FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[HOLY]

It's a decent little arcade game! I like some of the ideas that it plays with, such as having to recover your ammo after your shot, digging through darkness with your shots to kill an enemy at its root, and having to prioritize enemies to reduce the spread of darkness before it gets uncontrollable (but letting them spread enough to get points): it's got some good strategy to it, and its quite satisfying to cleave through darkness, kill the root, and witness the conversion explosion of score pellets come to you! It's certainly a bit rough and confusing, especially since it doesn't even bother to give descriptions for any of the power-ups you're getting, but it still is a decent romp while it lasts.

However, while I can forgive most of the subpar visuals and juice because its a game jam game, I still wasn't quite sold on the gameplay enough for me to consider it a success. It wasn't bad and I did have some fun cleaving through darkness, but for me, the gameplay mechanics, while interesting, didn't quite coalesce into a very intriguing and addictive core loop, and that's what I'm looking for from game jams: something that I'd love to see made into a enhanced final version. Obviously it still has potential and could blossom into an incredible game, but it didn't quite give me enough breadcrumbs to guide me towards where it would evolve into: I just needed something like more enemy types or events or something, I'm not sure. A good attempt still and a decent result, to be sure.

[Six Seats Left]

Cute little game! I really enjoyed the concept of picking people who deserve to get the last seats on the ark: might be easy to think "oh, I'll just pick everyone who isn't rude to me" or something akin to that, but considering the situation, I think its understandable that some people might be desperate or rude and that doesn't necessarily make them a bad person or unworthy (and the endings reflect that in some cases). So many factors to think about beyond that as well, such as diversity, "women and children first", and so on: very fun to ponder if you allow yourself to get immersed. Enjoyed the epilogues as well as they were nice to see play out, and I was especially impressed that some characters actually influence others: going that extra mile is quite nice, as you'd expect it to just be all character-specific with no overlap. Speaking of going the extra mile, I like the subtle touch of everyone turning to stare at you as you walk around talking to everyone: really amplifies the stress and importance of the situation!

Only big problems I had was that there was no way to fast-forward text: it's common for games to allow you to press the button mid-dialogue to automatically fill out the text to the last, whereas this game forces you to wait for the text to play out, making multiple playthroughs quite annoying (or even regular playthroughs for speed-readers). Speaking of multiple playthroughs, its also a bit annoying that you're forced to listen to them talk before being able to make a decision: I understand, but it would be nice if you could have the option to choose to talk or immediately skip to decision (after all, even on a first playthrough, perhaps you would just want to choose passengers by random to be fair instead of letting yourself be influenced?)

F1Krazy responds:

I'm planning an update now that the jam is over, and allowing text to be skipped definitely need to go on the list. Thanks for reminding me, I almost forgot!

[Solace Inc. Classic]

Hmm, I certainly think this has a lot of potential and is an interesting twist on Survivors-esque gameplay...but I found the execution unfortunately lacking in many respects.

As said, there is a lot of potential here. You've got an interesting and varied cast of characters here, both in terms of charming personality and gameplay actives/passives. The twist of being someone on the sidelines that collects the gems and leaves all the fighting up to your minions could be great: after all, everyone loves being a pet/summon class like necro in ARPGs. I even liked seeing all of the breakroom interactions between missions: it was a nice little reward that reminded me a lot of the Tales Of series skit mechanic which I love (though this incarnation was much more...sultry).

However, it doesn't take long for the gameplay to get very boring and tedious, all thanks, unfortunately, to the core twist of taking a much more passive role in combat. Fights all just felt the same, all in part due to how the arenas just throw enemies at you haphazardly and don't offer up any interesting events like bosses or encirclements or bombardments. It didn't help either how easy the game felt: your fellow warriors can't get hurt and easily dispatch enemies so that they never get close enough to be a threat. Therefore it all just becomes the same: walking around and getting gems effortlessly.

Even worse is that the game was so dry and lacking juice, an absolute critical element for games like this: collecting gems and defeating enemies was so unsatisfying. When I defeat a skeleton, it shouldn't just disappear: there should be an explosion of bones bouncing around! Another aspect that helped the game feel so pointless is that you never see any information on the benefits of leveling up actives and passives. When I level an attack, is the damage going up, or the projectiles, and by how much? Should I even level up a passive when I don't know whether it's going up 1% or 10%?

While it is true that a boss is usually a lazy sod who does profit off of more hard-working employees, which you've unfortunately replicated here accurately, it just doesn't make for fun gameplay. If I had my way, I'd make it so that the boss would have a more active role: they still wouldn't get their hands dirty and would focus on collecting, but there should be more management, like having to heal or revive your employees, rallying/buffing them with motivational speeches, giving them orders to use their special attacks at critical moments, and so on. It'd also be great if there were fun synergies between employees like coop attacks and relationship building, and some fun chatter between them: after all, you've got this great cast of characters, so you should promote them as much as possible, grow them together and have them be active in more aspects than just the breakroom.

Oh and what the hell is going on with the text? It's not only so damn tiny, but it's also artifacted to hell and got all sorts of holes and gaps everywhere: it's just a nightmare to try and read! And the game doesn't even look to save progress either!

[The Skibidi Toilet Collab]

I have no idea what the heck skibidi toilet is, but this seemed like a somewhat decent art collab (though quite rough in a lot of aspects, though)!

For the good, I like that this art collab didn't just default to the usual boring slideshow presentation and instead opted for this sliding showcase angle instead. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty much a slideshow at heart so I'm not giving you full points, but something about being able to slide everything smoothly to the side and seeing the art pieces as if they were statues on a table: it lends a bit more physicality and immersion to the experience and deserves some small amount of credit. The general presentation as well had a somewhat goofy charm to it all, especially with the title screen and transition into the gallery, albeit sometimes it was to the point of being garish and hurting my eyes.

As for the bad...while I can understand a lot of the mistakes I'm about to list off excused or brushed off as being part of some sort of goofy charm, I don't feel the same:

I felt like the text was very difficult to read due to the text box opacity being very low and the art pieces overlapping too much. Furthermore, the text was difficult to read because there were a lot of mistakes that could've stood to have been proofread a bit, and the text wasn't formatted properly and would even bleed off of the edges of the box at times. Again, I can understand if some of the typos were intentional, but still.

There was also some missing interactivity that I would've liked to see, such as being able to click on the art pieces to zoom into them or just have a clearer standalone view of them, as well as being able to click on artist's names to go to their NG profiles, thus making it easier to see their other art and potentially follow them.

All in all, it may not be great, but it's an ok art collab: always nice to see little community events like this.

name responds:

Thou know not skibidi toilet!? thou might not but join from England. Thou are belike settling, what's thy name?

[Artico]

Hmm, feels like a first-time student project or something: a nice start to someone's career as a game developer, sure, but is it actually fun? Not exactly.

It might be rather simple and bland, but it does show some good signs of design here and there. It can get pretty crazy fast as you build up speed, and the game promotes you going faster and having a wilder time with a score multiplier system that you get by keeping your combo up. There's an attempt at some nice effects, such as the snow particles coming off of the skies and the camera work for emphasizing speed. It's got its heart in the right place, I suppose.

Unfortunately, once you've played the game for a few seconds, you've pretty much seen everything it has to offer as it just loops the same stuff over and over. The game doesn't communicate information clearly either: you can lose your score multiplier if you don't keep going through slaloms at a good pace, but without some sort of progress bar or flickering flame or whatever, there's no way to tell how much time you have left.

The game is also drier than a Popeye's biscuit: death is so sudden and would be so much better with some sort of ragdoll, the player animation doesn't loop properly, the world is so drab and doesn't introduce anything new as it goes on like ramps or different obstacles, and so on. It's even difficult for me to offer feedback on this as there just isn't much to talk about, but you just know it could be way better.

And jeez, the username entry only supports three characters? Even Final Fantasy 1 on the NES had four letter names!

Hope to see something better from you in the future: this might not have been that great, but we all gotta start somewhere.

[Quantron's Game]

Hmmm, I just felt kinda confused by this one. Maybe it's my fault for playing it as a single player, but the option was there, so keep that in mind.

While it seems like a decent 2D platformer in some respects, I just felt like the game was very repetitive and generic, lacking an intriguing core concept or satisfying feel to it all. It felt like once you've played it for a few minutes you've seen everything as it just keeps recycling the same enemies over and over and not introducing any new obstacles or mechanics. Aspects that could've been interesting, like the AI partner which you can somewhat guide, or the different world's gravity, or the upgrade system, lack focus and just feel token, not adding anything but just stuck on as if just by having them it'd make this plain game somehow seem better than it is. Eventually it gets some stuff like boss fights but for me that was too little too late as I had already quit from boredom.

The most interesting aspect of the game I encountered was when I died and I was left with only my AI partner, who I could still somewhat guide despite being dead by signaling him to move forward, but he would automate his jumps and attacks. This was a rather unique control scheme that could be interesting and reminded me of games like Gyromite, but it really felt like it wasn't intentional and the way to play. The AI was largely unreliable anyway, regularly getting stuck on things or falling into pits.

The controls felt terrible, in particular with the way jumps kept you moving forward with momentum despite no longer holding the forward button, which would usually kill your momentum in other platformers, made it very awkward and feeling like you're constantly sliding on ice. Combine this with the way enemies can just rush in quickly from the right and smash into you and you've got a real frustrating loop of damage that feels unavoidable.

To add to the pile further, I really disliked the unnecessary scanline filter, which only served to hurt my eyes.

I dunno, maybe there's something interesting in here that could be salvaged, but right now it just feels like an unfocused mish-mash with bad AI, bad jumping controls, and at its core just a rather bland and uninspired side-scroller. Again, maybe if you focused on that unique aspect of helping to guide an AI through the battle, it might be a unique experience at least? Might've been a case where you needed to 'follow the fun', but maybe that's just me.

ImmanentDeath responds:

Honestly, this whole game was just my attempt at salvaging an idea. I wanted to make a generic video game and put my own spin on it. But it was rushed and overscoped. There's a lot more I wanted to add or change, but I just couldn't.

It is supposed to be a game where you just goof around with another player or the AI for as long as you want, and either laugh or get frustrated when one of you does something silly, by accident or on purpose. You are supposed to get hurt and fall off cliffs because losing is fun. I wanted it to feel like you and your partner are in this together against this broken universe.

[Rewound]

Not too shabby! It's not mindblowing or anything, but this felt like a good, short and sweet puzzler with an interesting core combination of a trail and rewind mechanic.

It's definitely got some rough edges: it takes quite a while for the tutorial to finish and the game to start proper, there are some lazy graphical issues like the POP FX being reversed if you die while facing the opposite direction and the actual exit of a level just being a boring fade to black despite all the fanfare/animation there was in constructing said exit, but the game was fun and addictive nevertheless. There was a good sense of progression of complexity with the mechanics as the levels went on, there were some nice touches like the pitch-shifted sound effects for jumping, and when it was over, I couldn't help but want more! Well done, especially for a jam game.

[PINFALL, Classic Edition]

Whew, what a tough game! Definitely gives me Jump King vibes in a good way.

While it can certainly be challenging to the point of frustrating at times with the level of precision it requires from a player, I found the journey of this very addictive and fun due to the great level design that has solid progression of interesting obstacles being introduced in all sorts of combinations, a good amount of natural checkpoints, and a very smooth and polished controls/feel to it that makes movements reproducible with practice therefore feel very fair. Along with this, the graphics/sound are very pleasing with nice touches like splashes and falling leaves here and there. Was also glad to see it have a save system: usually Pico-8 games don't seem to have those for some reason (limited space I'm assuming).

Don't get me wrong, the game can be incredibly stressful and frustrating with the constant requirement to edge jump and other highly precise manuevers, the game speeds a bit too quickly to kaizo mario levels around the water/blue blocks area, and the stun mechanic can be a bit overbearing at times. But overall I found the journey very enthralling (though, we'll see if I ever beat it, haha). Cool stuff!

[BLIMBO]

Quite the goofy and fun little adventure that gives me very strong Earthbound vibes! Overall the experience is quite enjoyable and fun, especially due to all the wacky characters and interactions you can have with them: the world, while a bit juvenile, was charming, and I loved talking to everyone I met, including even searching out all those dead-end gags! Even the graphics, while looking very low-effort and lacking animations and the like, do have an appealing look to them, and there is some good effort in the music and other aspects as well.

Finding new people to talk to and seeing where the silly story went to was a strong motivation for me, but unfortunately, I felt like the combat really got in the way here. It's a one-two punch of random encounters and braindead combat where all you do is spam bash/shoot and occasionally heal, both incredibly archaic practices that I feel should be left behind in lieu of encounters being visible monsters on the map that you bump into and combat being more strategic and with a more defined mechanic, like the elemental weaknesses to exploit for stuns or extra turns, or Undertale's talk puzzles and bullet hell dodging. No, the combat isn't the worst as the game and environments are rather short, and you can find have some modicum of fun grinding it out, but I just felt like it wasn't the games strong suit and would probably be better without altogether, focusing instead on the funny world you've built and adding in quests and puzzles instead. I also wish I never bought that AK-47: it just slows down combat by making you have to always scroll down to Shoot instead of mashing Bash! Why!?

Again, as much as the combat got on my nerves a bit, the game still does a decent job at keeping the pace up, not requiring that much grinding as it seemed like it would, and it was fun to build up my character with new equipment despite it all just being numbers and no new abilities. It also helped that eventually I realized you could sprint by holding shift or clicking to move. Pretty fun stuff!

Shai-P responds:

Glad you liked it regardless of the lil irritation you got from the combat!

I'll keep all this in mind whenever I decide to do another entry.

[The Distant Door]

Nice point n click adventure here! It's not the longest adventure game and did feel less dramatic than I thought, but what we got was a rather short and very sweet adventure (well, sweet based off of the ending I got!) that felt very executed and very polished.

What really impressed me with the game was the sheer amount of interactable elements and amusing flavor text that comes from them: always love a game that packs a lot of easter eggs and jokes in every cranny there is, just like the old Sierra games this seems to evoke. Voice acting and general presentation were very nice too, and the story wasn't too shabby either: while I was expecting this to go in a more horror route, akin to something like Silent Hill 4 The Room, and I was a bit disappointed at the realization of the low stakes afterwards, it was a rather heartwarming tale in the end. All-in-all a nice adventure!

If I did have any complaints, they would be rather minor ones, like how sometimes the logic for interactions would be a bit odd. For example, the first time you talk to the super about the package, you can just talk to them directly and bring it up as a dialogue choice: however, all subsequent interactions require you to give them the package notice instead of talking to them. In a similar fashion, you'd think you may need to combine the tack with the written note to create a tacked note and then put that on the noteboard, only to see that can't and instead you must interact with the noteboard with them as separate items. Little things like that came up, but again, were not that much of an issue: just slight hiccups.

Wonder if this is based off of a real story?