FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Goober Game]

Pretty decent Suika game clone! Compared to most of the other clones I've seen, this at least has a sense of energy and charm to its presentation, and takes steps forward in terms of iteration as the charge-up mechanic is a novel addition to the formula. Provided some decent fun, this!

In terms of feedback:

*While it is lively, I do wish it had a bit more juice to it, particularly in terms of the points/score-keeping. It's given such little real-estate on the screen that it's almost like it doesn't matter, making me feel less inclined to go for big combos and higher scores. It didn't even keep my high-score when I came back to it after a break.

*While the charge-up mechanic is a novel addition, I didn't even realize it existed for the longest time, so I definitely think the mechanic should be explained better: maybe the controls should be kept on the side of the screen instead of vanishing immediately. Furthermore, I don't feel like the charge affected gameplay as much as I'd like: there were times that I wanted to use a super-charged shot to squeeze through a gap, or make the pile bounce around to rearrange things, but I wasn't able to do it, making it feel pointless.

*It would be nice if there was a size chart on the side. Not only would it be nice to see a long-term goal to strive for, it'd be nice to help remember the evolution order so you can plan combos better than just eyeballing them and memorizing.

[Atomic: REDUX]

Ehh, unfortunately, I'm not really feeling this game. While I can appreciate that, as it seems to be built for mobile, it's going for a rather simple arcade game, and while the basic premise does remind me of games that I do enjoy, such as Infectonator, I'm just not feeling the appeal in this.

The main conceit of basically putting down a piece of fly paper and seeing how many flies you can catch just seems rather dry and so luck-dependent. Since the red atoms start to fade immediately on level start instead of once you place your green atom, there's no time to try and plan: all you can do is slap it down based on general feeling and see what happens. May as well just be pulling the lever of a slot machine to see if you win: I'm not a gambler myself, so again, the appeal is lost. And no, I don't see the appeal of grinding until you level up enough to win either as it just feels imbalanced and silly.

The game may have a lot of levels, but they all seem the same since all it is doing is increasing the number of red atoms. It feels fake and completely unnecessary as I don't really feel like I'm progressing without any sort of significant changes that affect gameplay and introduce variety: where are some walls being placed in the levels, or maybe multiple red atom explosions, or slow-mo fields, or something, anything? Then again, the game didn't keep me hooked, so perhaps the later levels did this? I wouldn't know.

I had hoped that the other game modes would change up things significantly, but no, they just change the properties of the game in a barely noticeable way (bounce) or in a completely idiotic way that screws you over (phase). I was really hoping that, as an example, bounce would be a game mode where the balls are affected by gravity and bounce around like superballs: at least then you might be challenged to place your green atom in a different manner since the pathing is different. Or maybe you could've made it so that the green atom bounces around, just anything more significant than that.

Maybe you can just chalk it up to me not being the target audience: maybe something about this might be addictive and fun to certain people like gamblers. Even I'll admit that it can be 'fun' to see the red atoms smack into your green atom: it sounds like bubble wrap being popped. But for me, it just felt like an incredibly lazy design that is padded and stretched thin with repetitive content and an unnecessary unbalanced grind on top.

[Folder Dungeon]

Pretty fun and addictive game that provides a fun little twist on the dungeon crawler genre with its amusing psuedo-OS theme! I particularly thought the heat system was quite novel as, stressful as it is, it provides some interesting decision-making where you need to decide whether it's worth it to say, loot a corpse, since it can generate so much in doing so! Similarly, the lack of exp and attack probability made it possible to employ different tactics for monsters besides attacking. It was certainly a fun adventure and impressive for a game jam game!

If I were to have some feedback:

*I found myself getting lost because I completely forgot about the marking system on right-click. I thought I only had to subsist on the dotted-line reminders for the last accessed folder. The marking mechanic probably would've stuck in my head better if the tutorial wasn't just a big ol' wall of text: images, examples, and so on would've been better here.

*Not a big issue, but I was a bit puzzled by some elements, like how health potions don't go into your inventory and are instead used immediately. Might've been good if there was some more labeling for what determines an inventory item. Additionally, maybe inventory should be relabled as equipment since it seemed to be used to only store relics.

*There were some missing OS interactions that I would've liked to have to make the experience feel authentic. For example, the back button isn't in a common location, you can't click on the file history to go straight to a certain folder, you can't move any of the windows around to rearrange things, you can't click X to close the instructions, and so on. Not a big issue, but it would've been nice for immersion.

*For some reason, it looks like the game is cut-off if you keep it in windowed mode: not sure if it's a problem on my end with the browser or if the setting you used for export were incorrect.

*There was a bit of a lacking sense of progression as everything looks the same: would've liked if there was a transition animation that played when you go to a new floor (like maybe the window closes and a new one opens up), or if the color of the OS would change from green to blue and so on, or something like that.

*It's a pretty short game, but it is a bit of a bummer that there is a save/continue option just in case.

[Hit Harder]

Oh man, I think there is a really cool stylish beat-em-up in here that has a Sifu-esque progression system and tons of cuh-razy combos and spectacle...but it's kind of hard to play and review it when the game is not sized appropriately and it cuts off part of the screen! Sure, even with the screen being clipped, from what I can tell it's pretty neato even if it is a bit mashy and confusing in terms of learning the controls for moves and understanding how stun/armor works, but yeah, hard to tell! Would love to revisit it if it gets fixed!

EDIT: Hey, you updated the game! I'm glad I was able to reach you: revisiting it now and being able to play it properly is awesome. Great beat-em-up you got here!

YollieDevving responds:

Thanks for notifying me about this game through twitter! I forgot I even made a newsgrounds account and didn't realize one of my games got frontpaged.... anyways, the screen issues are fixed now, to everyone, SORRY!

[Steel Surge: Revolution]

Wow, this is quite the cool SHMUP! Overall it feels very well-done in all respects: great enemy and boss design with lots of variety, well-paced wave structure, juicy explosive graphics, a nice bonus overclocked mode, and to top it off, a novel strategy of deploying your drone for focus fire. It's not exactly the most innovative SHMUP as it is pretty bog-standard in terms of mechanics with not much new, but it hits all the right notes for a good experience nonetheless: looking forward to seeing this built upon!

If I were to have any feedback, it would be that I did find the respawn mechanic a bit disorientating in how fast you recover, but it was nice in its own way. Rather, the part I want to focus on is the 'style' system, which I feel is neat since it pushes you to play in risky interesting ways, but feels bad that it is just relegated to points which can be easily ignored by players. Instead, it might be nice if doing stylish things actually gives you a tangible benefit, such as powering you up or giving you a bomb move if you keep it up. Even if you don't want to do that, at the very least, it'd be nice if you gain lives if you get points, meaning being stylish can get you lives quicker. Such things would increase player engagement and make the experience more unique and memorable, I think.

LokiStrikerDev responds:

Thank you for the lengthy feedback! Regarding scoring/style: It is definitely part of my focus to introduce extends/lives as part of scoring with the aim of making "scoring" a viable method for survival as well. The style system was introduced on the last 1/4 of development as it was more of a feedback to already existing systems. The idea it to keep developing this mechanic more and more throughout the stages, introducing both alternative score methods and also new ones. Beyond lives, I'm unsure if I want to introduce another reward method, but Ill leave that door open for seeing if something can go there.

I'm trying to stick closer to a ChoRenSha-type experience, so I'm trying to innovate in little ways while still holding true to a shmup experience with a fresh/evocative style. Once the game is closer to release, Ill be posting an additional demo, to see if I'm hitting all the right notes with the direction I'm taking. Thank you for the comment!

[Marty Mouse's Missing Millions]

Wow, this is a pretty neat arcade game! Overall it feels very polished, smooth, and vibrant with lots of flair to its presentation and special effects. Gameplay is some classic arcade fun with loads of interesting powerups and fast-paced collection while avoiding the various cats: lots of strategy to be had with bonuses for collecting certain groups of coins and utilizing powerups appropriately. I found it amusing that we're given a glimpse of the AI patterns of the various enemies, akin to the ghosts being introduced in Pac-Man. Fun stuff!

If I were to have some feedback, it would be thus:

*The game can almost be a bit too vibrant for its own good: visual clarity is lessened from all the visual noise which makes it difficult to keep track of important elements like enemies and powerups in your periphery. Loads of times I'd be ambushed by enemies that seemed to 'come out of nowhere'. I know, there are options to tune it down, but first impressions are important and it's the developers job to carefully curate what the default experience should be: you can't leave it all up to the players to make these calls.

*While the game does have levels, it looked like they didn't have any sort of consistency or sense of progression in complexity. In fact, they seemed randomized whenever you load into them, making me question what their point is? Just felt like they were very token and fake and perhaps the game should've just stuck with a classic arcade mode.

*I thought it was a bit weird that when you beat a level, you won't move on until you collect all of the bonus score items you might've spawned. I feel like it should be part of the challenge to collect those things before you win: a bit of a risk where the player must consider to stay in the level longer to get that bonus, or decide to abandon it if things are getting too dangerous.

[Golf Adventures! 2]

Pretty good mini golf game here! Overall it feels very smooth and well-presented, its got loads of content and variety, nice subtle touches like the sound quality, and has a surprising amount of quality-of-life options! Well done all-around!

While I am overall positive on the experience, I did encounter a few bumps along the road that I'd give as feedback:

*I don't know if it's just me being stupid, but I kept second-guessing myself and getting confused as to whether I was supposed to drag my mouse in front or behind the ball to power up the swing. For some reason, when I see that power bar stretch out from the ball, I see that as the club back-swing, not the intended path of the ball? Again, maybe it's just me, but I wonder if something about the visuals could be changed to make it more obvious.

*I did find it annoying that you don't have enough camera control to see the entire course at once, which makes it feel very unfair as you can't plan out your strategy. Sure you can zoom out the camera, but 1) I feel like it should be zoomed out by default and not make me do it everytime 2) zooming isn't enough to get a full picture as I need panning too and 3) using the mousewheel to zoom makes the browser window scroll because you didn't lock the cursor to the game.

*I felt like it was a bit tricky starting out? It's not that bad, but some of the early courses required some crazy level of precision (going up those hills and having to land in that tiny flat spot inbetween was terrible) that I felt should've been left for later courses once you've warmed up to the game.

*I'm not sure what the continue option is? Why is the next level, the obvious and most-used button you're going to select to continue with your adventure, not put at the top of the list for easy access?

Aleksander-Sats responds:

Thank you so much for really well detailed feedback! I really appreciate it! :D
So here is my response to all that! :)

"and has a surprising amount of quality-of-life options!" We are going to very soon actually release update v2.1.0 which is primarily a Quality of Life update, we are adding a bunch of nice improvements as well as fixing many bugs.

*I see. I didn't think people could get confused but Thanks for the feedback! I will try to make it more obvious which way you are shooting in 2.1.0! :)

*We are adding Freecam in 2.1.0 which you can access in the pause menu, it works great so far! 1) Personally we find the default zoom fine. it's how it is in the prequel so I guess the main reason is due to that. 2) We read into that issue where using the scroll-wheel causes the whole page to scroll. The last time we checked, it's an issue with the webpage and not our game and there isn't much we can do about it apparently. I did however find something else so perhaps it's fixable, well see. In any case if it isn't fixable, we already added a camera zoom slider so you don't have to go to settings for that due to this scrolling issue. 3)

*A bit tricky? Hmmm well we've done more than at least 10 full playthrough's to bug test everything and I don't find it tricky. That being said I am skilled versus a novice thanks to that so I can't really well tell sometimes. The main strategy is using walls and doing 45 degree angles. We have significantly improve the balance on the difficulties of levels compared to the prequel. Seriously the prequel is quite difficult (*cough* Ice 20 & Mech 30).. Anyway back to topic. Perhaps we can switch around the level order to smoothen the difficulty.

*The continue buttons main purpose is really to unpause. That being said you do have a fair point as there are many ways to unpause including pressing the same button you pause with. (Now that I am thinking about it, it is rather pointless.) I guess we will remove it.

[Rocket to the Top]

Oh, man, this is a rough one for me! I actually do quite like the challenge that this game brings and found myself getting a bit addicted to mastering the controls. But lord have mercy, the first impression was absolutely brutal, and 9 times out of 10 I probably would've noped out of this pronto! It's probably a testament to how good and polished the general presentation and feel of the game is that somehow compelled me to give it the benefit of the doubt and keep trying until I grew attached.

As said, the controls of this game are so hard to acclimate to: not only are they highly unorthodox, everything is just so fast and unwieldly, requiring such precise and light tippity-taps of the keys, culminating in a hopeless unrecoverable feeling if you stray even slightly. It cramps up my hands with how bloody delicate you need to be! Would love if everything was just slowed/powered down a bit overall to make controlling and adjustments easier.

In a way, while the game is quite challenging, it is forgiving, but I feel it does so in an awkward unsatisfying way. Typically a game like this would require you to clear the board of coins all in a single trip, with any crashes resetting the board. However, this game instead makes it so that only rubies are reset upon death, meaning that you could, as long as its within the time limit, make a bunch of separate suicidal runs to collect all the coins and then exit.

It's generous in a way, but death and frustration are much more so in this game with the method it chose, I think. I dunno about others, but I would prefer a game where I need to collect everything in a single run but the controls are much slower and smoother, than this game with unwieldly controls but you have as many runs as you want in a time limit. I know it's silly since the two methods kind of equal out, but it just feels better one way!

In terms of some quality of life, I wish there was a way to restart the level if you're in a 'dead man walking' state, aka you can see that you don't have enough time left to collect everything and make it to the exit. Also, would like a way to immediately retry/go back to a level you just beat: sometimes when I was trying to finish collecting everything I brushed past the exit and ended prematurely.

This one is definitely for the hardcore masochists!

platformalist responds:

Hi FutureCopLGF! Thanks so much for the thoughtful review <3

I agree that this game has appealed more to people on the hardcore side of things, and I'd be lying if I said that your response didn't mirror a few of my playtesters. Once I'd realized how tough the game was for folks unaccustomed to the controls, the game design was done and it didn't make a ton of sense to revisit and make the core of it easier (which would have required a full rework of ... well ... everything!). So it was like - polish this thing for the masochists to enjoy, get it out the door and make my next game easier!

Again, really appreciate your detailed, thoughtful review. :)

[RECURSION]

Pretty neat puzzle game! The concept is nice and gets iterated upon with lots of different obstacles, the presentation and warpy music have a sort of goofy yet mysterious charm to it, it's got some nice quality-of-life like forgiving hitbox collision, and so on: it's a solid short and sweet game that hooks you in effectively, so well done overall!

If I were to have any feedback:

*Some of the puzzle advancements and level design felt kind of silly. For example, the aspect of the finish line heart changing to have color outlines felt like a dumb trap 'gotcha' mechanic. Having to move through the long pipes by transitioning from one direction to another was also a bit awkward. In general, I felt like the middle portion of the game had some weird overly complex levels, then suddenly the final few levels had more straightforward and easier levels that I enjoyed involving the moving color-swapping balls: maybe the order could be rearranged for a better difficulty curve?

*It seems like you can exploit the game by moving diagonally? It requires some precision on your inputs as if you aren't exact it will switch the color, but if you make sure to press two directions at the same time, you can move through the level diagonally while keeping the colors the same the whole time. I was able to use this to skip a lot of elements that would've required me to route through the course differently.

*Would've loved if there was some sort of par score system, like getting medals for making it through a level with minimal color swapping: would've been fun to find the ultimate optimal route. Also, while the game is short, I would've liked a continue or level select option if you need to take a break.

*Ending was a bit of a bummer, though I'm not even sure what the story was in the first place, if there even was a story? It feels like there is, but it's very vague.

[Mini Over Game]

Hey, this was a pretty neat little arcade game you got here! The whole aspect of having to play multiple mini-games simultaneously was rather novel and challenging, and I enjoyed trying to juggle them as best as I could. I like the variety of games present (though I wish there were even more and it kept escalating further) and the general presentation and construction was polished. I also liked the little weird touches the game had, like the way you can click and hold on the title graphic to make it shrink and invert for some reason: felt like Mario 64, haha!

I definitely did have a bit of a rough time learning the game at first, as the game doesn't make the controls very apparent: for example, I didn't realize I had to switch to using AD when the third game popped-up as I assumed it was also going to use the arrow keys. It's be nice if the control prompts were made larger and were given clearer warning.

This is just me, but I also thought it would've been interesting if some of the games had overlapping/intersecting controls, like if they all had to be controlled with the arrow keys and you had to manage when that would clash in clever ways, but it's fine as it is: just food for thought!

Also, I'm not sure what difference the difficulty choices make: to be honest, they seemed to be the same to me, but maybe I'm missing something subtle.