FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Boo! Bark!]

Cute little game! I found the very physical slingshot pull-and-release mechanics very intuitive, fun and addictive to pull off, and the way you combined this with the theming of a dog pulling on a leash was a stroke of creative genius. Further combine this with great graphics and sound, a nice assortment of enemies to deal with, and other nice touches, and you've got a nice game, and even more so a great game jam result! Impressive stuff overall.

The only thing I felt a bit letdown with was the barking: it feels like it gets overshadowed as its power is very lacking compared to the dashes and I might've liked if there were certain enemies that were weak against it to create even more strategy...but it is still fun to press!

One thing to note is that I had a lot more fun when I switched over to controller: not only do analog sticks allow you to aim more accurately, but the physicality of pulling the stick back and letting go is more in-sync with the slingshot feel of the leash, creating a more satisfying connection of player and game. I wouldn't be surprised if people who play this with the controller would rate it higher: I know I did!

[Commission Hell]

Hmm, felt kinda let-down by this one, unfortunately. Perhaps it's unfair of me to hold it up to expectations I had, but for a game that's seemingly about drawing commissions and does offer you the ability to draw, I was disappointed that so much of the gameplay involved the placement of pre-drawn stamps instead.

Don't get me wrong, I can understand how difficult it might be to create an algorithm that can tell what you've drawn accurately, so I can see why you might've opted to use stamps in their place. But it just felt so creatively stifling, with so many of the puzzles being solved by randomly scribbling some color and sticking some stamps on, instead of actually needing to think about composition. Hell, even with the stamps reducing the algorithm complexity, I still found the requirement detecting terrible nonetheless: for example, I had an instance where it said I had stamps overlapping when they weren't even close to doing so, and I had another instance where it treated the color underneath a stamp as something to account for in percentages when it shouldn't.

The humor felt quite off to me as well, with most of the commissioners being just non-sequitur goofball morons with no common theming. Considering the game is called a commission 'hell', I expected to have a lot more of the commissioners themed around unreasonable demands, or sudden additions to requirements that completely ruin what you've been working on so far, all of which could be used to create some fun improvisational problem-solving gameplay. Heck, you could even make it so that success isn't possible: make it something akin to drawing puzzles in 'The Looker', perhaps, where they are never satisfied.

One thing I was very impressed with was the whole multiplayer aspect where you can see other people's drawings: as it is now, it unfortunately showcases exactly what I'm talking about where the drawings are just generally scribbles with stamps with no actual design since that's what the game accepts. However, if I had my way, I think I'd lean into that as the primary focus: throw out the stamps and throw out the game grading your paintings, and instead make it so that other people judge your commissions instead, similar to a game of Gartic Phone. This way you don't have to create an algorithm for judging since people will be doing it, and this way you don't need to have dumb stamps, instead allowing people to creatively draw and also being able to create more wild and creative requirements since you aren't limited to percentages and such.

Basically, I think this is a case of a really good concept just executed very poorly: if you were to just rearrange what you have and shift focus, though, I think there is something really promising buried in here.

[Featherless-Cake Delivery!]

Hmmm, this was a rough one for me! I really want to like it: the game makes a solid first impression with wonderful graphics and a cute world filled with amusing characters, and the idea of making these deliveries while also exploring to acquire upgrades to handle all the obstacles that get in the way of said deliveries was quaint.

So much got in the way of the adventure though!

First and foremost, the game just feels really stiff and laggy. General movement and actions just felt really awkward with strange delays and ignored inputs: felt like I needed to be overly slow and delicate with the game, like it wouldn't be able to keep up and break if I was to play naturally. There were tons of weird events such as, if you break a pot with a heart in it, the space where the pot is will still awkwardly block your movement until the shattering animation and heart has disappeared.

The game was also rather confusing and unintuitive. Why is a furball projectile, something that's technically very soft, necessary to destroy crates, when you'd think that would be handled with stronger melee attacks? If anything, I feel projectiles are best used to hit out-of-reach buttons or something akin to that. Also couldn't there have been some sort of hint that a sponge could be given to the frog, like maybe having the frog say something like 'oh i can't help you right now, i have a massive spill to clean up': I only gave them the sponge out of random desperation. And why is there no interaction prompt above the bunny cop when there is over everyone else, especially considering how important it is to talk to them?

As if that wasn't enough, the game also descends into outright being buggy and glitchy. I had plenty of times where an enemy would be invincible against my attacks for no reason. I found it incredibly awkward how when you pause or look at the map, when you go back to the game, the level will have reset to have everything back in their starting positions instead of preserving where they were. Speaking of pausing, my game eventually crashed when I tried to switch from the map to the pause menu too quickly, and when I reset, suddenly I was locked in a state where I had already finished my deliveries yet still hadn't delivered to anyone...and my jump was suddenly really powerful?

I think it could be a nice game with some more time in the oven: right now it is simply too janky. Not sure how much of it is limitations of the GB Studio engine, but as much as I can sympathize if that's the case, what feels bad is bad, no matter what the excuse.

Elv13s responds:

in my testing the game i havent encountered any lag or slowdown, unless theres more enemies and projectiles on screen. i dont know if the lag is an issue with the game itself, as ive checked with other browsers/emulators.

yeah the pot/heart sprites share collisions so im at fault for not fixing that part. but i feel like the movement and inputs are fine in my part, will tweak them in the future when this game is gonna be a full game eventually.

the furball is a projectile that so happens to be overpowered, in the future, i will reverse the tail and furball's function so its a bit "realistic".

the hint on the sponge was the frog's animation is he's scrubbing the fish tanks, it was supposed to be a "so this is where i needed it" moment, and the game doesnt really lock you in progression if yuou dont notice it at first, the game is open enough that you can just do the frog mission last, but yeah ill have the rog say lines that he needs it in the future.

the level resets every time you switch scenes because its the enemies arent really killed ion the game, just stunned.

oh there was a bug like that? thanks for pointing that out,

thanks for playing the game and giving feedback, i promise ill strive to e a better dev

[Blockade Burst 95]

A solid puzzle game! Overall the game feels very intuitive and well-constructed with all of the fundamentals for a good puzzler: for example, I was glad to see that combos and matches felt satisfying to pull off, what with the great freeze/explosion on match, pitched-up sounds as your combo rises, and so on. While my brain isn't capable of understanding the 'closest-wall-magnetism' mechanic enough to use it to its fullest, I still found it very memorable to try and grasp the mechanic as best as I can while going for a high score. Loved the extra touches you put in that add a little bit of juice, like the button-check/tutorial sequence at the start, and the animated title screen. While it is overall a bit generic and not necessarily something that's gonna rock the world, I found it quite impressive to have put this all together for a game jam, and overall an interesting puzzle mechanic that could be iterated upon!

[Mírame]

Wow, what an incredible game! Absolutely blew me away, just like the darkness got blown away by my drifting backblasts!

I gotta admit, it took me a bit to see just how incredible this game was: not only did I have a weird bug with Chrome where this game was really laggy until I updated, but I also took an embarrassingly long time to figure out the drift mechanic, with me just riding around and trying to dodge as much as I can before that. I know you show the controls at the start, but it was very brief and I didn't quite catch it: maybe it could stand to be re-explained at the start, haha. Now, the game was still really good even before the drift mechanic, what with its really slick and smooth presentation and feel, but it stepped it up to another level once I figured it all out.

The gameplay is just so damn cool, strategic, and intoxicating. I love drifting to light enemies on fire which can create a satisfying chain reaction, I love choosing to commit into a drift to build up enough heat to blast off a whole wave of bats, I love the sounds, I love everything! The fact that drifting being your means of attack means that you need to race towards danger in order to attack is such a clever design: big risk for big stylish rewards! The way the game evolves over time with new enemy types that force you to stay on your toes and use techniques like the backblast, alongside the music slowly getting more epic to match the increase in intensity, augh, I can't even describe it effectively, its just cool, cool, cool, and even though beating it can be a serious time commitment with how far deaths put you back, I couldn't help but want to keep playing more!

If I were to have some complaints, I would say that there is a weird input/control issue that involves drifting when getting hit: for some reason, sometimes the game will ignore my attempts to end the drift, leaving me stuck drifting until I press again and let go a second time. This did occasionally lead to dying and felt incredibly unfair: I'd say it might be intentional, but it didn't happen all of the time, so I think it was just a bug where perhaps the slight freeze where you get hit creates a brief time period where the code ignores input changes. Oh, and I also wish the game had a full screen option, as with how it is now, parts of the screen get cut-off since I can't fit it all in the browser window.

[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.

MWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM 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.