FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Trash Force Demo]

Pretty cute little game! Certainly makes a solid first impression with its very eye-catching interface design, but the gameplay is no slouch either, delivering some simple but addictive arcade fun which reminded me a lot of the game 'getting trashed' from No More Heroes 2 (if anyone gets that reference).

Had a decent time for the most part, but if I had any parts to give feedback on, it would be:

*Perhaps it's my fault, but I chose Hard the first time (as I do with almost every game) and it didn't give me a tutorial. Seems like it only does it if you play on easy, which makes sense, but I think it would be nice if it gave you a tutorial if it is your first time playing, no matter what difficulty you select.

*I feel like the difficulty curve of the game is a bit odd: parts of it slowly increase over time like the introduction of unbreakable asteroids and more of them, but other parts, like aliens, come and go instead of also increasing. It can lead to the game feeling somewhat boring at times when it chooses to go easy on you.

*Similar to above, it feels like the difficulty of the game plateaus and leaves you in an awkward state where you've bought all the possible upgrades but nothing is strong enough to fight back, so you just get bored and want to quit instead of staying in this purgatory. Would much prefer if the game ended with the boss battle, or just kept increasing in difficulty to a nigh unwinnable degree like your classic Survivors do: either end strong or keep it challenging, as both are better outcomes that leave a player wanting more than leaving bored.

*Perhaps this is a me thing, but I didn't think the whole metaprogression of statistical upgrades was necessary: feels like a hollow, unsatisfying and manipulative time sink.

Pretty impressive for a game jam game!

BluePinGames responds:

Thanks for playing and all the kind words!

To address the difficulty concern, i think the game does get to a point where its too difficult to progress. Furthest a newgrounds user got is roughly level 30. Its probably too gradual at the moment.

It will be better once we have more bosses, more upgrades and other types of levels :)

[Traffic DIE Light]

Hmm, bit mixed on this one!

The game certainly makes a fantastic first impression with its incredibly stylish presentation: love the retro vibes, the juicy effects, the unique HUD and shop displays, and so on. The gameplay design seemed pretty interesting too, with a lot of unique enemy types that slowly get introduced over time, the ability to passively reload which incentivizes strategic weapon switching, and a neat scoring system.

Despite everything sounding so great on paper, I didn't find myself having that much fun. It's decent, don't get me wrong, but the gameplay just felt so cramped and simplistic, frustrating due to the incredibly spongy enemies and load reload times, and unrewarding due to rewards only adding to a pool of possible items which you're sadly only limited to pick 3, so why even bother? It also felt like it was lacking quality-of-life features, in particular some sort of timer or bar that fills up for the reload so it wasn't so vague on how long it takes, as well as maybe a sound or signal when they are fully reloaded.

Sorry I can't provide much feedback other than it just not feeling that great: its so simple of a game currently that I'm not sure what to say since I don't know what sort of direction you're designing towards. It sounds like this is still an early version of the game, so hopefully it can be iterated upon and come out even better in the future. This does have a lot of potential!

EDIT: Hmm, I've revisited this a few times and have found myself warming up to it more than I did initially. I still stand by a lot of my initial frustrations, but the combat is a lot more fun and chaotic than I gave it credit for!

[You Have To Go Fishing]

Hmm, can't decide if I'm disappointed or just confused about this one!

I definitely think it started off pretty strong: it built up enough intrigue through its weird dialogue and illusions that it hooked me into seeing where the story went and made me forgive all the slight imperfections, like the fact that you didn't even put a fishing animation into a game about fishing (which is a pretty big imperfection in my book, haha).

But once I got to the end, I was like, is that it? It just felt like such an anticlimax, and not even in that sort of avant-garde intentional anticlimax that 'makes you think' or whatever: it just felt unfinished and pointless. I was also really disappointed that there wasn't any sort of cool interactions that you could do, like not giving the baby worms back to the big worm but instead use them for fishing.

I dunno, part of me is thinking that maybe I'm just a philistine and I missed something like I almost did with your previous Air Hockey game...but part of me thinks that no, that's all it was!

[TANKéMON TCG]

Cute little game, or rather, cute little art collab! I had a decent time admiring the art work, catching all of the references, and just indulging in the primal pleasure of opening up card pack after card pack and watching the collection grow.

As nice as the art is, though, I kinda wish this had a bit more meat on its bones in terms of actual gameplay. The obvious solution would be to actually let me play the card game, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that: perhaps the collection process could be more involved somehow, or perhaps it could be an adventure game about going around and doing quests in order to collect cards as rewards, or whatever.

As a side note, I noticed that there was a scannable code on the aplove card, but I couldn't get it to work. I'm curious as to what the purpose of it was.

I will admit, I'd love to see this format used for an actual art collab: I think it would add a lot of fun interactivity to the presentation!

[Cronela's Mansion GBC - Demo]

Hey, this is pretty neato!

While I admit that a point n click adventure wasn't the best decision to do for a Game Boy game as having to slowly move the cursor around with a d-pad can be pretty tedious and uncomfortable, the gameplay is a pretty fun and addictive adventure just like the classics, the presentation is very impressive and charming, and the game runs very smooth which surprised me as I'm so used to Game Boy games being technically slow, awkward and glitchy. Cool stuff you've pulled off here!

In terms of feedback:

*As said before, the control scheme of having to move a cursor around is pretty bad. Would much prefer if you went for another solution, such as just cycling through objects on the screen and picking an action.

*Would love if, when I'm moving the cursor around and hover over something, it would highlight or display the name of objects to let me know I can interact with them. Without that, it can be annoying to have to click everything to see whether its important or not.

*I was a bit confused as to whether I can finish any of the puzzles in the demo. I felt like I explored everywhere except for the locked-off demo areas: are the critical pieces I need within there or am I just missing something?

Elv13s responds:

What a great example for a review and not just leaving profound words in the comments and calling it a day. Quite helpful!

Yeah the controls can use a bit of work, maybe changing it to actual d-pad for character movement and interacting with A and B[shows options] wouldve been a smart choice. But alas, we're too deep into the dev and it is really a port of multiple version on the gameboycolor so it'll be a dishonor if i change it now.

the puzzles here are solvable, some can be brute forced too so youre not missing anything that's not in the playable demo.

and thanks! I really poured my all into this game, its a bit outside my "expertise" since almost all my other games are platformers, so its challenging to develop.

[CA-6 EX (Picture Poker)]

Pretty nice little poker game! It's not that deep or compelling, but the presentation, especially the dealer, is very charming, and it all feels very intuitive and polished, so well done in that regard! I had a good time playing this for awhile.

If I were to have any feedback, it would be:

*There was a bit of confusion at the start when trying to learn the rules: for example, I was annoyed to not have my clearly Straight hand recognized. In general, while I appreciate trying to be concise, I don't think saying that the rules for the game are similar to some Luigi game I've never played is a good tutorial, haha!

*It's not a big issue, but it'd be nice if making a bet that goes over your max bet wouldn't stop you outright, but just fill up as much as it can without going over. Or, you could just make an 'all-in' button.

*I feel like the UI could be rearranged to be more intuitive. For example, why not have the button to discard be below the betting buttons, since forms typically flow from top-to-bottom and discarding is your final confirmation you do after betting? Feels weird to go down to bet then go back up to discard. Might be nice if the discard button was bigger and fancier to draw more attention to it, too, as it almost looks like a secondary, unimportant action with its current look.

*It's a nice game, but I didn't find the gameplay compelling enough to chase after ranks or stars or whatever the goal is supposed to be. Might be nice if the gameplay evolves in some way more than just the betting numbers getting bigger. Maybe it does evolve eventually? But if it does, it didn't keep my attention long enough to get there.

GlitchyPSI responds:

[This feedback has been implemented in v1.1.0!]

Thank you for the feedback! I agree that some of my decisions were subpar, and that is mostly because they were a drag-from of the first version of this game which was made in a big rush. I will look into tweaking some things (ESPECIALLY the UI, betting and lack of tutorial besides a LC mention, excellent points!) for a final update now that all of your guys' feedback has made me want to polish it a bit more! It's definitely made me think of it better.

[NUTBREAKER: THE GAME]

Hey, I'm glad to see this game pop up again! For the most part, I think the game has improved in a lot of ways, both technical and gameplay, and has become quite the wacky woohoo adventure! Stylish combat, humorous dialogue, expressive animations, great attention to detail, all sorts of cutscenes and setpieces, interesting gear: the game is just bursting with so much goofy energy that I can't help but grin while playing it. Nice job!

However, in spite of that, I do think that my overall impression of the game is still somewhat similar to what it was before, in that it has a lot of style, but not that much substance or technique. Basically, it is 'dumb fun' in both a good way and a bad way. My feedback would be:

*While I like the tutorial's many little touches like how it puts in the extra effort to animate setting up the dummies and such, it is a bit of an overloaded info dump. It's just hard to remember all of the various techniques it introduces, especially since so many are so situational. Might be nice if it just teaches you how to attack, and leaves other techniques for when they are applicable, like teaching defense later on when enemies get harder.

*Combat has a lot going for it with various techniques, but in general it just feels like an absolute chaotic mashy mess, simultaneously feeling very easy if you just whale on enemies while also feeling very hard since some of them can delete your health bar outta nowhere if you blink like the spinny guys. Just feels like a lot of 'cool moves' with no real science or design to them: fun enough to play around with, but a bit shallow.

*Boss battles have a lot of pomp and circumstance to them which is cool to see, but many of them are either pathetically easy like the firefighter boss at the start, or just tests of patience like Sack and the cave boss since they require you to wait so long for them to become vulnerable with no way to speed that process up with skillful play.

*The controls feel very overloaded and unintuitive for a game as simple as this. For example, the dash being on A is an awkward to reach and unnecessary button: why not just have dash be used by double-tapping a movement key? Why not just use the number keys 1 thru 5 for the hotkeys instead of requiring you to awkwardly tab through them one-by-one with ctrl?

*I feel like the game is trying to add too many systems in instead of focusing on one thing. For example, I feel like inventory and gear is very superfluous and could be completely removed as it is mostly just used for dumb stuff. Hell, the game practically removes it by itself since you barely get a chance to spend money or acquire new gear after a certain point.

*My biggest issue with the game is that it starts off strong with a great beat-em-up adventure, but after awhile its like there is barely any gameplay, instead being replaced by constant dialogue, cutscenes, and these token 'puzzle' and 'chase' segments. Yeah, a bit of variety is nice, and I do like the goofy story and dialogue, but it just completely loses focus on what it had going for it: it makes me feel like maybe you just want to make a movie instead, haha!

I could go on, but while I do have various complaints about the game, I will admit that there is something about the way it's constructed that makes me want to forgive it all and just consider it another part of its charm, and I do plan on finishing the story since its compelling. There's just something so innocent and youthful with how overambitious it is, like a hyperactive child with a head that's overflowing with so many cool ideas they want to cram in without caring for whether they actually work or not. Ah, memories of youth...

[Unseen - The Story of Invisible People]

Hrmm, this is a rough one for me!

I really like what this game is going for, which seems to be a heartwarming tale of a ghost helping out various overlooked types of people through the challenges of their lives. It's shining a light on a very important issue through the more palatable medium of gameplay, while still having loads of information for people who want to look deeper and even get involved. Heart is definitely is the right place with this one, and it's very impressive that you constructed a large variety of different minigames for each character!

But as much as I like it in theory, I feel like it falters in execution. The mouse controls were an absolute nightmare to figure out, constantly glitching out in weird ways by resetting what it considered to be the center or the deadzone, and in general just being really unintuitive and unwieldly. The presentation was an awkward juxtaposition of very emotional music with child-like scribblings and animations, making it feel almost comical instead of serious. I could go on about the menus and other aspects, but I'll cut it short: in general, the game just felt like a mess that was barely holding itself together.

Now, a lot of its issues can be chalked up to game jam time limits, and for that you have my sympathy: this looks like you were trying to do something big, perhaps too big. For that, I have to at least give kudos to your overambition: it happens to us all! And as much as it was really weird, I did nevertheless feel compelled to keep going to see the rest of the story, so again, I feel like the concept had merit.

[Way of Knight 2: Recaptured]

Huh, this was a bit surprising! The game definitely doesn't make the best first impression from its incredibly dry and dull presentation: it does just enough to deliver critical information like the red lasers indicating what killed you, but I'd love some more special effects for killing pieces, making progress, etc. Despite that, though, I found myself getting addicted to making my way through this gauntlet, planning everything out so I don't trip any traps, so yeah, this is a decent example of when the core gameplay loop is able to shine through!

If I were to have any feedback other than the obvious matter of making the game a bit more exciting with some special effects and such, it would be that checkpoints would be nice to have. Maybe the game is technically not that long so it's not as bad as I think, but unlike a game with randomization where starting over is a fresh experience, having to just redo everything feels so tedious and adds nothing, I think.

[Magnolia Dwindlespark and the Mystery of the Entangled Propurrtions]

Whoa, this is a pretty unique game! Can't say I've ever played a game where I need to scale everything appropriately, but it tickles a similar addictive itch that a lot of other popular cleaning games do. For the most part, it all felt pretty intuitive to figure out: sometimes there's a bit of tedium as you keep trying to hit the sweet spot, but it's satisfying once it snaps into place. I like that it has a bit of a puzzle element to it as well, what with there being certain order-of-operations you need to do so you can scale other objects without them bumping into each other. Very creative and impressive for a game jam game!

If I had any feedback, it would be that sometimes it can be a bit frustrating or overwhelming. For example, I had a real hard time finding the sweet spot for getting the door to squeeze over the broom, for example, and I felt a bit put-off when I realized I had to individually scale different parts of the cat, or the various books on the shelves. Also it'd be nice if there was a save/load system in place: perhaps it's technically not that long to do in one sitting, but still, it's nice to be able to take a break so you can go at your own pace.

YaenGames responds:

Thank you so much for your consistently high quality feedback and kind words! I'm happy you found our game unique and satisfying.

I agree that the game can get a bit long on a first playthrough with all the books and so on. Was a little hard to gauge how many objects would still feel nice because of the novel game mechanic. Regarding the bookshelf, we were inspired by "A little to the left". Have a good one!