FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rogue Fable IV]

Wow, pretty cool game you got here! For the most part, this felt very polished and well put-together on all fronts: it felt very intuitive and informative with the way everything is laid out and has tooltips on hover, there's loads of great quality-of-life like these auto-go-to options, and the gameplay has a very addictive and juicy simplicity to it while still having some interesting complexities to it such as terrain advantages, skills, wands, and so on. Really great stuff and I could easily see this on Steam with how professional it feels!

While I am overall positive on it, I will admit that I've only played it for a bit so far, so I'm not aware of its long-term appeal and could just be in the honeymoon phase. Furthermore, while I can see it on Steam, I'm not sure if it would be able to stick out from the absolutely enormous crowd of existing roguelikes. Right now, while it looks and feels good, it's just a bit generic and nothing I haven't seen before, with its only potential quality being its addictive simplicity, which I think a lot of other games can compete with (for example, I love Barony and can't see this doing anything to take me away from that). I dunno, maybe there's something you can do to differentiate it a bit, give it some sort of unique quality to its gameplay, or change up its theming and add some charm to it?

Other than that, there are a few aspects here and there that could use some work, like how its inconsistent with labeling unstable ground (hovering over tiles like tracks and beds do not give any clue how standing on it counts as unstable). I'm sure there's probably some balancing problems here and there, but I haven't played it deep enough to have any insight on those type of issues: hopefully will play more and provide that information on the discord if I find any!

[Arsenal Online]

Hmm, feeling kinda conflicted and confused with this one!

Don't get me wrong, the game aims to impress with a very slick and polished look and feel to it, especially with the menus/UI which are intuitive and good-looking all-around. I also appreciated that I could play as a guest without having to go through all that setting up an account jazz. There's certainly a lot to like here, and I should be a shoo-in with this type of game as I love gun-centered firing range games like Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, Receiver, Police Trainer Arcade, and so on.

But as I played, I just really failed to see the allure of this game. Playing as this floating, disembodied gun and shooting at dumb targets just felt really awkward and unsatisfying.

All of the games, apart from some of the more exotic ones like War, felt like the same minigame of shooting dumb targets copy-pasted with the smallest of differences between them. Compared to something like Police Trainer which had all sorts of minigames that test all sorts of skills, this game just felt so padded with no real variation, ultimately feeling pointless.

You'd think for a game that's all about gun porn it wouldn't do such a bad job with it: how am I supposed to admire my gun when I have to aim at targets so far away that I can't even see the gun in action? Even when I can see the gun, it's so far away, it doesn't have any fancy reload animations that differ depending on whether it's dry or not, and I can't see any unique qualities of the gun like bolt manipulations: where's my HK slap?

It has to be said that the first impression was absolutely terrible as well. I was waiting so goddamn long for the game to finish loading so that I could play: there were three separate loading sequences which lasted multiple minutes each! It's a miracle I didn't just quit instead of waiting, but again, credit where it's due, the game has a professional look to it that makes me want to give it the benefit of the doubt.

There's also some confusing aspects like how holding down the trigger will have the reticle grow bigger, making you think you're losing accuracy, but yet the bullets will continue to fly like lasers down the center of the reticle: what's going on there?

Still a big fan of your games like Dinogen and I like the effort put into this, but this felt like a big miss to me, which, as said, is super odd because I'm usually into games like this. If I had my way, I'd love if this game got more into gun porn, like following in Receiver's footsteps and assigning buttons to all the different actions of handling the gun and making you master their usage: everything being so automated and simple in this just makes every gun feel the same when the allure should be showcasing all the differences.

[Advent Chickendar 2023]

Pretty cute art gallery! I liked that there was so much variety in the chickens and their animations for each day: made it really addictive to see what sort of wackiness would happen next, and before you know it, I had cleared the whole calendar!

[Dungeon of Numeromancy]

Pretty cool game! Overall the game felt pretty well put-together and looked good, and the combat revolving around solving math questions was quite novel. I liked that it had some cool depth to the systems, like where solving questions quickly makes for more damaging blows, meaning that there is a strong impetus to get better and take risks. As a fan of edutainment games, this is a great example that I was pleased to see!

I will admit that the game did feel a tad bit unsatisfying though:

While the dungeon gives you the impression of bigger scale exploration and loot collection and route choices and building your character and so on, the game just feels exceedingly linear and one-note, basically a series of unavoidable combat scenarios with no way to strategize or influence your run. It's like the whole dungeon exploration might as well not exist for all the good it's doing here, and it should just give us the combat directly one-after-another in a gauntlet. Maybe that's just me getting the wrong impression, but I really wish this game was a bigger roguelike experience akin to something like Dungeons of Dredmor.

It didn't help that the game kept droning the same bland music for the entire gameplay, including the final boss and victory screen: made it feel like I didn't make any progress or achieve anything!

The combat was also a bit confusing to parse. I understood the general systems well-enough, but I found it difficult to see how much damage I was doing or if I was being attacked or whatever, because not only is my attention on the bottom of the screen doing math, therefore making it difficult to see the upper HUD and battle screen, but the background is filled with numbers which easily obscure the damage number pop-ups when I attack. Feedback also felt quite unsatisfying and I wish I got more if I made strong attacks, as a reward for being skilled as a math wizard: without that, the impetus to play well wasn't as strong.

I also encountered a funny bug: I beat the final boss with mere seconds to spare, but as I sat back and was celebrating, my victory screen suddenly changed to a defeat screen. I guess time kept ticking away when it should've stopped!

It's definitely still a neato game and I like it, but I couldn't help feeling like it was a bit of a rough draft for a bigger math-based roguelike experience: would love if you end up iterating upon this!

voidgazerBon responds:

Thank you for detailed and valuable feedback. I really appreciate it!

[Office Spaced]

Hmm, I really like where this is going, and I feel like it has all of the engine components necessary to create a good beat-em-up, but unfortunately the execution is very lacking and the game just felt very bland to me. Yes, it makes sense considering it is just a game jam game, and in a way you can consider this a victory already since it does show promise for future development, but what can I say: beat-me-ups are my favorite genre so I'm a real stickler when it comes to them!

The big problem I have right now is that the player moveset is very boring as the enemies don't provide enough variety to facilitate any sort of strategy. For example, right now there's no reason to use the dodge roll as its too easy to just walk around bullets or kill enemies before they can fire, and there's no reason to use the keyboard smack over the mouse whip since it's just so much safer for a slight decrease in damage/knockback.

Therefore, what I'd love is more cooler moves and more diverse enemies that force you to use those moves strategically. For example, perhaps the mouse whip doesn't do any damage, but is more like a Zelda boomerang in that it stuns enemies: that way it serves an alternate crowd control purpose, and you could also gussy it up by perhaps making them take more damage or drop resources when you keyboard smack them while they're stunned. Another idea is maybe you could have enemies with shields that require you to get close and use a keyboard smack to knock them away as the mouse whip isn't powerful enough to open them up. Stuff like this would add a lot more flavor!

I notice a lot of people also talking about how you can smack the chair into people and it's very fun: that's a good sign for something else that should be building upon, as lord knows I know a game with a cool telekenesis mechanic like Half-Life 2 or Dead Space!

Again, right now I'm not that impressed with the execution, but I am impressed with the skeleton you've constructed: you've got all of the nouns and verbs that could be used to make a great beat-em-up where you rampage through an office, first wrecking weak employees, then defeating strong bosses, then facing off against security detail and finally defeating the CEO in his penthouse...I'd love to see it!

R083RT responds:

Thank you so much for the detailed review! I also watched your youtube video and I appreciate the honest feedback. I liked a lot of your ideas and your criticisms were very fair. I'm working on some new projects so I don't have any *current* plans to expand upon this game atm, but this is still super useful feedback :)

[Help Me Clean My Room!]

Huh, this was quite the weird, but funny little experience!

From utter confusion on what the heck I'm supposed to be doing, to slowly learning the little rules like you don't want the person in the room with the ball during or after since they'll either get hit or choke on dust, you don't want the window in the room with the ball since it'll get smashed, you need a turn after the window for it to open and vent, and so on, to eventually putting it all together and determining the final desired order for maximum cleanliness: what a journey! In a way, it's like one of those weird logic tests where friend A is older than friend B, and friend B is twins with friend E who doesn't blah blah blah. I also liked the subtle touches like the music buildup as you get closer to victory!

While it was amusing to figure it all out, it wasn't all roses and sunshine. For one, while some of the elements had some manner of logic to them, some of the others, like the box and cylinder order and why an extra turn is needed to open the window for no reason, were very weird and made no sense, leading it to feeling like trial and error instead of an intuitive investigation. Also, I was rather disappointed to see that the game was just one level and that once you figure it out, you're done: I know it's a game jam game but still.

In a way, the game reminds me a lot of McPixel where you need to figure out what to do with a lot of the logic being completely absurd. This game has a lot of potential be something like that, but it falls a bit short by having the failures not be funny and intricate sequences, and only having one level. Still, a cute experience while it lasted!

[Rahul In The Sewer]

Hmm this one is a bit of an odd duck. I really want to like it due to all of the goofy energy it is bringing, but something about the gameplay just really rubbed me the wrong way despite my best efforts.

Again, I'm really impressed with the charm this game oozes. The progression of difficulty feels nice due to so many types of enemies with their own patterns to catch you off guard, the game is very juicy with how it rewards you for combos and how it has little voice quips and idle animations and such. For the most part, it feels like a really cool Burger Time-esque arcade game, and I did have a decent amount of fun once I got used to it.

But again, despite my efforts, the game just felt kind of annoying. I kind of get what it's trying to do, where you are dragging and dropping items around to build up big combos for points, but since the items are random and enemies are getting in the way, you kind of need to improvise, sometimes sacrificing an item you wanted to make a combo with to kill an enemy in the way and such. I think it's that for most of my playthrough, despite my best efforts, it felt like it was too much up to luck, and that bothered me.

It starts out pretty easy so you'd think I'd like the challenge that happens later on, but that bothered me because the screen gets so crowded with enemies that its such a pain, especially due to the combination of random items and the fact that killing enemies doesn't buy you any leeway since they respawn instantly to always guarantee a certain amount on screen. Just feels like you stall out with no way to make progress: you're waiting forever for an item to drop so you can make a big combo you've been setting up, but by the time it comes you've either already given up from waiting and been trying to make something else, or you had to chuck it at an enemy which, as discussed, comes right back to haunt you, and so on. I also had a good run end because enemies spawned outta nowhere right to the sides of me, pinning me in and killing me with no way out: like, how was I supposed to plan around that in any way?

I'd call it style over substance, but I think that's a bit too harsh: I think it has something cool in there and it is rather charming, it maybe just isn't for me. Perhaps if it had some sort of system to help it feel less like luck, such as item spawn previews, or enemy spawn cooldowns and previews of where they will spawn, and maybe nice quality-of-life like being able to swap items if you place an item you're carrying in a spot already with an item placed there.

[NG Fishing Collab]

Hey, pretty cool collab! I like the creativity on display at making you collect the artwork through a fun fishing minigame: very appropriate and much more interesting and high-effort than your typical slideshow! Also love that there is easy access to the artist's profile when viewing their art too. All in all solid stuff: I even love the crudely drawn buttons and such as they are a bit charming in a goofy way.

If I had it my way, I'd love if the fishing minigame was a bit more involved, like maybe instead of the RNG slot machine it is where you just need to hope the missing fish you want finally wanders by, it'd be nice if all of the fish just inhabit certain depths or need certain bait to lure out and you need to dunk the hook low enough while dodging obstacles or whatever. I dunno, just something a big more complex and allows you to guarantee getting fish through skill instead of luck. But thinking about it, the casual setup you have is pretty fun in its goofiness and probably fits better: I'm just overcomplicating things. And to be fair, you do get birds and bombs in later on: not quite what I'm looking for but interesting.

If I had any other feedback, I'd love if the fishes being viewed in the gallery would bob up-and-down a bit to make it seem like they're floating in water. Even more so, it'd be great if the gallery was a big aquarium with all the fish swimming around and you could click on them to zoom in and bring up their info. But again, that might just be me overcomplicating it as it might make it difficult to find certain pieces, haha!

Ok, for real feedback this time! I wish the fish that you feel bait to would just continually grow larger and larger as it gains levels, instead of growing big and then shrinking back down for each level: I think that way would feel more natural for a sense of progression.

[plumer quest !]

Hah, pretty goofy and fun game! It's always a bit tricky judging these personal joke games: on one hand, if I was to be critical about it, I was pretty frustrated with a lot of aspects like the trial and error traps (like the chips that led to a death pit and the dead-end routes during the freddy chase) and the UFO boss fight, and it is pretty dumb and low-effort and reliant on memes, but the game was, in its own dumb way, charming enough in its goofiness and actually had a nice variety of activities to keep things fresh, along with all of its fun gags (like the secret chip that is so high you can't reach it) that I found myself sticking with it and having a good time. I even came back and conquered the UFO boss fight after rage quitting, so it's gotta be good if it has that kinda pull, haha!

So yeah, it's dumb, but it's dumb fun. And damn you, big bouncing splatoon ass! Next time!

[Underage Driving]

Wow, what a heck of an experience! I was already on-board with a game where you need to recklessly drive fast for points while weaving through traffic to some great bumping tunes like Spy Hunter, but the reveal that the game transitions you to other driving games like some sort of Warioware minigame sequence was awesome! The vibes and energy that the game were putting down were marvelous and I had so much bloody fun! Also loved noticing all the references to other driving games like Outrun, and even some of the more subtle ones, like I'm sure I saw a Zaibatsu car from GTA2, haha!

I will admit, however, that I did find the actual design of the game quite lacking, once the initial novelty wore off. For example, I was really disappointed that only a few levels let you control the speed to take risks for more points, while other levels only move at a slow fixed speed: those levels just felt pretty boring and easy, missing the whole point, I felt. To further compound this, the game doesn't really progressively advance in some sort of way as it goes on, like continually speeding up similar to Warioware games: it just keeps looping over and over with the same level of difficulty, meaning that eventually you just get stuck in a holding pattern and quit out of boredom. Because of this, the game felt more like a one-and-done, instead of something I wanted to come back to to try and get a high score.

There were also some other minor complaints like the controls for the 360-degree tunnel were very unintuitive: for some reason when you reach 90 degree points suddenly the controls shift and the direction you were pressing suddenly meaning something else, and I would prefer if it stayed consistent with left rotating one way and right rotating the other way (and up and down, ideally, for speed control).

Still, what a wild and memorable experience, even if it did only last for the first time!