FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[MUTABLOB]

Huh, this game is pretty interesting, being some sort of fusion of Conway's Game of Life with Vampire Survivors! More so that that, though, I was really surprised me with how much my impression of it flip-flopped!

My first impression wasn't that great. I'm not really much of a fan of idle games in the first place so there's that, but I just felt like the game was pretty mindless. There just didn't seem to be any sense of strategy or feedback to anything I was doing: I couldn't tell what the enemy was going to do next, so all I could do was hope for good luck and use whatever cards were given to me and watch the little guys go at it, which with the limited game jam graphics, wasn't that appealing. More so than that, the game felt really slow at the default speed, but I wasn't sure whether to speed it up since I felt like since that was the default, there must be some sort of micromanagement I was supposed to be doing, despite there seeming nothing to do.

Eventually, however, the game started to grow on me! Not only did the game start to introduce unique and challenging waves to watch crash against your blobs, like big rows or columns of enemies, but I also cranked up the speed to max which felt a lot more appropriate. While the visual effects weren't dazzling, the game did have all the critical feedback necessary to showcase the various perks and powers your slimes were picking up, so it was satisfying to watch them grow. Before I knew it, I ended up playing several times to take different routes of growth to see how it played out!

So yeah, in the end, I think it's a pretty cool concept and certainly has some merit, and considering that's the main goal of a game jam, this is a winner in my book! If it were just a bit more juicy and made some subtle changes to things like the default speed and the frequency of unique challenge waves, I think it'd be a hit! It reminded me a lot of playing Plague Inc, where you need to decide how best to grow your virus to maximize aggression while remaining covert and other factors in a great balancing act.

[B.A.S.]

Cool little arcade game! It's very simple and doesn't have much to it in terms of content and long-term appeal, essentially being an endless version of Feathered Escape's last level, but it nevertheless looks and feels very smooth and polished, and I found myself having a lot of fun going for a high score. In particular, I enjoyed the little touches the game has, like how the chicken panics when you mess up and go into a saw blade. Neat! Would love some sort of highscore table integration!

[Botanica Prototype]

Hmm, this one gave me mixed feelings. I think it is promising, but a bit rough around the edges for me in its current state!

First impression, as said, was a bit mixed:

1) While the art was gorgeous and the game overall has a very cute, soft and whimsical feel to it, that very same art was a source of confusion as it hurt the visual clarity: with our character being so small, the foreground having so much foliage, everything being so bright and colorful, and so on, it was hard to keep track of elements like our character and enemies and even determine what is a platform and what is part of the background!

2) The gameplay didn't spark joy either as not only was it a pretty bog-standard platformer at its core, but the movement and physics felt very slow, floaty and awkward: for example, I didn't like how our character got knocked back so much when swinging their sword to the point of making me fall off cliffs, and I didn't like how slow the thorn grenade goes when you toss it which made me not even want to use it! There were also weird glitches like how if you jump on a platform you'll strangely hit the ground twice for some reason.

Normally, I would've already quit by now based on this impression, but I tried to persevere, and I felt rewarded for my efforts because the next few levels did feel better, at least somewhat. The second level's graphics were a lot better for clarity as elements felt more distinct and popped out more easily, and the gameplay started mixing things up with interesting and impressive setpieces like the crumbling bridge chase, the falling leaf climb, and the boss fight. The game was still pretty slow, floaty and awkward as said before, but at least it was slightly more interesting to play.

So yeah, its a bit of a mixed bag, and kind of a case of style over substance: the game looks very pretty and shows some effort in creating an interesting experience, but the core gameplay feels a bit awkward and plain. It shows enough promise with the later levels that, at the very least, I wish it the best of luck on future development!

[Feathered Escape]

Yowza, this was a fantastic precision platformer! Overall the game felt very smooth and intuitive and I loved going through all of the courses. The tutorial was great at teaching all of the techniques, and I loved employing them, and even found out a lot of unexplained tech through logical experimentation! I didn't have a single missed input or some sort of unfair stuff happen to me: everything felt sharp and perfectly responsive. Fantastic stuff here: what a short and sweet adventure!

If I was to have any feedback, I'd love for it to save our progress or at least highlight what level we last completed on the level selection. Also, I'll admit that the choice for a feathered protagonist was a bit odd: usually when you think of birds, you think of mechanics like flapping or something like that, not sticking to walls and sliding along them like a certain animate slab of meat, haha!

[Who's That Pokemeat? (Pokemon Mystery Meat Collab)]

Pretty cool art collab! The theme is a bit too gory and gritty for my tastes (though obviously very appropriate for Newgrounds), but nevertheless I felt like this was well put-together in terms of building up the mood with atmosphere, and while it is a slideshow at heart, I liked that it creatively enhanced the experience with a story and quiz game (which I suck at because I don't know any pokemon past the original set, haha!) I also liked that it had links to the artists when viewing their artwork: definitely a nice feature for encouraging follows and such.

If I were to have one point of feedback, it might be that perhaps it would be best if the quiz had the questions randomly sorted for every attempt, as that would feel more fair, as it would make it more likely for every artist to be seen. With the current setup, the artists involved in the last questions have a very low likelihood of being seen due to the extreme difficulty of making it all the way to them, which can be a bummer for them!

EmsDeLaRoZ responds:

I actually like your point on the shuffling for the artworks. I'll consider it for future works (if I ever get back to something of this style). Also glad u liked it despite everything else :)

[Florisher]

Interesting little arcade puzzler you got here! The whole 'inverse minesweeper' is a pretty cool concept and I was impressed that I was able to understand all of the mechanics (well, almost all of them) and win a game without even checking the 'how to play' guide!

Something about the game feels a bit...off to me though. Not quite sure how to describe it, but I guess I just felt like the game and its scoring was a bit too much up to luck since you can't detect certain things like the purple blocks, and I found some mechanics really weird, like how I don't think the reveal abilities are worth it when I was able to beat the game every time even when I was just mindlessly clicking (though I guess I didn't get full points, though I'm not quite sure I understand the point system), and so on. Whatever, it's still pretty fun and interesting!

amidos2006 responds:

The point system is equal to how many water tiles that branch passes through.

For example, if u have a branch that passes through 1 water tile, if we extended to go to another u get 2 points. If that branch reached another one after the 2 water tiles, it becomes 3 points and so on.

For perfect score, u need one branch to touch all the water tiles after each other and use the rest of branches and exploration ability to achieve that

[Mazza]

Hmm, as much as I want to appreciate this goofy adventure for its great graphics, creatively gross enemies and wacky characters and dialogue, it really felt like all of that was just jangling keys trying to distract from the fact that the actual core gameplay behind it all is very boring and generic. Even worse was that the game just felt very awkward to play, what with a lot of the hitboxes being unintuitive, and the camera snapping around too quickly when I'm just trying to adjust my jump to the left a bit. Didn't help either that the game had no save system.

Maybe I'm being a grump or too old for toilet humor, but this was a miss for me. I don't think it's necessarily bad or anything, it's ok, but just a bit bleh. Pull your finger out, mate, haha!

[Wishlist]

Hmm, it's certainly an amusing meta concept, but while it was good for a few chuckles, the actual gameplay felt quite shoddy and undercooked, leaving me a bit cold on the execution.

As said, there's some nice ideas in here. I enjoyed watching the game evolve as more and more mechanics, themes, genres, art and so on got added to it, and I thought that it was interesting that some of the cards make you play in non-obvious ways to get likes, such as 'the creature' making you want to intentionally lose for likes.

But overall the game just felt very plain, repetitive and boring to play. Even worse was that the game didn't even seem to function properly: for example, the hitboxes felt very awkwardly sized and the graph kept resetting to the first pip instead of continuing onward. I was also really disappointed that there was no ending screen to show the release of the game and how much money it got versus its wishlists and so on: instead it just starts over but doesn't properly reset the variables.

I know you can probably just say that it's intentionally shoddy to reflect what a game is like during alpha or only farming for likes, but I still want this overall game I'm playing to be fun, and this wasn't. Would love to see a more fleshed-out version of this as I feel like it could be a great Warioware-esque experience if done properly.

[Happy Corp. [Alpha] [Updated 5/14/2024]]

Hmm, I really like the concept and vibes that this game has going for it, but the gameplay got really boring and tedious quickly for me. Thank goodness that it is only in alpha at the moment then as it has room to grow from feedback!

As said, the presentation and vibes that the game has are cool. I loved the whole intro sequence and the corpo talk, and the idea of plopping down this arena around a city block and smashing it to pieces through a Breakout-esque game was very amusing!

But while the gameplay was amusing at first, it soon became annoying, with so much time dedicated to just watching the ball bounce around and miss the few remaining buildings. The best I could hope for was to get some power-ups like the twin guns, but that just feels like cheating when I think the core gameplay of bouncing the ball should be fun and interesting enough on its own. Sometimes I would intentionally let the ball fall through just so I could get a chance to aim it, and I don't think that's a good sign!

In terms of feedback:

*As hinted at above, I wish there was someway that the core gameplay of bouncing the ball could be more fun. Maybe you could be able to subtly control it, like through magnets or side-paddles? Maybe the buildings should be less spongy? Maybe you should be able to decide how powerful the initial paddle hit is by holding down the button? Up to you!

*Considering the game is about being pressured by corpos, it's odd that the gameplay is incredibly easy: the penalty for dropping the ball is nothing to be worried about as it is so easy to accumulate loads of cash. I like the cash system in concept where you are penalized for moving and ball-dropping, but you need to make it harder so it doesn't become a non-issue, or maybe just replace it with a lives system.

*Could use some more info pop-ups to make certain events more clear, like money popping up when you do stuff that gets you money, and negative money popping up when you get penalized, as well as power-up names popping up when you grab a power-up as it was very unclear what each power-up was even doing.

*Would be nice to be able to see the ball when it goes behind the buildings.

saltandpixel responds:

If you hold down, you can use the magnet feature.

[WEIRDCORE PALACE]

I'm probably taking this too seriously and am just going to be laughed at, but yeah, I wasn't really vibing with this game.

Don't get me wrong: I really did want to vibe with this! As much as the game seems weird and low-effort, it has a certain sense of outsider-art charm and mystique to it that intrigued me and made me want to figure out what secrets lurk within.

But I just got fed up, as all the game seemed to be was just going from room to room talking to people saying weird stuff. It was so goddamn tedious with the way that I couldn't read at my own pace as there were no options to fast-forward text or proceed to the next line or exit when I wanted: instead I just had to stare at the slowly advancing text. I can understand that sometimes it is done for effect, like with jumpscares, but c'mon, there are ways to get both.

Finally, the game ended for me when I got softlocked by a character asking me for a joke, and despite trying every single button on my keyboard and the mouse, I wasn't able to select an option to proceed.

Be as artistic and weird as you like, but a shoddy game is a shoddy game. Hoping to see future games have a bit more construction put into them.