FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Kiwiman X-TREME]

Hey, this is a great arcade game you got here! The concept of being stuck within this circle and jumping to make triangles is a unique and well-executed concept, the overall construction of the game feels very charming, polished and professional, and the game has lots of variety and build-up with all sorts of enemy types that force you to play in new ways. There's also lots of nice little touches, like the triangles you build leaving paint on the background which slowly builds up. Great, classic, addictive arcadey high-score fun all-around!

If I were to have any feedback, it might be that I'd love if the scoring system was a bit deeper and allowed for more player expression and mastery. For example, being able to catch enemies in your triangles to kill them for bonus points, getting a style bonus if you 'graze' enemies as you build, getting a time bonus if you build your triangle quickly instead of waiting around, and so on! Being able to flex like this could add a lot of satisfaction and depth to the gameplay, introduce some exciting risk/reward as being stylish gets you closer to getting new lives but could get you killed, and most importantly, it would make starting new runs from scratch (which can be a bit boring due to getting used to the higher difficulty you were previously at) less repetitive.

By the way, you wouldn't happened to have played Resonance of Fate, would you? The whole triangulation mechanic? Oh, never mind...

[Boog A Spook]

Hmm, this feels quite promising as a goofy Dead Estate-ish clone, but in its current state, it feels really undercooked.

There's a lot to like about this game. In general, the game is very stylish and filled with life through all sorts of charming graphics, animations and so on. For example, I really liked all the goofy graffiti, the gibs that explode on killing enemies, the way you pinball around on death: it's great! Furthermore, the game does a decent job at having a good variety of enemy types and wacky weapons to use, and spices the waves up by introducing new obstacles in addition to enemies. There's certainly some promising combat to be seen here.

However, as stated before, the game just felt so rough and unfinished in many ways. Overall the combat now just feels unsatisfying, repetitive, and even confusing, especially when it comes to aspects like the altitude of enemies: so many times I tried to jump and shoot an enemy only for my bullets to somehow whizz right through them for some bizarre reason unless I hit the exact height sweet spot. Cooldowns for abilities were very strange as well with them awkwardly pausing at 99% like a bad Windows loading bar before eventually completing. While you tried to use shading to help players determine the altitude of enemies, it didn't work for bullets, which were always difficult to tell in the heat of combat whether they were above or on-level with you. And there's various other little nitpicks here and there that just made the game feel rather cheap and barely holding together.

If I were to be cynical, I'd say that you tried to distract players from a mediocre, unfinished game by waving T&A in their faces, but I'm hoping that's not the case. Nothing's wrong with some T&A if you wanna go there, but the game needs to be fun first and foremost, and I wasn't feeling that in this. Again, it's certainly promising and very charming graphically, but everything else needs more time in the oven.

[NG BBS Awards 2023]

Pretty cute presentation you got here! I was impressed with the nice cinematics and animations, and thought the book interface was charming and well-done. Functionality was decent as well and I liked that you could click on pictures of threads to have them pop-up in a window for further investigation and reminiscing. Basically, I had a good time flipping through the book and made it all the way through before I knew it!

It does have some rough spots I feel should be ironed out, however:

While it is nice, it is pretty rough in a lot of spots:

*While I liked that I could click on pictures of threads to have them pop-up in a new browser tab, I was disappointed that I couldn't do the same for profile pictures: would've been nice.

*The mouse pointer isn't offset properly: I tried to click on buttons by hovering the tip of the pointer finger over them, but found I needed to shift over to the center of the hand instead. Just awkward to determine what I'm pointing at in general.

*In addition to the mouse pointer being difficult to aim, the navigation was confusing because not only do buttons not react on hover to let you know you're pointing at them, there was no indicator for where the page flip button was: lots of times I tried to click on the corner of a page to flip it, only for the book to close!

*Perhaps this is intentional, but I tried opening the B book and flipping to other pages within it, only to have the game crash and boot me back to the title screen except with the mouse no longer working.

[BORE BLASTERS demo]

For the most part, seems like a pretty cool game! Definitely has the overall feel of high production values: everything is pretty smooth, polished, and intuitive, and there are plenty of quality-of-life features, such as the inclusion of an auto-fire toggle which is great for my old man hands! Even though the demo is technically pretty short, there's a good variety of biomes and enemies and the general loop is decent.

I gotta admit that I did have a bit of a bad first impression. I felt like I was doing great making my way downwards, collecting resources, blasting enemies and so on...until I got a warning that I had a fuel limit...right when I was running out of fuel! I'm not mad that a timer exists as I think pressure is good, but jeez, you think you could've warned me from the start that I was on a time limit? I tried to race to the exit but ended up crashing and getting kicked to the title screen: felt like a slap to the face, I was so deceived! Warn me earlier next time!

Furthermore, while the demo level does have a lot of surprising variety, without any sense of the long-term upgrading and mission structure, I don't think I can get a good feel of the gameplay loop, which is pretty critical for an impression. It's still ok, but in a way, the minute-to-minute gameplay didn't necessarily blow me away or anything: I think this game will likely be addictive because of the long-term carrot that upgrades provide as well as a story, so without seeing that being present, I'm not sure what to think of it.

[Goober Game]

Pretty decent Suika game clone! Compared to most of the other clones I've seen, this at least has a sense of energy and charm to its presentation, and takes steps forward in terms of iteration as the charge-up mechanic is a novel addition to the formula. Provided some decent fun, this!

In terms of feedback:

*While it is lively, I do wish it had a bit more juice to it, particularly in terms of the points/score-keeping. It's given such little real-estate on the screen that it's almost like it doesn't matter, making me feel less inclined to go for big combos and higher scores. It didn't even keep my high-score when I came back to it after a break.

*While the charge-up mechanic is a novel addition, I didn't even realize it existed for the longest time, so I definitely think the mechanic should be explained better: maybe the controls should be kept on the side of the screen instead of vanishing immediately. Furthermore, I don't feel like the charge affected gameplay as much as I'd like: there were times that I wanted to use a super-charged shot to squeeze through a gap, or make the pile bounce around to rearrange things, but I wasn't able to do it, making it feel pointless.

*It would be nice if there was a size chart on the side. Not only would it be nice to see a long-term goal to strive for, it'd be nice to help remember the evolution order so you can plan combos better than just eyeballing them and memorizing.

[Atomic: REDUX]

Ehh, unfortunately, I'm not really feeling this game. While I can appreciate that, as it seems to be built for mobile, it's going for a rather simple arcade game, and while the basic premise does remind me of games that I do enjoy, such as Infectonator, I'm just not feeling the appeal in this.

The main conceit of basically putting down a piece of fly paper and seeing how many flies you can catch just seems rather dry and so luck-dependent. Since the red atoms start to fade immediately on level start instead of once you place your green atom, there's no time to try and plan: all you can do is slap it down based on general feeling and see what happens. May as well just be pulling the lever of a slot machine to see if you win: I'm not a gambler myself, so again, the appeal is lost. And no, I don't see the appeal of grinding until you level up enough to win either as it just feels imbalanced and silly.

The game may have a lot of levels, but they all seem the same since all it is doing is increasing the number of red atoms. It feels fake and completely unnecessary as I don't really feel like I'm progressing without any sort of significant changes that affect gameplay and introduce variety: where are some walls being placed in the levels, or maybe multiple red atom explosions, or slow-mo fields, or something, anything? Then again, the game didn't keep me hooked, so perhaps the later levels did this? I wouldn't know.

I had hoped that the other game modes would change up things significantly, but no, they just change the properties of the game in a barely noticeable way (bounce) or in a completely idiotic way that screws you over (phase). I was really hoping that, as an example, bounce would be a game mode where the balls are affected by gravity and bounce around like superballs: at least then you might be challenged to place your green atom in a different manner since the pathing is different. Or maybe you could've made it so that the green atom bounces around, just anything more significant than that.

Maybe you can just chalk it up to me not being the target audience: maybe something about this might be addictive and fun to certain people like gamblers. Even I'll admit that it can be 'fun' to see the red atoms smack into your green atom: it sounds like bubble wrap being popped. But for me, it just felt like an incredibly lazy design that is padded and stretched thin with repetitive content and an unnecessary unbalanced grind on top.

[Folder Dungeon]

Pretty fun and addictive game that provides a fun little twist on the dungeon crawler genre with its amusing psuedo-OS theme! I particularly thought the heat system was quite novel as, stressful as it is, it provides some interesting decision-making where you need to decide whether it's worth it to say, loot a corpse, since it can generate so much in doing so! Similarly, the lack of exp and attack probability made it possible to employ different tactics for monsters besides attacking. It was certainly a fun adventure and impressive for a game jam game!

If I were to have some feedback:

*I found myself getting lost because I completely forgot about the marking system on right-click. I thought I only had to subsist on the dotted-line reminders for the last accessed folder. The marking mechanic probably would've stuck in my head better if the tutorial wasn't just a big ol' wall of text: images, examples, and so on would've been better here.

*Not a big issue, but I was a bit puzzled by some elements, like how health potions don't go into your inventory and are instead used immediately. Might've been good if there was some more labeling for what determines an inventory item. Additionally, maybe inventory should be relabled as equipment since it seemed to be used to only store relics.

*There were some missing OS interactions that I would've liked to have to make the experience feel authentic. For example, the back button isn't in a common location, you can't click on the file history to go straight to a certain folder, you can't move any of the windows around to rearrange things, you can't click X to close the instructions, and so on. Not a big issue, but it would've been nice for immersion.

*For some reason, it looks like the game is cut-off if you keep it in windowed mode: not sure if it's a problem on my end with the browser or if the setting you used for export were incorrect.

*There was a bit of a lacking sense of progression as everything looks the same: would've liked if there was a transition animation that played when you go to a new floor (like maybe the window closes and a new one opens up), or if the color of the OS would change from green to blue and so on, or something like that.

*It's a pretty short game, but it is a bit of a bummer that there is a save/continue option just in case.

[Hit Harder]

Oh man, I think there is a really cool stylish beat-em-up in here that has a Sifu-esque progression system and tons of cuh-razy combos and spectacle...but it's kind of hard to play and review it when the game is not sized appropriately and it cuts off part of the screen! Sure, even with the screen being clipped, from what I can tell it's pretty neato even if it is a bit mashy and confusing in terms of learning the controls for moves and understanding how stun/armor works, but yeah, hard to tell! Would love to revisit it if it gets fixed!

EDIT: Hey, you updated the game! I'm glad I was able to reach you: revisiting it now and being able to play it properly is awesome. Great beat-em-up you got here!

YollieDevving responds:

Thanks for notifying me about this game through twitter! I forgot I even made a newsgrounds account and didn't realize one of my games got frontpaged.... anyways, the screen issues are fixed now, to everyone, SORRY!

[Steel Surge: Revolution]

Wow, this is quite the cool SHMUP! Overall it feels very well-done in all respects: great enemy and boss design with lots of variety, well-paced wave structure, juicy explosive graphics, a nice bonus overclocked mode, and to top it off, a novel strategy of deploying your drone for focus fire. It's not exactly the most innovative SHMUP as it is pretty bog-standard in terms of mechanics with not much new, but it hits all the right notes for a good experience nonetheless: looking forward to seeing this built upon!

If I were to have any feedback, it would be that I did find the respawn mechanic a bit disorientating in how fast you recover, but it was nice in its own way. Rather, the part I want to focus on is the 'style' system, which I feel is neat since it pushes you to play in risky interesting ways, but feels bad that it is just relegated to points which can be easily ignored by players. Instead, it might be nice if doing stylish things actually gives you a tangible benefit, such as powering you up or giving you a bomb move if you keep it up. Even if you don't want to do that, at the very least, it'd be nice if you gain lives if you get points, meaning being stylish can get you lives quicker. Such things would increase player engagement and make the experience more unique and memorable, I think.

LokiStrikerDev responds:

Thank you for the lengthy feedback! Regarding scoring/style: It is definitely part of my focus to introduce extends/lives as part of scoring with the aim of making "scoring" a viable method for survival as well. The style system was introduced on the last 1/4 of development as it was more of a feedback to already existing systems. The idea it to keep developing this mechanic more and more throughout the stages, introducing both alternative score methods and also new ones. Beyond lives, I'm unsure if I want to introduce another reward method, but Ill leave that door open for seeing if something can go there.

I'm trying to stick closer to a ChoRenSha-type experience, so I'm trying to innovate in little ways while still holding true to a shmup experience with a fresh/evocative style. Once the game is closer to release, Ill be posting an additional demo, to see if I'm hitting all the right notes with the direction I'm taking. Thank you for the comment!

[Marty Mouse's Missing Millions]

Wow, this is a pretty neat arcade game! Overall it feels very polished, smooth, and vibrant with lots of flair to its presentation and special effects. Gameplay is some classic arcade fun with loads of interesting powerups and fast-paced collection while avoiding the various cats: lots of strategy to be had with bonuses for collecting certain groups of coins and utilizing powerups appropriately. I found it amusing that we're given a glimpse of the AI patterns of the various enemies, akin to the ghosts being introduced in Pac-Man. Fun stuff!

If I were to have some feedback, it would be thus:

*The game can almost be a bit too vibrant for its own good: visual clarity is lessened from all the visual noise which makes it difficult to keep track of important elements like enemies and powerups in your periphery. Loads of times I'd be ambushed by enemies that seemed to 'come out of nowhere'. I know, there are options to tune it down, but first impressions are important and it's the developers job to carefully curate what the default experience should be: you can't leave it all up to the players to make these calls.

*While the game does have levels, it looked like they didn't have any sort of consistency or sense of progression in complexity. In fact, they seemed randomized whenever you load into them, making me question what their point is? Just felt like they were very token and fake and perhaps the game should've just stuck with a classic arcade mode.

*I thought it was a bit weird that when you beat a level, you won't move on until you collect all of the bonus score items you might've spawned. I feel like it should be part of the challenge to collect those things before you win: a bit of a risk where the player must consider to stay in the level longer to get that bonus, or decide to abandon it if things are getting too dangerous.