FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Blue Cartridge]

Pretty neat stuff! I felt like the whole creepypasta-chinese-bootleg-sonic.exe-whatever vibes you were going for were pulled off quite nicely: certainly had me tense for a long time playing this!

While the platforming gameplay is a bit simplistic and repetitive at its core to the point of testing my patience, the experience is well-paced, always introducing new special events or story segments whenever I feel my interest starting to wane, keeping me hooked to the end.

Speaking of platforming, I felt like the level design was always very fair: I was expecting to make a lot of leap-of-faiths and die unfairly, but the platforms were always close enough you could see them at the edge of the screen or react in time if you couldn't. You could argue that maybe it's almost too fair to the point of not feeling like an authentic bootleg, haha.

The game was creepy and tense, but I appreciate that you never did any jumpscare earrape nonsense: that would've made me shut the game off pronto. Thanks for not stooping to that level.

Now I've given a lot of praise to the game, but if I were to point out some issues, it'd be that I felt a bit unsatisfied with the story. The ending might felt meh and kinda confusing (I picked Yes and he still calls me a traitor as if I picked No?) and also the story goes from supernatural to actually just being a straightforward game, if that makes any sense. Like, Akai starts out feeling like some sort of glitchy ghost that's inhabiting a game he doesn't belong in and speaking to me, to just being an intended character in a game that has cutscenes constructed for him and is speaking to Sonic, not me. The village filled with NPCs as well just kinda killed all the tension. I dunno if I'm explaining it right: hopefully you get the idea. Maybe it's the intention, I dunno, I'm a newbie to this creepypasta stuff.

[Clear the Skies!]

Wow, considering how bland the game looks with its clip art-esque graphics, I was surprised at how much I got into this! The way you need to struggle to balance so many competing factors and experiment with different approaches reminded me a lot of some of my favorite survival games like Frostpunk, Pathologic 2 or Plague Inc. It's quite addictive stuff, and I feel like this is a classic case where looks aren't everything!

That isn't to say it's not without problems:

*I found the research/upgrade system quite confusing in that I would get upgrades that didn't seem to make any sense, like batteries that somehow reduce pollution or create power on their own. Surely the upgrades should be more appropriate in where they apply, like capacity for batteries, power for solar panels, pollution for coal plants, and so on. I suppose it does add a bit of interesting randomization and improvisation to the game, though, so I guess it's a necessary evil.

*I really wish the HUD would provide better information that you can read at a glance: everything just being text and numbers makes it all just bland together in a mess. Would much prefer if there were more graphical representations like bars. One thing I easily lost track of was what my current power demands were: the way the numbers keep fluctuating made it difficult to grasp. Graphs and other features that track data would be great too in helping to strategize.

Pandaguru responds:

Thanks for the detailed review. Those are some really specific UI feedback I can try and apply to my next game.

Thanks for playing!

[Glass Cannon]

Hey, this is pretty good! For a game jam game, I was really surprised at how juicy and animated this is: it makes it an absolute delight to play! The core gameplay is no slouch either, with a good amount of enemy variety, decent sense of progression, risk/reward system that encourages speedy kills for more souls, and so on to make things fun. The way all of the characters are glass bottles and you can see the damage they take physically adds so much to the feedback, both in making it very intuitive and in making it satisfying to see them shatter.

Yes, I'll admit that it still does feel somewhat like a rough draft or prototype due to some lackluster elements like the level design, and when you boil it down it's a somewhat generic shooter so it's not getting much points for experimentation, but it just feels good to play at its core and really makes me want to see even more content and mechanics added to this game, and that sense of promising potential is exactly the type of result you want for a game jam!

[Break Point Tennis Champ]

Hmm, I wasn't really feeling this one, unfortunately!

I like the idea of combining Tennis with Breakout gameplay to create something fresh and new, but it felt like the Tennis aspect was incredibly superficial and underutilized here. I was expecting something like having to physically swing the racket around to hit the ball, and that would be a fun challenge to get good at handling, but was super disappointed to find that the racket is basically a glorified mouse pointer. Not only does the racket's implementation here lack the satisfying feedback of hitting the classic Breakout paddle, but it doesn't even have the ability to influence the ball's trajectory by hitting it from different angles, making simplistic gameplay even more simplistic by removing player agency.

To add to the issues already discussed, the game's screen shake is way too volatile and distracting, and the physics can glitch out and cause the ball to suddenly go backwards on hit and get you unfairly killed.

Surely this should be an evolution or fun twist of the core Breakout concept, but with all of these issues, I feel like I'd rather just play classic Breakout instead.

[Planting Frenzy]

Hmm, I think this has the potential to be a nice arcade game. I like the cute presentation, wholesome concept, and act of weaving through obstacles while planting seeds. Unfortunately, I had a lot of issues with its design that got in the way of the fun!

*Considering the game has a tiny red X on the character, I thought it was indicating the player's hurtbox, similar to bullet hells. However, unlike bullet hells where the hurtbox is a pixel, the hurtbox and hitboxes in this game were crazy huge and confusing. I was constantly getting hit by stuff that was miles away from me which made it feel incredibly unfair.

*The audio is nice at first, but once you start throwing seeds, moving around, and collecting the pollen all at once, it turns into an absolute sonic hell that was hurting my ears to listen to.

*I like when arcade games have a way to skillfully increase your score when you play well. Unfortunately, the gameplay in this felt incredibly braindead: there's practically no reason to not be holding the seed throwing button the whole time. Where's the strategy? Where's the challenge? Surely there should be some interesting balancing act, like having throwing seeds make you move slower which puts you at risk of getting hit, or make it so that you have to throw seeds in a special or precise pattern to get more points.

Not a bad attempt, but there were too many frustrating aspects and I didn't feel like the core loop and scoring system was interesting enough for sustained play.

QCrimson responds:

Thank you for your feedback!
I'm really happy to hear about the issues in gameplay.
It gives me encouragement to keep improving on game making.
.
We will fix them with new update soon.

[Waha's Circuit Break]

Hey, it's great to see this come back! Through a combination of a charmingly goofy world and characters, a challenging escalation of puzzle difficulty through the introduction of neat mechanics like boss blocks, and intermission stages which help me remember all of the subtle intricacies of your moveset, it all sums up to create a wonderful adventure! Some great craftsmanship on display here in general, and I especially enjoyed learning how to make the most of the moveset despite how challenging it was for me to master!

That said, as much as I enjoyed my time, I did have some issues with the design here and there:

*You'll call me stupid, but I took a long time before I realized that the goal of each match was to delete all of the robots from the board. I would just keep making matches and assume I was dealing damage to the dropper with each match, or was building up to some sort of score threshold, or just needed to survive for a certain amount of time. Finally my brain made the connection after some time, haha! I wonder if there would be a way to make that more obvious, like a counter on the HUD telling you how many enemies are left.

*Speaking of the HUD, I do wish the game had a bit more information to give to the player. For example, a little preview of the next block would be nice and would let you plan ahead. It's also a bit of a bummer that there is no score tracker: would be great if you could see how well you did with some sort of grade after beating a stage. It'd also just help add a bit of pizazz to the game.

*Considering puzzle games are usually quite juicy and animated to make things exciting, I was a bit disappointed how dry this game is. You could argue it's superficial, but consider this: taking the effort to try and make a big match like 4 or 5 in a row, or setting up and pulling off a combo, only for the game to not give any sort of positive feedback to differentiate it, is quite demotivating and makes me as a player only want to do the bare minimum.

*I'd get annoyed when I'm standing right below the block dropper, ready to intercept whatever it drops, only for it to insta-teleport to another position right when it drops. I really feel like the dropper should smoothly move into its next position right after dropping something and stay there to serve as a preview of what's coming next. It would make things feel more fair and let you strategize.

*Some mechanics were a bit unclear, particularly the way to damage bosses. I kept trying to blow up bombs next to them, only to realize they have to 'lead into' the boss to actually cause damage. Feels like an unnecessary complication, and the way bombs blow up simultaneously instead of one-by-one towards a direction doesn't help make it intuitive.

Despite that big wall of text of issues, though, I had a grand ol' time!

EDIT: Whew, still working myself through story mode. It's probably because I'm a puzzle noob, but damn if those fights on the train and the doublecross were really exciting and challenging!

TharosTheDragon responds:

Thanks FutureCopLGF! I was certainly looking forward to your review. You've made some good suggestions about how to make the mechanics more clear. I was certainly confused myself when I played Robot Daze for the first time, and I'm not sure I would've ever figured out everything that's going on if I never looked at the source code.

Robot Daze actually does have a scoring system, but we ditched it because it doesn't make sense. If you get more points for destroying more stuff, that incentivizes slower victories when we should be incentivizing speedy victories.

I think the game does have a fair amount of juice. There are sound effects, particle effects, and screen shakes. Getting a combo of 5 or more produces a gem/superbomb, and detonating it produces a huge complicated lightning effect.

It seems you're not the only one who's not getting that hostiles have to be in the combo line in order to be damaged. We may have been too biased because of our familiarity with how this mechanic works in other games.

[Riddle Middle School]

Wow, we were really spoiled for choice with great point-n-click adventures for the Flash Forward jam! I'm a bit bummed that this got sidelined in favor of University because to be honest, I think they are both quite equal in strength, so I'm glad to see it getting more eyes on it now and hope the wait to be appreciated wasn't too much. Nice work!

[Mr. UFO]

This ain't half-bad! It's a rather simple and bland game, feeling like a proof-of-concept or a practice run for something greater, but it still manages to be a good short-n-sweet journey. It's got a decent amount of mechanics that it introduces and then puts interesting twists and combinations on them, keeping me interested to see what's next. To top it all off, it finishes strong with a good ol' boss fight. Nice work!

[DUNGEON RAMBLER [demo]]

I'd write a review for the game, but it seems like you've already covered that in the description, haha! As you say, it's a pretty decent prototype for a dungeon-crawler, but it currently is rather simplistic, repetitive, and frustrating in its design.

I just had a hard time getting immersed or taking it seriously due to the lack of functionality. It had the feeling of playing, like, a tiger electronic version of a dungeon crawler, where the simplification is to such an extreme that it loses the essence of what the genre is. I couldn't tell whether the game actually had a map you were traversing or if it was all just random, like a paper tiger, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I still think it shows a lot of promise, and as a lover of dungeon crawlers, I would love to see this evolve into something greater!

thriceAccursed responds:

mmmh... yeah... well to be honest, i doubt you're gonna like the final thing much 😬 see i'd love to make something complex and abtruse and berlinschoolish but i am, how should i put it... rather limited, as a developer. i do what i manage, and then i go say it's "casual" o "minimalist" or whatever XD
And no, there's no map at all, it's all is sheer wantom randomness. which is part of the core concept i guess, so not likely to change... that's why i get the impression you're not gonna be a fan. it wont really change that much.
anyway, thanks for checking it out!

[Deadmare]

Not bad: the core mechanic of switching back and forth between corporeal and incorporeal forms to take advantage of their strengths is pretty neat, and the game quickly introduced some nice puzzles to make the most of it!

It did feel a bit clunky and unsatisfying in some respects though. It not only really overuses the mechanic of weaving down a maze and trying to avoid touching graves, but that feels like an ill-fitting and false challenge for a puzzle game. A lot of the maps just felt way too huge and maze-like, and it was awkward to search for and pull levers when you haven't even seen the doors that they are connected to yet: maybe the camera should've been zoomed-out enough so you could see everything as most puzzle games do, or the doors and exit should be at the start of the level, not the end.

For the most part, though, I still had a good time and felt like it was a good exploration of an interesting puzzle concept that could be iterated upon, which is exactly what you want from a game jam!