FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[worDefense]

Cute little game! I like the combination of tower defense with word/typing mechanics: that alone is already nice enough to keep my interest, but when you combine it with special abilities and diverse enemy variety and so on, it gets really complex in an interesting way! It's like, the game could've just been about always typing the biggest words, but when you factor in innocent chickens that you want to avoid, or maybe enemies that split, there's actually a lot of strategy involved in what is truly optimal beyond just the biggest words (but then you also need to factor in the bonus for using all letters: maybe its worth sacrificing a chicken for that!) Game is also just very juicy and charming with its general presentation too: well done!

I will admit, though, that parts of the game had me really confused. For example, there were plenty of times where the game allowed me to fire when the word I typed was seemingly gibberish. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that they were technically real words that I was typing, just unbeknownst to me, but still, weird stuff.

There's also the fact that I found it quite weird that there is no time limit: instead of the enemies coming down over time, they freeze in place until you make your move. Call me an armchair developer if you like, but I feel like this compromises the scoring system, since without any pressure, it just becomes a game of patience where anyone could take all the time in the world to make the most optimal choices, instead of being a game about skill, reactivity and improvisation. Maybe it was an intentional choice to make a more relaxed game, I guess (though if that were the case, you'd think that hurting chickens would only deprive you of an opporunity to get health, not immediately hurt you as well).

amidos2006 responds:

Thanks a lot, there is two modes, normal and hardcore. In hardcore, there is time limit, I wanted to also give people relaxed experience.

[Looping Larceny]

Neat little game! It's like a cute combination between a Metroid game and something like Minit's speedrunning time loop structure. Overall I felt like this was a nice short and sweet experience, where I kept delving down different routes, collecting power-ups, opening up shortcuts, and eventually finding the diamond, whereupon I had to plot out a route to get in and out quick enough like some sort of heist, haha!

While it was all good, I did find the design a bit confusing. It just felt a bit odd that, due to the way the world is constructed, you only find the diamond when you've pretty much collected all of the upgrades necessary to get it out: before then, you don't even know what the goal is and why you're collecting all this stuff in the first place, so it's somewhat aimless. And why does the time loop structure happen before you've even collected the diamond? You'd think it only needs to happen then, like some sort of alarm. Basically, I almost feel like the diamond should be introduced in some manner earlier to setup the premise: like maybe you have easy access to the diamond, but getting it out is impossible without upgrades, so you make the decision to leave it for now and instead go into another part of the cave and get upgrades and set stuff up first. Eh, it worked out in the end, I suppose, but still, food for thought!

Oh yeah, as a side note, the jump physics felt really wonky and difficult to control: eventually got used to them, but yeah, wish they were a bit more intuitive.

bluswimmer responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

[Disconnect]

Hmm, this was a tough one for me! I'm a big fan of console hacking games like Uplink, Quadrilateral Cowboy, TIS-100, and the like, so this game should've been a slam dunk for me. And in theory, this game's whole eavesdropping over connections to try and find clues in text logs and files to suss out evildoers is pretty cool!

Well, it was pretty cool in theory, at least. Unfortunately what I found was an incredibly repetitive and boring game that I just couldn't stand playing any more. Compared to games like Uplink where you're multitasking, handling all sorts of different apps at once, improvising and diverting power to systems, and so on, this was incredibly restrictive and limited in player powers.

In this it was just: wait for connections lines to show up. Click on one. Decrypt the line. Play a simple minigame of matching keys. Read the single line of new info, maybe download a file. Click another line. Decrypt. Key Minigame. Read/Download. Click. Decrypt. Minigame. Read. Click. Decrypt. It's just so monotonous!

Every single mission was the same basic setup and the same goddamn process over and over and over: why can't we just get the full comm log at once, or keep the monitoring ongoing like a proper tap? Why can't we handle multiple connections at once? I want to get to the good part of combing through logs and finding out clues, but the game wastes so much time in collecting it in tiny bits-by-bit.

Basically, I think it's a cool idea, but the execution left much to be granted.

Also, as a small quibble, I really disliked the whole blurry monitor filter you've got for the game: it's not the worst but it felt a bit much and made it difficult to read words at times due to how blurry they get. Eh, but that's just my old man eyes, I guess.

[Slippery Delivery]

Cute little precision platformer you got here! As a fan of games like Jump King, I quite liked the challenge this brought and had a good time going through all the levels as fast as I could, getting better at my routes, and admiring all the various obstacles you put in my way to keep things fresh.

One aspect I found very annoying was the controls, however. The biggest annoyance was the fact that, due to how the fish squashes when you charge up, you'd naturally think that the strength of your jump correlates to your charge time in a gradient manner, but bizarrely the jump charge system is binary, where you either flop or do a full-power jump, nothing in-between. It's just so bloody unintuitive! Eventually I learned to accept it and work with it, but in times of trouble, my natural instincts would keep coming back, making me think I can do a half-charge jump and screw me over constantly.

Game was also a bit janky and unrefined. For example, the way slopes/ramps worked was really wonky with how they make you jitter around when you're trying to charge up a jump while sliding, or how they instantly kill your momentum and make you slide downwards immediately when you come into contact with them. Platforming was confusing too where I was never sure if a jump would successfully put me on top of a platform or just barely make it and hit its side. Level design was really haphazard at times too and didn't achieve a smooth difficulty curve and sense of progression.

Also, there were a lot of aspects that felt a bit underwhelming: for example, I was disappointed that there was no good/bad ending depending on your performance considering how strongly they imply it at the start, but then again, I was confused as to why the game was displaying my total time at the end instead of adding together my best level times, which would seem more natural.

Despite its roughness, which I suppose is to be expected for a jam game, I still had a decent time with this and was compelled to keep going just because of how charming it was, so well done for the most part.

[Yule Duel]

Cute little game! Call me unfair, but I don't feel like I can give you full credit since, instead of making your own card game, you just remade Triple Triad without even putting any sort of significant innovative twist on it, but hey, it's still a decently fun and addictive adventure to battle dudes, collect cards, defeat bosses for badges, and so on! While the game was a bit bland and didn't give a strong sense of progression and escalation (really felt like the journey to leaders should have more impact to it with music and level design), and despite me not really liking Triple Triad at all, this game nevertheless was so friendly and cute that I felt compelled to give it my best shot and actually came around to it, so kudos!

[Energy Quest]

Hmm, bit of a mixed impression on this one!

On one hand, the game certainly has a charming presentation quality to it, and while the gameplay starts out quite simple, it escalates with each level introducing something new, be it faster speed, more intricate and tricky patterns to handle like jumping on moving traffic, and more manuevers like double-jumping and stomping, creating a nice addictive sense of progression. In theory, it should be a decent game!

On the other hand, though, the game feels quite dry, bland and generic, my initial impression being that it was some 'my first endless runner' game that someone made in a game jam or as a student project: just didn't feel that good or impressive to play. It certainly lacked the unique memorability of your previous games like 'The Reboot.' While it does keep escalating as the levels go on, it felt not be paced quickly enough as I was getting close to quitting from boredom around level 2-3 or so, and the 'story' wasn't really doing anything to intrigue me.

There are also just some clunky aspects to it, like how awkward getting damaged feels with the way it warps you back, sometimes unfairly putting you in a position that you can't react to or locks you on a dead-end track. Was also really annoyed when I took a break for a bit and, upon coming back, realized it didn't save my progress. C'mon, no continue option? Why the heck not? Speaking of, it didn't look like there was a way to replay older levels either to get a better score: I kept trying to go back to them but it never seemed to work.

I still think it's a pretty decent game, but something about it just felt a bit lacking and made me want a lot more from it: like a strange disconnect between how good it looks it should feel compared to how it actually does feel.

Also I still can't stand these robo dudes: it's a bit better with this guy, but their nose still really looks like kissy-lips and it throws me off!

MartinJacob responds:

Thank you for your feedback, as always very insightful. We did go for something more classical and approachable this time.

About the saving system, my old way of doing this went obsolete some short while ago and I am still figuring out how to save games again... Sorry for this inconvenience, we did try to make it saveable. There are some codes you can enter to unlock previous levels, and you can use their associated buttons in the menu to replay them.

Thank you for your other technical feedback which we will take into account in making further versions of this.

Cheers!

[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!