FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pinokyo is depressed]

Wow, quite the interesting puzzle game you got here: the usage of Pinokyo's extending nose was rather inventive and I enjoyed seeing the twists and turns it added as the game progressed! Puzzles were really well-designed and it felt like they intuitively tutorialized all of the tips you needed to learn well. Apart from that, the game was also decently juicy and smooth-feeling, and had some nice humor with all the quips that came up and the amusing ending.

While I enjoyed my time overall, I was a bit conflicted about the mechanic where you can shorten Pinokyo's nose by snapping it during a turn.

Part of me likes the mechanic in theory since it not only adds another layer to the puzzles to think about, but it also provides the player a bit of wiggle-room where they can recover from a slight error, similar to platformers which let you get a bit more distance or change your direction slightly during a jump by punching or kicking in mid-air.

However, whenever I needed to shorten my nose, it kinda felt like cheating, like I shouldn't be doing it. I think it was due to the fact that a) the initial puzzles and theme set a precedent that you gotta live with your lengthens and b) getting the nose to snap to a shorter length felt really fiddly and hard to pull off: I'd just mash the jump and turn keys and eventually it would happen. It just felt awkward.

Ideally, I think the puzzles should be built around not being able to shorten your nose: lengthening the nose should be a careful consideration as the player needs to decide when to lengthen it and how long to make it without getting stuck, planning their whole trip out. It makes sense since the puzzle rooms are so short and the nose is reset every room: getting stuck with a too long nose would only ever put you back a few seconds. But I could be wishing for something that I'd regret getting, perhaps, haha! Well, it's food for thought!

A short and sweet adventure that, while I enjoyed it, would've loved to see even more twists and mechanics get introduced!

[EGG DROP ONLINE]

Hey, this is a pretty cute little game: it's like a bullet-hell chicken version of Tetris 99!

I wasn't able to test out the online portion due to not getting any connections unfortunately, but I was very happy to see that the game was completely enjoyable solo with bots, so thanks muchly for taking the effort to include that! Felt like the game was well-crafted overall and very intuitive, thanks to the short and sweet tutorial and helpful in-gameplay tips like popups that explain powerups and the targetter at the bottom of the screen.

I liked the strategy and progression behind the game where, as a newbie, you can just aim eggs using the target at the bottom of the screen, but if you are good enough, you can aim using the side screen which provides more information at the risk of splitting your attention (for example, looking at the side screen could show up where your opponents powerups are and you can fire at those to trap them). Speaking of powerups, the large variety added a lot of fun to the game as well.

All in all feels like a solid concept with a solid execution. I'm not much of a multiplayer guy but I felt like this hit that sweet spot of a simple-to-grasp-but-hard-to-master party game and left me with a good impression. I'm not sure about the long-term viability of something like this as it might need more game modes and it could maybe stand to be a bit more juicy and satisfying with its feedback as some events like KOing players felt like they happened without me even noticing, but it was nice.

[Paraiso]

Wow, what a wonderful adventure you got here! Felt like this was very well-constructed and was firing on all cylinders: great simple premise, wonderfully animated and comical cutscenes, juicy graphics and effects, smooth and interesting control setup that allows for strategic use of two differently powered jumps, tons of challenging obstacles to overcome along with tons of secrets to uncover for the attentive player, some very elaborate and exciting bosses/setpieces, a large variety of mechanics that kept getting introduced to keep things fresh, and so on and so forth! I couldn't help but get addicted and play this all the way to the end in one sitting (and thank god I did because I would've been real annoyed to realize it doesn't save your progress!)

In terms of feedback for improvement, in addition to the note that there really should be a save/continue feature as mentioned above (I know it's short but it's not that short), there were some instances of strange sound issues: whenever you'd go into water, the music would suddenly only come out of the right side from then on with sound coming only out of the left, even after leaving the water, and it will only reset to normal when a new track comes on eventually.

Also, as much as I did enjoy the adventure, it did feel oddly paced at times: the battle with Bowser and the chase scene feels incredibly climatic despite being so early on, only for the game to continue on afterwards with normal puzzles, until another less climatic Pacman boss fight, then a sudden downer bad ending. I felt like the game could've been twice as long to give some new mechanics like the fans and such more time to breathe as they go by so fast, but perhaps it is best to keep it short and sweet. Well, it was sweet, but again, the downer bad ending was quite a sour note that did leave me a bit let-down.

...is what I would say, if I didn't end up playing it again and discovering that secret challenge path if you avoid collecting the goblet in the first place. What an awesome easter egg! I almost gave up due to annoyance from having my inputs screwed up by the freeze from the roars which felt very unfair, but I persisted and got the good ending in the end! Always love a challenge like that, just like how I loved all the challenge rooms for the secret treasures as well!

Again, great work on this: I had a blast and would've loved if there was even more to this game, but it is very good already, and I will just await whatever next big entry from you in the future!

["Loss" Collab!]

Heh, interesting little art collab! Very amusing to see so many different takes on Loss: had a lot of fun going through and seeing how closely or how loosely the artists stuck with the theme.

While it's all very nice, I do wish the collab presentation was a bit more unique and had a bit more effort put into it, as what we have here is what I'd consider the boring 'default' slideshow presentation: considering it's based off of a webcomic, it'd be nice if the presentation was done in a more creative comic-esque format, at the very least. I'm sure you guys could think up something way more creative than that, and it'd be worth the effort as I think it would get a lot more people engaged and sticking around to see all the pieces.

Moving on from that, I do wish this gallery had a bit more features. For one, it'd be great to have some sort of zoom function as a lot of the pieces are very tiny, which makes it difficult to see some of the more intricate details. Also, I'd love it if you could click on a user's name to go to their page, as well as being able to click on the art piece to see it's page on Newgrounds: by doing this and making it so easy, more people would potentially follow or engage with artists they like, which I think should be the primary goal for these collabs in the first place.

Anyway, putting all that aside, your hearts in the right place, and it's always wonderful to see collabs like this!

B^U

RustiTank responds:

i aint reading allat

[Mine Sweeper]

I mean, it's cute, but it's not really a game, more a one-off joke that you have a small chuckle at before moving on, and therefore I don't think it works well when put standalone like this.

Encountering it within Binbows makes sense as it becomes a fun easter egg you found in your search, but when standalone like this, it makes me expect a lot more from it, like more levels and obstacles, and therefore I feel let-down when it's just a single level and the sweeping feels so glitchy and awkward.

Don't get me wrong, while the joke would work just based on the title and picture alone with no gameplay, it is nice that it goes the extra step forward in selling the joke by being a fully-functional game. Credit where its due, and all that.

I'm probably overthinking this and going too deep into context and all that jazz. It's perfectly fine to have this preserved standalone as it was from Binbows. Hopefully you can just take it as a compliment that it got my hopes up and made me want more from it!

[Half Hour Hexagon]

Not too shabby of a survivors game! While the minimalistic presentation might seem low-effort on first glance, I think there is actually a lot of charm, style and juice put into so many facets of this that elevates it considerably and makes it feel so lively and smooth! Definitely makes a solid first impression that got me excited to see how the gameplay evolves.

Having said all that though, while it did have a strong first impression, it didn't take too long for me to get quite bored and feel like switching off:

*So much of the gameplay was just being chased by this braindead spongey cloud of enemies that can be easily avoided by running circles around it: never feels like I'm making any sort of progress as whenever I kill something, more enemies get added to the cloud to replace them.

*There were technically a lot of different enemy types, sure, but they were all the practically the same with no different AI patterns to make you strategize or think: any statistical differences they have become moot as they all just become one with the cloud.

*Upgrades/levels came very slowly and were terribly unexciting due to most of the upgrades being boring passive statistical upgrades like bullet speed or movement speed. Eventually I get some interesting stuff like fire bullets or ice shield, but they were few and far between: by the time they showed up I was already ready to quit from boredom, and afterwards it was back to those boring passives being the only options available.

*Similar to upgrades, I was really hoping for more interesting events to happen, like bosses or new different enemy types or sudden bullet barrages to dodge and so on. The game did eventually have a cage event which was quite exciting, but again, it was so little, took so long to happen and only lasted a bit before the game devolved once again into just circling around and plinking away at the cloud.

*The final nail in the coffin was me playing for around 15 mins and only getting $86, which was not even half the amount needed to get a single permanent upgrade: talk about a motivation killer! Usually games make getting the first upgrade very easy so you can get a taste of the process. The amount of grind that you're asking for is crazy to me, especially considering how repetitive and simple the gameplay is. The upgrades didn't seem very interesting either: just more passive number tweaks instead of fun gameplay additions like new abilities.

I don't necessarily think this is bad, but it's just very basic nowadays, like a prototype or a student project. This might've been cool back in the day, but with other free survivors games like Holocure raising the bar, this unfortunately falls short. Still, if I were to view it in a vacuum, I do think it shows a lot of promise and good craftsmanship/presentation: just needs more oomph.

[Heliox Station]

Wow, solid little puzzler you got here! Felt very well constructed all-around: movement felt very juicy, well-animated and smooth, puzzle elements felt very intuitive and varied, and the general presentation and world had a cool sense of mystique to it. With such good gamefeel and fun brain-scratcher puzzles that kept escalating, as well as that bit of an intriguing story hook and cool atmosphere, it was very simple for me to get addicted and blast through this!

While character movement was generally smooth and well-animated, there were definitely some oddities. The character physics were a bit wacky at times, with the jump feeling both very floaty on initial jump and very heavy on falling, and in general the little guy felt a bit too fast which made some puzzles, such as the fan puzzles, a bit tricky to be precise in your movements. The walljump/cling interaction was particularly terrible as well with how the little guy just floats a few feet away from the wall, awkwardly leaning in mid-air in the opposite direction: you'd think at the very least he'd lean into the wall and make contact with it for the sliding to make any sense!

While I did like the puzzles a lot, I will admit that the difficulty curve was a bit wild due to some real crazy spikes here and there. One of the earlier spikes for me was where you need to put a mirror box on top of a box and then resummon the box to drop the mirror box: stumped me for quite some time as I don't think any puzzle before that set any sort of precedent for any of those new techniques of stacking boxes or resummoning as a trigger or whatever to serve as a hint to work from. I didn't mind the spikes so much as they did spice things up and I was surprised at how much some puzzles pushed outside-the-box thinking and wanted more of that, but outside of those instances, things were pretty easy, so it was a weird mixture of severe ups and downs.

There were a couple of other weird things, like there was a moving platform where if you stand on it, you're fine, but if you stand on a box on the moving platform, you won't follow it and instead fall off, and I also found the lasers a bit fiddly and annoying with how too precise they were due to them bouncing at the exact spot of contact instead of just generalizing towards the center of the block for consistency. But overall I had a great time and got all the way to the end: cheers for this!

[Odd Verdure]

Wow, considering how often GB games feel so janky and stuttery to me, I was really surprised at how incredibly smooth and fluid this game felt! Not only did the game feel so nice, the gameplay was really cool as well: I'm always a sucker for grapple-based games, and this was a nice plant-based Bionic Commando that I really enjoyed getting more skilled at pulling off complex grapple manuevers!

It was a little awkward to get used to the game initially. At first I thought the game was similar to something like Dustforce or Mario 64 where you collect flies to open up doors to levels, but then it was a bit awkward to find that within those doors was just more of the same instead of something different. Furthermore, it was a bit frustrating with how easy it was for the plant to bump into things and then get stuck in this looooong stunned state where all you can do is fall: wish there was just a bit more wiggle-room to get close to things without being stunned.

I do like the game, but I had to admit that it was starting to feel quite repetitive and a bit draining. My favorite parts was when I was pulling off some really challenging grapple moves that required skill and timing to get flies, but those moments were very far and few between: most of the time flies were easy to get and just required plodding across the large map, and what flies were actually difficult could be skipped due to not needing to get them all. There was just so much backtracking or dead ends as well that exhausted me: I wish the game felt more like a classic linear level with obstacles and pits instead of this open world, because at least when I fall into a pit I'll just respawn in front of the obstacle, whereas here I have to awkwardly trudge my way back to try again. Basically I was looking for sprints but this game was cross-country: still ok but not quite what I wanted, and that's fine.

EDIT: Went back and enjoyed my playthrough with a bit more practice, and was really pleased to see the challenge rooms afterwards! Just what I wanted!

MondayHopscotch responds:

Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed review! In our own playtesting during dev, I think if you try to improve your completion time, you may find more situations that appeal to your enjoyment of challenging grapple moves. A lot of the most complicated movement options really show up when attempting to optimize speed runs. But I also understand that not everyone wants to come at it from a speedrun direction.

Bionic Commando was definitely an inspiration for this game :)

[Paper Planet DEMO]

Pretty cool game! Overall felt like the game had a nice, addictive, 'simple to learn, difficult to master' vibe to it: felt great to blast away at ships, use the shields to block red bullets, and decide between moving side-to-side or teleporting depending on the situation. Great variety of enemies and upgrades, cool boss fights, great juicy graphics, intuitive and helpful symbols/colors and guides like the position highlighter, lively animations for both in-game and the menus, and gotta love that charming old-school Flash aesthetic as well: well-done all around!

If I were to offer any feedback for improvement, it would be thus:

Menus were a bit awkward and buggy in some cases. Overall I'd love if the buttons would react a bit more dramatically on hover, like becoming bigger and another color: right now all they do is sometimes turn a bit more grey, or not even react at all. Certain interactions also bug out, like if you select 'start game', but then use one of the menu shortcuts before picking a game mode, the two game options will remain on screen, whereas if you use the arrows, it will make the two game options disappear.

I found it a bit frustrating that while some of the item descriptions tell you what they do, such as increasing fire rate but decreasing damage, other item descriptions will just offer some sort of cryptic quote. Yes, it can be somewhat amusing and add to the mystique, but I'd prefer if you'd just go all in one way or the other: either have them all be cryptic or all be informative (with me leaning towards informative).

The shop option, while very neat and unique with the way it is done in-game by shooting at the various purchase choices, can be a little awkward and had me sometimes just wanting a more classic menu: I'd have times where I would overshoot money at an option and then have to wait for it to come back before I could purchase something else, and other times the continue option would take so much unnecessary ammo to activate. I do really like the implementation in theory, though, as its very charming, so I could live with it if it remains as-is.

I found it a bit strange that, despite selecting 'story' mode, there was no story. Not sure if it's not present for the demo for some reason, which is a shame as that would be the primary hook for me.

For the most part, everything is very clear and visible with important aspects being color-coded, but as the gameplay went on and I started to be able to fire more bullets and flood the screen, it became more difficult to track things, primarily being due to my bullets being a similar shape and color to basic enemy planes: maybe some more differentiation would be nice, like enemies always have a certain colored outline.

There's also a lot of weirdness that came due to rebindable controls. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have rebindable controls, but when you're playing the game, the in-game tutorial will still be based on the default controls (so for example, it will still say 'A' and 'D' at the beginning despite me switching it to arrows keys). Furthermore, while the tutorial menu uses the rebindable keys, it uses weird language like 'Mouse0' and 'Mouse1' instead of Left Click and Right Click, or those nice mouse symbols that are used in the in-game tutorial. Basically I wish the tutorial would be as nice looking as the in-game one, but respect the rebinded controls like the menu one.

Finally, as much as I do like the game and have fun with it, I'm just not sure whether it feels like something I would actually spend money on. Arcade/score-attack games like this always feel difficult to spend big money on since they can feel so short-lived due to a lack of long-term progression or story hook, and not to mention that there are so many other games of this ilk vying for competition, with many of them even being free. Best of luck, though!

[Trust Issues]

Hmm, to me this really feels like a case of a great game concept, but executed in a rather unsatisfying, frustrating and confusing manner.

As said, I really like the idea of being in this awkward mexican standoff with a bunch of people who could or could not draw and start shooting at you at any moment. Moving around near yellows while trying to keep some cover between you and them, ready to fire off when they turn red, makes for some tense reactive scenarios. Reminds me a lot of things like various SWAT/police games where you need to make sure you only shoot if lethal force is warranted, or Watchdogs with its minigame where you have to time your superhero entrance to catch criminals in the act: not too early and not too late.

However, the gameplay was awkward on several levels. First, a lot of the game felt very clunky to control: shoot-outs with red guys almost always ended with my bullets going into walls that they shouldn't have collided with, or hitting two people standing nearby each other leading to unfair deductions, and/or with me taking unavoidable damage unless I tried to awkwardly snipe them from across the room. I can understand the game making the player slow and having to stand still to aim in a tactical sense, but it just felt so stifling and led to gunfights where it just feels up to luck: there needs to be a better way to intuit or react to reds, I feel.

Secondly, the rules/design of the game was confusing as well. You'd think that people would only turn yellow/red if they've got their eyes on you and are in close proximity, but no, they'll do it despite being on the opposite side of the level, making it just feel random and silly and prime for 'laming it out' by waiting out-of-sight to determine who is red and only popping out to snipe them safely. Taking this into account, you'd think that you could reasonably use the fact that someone has turned red once to treat them as red forever, even if they turn back to grey, similar to sussing out an impostor in Among Us, but no, if you try to shoot someone who was red but has gone grey again, they won't take damage for some reason, and if they're yellow, they could be treated as 'innocent' despite them being red before! I suppose you could argue that I'm misinterpreting the rules, that it's not good enough to shoot them based on their previous intentions, but only if you catch them red-handed in the moment, but it just felt really unintuitive. Are reds a pre-determined set of people within the crowd, or does anyone in the crowd have the potential to turn red? I just didn't know.

Would definitely like to see this concept revisited!

MoeAnguish responds:

Thanks for your feedback!
Like some other people have commented, the "Mexican standoff" thing can be pretty difficult especially in crowded levels, and to me personally it felt like an interesting concept, but i understand it isn't for everyone.

As for the reds turning grey again, i actually tried to keep them red. But the difficulty increased a lot to the point where it's almost unbeatable since you might have like 5 reds in one area preventing you from going to certain places or finding cover. And as for them turning yellow again, i thought it should be something that should keep you alert but you can't trust that it WILL mean they'll attack you, to make things a bit more tense.

At this point i might actually revise this game and make another installment of it with the feedback i got. But for now, i thank you and everyone else who offered constructive criticism and feedback on the game!