FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Minefield]

Hmm, I'm always a bit confused at how to review these type of games. I mean, I had fun, sure, but that's because it is literally Minesweeper. Yes, it's novel that you were able to recreate it in the Pico-8 engine and I'm not saying that's easy or anything, but I'm not sure if that makes you deserving of any credit for the fun I had, especially since you didn't try to build on the original concept or offer any sort of twist or quality-of-life improvements. You didn't even really save me money or whatever: I can play Minesweeper on my computer easily for free. Don't get me wrong, the interface is nice and smooth and I like the transitions, there are no bugs and it feels solidly put-together, but beyond that...I dunno. Oh whatever, I'm thinking about this too hard.

[Gappy's Labyrinth]

It could be a decent metroid platformer, but unfortunately the world is just so interminably dry and lifeless. While it's a little fun to explore around at first and collect things, the lack of any sort of obstacles or enemies makes it an incredibly boring affair where the powerups are pointless: without any sort of danger, all you do is just walk from place to place, and even worse, there's loads of backtracking too.

There's nothing really particularly Gappy about this game either, if I have to be honest, beyond very token aspects. My pessimistic side says that you just used him as a bit of star power, a desperate attempt to make a sub-par platformer seem more exciting than it is. Gappy games always thrill me with their engaging platforming and none of that was present here.

It also commits a bunch of other minor sins like, if you press a button when the text is typing out, it closes the entire window outright instead of just finishing writing out the text like it should. Medals don't work either.

It really feels like you made an entire world but then forget to fill it in. I actually found myself trying to create my own fun: for example, when I was doing the tower climb, I found myself pretending that there was lava slowly bubbling up, kinda like the final tower of I Wanna Be The Guy, and that I needed to jump and dive quickly to make it in time and not die. It shouldn't be my job to do things like that though: that's your job! I'm not saying there needs to be enemies, per se, but jeez, a few spikes here and there, maybe a couple of saw blades? Some pits? It would go a long way.

[The Terror of Mongolia]

Pretty cool game! I really liked the high-energy vibes that this game was putting down: leaving that first tent with it now being on fire, the music coming in with the title drop, boy that was a great intro and I immediately started tearing shit up Genghis Khan-style!

Overall the gameplay was quite enjoyable: it's simple, but the slight strategy of only being able to shoot in two directions ala STD and your horse having slightly unwieldly controls and being on a timer make it an energetic experience. Found it amusing that the game was a series of 'your princess is in another castle' moments with you burning down each as you go as I best Mario wish he could've done. Loved getting more and more powerful while the enemies get more and more dense and difficult. Also surprised at some of the hidden controls, like being able to hold down the fire button and use that to move in a different direction than where you are firing (initially I just kept tap-firing).

If I were to have any complaints, it might be that I do wish the timer was a bit more apparent and front-and-center: I actually kind of forgot I was on a timer since it's stuffed all the way in the corner. Also it was a bit awkward that your initial horse control is so bad, seemingly for the express purpose of selling an upgrade to make it as good as it should've been at the start: just seems a bit scummy, but maybe I'm reading into it too much. Also the game seemed a bit buggy: I came back to this to play again and for some reason I got a game over screen when I tried to enter the tent despite the cutscene also playing at the same time.

History was always my worst subject in school, but now I feel like I've learned a lot. Thanks!

jacklehamster responds:

I probably should've spent time thinking more about the initial control. I was actual aware that the horse didn't play very smoothly on first play, and it's the main reason I offer the first choice between "speed" and "bow and arrow". By choosing "speed", you sacrifice initial profit but zoom to the next hut much faster. You should try that out ;-)

[Sweater: Trouble in Cottonvale DEMO]

Pretty cute game, but currently feels like its in a rough state. While it does have a lot of nice touches like the map screen and these scarf powers and does deliver some decent platforming gameplay, the gameplay was pretty basic with nothing that grabbed me, there was a lack of polish and quality-of-life features, and it was difficult to get used to the controls/physics for the world and character.

If I were to give some feedback:

*In general, I don't like the physics of the game, being these weird Kid Kool physics where you have to build up tons of momentum and it just makes it so tedious and unwieldly, like you're always on ice. If you want to stick with it as a intentional design choice, that's fine, but I found them annoying to deal with so if there's some sort of way you can improve the control while still keeping the physics you want, please do so. For example, I would've loved more levels of jump control, like being able to make even shorter hops with a tap of the button, and I'd like if you hold the jump button, it will automatically deploy the helicopter scarf without needing a second press.

*I don't feel like the foreground elements pop-out enough from the background and make grand picture a bit muddied and unclear. I don't think the background is muted enough and could stand to be blurred or desaturated a bit more, and I think the black contours should be removed so as to make only the foreground elements outlined. Speaking of contours, I find it odd that the character's contours are so thin compared to the environmental contours: it really throws off the composition since generally elements on the same layer should have the same thickness for their contours.

*There's no coyote time for jumping, leading to me trying to make a lot of jumps from the edge of platforms and it ignoring my input and sending me falling to my death.

*Speaking of falling to my death, it was very unclear at times when it was safe to fall down and when it was a death pit: would love if there was an option to peek downwards/upwards, or if the level design was improved so that it's more easily discernable (for example, some games consistently signal death pits with certain art, or perhaps floating skulls and so on).

*Game was really lacking in sound effects: perhaps its part of the demo and you are planning on putting them in, but I felt like you need more sound effects for actions like swishing your scarf, for successfully grabbing an enemy with the scarf, and then throwing them, for example. Speaking about sounds, the balance/leveling for them was really inconsistent: the sound for slamming a slime into another slime was ear-splittingly loud while others were much calmer.

*It was pretty inconsistent that the game needed to be play with keyboard yet for menus you need to switch over to mouse: would much prefer if the menus could be controlled with keyboard so you only have to use that for the entire game.

*Scoring for the levels wasn't immediately apparent and I wasn't sure how to get a better grade. Am I ranked on time? Wools gathered? Enemies killed? More clarity would be good, perhaps do a rank summation of all of the factors that help get you points on the endscreen, like 57/100 wools gathered or whatever, or have points pop-up when you do an action that gives you points like the old Duke Nukem games (the 2D ones).

*Finally, while the game is cute, I wasn't really seeing any sort of interesting mechanic or core appeal to it: at the end of the day, it just seemed like a really bog-standard platformer. Maybe as you get more scarf powers the gameplay evolves, but I wasn't seeing anything that grabbed me. I mean, it's ok to just make a standard platformer, but then you really got to make it polished and flow well, and that isn't there yet (but hopefully can be with improvments).

*Why is he called Sweater when it seems all of his power come from his scarf? Maybe the game should be called Scarf?

Hope this feedback helps!

WooltronicStudios responds:

Woah, that's a lot of feedback. Thank you for being so thorough with your review, it helps a lot and you bring up a lot of valid points!

[Infinite Tree Pinball]

Wow, this is a pretty neat game! Reminds me a lot of Yoku's Island Express in that its a metroidvania but with pinball-based navigation. The sense of novelty is strong here and when combined with the rather polished construction, makes me want to explore all of this intricate world you've put together, addictively upgrading my powers and levels and so on! I also found it kind of impressive how many options and little quality-of-life aspects are in place (though I have no idea what the difficulty sliders are, I mean what the heck is 110% difficulty?)

I gotta admit though, that as much as I am impressed with the game and do want to love it...it is a difficult love. There are a lot of times that I just want to rage-quit from how frustrating it can be to navigate the world with these pinball mechanics, and this is coming from someone who plays pinball games regularly and should be having no problem! Just trying to hit the ball into the exit ramp to leave the room but slightly missing, making it fall all the way back to the start...missing the paddle that would've taken you where you want and dropping down into a route that takes forever to get back to where you can get another chance...getting stuck in a room where you can't tell if you just don't have enough powers to proceed and need to force a restart from menu...augh, it can just be so dang tedious and the physics just sometimes don't work as I would expect! Really wish the game was a bit slower to make accurate shots easier to pull off, or provided a bit more of a helping hand, like maybe magnetizing/vacuums balls into ramps if you're just a little off, for example (I want to use the lightning power more to help but its at such a limited quantity I can't use it on such things when I need it for breaking walls and such).

Having said that, despite the frustrations and my 'skill issue', I'm still pretty positive on the game and will keep trying! I just wanted to note that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people quit from frustration (but then again, the strength and novelty of the world wouldn't surprise me if it sucked those same people right back in like it did me!)

EDIT: Sure enough, I came back and beat the whole game despite my frustrations, and I was very impressed! Always love a good final zone that challenges you and a great boss fight: wish it had even more!

[Lost in Lampyrid Fog]

Wow, another solid puzzle adventure! I haven't beaten it yet because damn, some of these puzzles are really cryptic, but I love the challenge and the creativity in all of them!

I gotta admit that I had a bit of a rough start: I was just sailing in random directions trying to find islands and getting frustrated at what I was supposed to do, not realizing that the island right at the start had already changed to something new. But once I got the gist of doing sequences to change what the starting island is, I easily got addicted in collecting more and more clues and solving these puzzles.

If I were to have any complaints so far, it might be that while figuring out that you could changes docks at that island by approaching it in different ways to access the caves made me feel pretty clever, having to go back and forth to the boat to access the puzzle caves one-by-one was quite tedious and I much would've preferred if I could just walk to them, at least by unlocking a shortcut like the bridge for the castle, haha.

Reminds me a lot of 'Lost in Firefly Forest' which was another one of my favorites: keep up the good work!

[Bird Tapper: Purple Platoon Panic]

Pretty cool game! I really liked what this game was going for where you go from just completing the levels for your token bronze to then plotting out a maximum combo potential route and stylishly pulling it off for the gold: felt really satisfying when it all comes together in a perfect flow of flaps, punches, uppercuts and dives, and it was so addictive to do it over and over. Reminds me a lot of other fun speedrun games like Cyber Hook or Neon White. Definitely a solid concept that you did a good job at slowly evolving over the course of the game. I also like the little juicy touches you put in, such as the menu animations that play when unlocking stages and medals.

However, I will admit that I think I like the game more in theory than in execution. Yes, when you learn the route and manage to pull it off, it's great, but the game's controls and physics felt very unintuitive and wonky to me and kept leading me to make moves different than I expected, constantly ruining my flow. Furthermore, there were some weird glitches like where, for example, I'd punch an enemy and they'd die, yet I'd simultaneously die as well, even though that shouldn't be possible. It felt like the game just needed a bit more time in the oven: so close to greatness! Still, a pretty good time nonetheless.

[SNEKMEK]

Pretty cool snake game! For the most part, I felt like the game was rather charming in its presentation and an interesting twist on the typical snake gameplay, what with its introduction of enemies that fire back at you (with great attack telegraphs) and turrets you can install on your body. The ability to recover from failure by switching to pilot mode was also quite novel (though a bit odd that your turrets still fire during when you'd think they'd be inactive). I was also glad to see that the controls never let me down when I tried to pull off difficult maneuvers like sharp turns.

For the most part it is fun, but I was a bit disappointed how quickly the game stalls out: it doesn't take long for the enemies to stop evolving and for your ship to stop growing, leaving the game feeling rather repetitive. The whole aspect of having aggressive enemies and turrets really brought my expectations up for how the game might evolve: maybe we'd start fighting crazy boss enemies or something like that, but instead it just stuck with pretty standard snake gameplay, even being a bit lesser since you stop growing. I dunno, something about the game really made me want more than what it settled on, but still, as I said, it's pretty decent nonetheless.

Alphons6 responds:

Thanks! it was a jam game so we didn't have all the time, we'd like to add more content though, thank you :)

[Leap of Life]

Hey, this is a pretty dang solid puzzle platformer! Sure, it's not exactly groundbreaking or anything and there are a lot of games like this, but all-around it felt very well-constructed, stylish, smooth and fun and I had a good time playing through it all. Great concept about managing limited jumps/falls and the level design kept me on its toes by constantly providing subtle traps that make you waste your jumps/falls. Didn't experience any major faults or bugs, and my only major complaint was that I wish I had even more levels to go through!

[Meowxtape: Delivery]

Cute game!

I'll admit that I didn't have the greatest first impression of it as it was a bit lacking in juice and polish: yes, it's to be expected for a game that was made in such a short time limit, but I was bothered by a lot of aspects like the lack of feedback/effects for running into things, weird layering issues, the way potholes disappear when you drive on them, the attack/drift powerup being a bit confusing and awkward, and in general the gameplay just feeling kind of simple and unrefined.

I was really worried that the game would stall out and bore me, but I was surprised at what a good job the game did at keeping things fresh through escalation, introducing all sorts of new obstacles and hazards and capping it all off with a great boss fight conclusion! In addition to that, the stylish presentation, goofy dialogue/music, text messaging, and the general vibes helped elevate the experience well and compensate/distract from the gameplay's small faults. So in the end, I quite enjoyed my time with it, and truth be told, was quite impressed that you got all of this done in such a short time: what a reversal, haha!