FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[commonweal]

Hmm, this is a bit of a weird one! For the most part this game has an interesting sense of mystique and style to it, especially from its lack of overt tutorials/HUD and slick presentation, that made me very intrigued and wanting to explore to figure out how deep the rabbit hole goes! Slowly figuring out how to gather rocks for the fire, staying warm, and so on were neat, and when I heard a guitar player out of nowhere, it became my goal to find out how to get to the source!

Unfortunately, as cool of a mystery as it was, it didn't take long for me to become quite bored of the tedium and lack of direction: I was sick of carrying rocks back-and-forth, and sick of trying to find the guitar player due to so many dead-ends and needing to constantly backtrack to warm up. Call me impatient, and I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot of interesting hidden mechanics and artistic depth, but I ain't got time for that! For all I know, it's just as shallow as it seems and it's just the style that's inflating it in my mind's eye, making it seem more than what it is.

I think what might've made it a bit less in my eyes was the fact that I had an inkling that it might've been meant to be a multiplayer game, but I didn't encounter anyone. Not really sure whether it would've elevated the experience or anything, but just thought to mention.

[Voiceless Demo]

Hmm, this is a bit of an odd one for me, because while I really do want to love it, I can't help but feel that it's got some severe problems!

Don't get me wrong, as overall I do find the game very impressive! The intro cutscene was incredible and really got me pumped due to its musical timing, and moving around in the levels by timing your dashes, jumps, and so on to the beat was a lot of fun, especially since the music was so catchy! It was fun to get more skilled at moving around too, such as intentionally using misbeats for a short hop, or using fast-fall to cancel out of that awkward lagtime after an airdash. The hard mode was pretty interesting too with the way it makes you master the melodic beat of the song. For a demo, it's got loads of potential!

But as said, there are a lot of aspects that just made the experience less than I thought it would be:

*While it was initially fun to move around and time things to the beat, it didn't take long for it to become rote. It was there that I wanted the levels to step it up with challenging layouts, hazards, unique mechanics and so on. However, all of the levels felt the same, largely being overly long, boring treks which were devoid of any sort of danger or...anything! Ideally I'd like the levels to feel more unique and interesting, like these speedrun levels where you're bouncing on enemies and always moving forward and reacting to obstacles and so on: I just want a greater sense of flow and momentum, like Neon White or Sonic or many other speedy games!

*I didn't like that the scoring system seemed so trick-centric, especially since the way tricks are handled was so incredibly awkward, being that they are only done 5 at a time in these designated rail zones. I would much prefer if doing tricks was part of the entire experience: they should be a way for a player to express themselves, demonstrating mastery of the systems and a way to make their run flow even better, instead of making the flow worse by making them these checkpoint pit stops.

*I found it very strange and confusing when you get a 'cool' response when you do an action that you don't have any charges for, like trying to jump when you're out of jumps. While I don't necessarily think you need to get a 'bad' response for doing this, getting a 'cool' makes it seem like you did something right when you didn't, which can make you think briefly that you did have a jump charge when you didn't until you realize a bit after, and so on.

*Navigation through the levels can be very confusing a lot of the time, from how there are a lot of odd branching paths that lead to dead-ends, loads of death pits that don't look like death pits at first glance until you try, and difficult to parse graphics where it's not always obvious whether something is in the foreground or the background, an obstruction or just set dressing.

*There were plenty of other minor stuff, like how the tutorial shouldn't inundate me with so many signs about stuff other characters can do, or how when I fastfall in the middle of two cracked tiles it should break both of them and not just one, or how the game says that misbeat jumps can be tactically important but it kept lowering my score when doing them, and so on.

It's definitely got a load of potential, so I hope that this feedback can help in some way!

[The DEGENING]

Huh, not too shabby of an RPG! Certainly quite nostalgic as I liked peeping the references and all that jazz, but more so than that, what impressed me was how well-constructed the game is! Wouldn't have expected it considering how goofy the game looks, but the mechanics felt very intuitive due to informative tooltips, and the strategy and depth of the combat evolved nicely as you get new party members and get introduced to more and more unique enemy types. Usually I expect these RPGs to just devolve into mashing attack, but I really got into target prioritization, stunning to delay enemy attacks, debuffs, healing, and so on!

Now, it ain't all sunshine and rainbows. For one, as much as I say that there was strategy and depth to the combat, sometimes it did really feel up to luck as I had plenty of fights where I was just unlucky enough to have all the monsters focus down one of my guys instead of splitting their damage, or spamming all their best moves instead of waiting. Also was really bad when you get stuck on a fight and have no opportunity to respec your vouchers to try and fix it, instead having to restart all over. Was also really annoying and repetitive to go back and forth between the rest points for every fight. Was also a bummer that there is no save/load system!

Nevertheless, despite my first playthrough being quite rocky, I just had to come back to this and ended up beating it, so well done on making a short and sweet adventure!

[SLUMMONER]

Hah, I do certainly enjoy the goofy concept and style of this game, what with its crazy hobo copkiller wizard, and I do think it's got some cool stuff like the boss fights, but overall the gameplay left me unsatisfied. The game overall just had a lackluster sense of feedback where despite me going around wrecking things, I couldn't feel that connection, that sense of impact of my attacks and summons. It also felt so awkward, like how I kept expecting my bullets to come out of my hands but instead they came out of my feet, throwing off my aiming constantly. Didn't help either that it felt incredibly unbalanced: I was holding back from spamming healing and summons and I was still able to clear everything without much thought to my safety.

It's understandable since it's a game jam game and that you're on a budget, but still, it just felt very style over substance in its current form. I like the idea and would like to see more of the Slummoner's adventures, but it just doesn't have the necessary polish and juice to sell the chaos to me.

[Gravoor Infinity]

Pretty neat infinite runner arcade experience! I quite enjoyed Super Gravoor as a nice Irritating Stick-esque game so it's nice to see it come back in a new form! Presentation is wonderful, especially the menus and UI as they are incredibly juicy and colorful, the controls are smooth and have a lot of interesting depth to master such as the new drift control, and the gameplay is fast-paced and fun! Definitely found myself getting addicted going for higher scores, deciding when best to use ammo or keys to save time!

As nice as it is, though, it did start to feel a bit repetitive as I started to see the same chunks of levels over and over, sometimes with the same chunk repeated right after one another. I was hoping that once I got to a high enough score threshold or time it would introduce something new, but I never saw it (perhaps it is there but I'm just bad, though, haha). I suppose this is where Super Gravoor was a bit superior for me, what with its level-based structure that kept introducing new elements, like power-ups, obstacles, layouts, music, and so on.

Another aspect that was a bit rough for me was how luck-based it could feel: there were a few runs where I kept getting that level which has a side 'supply room' containing 3 powerups and I was awash in extra time, whereas other runs I was fighting to stay alive. Could just be me, though.

[Dwarf Planet One]

Wow, this is quite the fascinating game! The presentation is beautiful and silky-smooth (never get tired of seeing the way the seeds grow) and the gameplay mechanics like the childlike way gravity works and the seeds grow are very unique and mind-bending: all of it gives such an enthralling sense of mystique and scale that makes me want to explore further and reprogram myself to grasp it. Can't believe it was made in Flash: guess I underestimate what this is capable of!

I will admit, though, that as much as I want to love it, it can be quite intimidating and confusing to figure out! So far I've been able to experiment and figure out certain things, like feeding the bugs to the gator by either building a path or knocking them over, but ever since the universe expanded, I've been at a loss, wandering around, trying things out but not working out and begging for some sort of reset button. Even when I do figure out a solution, the way to enact said solution can be so slow and tedious it ruins any catharsis. Perhaps I'm overthinking things or doing a very inefficient solution: not sure yet.

It's a bit of a battle in my head right now: I want to play further because the world seems so fascinating and grand, but at the same time exploration can be so intimidating, overwhelming and tedious that I want to pass. Guess we'll see what happens!

[Los Tostadores]

Hmmm, this one is an odd one for me!

My initial impression of the game was sky-high: I loved the goofy premise and the lively and animated presentation, and I especially loved the very creative shooting mechanics: popping out of the toaster and shooting in slow-mo was so damn stylish and satisfying! It really made me curious as to how the game would play with the mechanics: I wanted to see how it would evolve!

But then before I knew it, the game was over, and it barely did anything! This incredible premise just felt like such a waste: the entire game felt like a tutorial where you keep shooting non-threatening dumb targets over and over, rarely engaging with actual bandits. It took until the boss to introduce any sense of challenge or strategy, and then it was over.

Hopefully you can take this as a compliment, in a way, that the game raised my expectations so high (only to unfortunately lose them)! Would absolutely love to see a more fleshed-out version of this game.

[Tracie's Pursuit]

Nice point n' click adventure! It's a bit short and doesn't have as much meat to it that I'd like (based on the tutorial prompt, I thought it was going to get very complex with all sorts of routes and order of operations and such, like some Majora's Mask-level planning), but it's still very cute, funny, and a great nostalgia trip! Characters were great and I got to flex some science knowledge (or rather lack thereof).

Wasn't sure, but are the two endings just the bad one being the various ways you can blow it (intrusive thoughts, talking about kickball) and the good one being that Pico is fine being just friends? I was trying to do stuff like close the locker, or avoid the locker altogether and just get the kickball knowledge from Darnell, or see if not scissoring that girl would have a positive effect, but couldn't get anything else to happen.

[Windowz XP 2012 Professional]

Hah, this was an amusing little trip! Like a toybox, it was fun to poke and prod at everything I could find in the fake OS interface, watching what happens, catching all of the references and seeing how deep it goes. Sometimes it wasn't as interactive as I'd like (a recycle bin with no empty button?) but then other times I'd be surprised at how interactive it was (clicking on that file within the recycle bin). Heck of a nostalgia trip to go through the various Flash files as well: reminds me so much of the little sketches I used to do back in the day. So yeah, it was nice and all, but c'mon, why you gotta remind me that we're never getting Half Life 3?

Kolumbo responds:

thank you for the review!

i really wanted it to have more to the windows aspect of it, but i started way too late to be able to pull it off in time for the deadline. maybe if i actually knew how to code or something, but even this took some effort.
there is a substantially expanded version coming soon, in order to remedy that, though!

hahaha sorry about half life! if its any better, it hurts me too.
but hey, a half life 3 joke is peak 2012

[Earth Day Collab 2024]

Wow, this is a solid art collab! Hits a lot of the right spots that I desire from these and avoids the typical, dull slideshow presentation. The corkboard gallery is a very cute way to present the art and is such a display of variety at once that you can't help but get enticed to click em all. Love how convenient it is that you can easily get to the artist's page by clicking on their piece (though this is absent for the side poetry for some reason) and it's awesome that you can pop the image into another window so you can zoom in for higher detail, which is crucial to be able to read the comics. This also has a nice bit of polish to it, like the cool way the picture swooshes in when you click on it. Well done! Could always aspire to be even fancier, but as said, I'd consider this to be a great ideal baseline example for an art collab.

JYGame responds:

Thanks bro