FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Parking Ticket Mayhem]

Hah, quite the amusing game! I've always thought that if I were rich, I'd love to have a room filled with breakable objects and weapons where I could de-stress, so the idea of creating a rage game is right up my alley. And considering we're on Newgrounds, this feels like a close brother to the Assassin games where you can really get out what's grinding your gears.

At the same time, however, the game was a bit less satisfying than I hoped. While it was amusing to smash cars and even discover that I could smash buildings and shoot as well, the amusement was short-lived as it soon became quite monotonous due to the lackluster feedback and rather shallow world that doesn't allow for much creativity. Even more disappointing was that, after taking the time to smash everything, the only reward afterwards were just more of the same cars falling from the sky to smash once again, instead of something new or game-changing.

I understand this game likely didn't have lofty ambitions or anything and I don't mean to be down on it, but it's a great concept and I would've loved if this game just had more to make the act of smashing more satisfying. More detailed damage modeling, hit-freeze and knockback and screenshake, more explosive effects, charge attacks that absolutely blow shit away to a ridiculous degree, more fun toys to wreak house with: just take everything to eleven, like a modded version of Teardown or Saints Row!

Anyway, hope you're feeling better now that you got it out, haha.

Raccoon-Formality responds:

hey, yeah, i made a comment on your youtube video but i'll just respond here also.

thank you for playing, i really appreciate that and the feedback. I made this game in a week right after finishing another project so yeah it's not exactly my magnum opus.

i am feeling better but i do still have a lot of rage for a continuation at some point. i want to do like a directors cut and release it on steam or something, idk, i'm really just going with the flow.

also, i'm quite new to newgrounds lol, I usually just post my games on itch.io but this one was doing very well on itch so i thought i'd try some other platforms as well. So yeah, i am not very well versed in the LORE of newgrounds lol.

anyways, thank you, have a nice day

[Ruby & Rusty Save the Crows]

Wow, quite the impressive game: legit feels like a real Nintendo platformer you'd find in the wild, down to the great ending credits that showcase all of the monsters you encountered!

I have to admit, I had a rough time at first due to the game feeling overly laggy / delayed / clunky / awkward, a feeling that unfortunately seems quite common with these GB Studio games: I know it's likely an intentional engine limitation, but it nevertheless bothers me as it led to a lot of unfair feeling deaths and difficulty with the controls. To run salt into the wound, there were a lot of those flowers that were hidden behind one-chance enemy bounces that, while understandable given they are an optional challenge, really ruffled my feathers, haha.

In spite of all that, though, I kept playing this game all the way to the end as it just feels so darn professionally made: gorgeous graphics, great level design with so much variety in obstacles and mechanics, a nice balance of difficulty where levels are nice and bite-size while also containing tons of bonus challenges, cool boss fights, and overall a very charming and cute aesthetic. Well done!

[Square Ways]

Decent little arcade game: I like the minimalist and stylish presentation and the bits of juicy effects here and there like how it flashes when you die for example, but while it can be good fun for a bit to maintain your course, weaving through blocks as it gets faster and faster, it quickly becomes old and I didn't feel compelled to play it more than 2 times.

Wish it had a bit more meat to it, like perhaps not only increasing speed, but also changing up the obstacles or introducing new mechanics and so on. It also didn't help that some of the effects, like the zoom-in on turning and then subsequent zoom-out when finished turning, could be a very nauseating back-and-forth when you are making minor adjustments to your turns: it's not a problem for big turns, but those rarely happen.

Also, of all the words you could've chosen for hi-score-keeping, why "higher"? I would've accepted "high" or "highest" as they are both appropriate, but "higher"? It's like you chose the worst option you could've! It is a silly thing to nitpick, but I just found it amusing.

[Fall from Space]

Hmmm, this is quite the interesting Fallout/Zelda 2 adventure you got here!

Was definitely quite impressed with it in a lot of respects, obviously starting out strong with the very stylish and cinematic (albeit a bit over-indulgent) opening that plays when you start. But the game itself also had such a huge scale and variety to it: side-scrolling action sequences alongside top-down exploration, so many people to talk to and objects to examine with loads of flavorful text, a huge world map with all sorts of locations and random encounters, tons of secrets hidden around, lots of quests and unlockables...it goes on and on! Clearly, a lot of effort and love has been put into crafting a huge adventure here!

Having said that, though, the game also felt incredibly awkward, stuttery and laggy to play at times. Combat was particularly bad feeling with no satisfying and intuitive feedback to it: just made me never feel like I was connecting with my blows, and I was constantly getting surprised when I got hit despite being so far away or giving my best efforts to dodge the telegraphed attacks. While combat was the worst, the awkwardness also extended to other elements, like the pause menu taking so long to come up after a press, dropped inputs, or weird collision detection and such. I understand these might be limitations of the engine, and while you have my sympathies, it doesn't stop it from feeling bad nonetheless.

Apart from that, there were some other minor complaints, like how tricky it can be to keep track of quests: it seems like the log only tracks your main quest, but none of the other quests like tracking down the child. Yes, if you go back to the quest giver, they'll likely tell you something about what your current setup is, but still, that's so inconvenient and they didn't always provide all of the details you needed.

I dunno, I'm a bit mixed on this one. Like I said, I really appreciate this huge world you've built with so many characters and quests and such, but as much as I wanted to keep going, I couldn't get over how sluggish and bad the combat and general movement felt: it just sapped my motivation. Almost felt like the game would be much better if it scrapped combat and just stuck to exploring: perhaps that might better fit the limitations of the engine, assuming there is no better way.

JoelJGames responds:

Hi, thanks a lot for taking the time to leave so much feedback. It's really useful.

Lag and sluggishness I'll have to put down to perhaps taxing the Gameboy hardware a bit *too* hard, it's built to run on the 1989 OG Gameboy so I'm limited to how fast it can run in general and in New Grounds it's the ROM running in a Gameboy emulator (so replicates how it would be). It'd (hopefully) be more impressive running on the original device, but I'd still like it to be enjoyable in the browser!

Saying that, I'm going to make a note to look at how I can improve the responsiveness of the combat as while not modern console comparable, I'd like it still to be fun! The impacts in particular, I'd like them to feel more meaningful.

The pause menu has a wait before it, it was to work around a bug if someone pressed it straight away so I'll make a note to see if there's a better solution than that so it doesn't suffer on every press.

More detail in the log I agree with this too, I'll try and get some more guidance in there for the missing child quest!

Thanks again for the feedback

[TYP-HORS-DISSEY]

Quite the goofy little game! Love the concept of racing being done through typing and I love all of the kooky effects and juicy presentation, but ultimately my experience with this was a bit rough and left me kinda unsatisfied.

My initial experience was one of absolute confusion where I just couldn't figure out how to play. I kept typing in spur, spur, spur or faster, faster, faster over and over and it seemed worse than just plain mashing, though even with mashing being better it never gave me a win no matter how hard I tried, only incredible hand pain. Then I tried to experiment with the yeehaw command which seemed borderline exploitative at how quickly it can get you back in and got annoyed at how everyone else could instantly punch me off my horse if I get within their range: so confusing!

Eventually through some experimentation I discovered that the trick was to go back and forth between typing commands and mashing: from there getting first place was not too bad anymore, just a matter of looping faster, mash for a bit, faster, mash for a bit, and so on, maybe mixing in some yeehaws and punches if I can.

It was an interesting adventure to get first, just not sure how to think of it since it resulted in so much hand pain, haha. I think its a cute and funny idea, but I guess I wish it just had a bit more substance to it: feels like just a single minigame within an entire bimsy game, I suppose. But most likely it is just a fun little experiment and I do like the idea behind it, even if I wish it had a bit more.

[THREAT != CONTAINED]

Not too shabby execution of your classic "avoid the stalker while collecting macguffins" horror game! It's not exactly the most original thing, but nevertheless I found it to be a decent short and sweet spooky adventure: of note is that I found the presentation and graphics to be quite cool, especially all of the various caged monsters (almost made me feel like I was viewing an art collab) and I appreciated that you didn't utilize ear-shattering jump scares! I also liked the small touch of being able to race by the guy at the start to interrupt him: always cool to see a skip mechanic be modeled in-universe!

If I was to have any complaints, it would primarily be that I could barely understand a single word that anybody said: would really help if you had some subtitles, or at the very least reduced the distortion that's present in everyone's dialogue. And in regards to skipping the dialogue at the start: as I said, its cute that you can do that, but it also might've been better if it just starts you off in the power room on subsequent plays?

Frosty responds:

Thanks for the reviews as always!!

[Mosa Lina Demo]

Wow, quite the interesting experiment you've got here! Only in the indies would you see a strange game like this, and I found it rather novel.

The fact that success is not guaranteed, your tools are limited, and its all up to you, can certainly be quite intimidating, but more so incredibly refreshing and stimulating, as there is something quite nice about a game that isn't afraid to let you own your mistakes and not baby you. It reminded me a lot of games like Psuedoregalia which allow you some wiggle-room to use the tools you have to sequence-break, getting past obstacles you're not 'supposed to' using your creativity and skill: those times were very memorable for me more so than the typical curated experience a game provides, just like how I really enjoyed my time here trying to desperately solve the puzzles however I could.

It really made me think about game design a lot as I played. Survival horror games, for example, while saying that you need to conserve your supplies, will nevertheless do everything in their power to ensure that you don't softlock yourself into an unwinnable situation, ultimately making the genre be a rather hollow experience if you don't play along and pretend to not notice. This game, by breaking those conventions, is brutally honest and inspiring how it leaves it up to the player to decide, similar to how Bennett Foddy pondered whether the obstacles he was making in Getting Over It were truly unwinnable, or if he was just not being creative enough and should leave it up to the players to see if they can overcome against the odds that even he might not be able to. Basically, this is the Action Park of video games: wild and unsupervised!

All pondering and chin-scratching aside, however, would I actually buy this and keep playing it, at the end of the day? Mmm, probably not. I'm not saying it's bad, but the biggest strengths of this game, being its lack of guarantee of success, its limited ammo, its wibbly-wobbly physics, are also its greatest weakness, as it can make any mistake feel so punishing, unfair, and just make the game feel pointless and have you give up. Combine that with the lack of some sort of greater long-term goal to strive for, as well as not having any sort of tutorial and explanation for the tools (still don't know what the green box flash gun is) and there's just not much motivation to keep me going. That's just me, however, being brain-washed to treat video games as designed to grant me validation, instead of it coming from within: I'm sure gamers more inclined to speed-runs and exploits and glitches and such would love this!

[Greedy Goblins]

Not too shabby for a little retro-style arcade game! Overall found it quite the charming experience and loved the little touches it had, like the funny cutscenes between levels that reminded me of Pacman with its intermissions. It starts out a bit slow and was feeling quite repetitive and unchallenging, but later on the levels did start to get more creative and provide new obstacles and layouts to keep things interesting.

The main complaints I have against the game:

*There is this really annoying friction that is apparent when you run against the walls that can slow you down or stop you in your tracks: feels very unnecessary and gets in the way constantly.

*There would be plenty of times that I would plant a bomb next to an archer, only for it to immediately explode and kill us both: I understand that they can set them off, but I swear I was leaving even of a space between us and it just felt dumb.

*As stated before, the levels can be a bit silly in how unchallenging and relaxed they are at times: most of the goblins and obstacles and collectables just felt like window dressing at times, not actually providing any sort of interesting risk/reward or strategy to take care of them. Yes, the bombs do provide a bit of excitement with how they can hurt you just as much as they can hurt the enemy, but usually it wasn't that much to keep me interested. I dunno, I know I'm being vague, but it just felt like it was lacking some core appeal or mechanic.

*It felt like I was constantly holding the run button to the point where I feel like the default speed should just be running and the button can be removed so I can relax, or perhaps invert the buttons purpose to become the walk button instead since it is needed much more rarely (if at all).

KageKMB responds:

Glad you liked it! If I'm not mistaken, this is the highest you've rated one of our games.

Response to the complaints:

-Wall issue should be fixed, (changed movement from move_and_slide() to move_and_collide() ). Please tell me if it's better.

-On adjusting the bomb next to archer issue, unlike the walking it'd require significant adjustments to the backed of the game. Which in turn requires a lot of testing to make sure it doesn't break the game. I'm not going to rule out, but it won't be adjusted within this week lol. Hopefully resizing the hit-box does the trick.

-A trend with your feedback on CubePunk's titles tends to be related towards the complexity/difficulty being a bit low; Keep in mind the majority of people who play browser games skew more casual - and majority of feedback praises the rate the challenge increases difficulty level (with some saying the peak challenge was even too much). Future games will try to add "challenge" or "expert" game modes; made for the hardcore players; so that'll hopefully fix that issue. In the case of Greedy Goblins - an iterative sequel with a harder difficulty cap is more likely than an added game mode.

- If I ever updated it to reversing the walk/run toggle - it'd be an option in the settings and not the default. Going against the muscle memory/convention that's been a thing since SMB1; it'd frustrate the majority of players.

[Katti]

Wow, this was a solid, cute little puzzler! Overall feels very well polished and executed in all respects with no major complaints I can think of, except that I feel like I've played a Kultisti game just like this before, but hey, still fun, what more can I say!

[One Escape From Franky's]

Huh, quite the interesting mash-up of genres you got here! I found the concept of having to solve an escape room while simultaneously fending off intruders quite the novel idea, and combine that with the rather cute art, I thought this would be quite fun. I also enjoyed the subtle touches like hallucinations popping up. Unfortunately, I found myself rather confused and frustrated after my play attempts, not necessarily due to the puzzles (though they were quite tricky), but due to a number of design decisions, or lack thereof:

*I understand that you might not want to highlight interactable objects as perhaps that would make it too easy, but without that, it just felt too confusing to figure out what you can do in the world. This was made even worse by the incredibly unsatisfying lack of any sort of feedback when you do interact with objects: for example, you'd expect to see the plant rustle when you pick up an item from it, or have the cabinet open when you unlock it, but everything stays so static that you're never quite sure what you just did, if anything.

*Items were quite confusing to figure out without any sort of description tooltip: I have no idea what the item you get out of the plant pot is (a bolt? a flashlight?) and I had no idea where the key you get is supposed to go either (you'd think it would be for the obvious padlock, but its for the medical cabinet which doesn't even look locked?)

*Certain interactions like the clock felt incredibly unintuitive with their being no clear rhyme or reason for how to move the minute hand or hour hand: I'd try my best to work with it, but I'd always end up moving the wrong hand, or somehow moving them both at the same time.

*Without any sort of subtle cues you can use to identify if the intruders are getting to close without having to actually go back all the way to the door and visually confirm, like footsteps or music, it just becomes so tedious and annoying to manage. In addition to that, I had many times where intruders killed me in mere seconds after I just checked the doors and found them empty, leading to me losing confidence that the intruders were coded in a fair manner.

*There were also some weird glitches, like how you can pick up more scissors from the cabinet after you've already picked them up and used them on the doll.

Again, I do really like the idea behind this and understand that some of the limitations may come from the game jam: would love to play a more polished up version of this if it were made! For now, I made it as far as finding that cipher in the doll's head and getting no further.