a gamble, but as long as you view the life counter as an allowance for error instead of something you don't want to lose, then it's ok. Yeah, just some simple but addictive fun to be had here!

If I were to have any feedback:

*It'd be nice if you could keep moving if you held down the key so you wouldn't need to constantly be pressing buttons to cover large areas. I understand that maybe it's intentional so players don't accidently wander too far into a mine, but perhaps you could make it so that holding down the key only works on ground you've already marked/covered to prevent that.

*It'd be nice if, similar to Minesweeper, you could mark tiles that you suspect have a mine in them with a flag, just to help you keep track of everything.

*I'd like it if there was a better scoring/grading system, like if you get a gold medal if you clear the level quickly and with a minimum amount of lives lost: would add a lot of replayability, I think.

Pitigamedev responds:

I'm glad you enjoyed my game, and thank you for your precious feedback as always. If I will decide to expand this game a little bit I will implement a "flag mechanics" similar to the one in Minesweeper!

[Face Down]

Interesting game you got here! Reminds me a lot of games like Buckshot Roulette and Inscryption, and I assume those were the direct inspirations. The presentation and atmosphere were pretty slick, and while it was a bit slow to start, I enjoyed the way it kept adding on new rules as the game went on to keep it exciting: in particular I thought that the rules were you can call out rule-breaking were neat and reminded me a lot of Liar's Dice and other deception-based games. The way the villain has dialogue and expressions that dynamically respond to your actions and how the game is going is neat too and keeps the tension up.

For the most part, I didn't have any major issues, just little nitpicks. I was a bit confused as to why whenever I moused over to the right that the drawer was being so fiddly and unresponsive, but that's because I didn't realize that I needed to mouse over the card piles specifically instead of just the general right side of the screen: perhaps a highlight when you hover over the card piles would've made this more obvious. And I will admit that as neat as the game is, sometimes it feels like it is just dragging on and on and I want it to end already: sometimes that might be due to the game just feeling random and up to the luck of the draw, other times it's probably just me being impatient and not wanting to count cards and all that jazz, haha!

prsaseta responds:

Buckshot Roulette release date: 28 December 2023
Face Down release date: 26 September 2022

[Tezcatlipoca Early Acces]

Huh, quite the promising survival horror game you have here!

For the most part, it feels like the game has good fundamentals: all the stuff you would expect, such as tank controls and fixed camera angles are presented and handled alright (though I'll admit I find it weird that pressing backwards has the character insta-turn instead of backpedaling). The visual style is pretty distinct, reminding me of something like Killer7, and the way it brightly highlighting interactables is rather striking. Atmosphere is alright too with neat lighting and ambient sound. I also thought it had some pretty neat aspects to the gameplay: in particular I liked some of the first-person segments, like the part where you have a maze to get through and you need to use audio cues to find the way out based on the clue given: that was pretty clever and felt like a good puzzle!

In spite of this, though, I had to admit that I had a tough time getting immersed into the game and taking it seriously. My feedback would be thus:

First there were a lot of weird technical issues. For some reason the game defaults the SFX volume to zero which is bizarre as it can make you miss a lot of audio cues, even important ones such as your father screaming. Whenever a tutorial would pop-up to explain controls, the place where an icon is supposed to be wouldn't render properly. I crashed the game when I tried to crouch through the gap in the bus because it involves pressing ctrl+W and that is a shortcut that closes the browser window. The SFX of the game also felt like stock sounds that didn't fit the theme, especially the menu sounds. Finally in general there were just a lot of weird micro-stutters and times were the controls became unresponsive for no reason I could tell: I think it would happen when the game would load those wandering ghosts in?

When it wasn't technical issues, I just felt like the game wasn't appropriately building horror and dread. A lot of stuff just felt really goofy and unthreatening with the way they were presented, especially the dumb enemies which are so easily avoided due to their slow speed and attacks: seriously, I can't see how you would ever be hit by these guys unless you wanted to die. The way events were setup were silly too, like the way the game interrupts you with a blatant 'Flee!' prompt instead of something more subtle, like a musical sting or just letting the enemy appear and scare the player naturally. There's plenty other stuff but it's rather subtle and hard to describe exactly what it was doing wrong: it's just the vibes weren't fitting, I suppose.

As said, I definitely think there is something here, so I hope you keep working on it and I get to see the final version sometime soon!

BecSantus responds:

Thank you very much for the review! I’m still working hard to make this game the best it can be. I'll address as many of the issues as possible, though some are unfortunately tied to the limitations of the HTML version. I recommend playing the executable file available on itch.io for a better experience.

As for the crouch feature, it’s a toggle that automatically deactivates when you start running, so there's no need to keep holding Ctrl. I'll try to upload a fix for the SFX issue soon, as I'm currently working on finishing the rest of the town.