FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dungeon Watchers]

Hmm, it's a rather promising survivors-like! Overall it has a lot going for it: the presentation is cute and polished, there's a good amount of enemy AI patterns like the boo ghosts and the rushing spiders, I like that the two characters on offer have unique playstyles like casting spells or placing bombs, and the gameplay in general has that addictive sense of progression where you're growing more powerful and adding all sorts of weapons to your arsenal.

Unfortunately, while I think that this has a solid foundation, it didn't really grab me with its execution. It just felt rather stale and boring, and I'll admit that part of that might be because I've played so many of these types of games so I'm just fatigued, but there's just some certain je ne sais quoi that's missing. I'm not sure if I can explain exactly what the core issue is, but in terms of other feedback in general, here's some:

*The game's pacing felt a bit weird in a lot of ways. For example, sometimes the character would level up so fast it felt like I hardly got to play the game. Othertimes it would be weird when stronger enemies like the rushing spiders would show up, only shortly later for boring and easy slimes to appear. Also because a lot of upgrades were boring statistical upgrades instead of exciting weapons, it lost its luster.

*Speaking of upgrades, it was really weird how upgrades like bullet size were showing up for the bomb character when they aren't applicable. Why does this happen when the bomb upgrades only show up for the bomb character and not the magician?

*Speaking of the bomb character, i was a bit disappointed that they couldn't hurt themselves with their own explosions like Bomberman. It just makes their gameplay rather boring since there's no risk to it placement: you can practically cheese the game by just sitting on your bombs and letting enemies try and come to you, but they can't because it's too easy to get overpowered in this game.

*The controls were rather awkward in that it felt like the game was ignoring my inputs a lot and I could never tell if I pulled something off. For example, a lot of times I would try to place down a bomb or cast an ice spell and it wouldn't come out, even though I felt like I had spaced it out long enough for the cooldown to be ready, and even though the character acts like they did it even though they didn't.

*Graphics were a bit ugly and inconsistent in how some enemies were very crisp and clear, and other graphics like our character sprite were very grainy, most likely from being scaled down from a much larger original art work.

Anyway, best of luck on further development for this! As I say, I think it technically has all of the foundation necessary to make a great game: now you just need to find a special spice to make this very memorable and fun!

[scaling a mountain using the second amendment]

Pretty neat Happy Wheels/Getting Over It rage game you got here! I'm a fan of these kind of games and for the most part it felt pretty nice: the world had a challenging construction to it and a neat sense of progression with checkpoints and upgrades, the gun being your method of transport was cool, and it was fun to try and master the intricacies of the reload/reset mechanic since it does so when you just brush against the environment instead of necessarily landing.

I'm a bit torn though on whether this is a game I'm going to beat, though. As said, I'm a fan of these types of games, but the goofy non sequitur nature of this makes me afraid that I'm just bring jerked around: that the world and controls aren't as elegantly and fairly designed as its contemporaries and that it's not a game that can be won through skill, but rather random dumb luck. Since there is a volume control for the narrator that can be used to make them shut the hell up, though, maybe I'll keep trying: it's in the nature of these kind of games where they can seem random and impossible at first, after all.

A bit annoyed that the save feature doesn't seem to work: I made it all the way to the third checkpoint and wanted to take a break, only for it to start me all over with zero upgrades...what is the point of the save, then?

crow-seeds responds:

Hmmm, never had anyone have an issue with the save mechanic. Did you make sure to click the save game button in the pause menu? Saving isn’t automatic when you quit the game. Thanks for the review as always!

[Lee's DeLeeVery Service!]

Hmm, a bit mixed on this one!

I do think it has a lot going for it. The animation of the robot is very cool: the tactile feeling of weight as you lumber around reminds me of games like Mechwarrior, and seeing it make it up stairs, pick up packages, stand and crouch, jump and blast, and even getting its head caught on things was all quite impressive. In terms of gameplay, the way the world has been setup tickles my metroid speedrun brain, in that I bet it would be a lot of fun to experiment and jot things down to make the ultimate route to get it all done fast and acquire the best grade.

Unfortunately, I had a real rough time getting into the game proper. While I like lumbering movement in games like Mechwarrior and such, I'm not a fan of it for a game that's trying to promote speedruns: it just felt so tedious and annoying to try and get anything done with how claustrophic the world was, both in terms of the cramped corridors and the zoomed-in camera not allowing you to see far enough ahead to learn this maze effectively. The game also didn't have the best first impression with the text/instructions overlapping each other and making it hard to read.

Basically, I think it's a bit more of a neato tech demo than an actual fun game at the moment! If possible, I'd love to see the mech-based movement of this game be done in a different genre or setting, as it's too cool to be abandoned on the cutting room floor.

[SnakePit]

Pretty neat game! For the most part it's a rather simple versus battle game with Snake mechanics which isn't up my alley, but the game's presentation and style is very peppy and the battles do offer some element of strategy and depth to them through the inclusion of power-ups, body size influencing speed, and being able to bisect enemies and eat their shed body parts. The game also has a decent amount of modes to play. Basically I didn't have the best hopes for it at the start, but it ended up impressing me!

Keep in mind that this review is coming from someone who only played single-player mode, which while I was very happy to see its inclusion, it might not showcase the game at its best. The feedback I'd offer is:

*While the battles were fun at first, I'll admit that I was letdown by the tournament mode since all of the battles felt largely the same. I was hoping that since the snakes were all different characters, they would have stronger personalities and quirks to strategize around like you'd see in your typical fighting games, but it seems like those only manifest when they get powered up which they never have time to do, and it wasn't until the final boss that they had a ever-so-slight starting advantage to try and pep things up.

*The game is rather simple, and while it does try to inject some strategy and variety, it doesn't have enough staying power to keep me playing and just feels like padding. As said before, all of the snakes feel the same because fights never last lost enough for their special powers to come into play, and while the game does have different fighting modes, all of them except fruit hunt feel pretty much the same.

*The way snakes move can be awkward with the way they stutter around: I understand it might be a tactical thing based on body size and so on, but it just felt weird and felt like the game is lagging, with the worst being that sometimes it would make my inputs get misinterpreted or ignored.

[Mars Underground (full game)]

Wow, this is a heck of a sandbox you've created here! The setting is pretty intriguing and reminds me a lot of other visual novel or timeloop games such as Majora's Mask, Twelve Minutes, Indigo Prophecy and so on. Seriously impressed at the amount of interactivity in this adventure: I typically expect the only interactions in there games to be important ones to the plot, but I like that there was effort to add more than just that as it gives a lot of flavor to the world!

There are some slight annoyances to the game here and there, sure. The intro was a bit annoying to have to sit through before being able to access any sort of options menu to adjust volume and the like. There's also a lot of experimentation and backtracking that can get quite tedious to wait through at times to finally get to the choice or outcome you want: overall the game can be quite intimidating!

Nevertheless it's quite addicting to see what you can do, there's plenty of interesting story hooks to keep me motivated, so I'm looking forward to getting to the final ending eventually!

[Off the Grid - Summer 2024 Collab]

Cute art collab! Always neat to see other artists and their interpretations of each other's characters, and seeing all of this art in this intuitive grid layout with all the information you'd want, topped off with some chill vibes and neat special effects like the intro animation, is great stuff!

If I were to have any feedback, it's that I wish I could speed up the navigation at times, like being able to double-click to skip the sloooow transition and just snap to the next picture immediately. Either that or I wish we could actually free-form navigate as well, like dragging the grid around and zooming in with the mouse wheel as we please. It'd also be nice if there was some sort of credits and information window about the event, perhaps. I suppose I'd like if maybe it had a bit more razzle-dazzle as well: it's practically a sterile room with how white and clean it is, haha! But yeah, this is all small potatoes, as it's generally a nice gallery!

alsoknownas1 responds:

Thanks! As always your comments are super constructive. You're absolutely right that the balance here between minimalism and effects was a bit awkward. Not just because of you--of course--but we're definitely leaning towards the razzle dazzle (or at least novelty) in the next few projects. Would be very interested in your thoughts. Stay tuned!

[Pent's Wacky, Zany Road Trip to Adulthood]

Wow, this is quite the departure from your usual grim and chill horror vibes that your games typically deal with, but hey, it's a welcome surprise nevertheless!

Overall this is a grand ol' adventure that I enjoyed very much, filled not only with a variety of challenges from mind-bending puzzles to deadly obstacle courses, but also loads of goofy characters and amusing interactions. There's just so much wackiness crammed in here that you just can't stop!

It's not without its frustrations, of course. Driving the car through those cramped corridors can be particularly annoying with how wonky and punishing the hitboxes are. I don't like how weird the save system is. I wish I had a sprint button for all this backtracking. The humor isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, and for those it is, there can always be some hits and misses (for example, I'm down for references to Trumpet Guy, but it might be played out for others, haha). And I spent an embarrassingly long time on the first line-drawing puzzle only to realize how easy it was eventually (I blame the hint guy psyching me out!)

But in spite of all that, I'm glad to have cleared that puzzle and got the adventure going!

[THE SUBSPACE EMISSARY COLLAB]

Pretty neato art collab! I was pleased to see that I got exactly what I expected looking at the title/thumbnail, being a very Smash-esque trophy/gallery view with all the neato bells-and-whistles I could want, from the authentic sounds and 3D rotating art, to various quality-of-life features like clickable artist profile/social links and the different categories for viewing. I can always wish for more, like being able to click on the art and be able to rotate it around as I like, or an actual subspace emissary game where you collect the art, but what is here is perfectly acceptable. Nice work, and nice art!

ElRandomGMD responds:

U are a legend :D

[LITTLE ADVENTURE FANTASY LAND]

Goddamn, y'all are nuts sometimes, you know that? In a good way, of course. Don't you dare go hollow!

Game is certainly quite the wacky experience and boasts some impressive quality on all fronts: not only is the concept of traversing an environment by strategically scaling up body parts very unique and very fun to get skilled at managing, but the game has so much energy, charm and depth to its presentation with loads of voice lines, special effects, challenging enemies and level layouts, secrets, and so on and so forth. Like a good comedian, it's one of those weird games where it's so funny that it feels so natural, like no effort was put in, but clearly a lot was. A fantastic experimental game jam result all around!

It was certainly very memorable, but I'll admit that it wasn't all good memories. The game can be quite frustrating with how random and janky it can feel, mostly from the ragdoll limbs constantly getting stuck in places and throwing off your intended plans. And speaking as an old man, the high energy that this game boasts can be a bit too much at times: the ever-forward momentum and traps and screaming and augh I need to take, like, a week-long break before I try and play again!

[[ROOOM]]

Hrmm, I think I understand what this game might be trying to do, and it's certainly rather unique and experimental, but I just didn't enjoy myself with this, unfortunately.

From what I can gather, the core conceit of it is that you're uncovering tiles to try and find the exit, but every tile uncovered has a chance to be something else: sometimes it can be helpful treasure, other times it can be deadly enemies. In a way, I could see it playing around with risk/reward a lot: do you just try and speed through to find the exit while ignoring enemies, or do you play very cautiously? If you find the exit, do you risk uncovering more, hoping to find treasure before continuing? The spin the wheel modifiers, new enemies and tile types, and so on also add some excitement to the mix.

Unfortunately while that sounds decent enough in theory, the execution left me bored and confused. The scenarios I posted above don't work because there aren't core elements like a timer or score to provide any sort of motivation or guidance to take risks. Many of the enemies were unthreatening statues, and many of the power-ups like omni-vision just completely delete any sort of fun as they are a get-out-of-jail free card. I dunno, I just couldn't get into it as it all felt pointless.

If that wasn't bad enough, the game also just had a lot of annoyances getting in the way. For example, it's cool if you pick up a gun like the railgun where you can blast enemies and clear big swathes of the map, but lord have mercy if you pick up a damn telegun: you're begging for a button to switch back to your fists as you're left uncovering the map at a tediously slow rate until you finally run outta ammo.

As said before, it does feel like an interesting experiment which is good for a game jam, so kudos for taking the risk: it just didn't work out this time for me.