FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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

[Pico's Date]

I'm not usually one for visual novels, but I found this to be really enjoyable! The dialogue and characters were quite humorous and charming, and there was an incredible amount of amusing choices and creative endings that made it so addicting to replay over and over! Definitely feels like there was a good amount of effort put into this: was surprised at how many of the endings and events got custom art to present them instead of just fading to black like so many others would do.

If I were to have any complaints, it's that there is a brief period at the start where, since nobody has nametags yet, it can be confusing to determine who is talking, be it Pico, the main character, narration, internal thoughts, and so on. Yes, I know it was done somewhat intentionally as the character's haven't been introduced yet, and there's an amusing joke in there, but it would still be nice if there were some placeholder nametags even before they've been introduced, with names like '???' or 'You/MC'.

Also I've recently switched from Velveeta to Kraft, but thank god I answered with my old preference first!

Hattsoff responds:

Super glad to hear that you enjoyed it! And thank you so much for your feedback!! I'll try and keep that name place-holder in mind for next time! If you didn't get a chance to peek through the description ('cause it's long, and I don't blame you if you didn't look X,D) this is actually my first game!

The idea was to make something that I've been wanting to see for a super long time now. A Pico dating sim set in the Pico's School universe and treated as a Pico game first and a date sim second. :3

I won't yap your ears off anymore, but I do plan on making other Pico related games like this one! I have an idea or two already brewing on the stove. <3

(He never liked that processed powder cheese flavor. He doesn't explain it, but you can easily just add milk and shredded cheese just as easy and it doesn't taste nearly as wack. I dunno, he has standards with his cheese I guess LOL)

[Heroes of Pico's School]

Damn, this game was absolutely firing on all cylinders! Seriously, I would've already given this game a high score just for the incredibly elaborate and juicy introduction and main menu, but to then find out that there's a great puzzle game attached to that with extremely unique character-based mechanics and some real mind-bending puzzles as well? Top-shelf stuff here all-around!

If I were to have any complaints, it's that the difficulty is pretty overwhelming at times with some serious spikes as early as Darnell 4 and Nene 3! Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge and boy did it feel good once I figured them out, but boy did it make me feel dumb and kill my motivation for a bit, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if a large portion of players quit out at those points. Challenge is good and you're free to do as you like, but the main problem is just how spiky and sudden it was: I wonder if there would be a more elegant way to design the levels that teaches the aspects it wants without involving a whole bunch of other stuff, so it eases you in better, at least at the start.

[PICO.exe]

Despite the fact that this creepypasta stuff kinda makes me roll my eyes and I'm certainly not a fan of getting my eardrums blown out, I feel like I gotta give this some credit as it did have some decent effort put into it and pulled off a fun little experience. Certainly a lot of fun tricks like the way it triggered the pop-up and remembered my refusal from the first time when I tried to refuse again by freezing, and I thought the whole alternate take on the Pico's School story was amusing. Sure, it cribs a lot of stuff blatantly from Undertale and such, but hey, I kinda did that too in one of my games, so who am I to cast stones?

You'll laugh, but I actually didn't even realize there was a whole 'game' portion attached to this as my first session had me just refusing and then leaving, haha. I'll admit, though, that it might've been for the best as I did find the 'game' portion to be a bit meh and so inelegant that it actually took me out of the whole experience, so perhaps there's a better way to do that aspect (like maybe it shouldn't let you retry as it kind of reduces the amount of terror you feel).

mrstiK101 responds:

Heya! Tysm for da critical feedbacks

That freezing part was TOTALLY unintentional, but I guess it ain't a bug no more. It's a feature XD.

And I later realized the kill or be killed part was from flowey, I guess playing undertalefor 100+ hours did something to my brain.

I had to time crunch, so i coudn't add any gameplay to it, but the next versions might have a LOT of gameplay, I have some stuff in my mind about it.

Thx

[BRAWLERS WORLD RPG (DEMO)]

Hmm, not sure how to feel about this since it is in such a rough and bare-bones state!

I mean, sure, walking through the pre-rendered 3D-esque backgrounds and Mode7-looking world map was really cool, especially since, being made in RPGMaker, I thought the world would be all 2D tiles and sprites. Not sure what magic you used to pull it off, but that's pretty neat for a tech demo!

But on the other hand, I couldn't really get a feel of what the game was even going to be. There's no interactivity in the world, there's no combat, no puzzles, no anything! I struggle to call this a demo: feels much more like a super early prototype for just the world and just not fit for public viewing yet. Elements like the phone menu also felt super clunky with how awkward delayed the action is and how it doesn't pause your movement, among other things.

I mean, hey, best of luck on the development and I hope it shapes up to be something cool: I just have no idea what to expect currently!