FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Powerline Guardians]

Hmm, feels like this could be something pretty nice, like a simplified browser version of Deep Rock Galactic or Helldivers: call it deeprock.io or helldivers.io? The game has a decent construction to it where everything felt rather intuitive and I was able to get into the game quickly, even without creating an account, which is nice. The graphics are pretty lo-fi, but cute. Not too shabby!

Unfortunately in its current state, it feels like its only in a very early alpha state. The gameplay is pretty dry which makes actions like shooting spiders rather unsatisfying, and the combat and objective design isn't very exciting, feeling like boring busywork instead of thrilling chaos like it does in Deep Rock or Helldivers. It doesn't help either that there's no one playing it at the moment, and there are no bots to help the single-player experience. Basically, the game feels like its only a skeleton at the moment: needs some more meat on them bones before its presentable!

Understandable that it's not as fleshed out as I'd like considering its a game jam game, but I just wanted to be honest with my experience. Also I'm obviously not seeing in its best condition, reviewing it after its initial population period. Still, considering it is a game jam game, I do think a game like this has lots of potential: with a bit more work into it, I would've loved to play a little coop game like this on my school browser back in the day!

[Advent Chickendar 2024]

Cute stuff! Always fun to check out all the various animated gags and pop culture references and see which ones my old man self can recognize. I'm still hip! I'm still in the know!

Also I like the detailed descriptions on the medals that either add to the joke or provide some additional lore: how meta!

[I'm Not a Doll]

Wow, this was quite the experience! Certainly an interesting twist on the classic dress-up game and a very personal and powerful exploration of sexuality, gender roles, societal expectations, the list goes on!

It's technically a rather simple game, and a short one at that, but I was surprised at how much I got sucked into it! Tried my best to think of what clothes might fit best and really got into my own head on whether I'm being too forceful in trying to make them fit my style or societal norms when that might not be their style, and so on. Eventually we settled on something, only to get the inevitable bad ending where we just can't please the public no matter what we do. That "thanks, anyway" at the end was so tragic!

It's there that I made the mistake of experimenting with other outfits, curious as to whether we could change the ending by pleasing at least some of the nay-sayers in the crowd by focusing on attributes they were hinting at. What a fool I was! Didn't I start this off by thinking that I should pick what they themselves like, not what society likes! Why should we pander to those slack-jawed dimwits!? As you might guess, this led to me trying on the sexy outfit, and boy did I regret that! Very much an Undertale moment: just because you can explore every option, doesn't mean you have to!

So yeah, quite the showing for a first game: very experimental, emotional, and surprisingly powerful!

In terms of feedback, there's a weird bug where the font will no longer be stylized on replay for some reason, and the screen is way too big and should be shrunk down to a more manageable size.

Thetageist responds:

Aware of the bugs, I’ll be fixing those asap when I have the time.

Thank you so much for trying out the game and for this thoughtful review! I’m glad the game was effective!

[Tankmas ADVENTure 2024]

Cute game! Always nice to see a community event like this, and so far it's rather fun to walk around, talk to NPCs, emote at other Newgrounders, dress up my avatar, roast some marshmallows, look at some cool art, and just soak in the chill vibes! I like that the marshmallow roasting has a bit of a minigame and scoring attached to it: one of these days I'll perfectly roast one instead of turning it into cinders!

As the game is constantly being updated, here is some feedback for potential updates/fixes:

*There's a strange bug where the mouse pointer was not appearing when accessing menus: it's still technically there as buttons will react when you hover over them where the pointer should be, but it's very difficult to fly blind. It seems to be appearing for me now so either it was a freak accident or maybe it's been fixed.

*Speaking of the menus, they can be rather fiddly and weird at times. There has been loads of times where I've gone to click the Emotes tab, change my emote, and then come back out and suddenly my avatar has changed to something else! I swear I didn't click on an avatar, but maybe there's a strange spot where the Emote tab overlaps with an avatar and it does both if you click there or something of that nature.

*The basic interactions can also be quite fiddly. I'd expect that when I click on a gift in the distance that I'd walk up to it and then open it in one combined action, but instead it will only walk over to it and then I need to click again to open it up. Not bad, but just a bit awkward. There will also be times where I'm trying to click on something else and I end up opening a gift that was close to me.

*It feels rather limiting to only being able to equip one emote at a time. It'd be great if you had an emote wheel or could assign one emote to each of the directional keys: that way you could assign an emote for happy, sad, angry, encouragement, and so on, and could then get some more effective communication going as you'd be able to react more snappily!

*Been having some issues with saving information/progress. There are a lot of achievements I should've got for opening gifts that I don't have, and I used to have more emotes and avatars but they have been lost, and sometimes my avatar will reset as well.

*The activities are quite limited at the moment, though I understand that's part of the advent experience where it gets updated as it goes. Would love to see more little community events like the marshmallow roasting: you know, some multiplayer games that people can join in and have fun with!

Looking forward to seeing how it gets updated!

[Braininess 2]

Decent puzzle game you got here! It's not necessarily something I'm going to write home about, being a rather generic puzzle game with mechanics I've seen done many a time, but it nevertheless feels very polished and stylishly presented with a good sense of pacing and progression, so yeah, it made for a fun little time!

[Samurise]

Hey, this is a pretty neat game! Makes me think of a more fast-paced action-oriented version of Jump King and all those other ascending rage games, and in a similar fashion to those games, the controls are deceptively simple, requiring a lot of interesting and mind-bending techniques to get around the world as platforms get smaller and the level design gets more complex. Overall it looks and feels very cool and I got really addicted to the increasing challenge and new worlds you reach!

If I were to have any feedback, it'd be:

*It's not much of an issue for a first run where the player probably won't care, but for achievement hunters, it can be very annoying when you accidently make it to a checkpoint when you still had things you wanted to do on the previous floor, and now you can't go back without starting the entire game over. Would love if you could go back a floor, or at least go back to the start of the level/world: anything but completely restarting.

*I know it's possible to speedrun the game in around 15 minutes or so, so it's not technically the longest game, but it's still something that can take some time where you'd want a break, so a way to save/load or continue would be much appreciated. You've already got checkpoints, just let us start at them after a break!

[EGORADISE]

Hey, this is a pretty neat game you got here! The world and characters are very charming and amusing, the story is surprisingly compelling, there's an intriguing vibe where it goes back and forth between silly and serious, there are so many interesting shops with items and ways to power up, the combat is simple yet deep with a big roster of enemies and the unique Gary companion, the boss fights are quite the spectacle, the music is cool and reminds me of Neon White, and so on and so forth! It's shaping up to be quite the interesting roguelike shooter!

That being said, there are some aspects I wanted to provide feedback on:

*I do like the combat and think it has a lot going for it on paper, but in execution, I found myself getting bored at the mob arena fights. Technically there are a lot of things to look out for with so many enemy types, but it just feels like it devolves into muddy chaos with every fight being the same enemies rushing at you, over and over. It looks like you're trying to pep it up with side objectives like collecting gears, but I don't know if that's enough. Maybe you need to change fights to feature only a few enemies instead of the whole roster every time, and make them stronger to be able to flex their unique properties more, that way fights feel more different?

*The items and such are nice, but I don't know if they are unique and interesting enough to make replays varied. Also, while the minigames are nice, they can be a bit long and I can understand if some people would get impatient having to go through them over and over.

*I'm a bit unclear how Gary works: can't tell if he is getting hurt or not and whether that changes when he is in attack mode or passive mode? When you send him out, does he have a limited amount of time left before he gets exhausted, or does he get damaged to get exhausted? What does the HP items do for him, exactly, and is there a way we can see his HP in combat?

*To expound more on Gary: I would like some more strategy when using him as currently it feels like its a no-brainer to just turn him into attack mode at the start of a round and leave him to it, as if he gets hurt you just heal him up at the end of a round for free. Feel like he needs to be something you should have to strategize or meaningfully use with care a bit more, like saving for emergencies, or toggling back-and-forth between passive/attack modes to keep him safe. Maybe he should do more than just damage so that Pepper and Gary have strengths/weaknesses that they help each other out with. He's a very unique and creative element to this game so I think he should have more importance to sell the duo nature!

*The boss fights were really cool with a lot of intricate patterns, but they felt a bit easy, especially if you abuse the special rapid-fire ability: you can melt these guys down before they can barely do a full cycle of their moves!

*Would be nice if there was a save/load system: I understand it might not be necessary now since the game is somewhat short, but if it does grow bigger, it'd be nice to take a break when our characters take a break on the train.

Would definitely like to see this get iterated upon if it still interests you!

Just-a-ng-dummy responds:

Thanks for playing as usual Futurecop!

1. I didn't think much of how I did the enemy waves, for every new enemy added I just made a new wave where they take the spotlight. I think I can adjust the waves so they can have enemies that can make some interesting interactions. I also had a scrapped idea where you have to chase after the train while getting past obstacles and killing enemies so maybe I can implement it.

2. I have lots of other item ideas that can be very influential. I also think of adding curses or extreme power ups per chapters that you need to choose that can change up how the game plays.

3. Gary gets hurt in whatever state he is in. He gets exhausted from taking damage (Cause if he died he wouldn't be back okay in the train. Although I could just say he died but he got revived because the train abilities or whatever magic BS I can pull out of my a**. The HP items increase his overall HP. Currently there is no way to tell but I think a simple hp bar should do the trick in the future.

4. I think to make Gary more strategic is that every time he gets exhausted he comes back with half hp so you have to be careful if he gets hurt. Then if he doesn't get exhausted he gets full health, or I'll just add a regenerative factor to him. I am planning on making combos or pair actions with Pepper and Gary so that he has a better role during fights.

5. Hrm.. I see your point, perhaps I can make them do a move whenever Pepper unleashes her special so that you have to find a way to hurt them properly. Perhaps even make it so bosses will not increase the eye to open as much as the enemies. Those options.. or I go the easy way out with more HP

6. I honestly never heard of a rougelike with a save/load feature so that's new! I think I can try add one, maybe replace the ticket dispenser and make it a save and loader machine. I could also just make it so you can play different chapters from the start but you immediately get a handicap or more curses (from what I suggested earlier). I think it ultimately depends if the game is interesting enough to be played with long-runs

All in all, I'm not the best at sticking with my games, although hopefully I can take your words into consideration and update the game more!

[Trivial Trivia: November Grab Bag]

Always down for some more fun trivia! I went for food and was surprised how well I was able to make it through, especially considering I still have the palette of a child who just wants his chicken nuggets, haha!

Anyway, the game feels like its in a pretty decent place now for the most part, having been improved over time with slight alterations, quality-of-life features, and a nice bit of pep to its presentation! I'm sure there are little things here and there that I could nitpick, but I just want to celebrate its evolution into a solid trivia game: well done!

[Meteor Tempest 2]

It's a decent arcade experience! It's rather simple, but the very lively and animated presentation does a lot to make the game feel exciting despite that, and the game does have a decent array of different meteor types to keep you on your toes. There's some potential here!

Unfortunately, I feel like once you've played 1 or 2 waves, you've already seen everything the game has to offer: every other wave just felt like more of the same except maybe a tiny bit harder, and I found myself running out of patience, especially since it kept increasing the time commitment. Perhaps if the game introduced new meteor types, or had some special events to shake things up such as a bonus level or a boss fight, it could've kept my attention better. Perhaps in Meteor Tempest 3?

[Kerners!]

Wow, this really surprised me with how much I got into it! It looks great with very chill and polished vibes, the concept is really neat and the gamefeel/interface is just so satisfying to operate with the way pieces automatically rotate and snap into position as you drag them around. And that little jingle when you win is so nice for some reason! The inclusion of a bunch of different modes, particularly the ones like Daily and Instant which allow for community/party play, is quite nice too. It's a solid game and definitely something I could see installing on my phone to play now-and-then for realsies!

If I were to have any complaints, it'd be that while it is very addicting, it's only in a kinda turn-off-your-brain chill-out way. Perhaps I just haven't played it long enough, but the difficulty/challenge factor of the game seems very stagnant and practically non-existent: the time limit is too generous, the play space stays mostly the same, there's no ranking/scoring system, and so on. Basically, there's not much of a long-term appeal for me because there's no room to grow and flex my skills to prove mastery of the system. Still, fun while the honeymoon period lasts!

As a side note, I found all of the unlockable palettes and fonts to be not as good as the default, so there's not much motivation to be found there (though I'm not one for cosmetics in the first place, haha)!