FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bauti’s Rich Diet]

Wow, this was a pretty cool game! Absolutely love the intro in how it lets you subvert the premise, and the sense of escalation and momentum that the game has by use of excellent musical cues, evolving enemy types, challenging level layouts and so on feels fantastic and you just can't tear yourself away once you start playing! The slow-mo effect when you munch someone is just so satisfying. The movement controls are pretty tricky to master and it can be a bit annoying bumping into walls and such, but you just gotta love that heroic monster!

I will admit, though, that I rage quit once I got to the shield enemies! I think they are a good escalation in terms of enemy design, but man, something about bumping off of them just really gets under my skin. Once I cool off, though, I'm coming back to eat them: just you wait! Wish I had a continue option so I could get right back, but I don't mind getting a bit of practice in by going through it again.

EDIT: Hah, I did it! Munched those shield guys once I figured out the tech and munched that final boss down: what a great short and sweet adventure this was!

DavidMarchand responds:

That was a wild ride of a comment! Thank you so much for the thought and time you put into it. I apologize in the name of shielded law enforcers everywhere.

[Call of the Woof (Ludum Dare 55)]

Cute little game, but the audio mechanics didn't seem to work for me? When I called out to the dogs, it didn't feel like the sound was coming from any sort of direction, instead always seeming to be coming from a neutral center. Because of this, the only way I could find the dogs was from volume alone, which while good enough to get me through the game, it felt less satisfying and a bit awkward, particularly because the volume remained practically the same level until you were right on top of the dog. Perhaps I just have bad headphones? Anyway, it's a decent idea, albeit rough in its execution and would've loved to see it expanded upon a bit more (like maybe it gets harder, with other competing animal cries drowning out the sound or something)!

[Cascade Cascade]

Hmm, not much to say about this one! It's a decent endless Bust-a-Move-style arcade game with a slightly interesting combo mechanic that makes it where you need to weigh your shots so as to balance keeping your ball count high and destroying blocks close to the bottom. Not bad, but not really that great or memorable as it's quite dry, bland and can get tedious since the gameplay doesn't seem to evolve significantly as it goes. It's ok for a small bit of fun, but then you move on!

[Sport Dungeon]

Hate to say it, but this is pretty damn rough. It's got some stuff going for it, like the intro cinematic was neat and the boss fight showed some potential with a decent attack pattern, but the game barely felt functional as it was constantly ignoring my inputs and bullets were glitching out for no reason. Game was also incredibly dry due to a lack of any sort of impact or special effects, and it was over in no time flat! It was made under a deadline and it's probably your first game so I don't wanna be too harsh, but I feel like it's important to be honest: looking forward to seeing future games from you at least!

[Sinful Scoops]

Hey, this was a really nice little job sim game with a neat creative twist! I may not know why serving ice cream to people based off of their sins is a thing, but I found it very fun to figure it all out and draw the heck of out some glyphs! Loved how it slowly escalated the challenge of the game: first you're guided through it, next you are given hints, and then you're let off the leash and have to do everything yourself. Overall had a good time and would love if there were some sort of endless mode where it keeps generating new puzzles and you see how many you can serve in a time limit or what-have-you.

I did have a few nitpicks with the game:

*The most obvious issue is the glyph detection: most of the time it worked alright but I had some real constant issues with the pride symbol, as well as a few clashes here and there with wrath/envy. Luckily the game allows you to reverse a scoop, but still, definitely a bit annoying.

*The logic could get a bit twisted here and there where I would feel like there were a couple different ways to interpret the sins and I wasn't sure what to go with: sometimes I'd go with what I think the game wants only to get it wrong. At the very least, I'd like it if it would tell us what we should've done when we get an error so I could learn.

*Not the worst thing, but I got a bit annoyed at how much I needed to wait around during animations, like how you can't start drawing the next glyph until the scoop generation has been fully played out, and how you can't fast-forward text.

[The Royal Writ]

Hey, this is a pretty neat game! I wouldn't think this was a game jam game as it feels incredibly and professionally crafted in almost all aspects: the game is very intuitive to grasp, the combat has a lot of strategic depth that evolves over the course of the game, the story is very humorous, and above all else I absolutely love the juicy and stylish presentation this game has, especially when it comes to music, which was very memorable and immaculately timed to the various story beats.

I will admit, though, that it does have a few problems. For example, while the game isn't that long, it would be nice to have a save/load system so you can continue and not be forced to play it all in one sitting.

But we can forgo the nitpicks and talk about the biggest one being balancing. In my experience, the game seems incredibly duke-centric, as in a win revolves too strongly around the card that becomes more powerful when cards are destroyed. In my first playthrough, I ended up getting 3 duke cards early on and steamrolled every single battle with ease. In my second playthrough, I was struggling and down to a single flagbearer and I would've lost the final battle if I didn't have the good luck to get a duke right before it, which ensured victory. Now of course this is probably just because it's a game jam game and you didn't have time to playtest it and work out every use case, but still, I wanted to mention it as it does undermine the more interesting strategic elements to the game.

[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.