FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lich King's Gauntlet]

Pretty interesting fighting game! It kind of reminds me of something like Footsies or Divekick, or maybe even Elden Ring PVP, in that it isn't particularly complicated, but it can still have a lot of interesting mindgames and intricacies to the combat. The combination of all the factors for combat led me to doing some interesting plays, like backing off enough to let the AI try and go for a health potion but preemptively be aiming at the potion so it intercepts them, using my dash aggressively to close the distance and get a quicker shot but then being mindful for my cooldown-induced vulnerability afterwards, using the explosion shockwave to knock someone into spikes or acid, and so on and so forth. Lot of depth to be seen here!

Unfortunately, as nice as it is in theory, I found myself getting bored rather quickly, mostly due to the really bad enemy AI which doesn't seem to move intelligently and fires off random blasts, commonly killing themselves with their own blasts or stumbling into spikes/acid. I was really hoping that all of the enemy wizards would have very unique AI patterns and their own sets of powers, turning the game into a cool boss rush, but alas! I feel like the game tries to hide this or make up for it by having the fights commonly involve multiple wizards, which causes a load of chaos to become a smoke screen. Perhaps if it had multiplayer against human opponents, it could be fun, but as a singleplayer experience, this doesn't feel great (but could be with better AI).

As a side note, another aspect that hurt my first impression is that I went to training mode first, thinking that it would help me learn the rules. Afterwards it went into real matches, but unlike what I thought, it didn't go straight to the tournament matches, but instead to an easy mode version of the tournament, which really served to bore me as it was all 1 on 1s which, as said before, the subpar AI doesn't shine well with.

[Upbound]

Wow, this one really surprised me! It's a rather simple arcade game, but you did a fantastic job at giving the game so much style and soul, what with the cool astronaut-themed voicelines, the very bouncy and lively animation as you jump around, the way sounds pitch up as you combo, the satisfying feel of speed when you're comboing balloons/jetpacks and watching your power bar flare up, and so on! Great stuff and a fantastic example of the power of juice to elevate an experience!

yahhcheee responds:

wow.. we really appreciate your sharing. we really tried to go the extra mile on all things you mentioned and i'm so happy that it touched you. Thank you FutureCopLGF!

[Keep It In! 3]

Not too shabby! Certainly seems to be going for a simple-yet-fun arcade vibe, and the amount of game variations were rather intriguing. Had a decent bit of fun checking it all out.

However, I didn't have the best impression when playing this. At its core, the game just didn't really hook me with its concept, and despite having a lot of different types of games to play, it felt like a real quantity-over-quality situation as many of the games either felt superfluous and barely any different from classic (timed), or felt very unbalanced (multiball) or confusing (rhythm).

In addition to that, the game just had a very unflattering presentation to it, the music was way too loud and there was no option menu to turn it down, and it was missing quality-of-life features like being able to quit out of a game. Furthermore, I had a few of the games glitch out on me in weird, frustrating ways.

Also, and this might be a nitpicky personal thing that doesn't matter so much, but I really don't jive with the whole bouncecoin system where you're playing and logging in daily to purchase cosmetics and all that jazz: just feels really unnecessary and scummy. I know you're not trying to scam me or take money from me or anything like that, but it just rubs me the wrong way and makes me feel like you're trying to add this as a motivation to make up for the fact that the game can't motivate strongly enough by itself.

St4rryQueen responds:

Although it might not be the clearest, the BounceCoin icon doubles as a clickable icon that pops up with a pause menu, in which you can quit, or even change your background or style mid-game.

[CHEFWARE]

Yowza, this game was fantastico! Not even quite sure how to praise it as it was just very professionally-crafted and juicy in practically every regard, including the spots that developers usually don't bother with, such as the main menu and options! Well done: it was loads of fun, and I thought some of the minigames like the one where you need to write down the order and execute it later were very memorable!

If I were to get a bit nitpicky, I'd say:

*I did find it really weird that it doesn't automatically transition to endless mode upon beating the boss for the first time, either by allowing you to continue past the boss into it or by selecting restart: instead you can only access it by fully quitting out and selecting it from the main menu when you start.

*The beer mug filling one was a bit deceptive and confusing on what constitutes a success. I think the problem is that I was trying to fill the glass so that the top of the liquid portion matches the line, whereas the game considers the top of the foam where it should match the line. Could be wrong about that, but something about it was weird.

*It's a minor quibble, but I wish the game would give you immediate feedback on your success or failure before the time limit (when possible). For example, when you finish cutting up enough fruit, you should hear a 'woohoo' or something like that to let you know you can rest easy as you've already won.

*Some minigames didn't seem to scale well at the speed gets higher, like the hamburger grilling one became practically impossible and acted in weird ways.

*It's a greedy wish, but I do wish there were even more fun minigames to play, or even more so, I wish there were more variations and tricks in the existing minigames. For example, some ones like the bike delivery have decent variety with changing up the jumps you need to make between pits and goblin, whereas others just do the same thing every time and have no such tricks to keep you on your toes.

Great stuff!

[Kill Laanie Race or Die Super Laanie Update]

I certainly think this has potential to be a nice racing game, but currently it feels rather underbaked and needs more time in the oven!

My main complaints are:

*While some of the visuals are pretty cool, you went way overboard with the filters like the monitor static/film grain/whatever and it just makes my eyes hurt and makes it difficult to read the screen. Get rid of that crap: your art looks good by itself and you don't need to hide it behind these dumb filters.

*Damage feedback is very lackluster: getting shot or shooting other cars isn't apparent as there is no sort of sound effect or hitspark to indicate contact. Also when you crash into a wall, the game starts draining your health and plays these loud, grating sounds.

*There's a lack of information given for the race. For example, what's my current position/place/rank in the race? How many cars remain? What's my speed? When I finish a lap, where's my current lap time and how does it compare to my previous laps?

*Unless you memorize the course, it's very difficult to determine where turns are, making it rather frustrating. Up to you how to handle this, but a few ways would be to zoom out the camera, add signals/signs onto the course, or to have a minimap/radar of the course in the corner.

*When all is said and done, the game isn't doing anything that innovative to create a fresh new experience, nor does it have core driving gameplay that is satisfying enough to make up for that as it feels rather basic in terms of functionality and slippery/awkward in terms of physics.

Hope this helps and that you continue to work on it!

GNOSTU responds:

Hi Mr FutureCopLGF

Thank you so much for your honest feedback. We are currently polishing Kill Laanie, we also want to state that this is a game jam entry for Gdevelops game jam 5 and we only had 9 days to make this hence the reason it seems underbaked.

Addressing your complaints

* The visuals effects we know does not appeal to everyone and we are aware of that. We are a retro revival indie game development studio that focuses on a sense of nostalgia to everything we do including art and music. We are sorry to hear that you have experienced pain in our visuals we are adding an options section to turn these effects off for players that do not like it.

* About the lack of visual information. Yes we understand that the industry standard is to know your position, speed and lap time. Again we simply did not have time for all the extra bells and whistles that go with racing games. However we are creating modes for players that want to have a normal racing experience.

* Regards to minimaps. Again not enough time to code we only had 9 days. We do not believe in hand holding when it comes to our games as many old games dropped you in the deep end with no help or info regarding things like minimaps and when corners need to be taken we were trying to go for a more realistic racing experience. Like I said we are working on modes where minimaps are an option to turn on or off. As for the zoom I do not think we are changing anything in that department as we are trying to keep the zoom like Konami's Road Fighter.

* Being fresh and new is not what we do at graphic nostalgia studios we focus on bringing life to old games from the arcade, sega and nintendo and adding things like physics and redrawn or modern styled additions like character select, color selections, PS1 and PS2 style 3d graphics and music. As for the awkward slippery physics the game jam theme was unstable so I think we delivered on that.

Conclusion.

We do not shy away from any criticism here at Graphic Nostalgia Studios and we try and cater to all gamers. Please keep in mind that we are a retro studio first and modern gamers 10th. We are a studio that still plays old games like pokemon blue, Rise of the Triad, Contra, Piko's School and SimGirl. We do play modern games like GTA V and Cyberpunk 2077 with innovation and new things to see and honestly as a retro studio we do not see much change in anything in the new games we didn't 15 years ago. We love how old games were simple and none instructive, we believe that this generation of gamers are too spoiled when it comes to help and instructions. We read all our comments and appreciate each one as well as yours. We will take what you have to heart and work on a better experience for gamers. Thanks again for the feed back and Stay Retro

[Balance]

This definitely has some potential and feels like it could be a decent simple-but-fun arcade game. Unfortunately, I found the control scheme to be very odd and just make the experience too awkward to stick with. You'd think that the player would control the balance beam, making it tilt back and forth to make the box naturally slide, but instead you make it so that the player controls both the balance beam and the box, but the box isn't affected by the tilt of the balance beam? What's the purpose of the tilt, then? Even weirder is the way that the box only moves if you hold down the movement key: just tapping will have the box remain in the same spot while the balance beam tilts to no effect. Very strange!

[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.