FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Corn Collab]

Wow, this was quite the rollercoaster ride!

Initial impressions were a bit rocky, as once again I was seeing an art collab where it's going with the unexciting, bare-minimum-effort slideshow presentation. Well, bare-minimum-effort isn't completely fair as I did have to admit that it had a certain sense of style and grace to it, what with its crisp layout, cool music and nice subtle effects for buttons and transitions, as well as these weird joke pop-ups. I also liked that there were links to artist's profiles when you click on their names...or at least there should be, as only some of them work (poor Chdonga gets shafted, for example).

That all changed when I got to the poetry section, however: what an experience that was! Great voice acting, a nice variety of different poetry cadences and styles, cinematic presentation, and so on! This is the kind of interesting creativity that I live for in art collabs, and I'm really surprised you don't lead with this as the hook since it makes a much stronger impression! Course, there are still a few weird errors that bodge the work up, such as janky audio cut-offs, but still, very memorable indeed!

riot100233 responds:

ea sports

[Palm Cracker]

Wow, pretty cool fake-OS puzzle game! Reminds me a lot of something like Hypnospace Outlaw, and similar to that, I really enjoyed digging deep into this! I liked how educational it is in learning about various cyphers while still being fun (imagine that, learning being fun) and also how it is more than just figuring out the cypher code, but then taking those hints which are used to solve another puzzle hidden within another app, and so on. Cool stuff!

I have to admit that I am having a bit of a rough time with the game, though! For some reason, ever single cypher I've tried to learn and use feels like it was explained in a rather confusing manner which made me completely misinterpret what it was going for. I'm not sure if you're intentionally trying to not explain it clearly so as to not make it too obvious and make the player do more work, or if you're actually trying to be clear and you've just chosen a weird way to explain. Could also be me just overthinking it or something.

For example, when going over the third cypher, it says that letters are placed on separate rows, where every other letter is placed on the lower of the two. This makes it sound like, if you were to scramble EXAMPLE, it'd be:
E A P E
X M L
I understood that, but then it gives an example of LITERATURE being scrambled, but it's not following the same pattern of every other letter alternating rows, and instead it looks like it splits the word in half, putting the first half on the top row, and the back half on the bottom row. This made me really confused in solving the puzzle as I was trying to follow what it showed instead of what it said. Eventually I realized my mistake and it was just a confusion between encryption and decryption, and I do feel silly, but again, I wonder if it was just a weird way to explain.

Anyway, I'm very much enjoying myself, and while I haven't beaten it yet, I'll give it my best!

EDIT: Got confused with the puzzle with the grid and cross, especially since it didn't open up a code book to learn from, so I just looked online for 'cypher grid and cross' and figured out about pigpen that way from wiki. I assume that's not intentional and maybe I was supposed to unlock the book somehow, but eh, learning is learning, haha!

Deklaration responds:

Hey, thanks for the review! You're correct that some of the books describes the encryption process, and that you're supposed to use it to decrypt. That might be a bit confusing though, you're right. I'll take a look at it. Also, my English isn't the best, and it's most noticeable when I try to explain stuff in the most clear way possible.

And yeah, it's pretty cryptic that you're supposed to pick out the correct letters once again in the ICU app, just like you did before. I think most people found out that the letters in the pig pen are clickable by just trying to click stuff out of frustation and realizing that the letters are more than just an image. But, I guess an additional clue wouldn't hurt. I'll add one in the next update that's going live in an hour or two.

[GOMBI-ACTION: BOOZE TIME]

Mmm, I want to like this game, but it was a rough one for me! Definitely started good as I find it has a very energetic and goofy vibe it's got going for it that's quite charming, and I think the general presentation and feel is nice. However, I just didn't find the combat that exciting, unfortunately! The horde survival was pretty meh, and while the boss was promising and I liked learning its pattern, it felt way too spongy and got old quickly. The worst part was the weird ammo system which felt like it was just constantly stopping me from having fun: maybe it could work with some tweaks, but here it was just an impediment. Still had some decent fun, and nothing wrong with just having a short lil' game like this, but yeah, it was rough.

[The Summertime in Wintertime Collab]

Cute little art collab! For the most part it's nice, but I have to admit that, presentation-wise, it is a bit lackluster, going the ol' slideshow route, aka the bare minimum. I'm not saying you need to have an incredibly unique presentation or it's a no-go: in fact, I wouldn't have minded it that much if the art was consistently posed in such a way that they appear to be on the beach as many of them do, but there are a lot of pieces that are look like they're floating away and it would've helped so much for consistency if they were placed better. Ideally, I'd love it if all of the pieces could be combined in a big collage where they all look like they're at a beach party together, kinda like something you'd see in a Where's Waldo book, haha! A more interesting presentation would get more interested viewers which would mean more follows and commissions for artists!

Moving on from that, it'd also be nice if there were some other certain features for a better gallery. For example, it'd be great if there were links to the artist's profile within the game that would allow for easy access to view an artist's work or follow them if they catch your eye. It'd also be great if there were features like a gallery/thumbnail view, or perhaps a search: with a lot of entries, it's nice to have ways to get around beyond mashing the arrow keys over and over.

TigerPlushiefire responds:

At least the last review didnt called us basment dwellers. I live in apartment complex in Brier Creek

[Ozzy's Rockin' Diner!]

This one was a bit of a rollercoaster for me, never being quite sure how to feel about it!

First impressions were pretty positive: I liked the whole appeal of this Atari-demake of Five Nights at Freddy, and I was impressed that it was all being done through RPG Maker as it really doesn't look like it from a cursory glance. It was starting out a bit slow, but I had hope for the story it was building up.

As it went on, though, I was getting quite bored. Every day was just mindlessly following very boring orders and I was confused on what this game was even supposed to be. Will I ever have to do something interesting, make choices, improvise, and so on? Yes, the game was delivering little tidbits of intrigue, but I've seen so many of these Five Nights at Freddy's parodies that all try to add some elaborate twist that I've grown tired with it all. Maybe that's on me.

I stuck through because of sunk cost fallacy and was finally rewarded with a chase sequence! I was excited...but then let down by how many times I needed to reload my save to finally find the stupid way you're supposed to get through it. Why in the world do those cones move like that? It doesn't make any sense! It's a miracle I didn't quit!

I pushed on, and as silly as it was, I did like the whole twist ending with the fake "new game" screen and getting revenge and all that. And with that it was over! On one hand, I do think it was somewhat memorable and I enjoyed it, but on the other hand, I felt like it was a bit boring and could've used a bit more work to make it fun. Definitely had a lot of potential, and it was interesting enough to keep me going despite my reservations, so that's something!

Azeleon responds:

Thanks for the review! I appreciate all the feedback, and I'll definitely be taking notes for future games or updates. I've never written a horror story before, so I didn't expect this one to be super interesting, but glad to see it was still enjoyable in some parts regardless.

[Driftmania]

Wow, this is a great little top-down racing game! It's simple, but lord have mercy, it just feels so bloody smooth, and nothing beats the satisfaction of pulling off a perfect turn or cut corner! I got really addicted to optimizing my routes to get more medals to unlock more courses, and I was glad to see that the courses kept introducing new elements like puddles, boosts, jumps, and so on!

Yes, the environments can be a bit bland and it can be a bit of a bummer that there are no other drivers to race against, but not only do I understand the limitations of working in Pico-8, but I was surprised to see that the game has cool car customization and ghost cars, so I think the right choices to focus on were made in development. I was also really impressed at some of the special effects for stuff like the puddles: it looked fantastic!

At first, I was a little aghast at how difficult the medals were in this game. I mean jeez, I was cutting corners like crazy and pulling off perfect drifts, but I still haven't even gotten a gold medal on the first level! The first level! But then again, I do feel like games give out gold medals and SSS's way too easy nowadays, so it's nice to have a game make you really earn it. It's not even that bad either because you can unlock levels just through bronze and silvers, which feels fair.

Frenchie14 responds:

Really looking forward to watching your Newgrounds Monthly playthrough!

[Time Warp Infinite]

Wow, this was pretty cool! Overall it feels like the game has been very lovingly constructed, absolutely brimming with energy and pizazz in every single element: even the menus, which devs typically leave as bland boring afterthoughts, are a joy to navigate! Gameplay is a very addictive affair where I enjoyed busting my ass and minimizing my movements to efficiently gather all of the cogs and make it to the finish line, all while using whatever power-ups I was granted to access new avenues of movement. Neat stuff!

Having said that, there were some elements here and there that I felt I could give some feedback on:

*I had some minor issues with the controls where it felt like movements I was attempting to pull off weren't being executed properly as I expected, like it didn't have enough input buffering to parse my early jump inputs or something akin to that. For the most part it still worked fine and I just needed to get used to it, but these little awkward input moments, which could maybe be forgiven in other games, felt incredibly frustrating since every little movement counts in this challenging race.

*I was a bit confused on how the score was being calculated: why points? Shouldn't it just say how many cogs we got out of the possible total? If we can get more points beyond collecting cogs, then how, and why is that not explained anywhere?

*There were times when I would arrive at the temple with all cogs collected and, as short of a time as it was, I was annoyed that I needed to just sit and wait for the timer to run out. Perhaps there could be a way to manually move forward to the next level when you're ready, or just move forward immediately when you arrive at the temple if all cogs are collected, with maybe bonus points being awarded based on the leftover time if you do such a thing?

*As fun as the upgrade powers could be, I didn't like the upgrade system since it felt like it made certain runs only possible depending on whether you get lucky enough to get the right powers to make things easier: I would prefer that the game is equalized and purely skill-based to keep scores fair and consistent. Also some of the powers just felt silly, like 'better traction': shouldn't the game just have better traction in general?

*While I am a little intrigued to see what the campaign mode could be, and I am still overall pretty positive on the experience of this game, I can't see myself forking out 10 bux for the full version: there just wasn't enough to go on in this demo and I don't get the feeling that there is enough meat on its bones for that kinda money. Perhaps I could be wrong if it were to let me sample the beginning of the campaign to whet my appetite, but with only a very small arcade mode, I wasn't hooked. Also, for some reason the steam link goes to itch.io instead.

[Blinded Sieve]

Quite the odd game! I found it really strange how comedic and silly the game was considering it was trying to be horror, but I really tried my best to give it the benefit of the doubt that the juxtaposition of horror and comedy might've been done intentionally to let my guard down or something to that effect. Alas, despite my best efforts, the game just ending up feeling incredibly dumb, retreading tired-out horror cliches with no sense of impact or style. Whether it was intentional or not aside, at least it was good for a few chuckles: ain't nothing funnier than blasting your son and being told you got the bad ending, like no shit I did!

By the way, how in the world do you screw up a title screen so badly? In what world is the highlighted option not the selected option? Was quite the awkward first impression to try and start the game, only to find out I just quit it, haha!

RaidenKramata responds:

HELLO!! i really appreciate the feedback! thanks for playing! so yeah, since this is my first horror game ever i'm not really used to making games like these, and yeah you're pretty much right with the horror cliches, i use em to save time to finish a short game for a game jam lol. I promise that i'll do better next time! thank you very much for playing!

also the highlighted options is my bad lol, not really good when it comes to ui design like these xp

[PLOMO]

This one was a bit of a odd duck! On one hand, it was a very pretty and cinematic experience, and I enjoyed the adventure of figuring out what the game was even about and how it operated. For example, I felt overjoyed that I was able to intuit exactly how to handle the first duel without any overt instructions. On the other hand, though, the game was just pretty repetitive, I didn't like how the duels were hard-coded in terms of timing as I would prefer an actual reflexive challenge ala Samurai Kirby, and I have no idea what the twist at the end was or what the point of the story was, amusing and baffling as it was to experience. Memorable in a way, but not entirely in a positive sense, haha!

TheGorondorf responds:

Thanks for the feedback! Never really expected to gather attention at all with PLOMO, but if it lingers on people's mind I'll be happy no matter the reasons for it (next game I'm working on will be more traditional in terms of everything, so I guess that one will be more enjoyable).