FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rumbleweed]

Hah, a rather charmingly silly game! Overall it's quite the fun shooter experience, having a goofy but intriguing premise and control scheme, lots of guns to play around with both in shooting and combine, a good sense of escalation as new enemy types are introduced, and amusing little touches like all the combat barks from enemies. A solid game jam result in my book!

It's a silly complaint, but if I were to have any complaints, I do feel like the game lost something as it went on. I liked in the beginning where there's a lot of difficulty in aiming at people while also dodging their fire: it was very unique and a challenge to get used to, similar to other fumblecore games. Later on when you've got a bunch of weapons strapped to you pointing every which way, suddenly you don't need to worry about aiming as it basically turns into a survivors-like where you only need to focus on movement and firing becomes essentially automated. There is recoil to manage but it's rather negligible. Again, I don't know if it would make the game better or worse, it's just something that came to me and maybe something to think about.

[SymmetryCats DEMO]

This is pretty cool! It's exactly what I expected and wanted from the title and thumbnail, being a mind-bending puzzle game about a pair of cute cats in mirror dimensions. I feel like it does a great job at escalating the difficulty as it introduces more tricks and new mechanics to the levels, and it really kept me on my toes and wanting to see what's next. Very nice!

It's nice and I don't believe I encountered any major issues, but if I were to have any feedback:

*I took a break and was planning to come back to finish it, only to realize it didn't save my progress! Definitely feel like it needs to save progress and offer a level select.

*Wish the levels that have spike-flipping had some sort of signal to let you more easily track when they are going to flip, like a rhythmic sound effect, or maybe a shaky animation telegraph.

*The music is quite monotonous: wish it would change up as you progress and/or be more complex in general.

CleitonEldorn responds:

All of this is gonna be on the final version, the music, save and level selection were already on the plans, and I like the flip platforms feedback.

[Creature Collab 2024]

Wow, this is a pretty cool collab! I love the creativity behind turning it into a pokemon-esque gacha game where you get to experiment with all sorts of combinations and evolutions: very addictive stuff! I'm glad to see a lot of good quality-of-life as well, such as being able to speed-up animations, saving progress, and clicking on artist names to go to their profiles. Great work!

For feedback, I got this:

*For the most part, the combinations of DNA made creatures that fit the parameters, but there were a few weird exceptions here and there that confused me and made me think it was all just random (though thinking about it, I guess those few exceptions were the failures, so maybe it all makes sense)

*I like that you can click on an artist's name to go to their profile, but it's weird that you can't do it on the combination screen, only within the pokedex. Also its not immediately apparent that it's a link since it doesn't react or change when you hover over it.

*I really wish the various actions in the game were a bit more juicy and cool, similar to the fancy animations you see employed in gacha games for summons. At the very least, it's absolutely begging for more sounds to be used: I wanna hear the bubbly swoosh of DNA getting injected, all sorts of clanking and steam and electricity and bubbles for creatures getting made, the flames of the incinerator and the screams of failures as I delete them, and so on! It's asking a lot, but I'd love individual barks/cries for each of the creatures as well.

*Some quality-of-life suggestions: a filter button on the lists to show unlocked entries so you don't need to scroll to past all the ones you haven't unlocked, as well as sorting options for ordering by name, artist, etc. Also, as much as it goes against the nature of the game, it'd be nice if there was a secret option to 'unlock all' so you could just view everything in your pokedex without unlocking it one-by-one.

*I don't know if I fully understand the whole supplementary evolution process: it's neat, and perhaps helpful in some way, but I think it just overcomplicates things and maybe it'd be better if it was just the DNA combination machine only.

[Slimeslinger]

Fun little game! It's rather simplistic, doesn't have much meat on its bones and feels a bit dry due to the lack of music, but the feedback for combat is very juicy and explosive, which when combined with the wacky arsenal of weapons you get to use, creates some chaotic fun. I like the strategy of being careful not too blow up too many nests so as to not generate more enemies than you could handle, as well as chaining level ups to keep you in a powerful state. Not too shabby!

Unfortunately its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, being its chaotic combat. Getting good at chaining level ups to keep yourself equipped with powerful weapons is great, but it stinks when everything's exploding and you can barely tell what's going on anymore, and your weapons have turned into a crazy roulette from all the level-ups where you can get screwed over if you weapon suddenly changes into something else too quickly, like when you get the melee weapon and go in to attack and suddenly now you're carrying a heavy ranged weapon and boom, you're dead. It's part of the challenge, sure, but it nevertheless can feel frustrating.

KingStache responds:

thanks for the feedback!

[Balls, Dice & Stickers]

Huh, pretty interesting game! Reminds me a lot of games like Balatro, Luck Be A Landlord, Peggle and so on, as it's got a certain gambling appeal to it. Overall the game seems very promising: the presentation is polished and charming, the core loop is simple but addicting, there's some good informative feedback through effects like number pop-ups as well as the log, there's some cute affectations like being able to interact with the portraits, and there's a lot of strategic potential in aiming and equipping your dice. Very nice!

It's very promising for an alpha, so in the interest of helping, here's my feedback:

*I wish there was a tutorial because there was a lot of aspects that took me a long time to learn. For example, I had no idea what the aiming cone was or why aiming away from it gave a bonus, until I learned that the golden dead center seems to always be an optimal calculated shot. It's also so difficult to keep track of all the numbers popping up and the reasons behind them, like how once you hit all the dice it triggers all of them again (I think?). In general things happen so fast and it can make things unclear: I didn't even realize the dice were rolling since they stay still and instantly change without some sort of animation for it.

*It's a bummer that you can only read the last lines of the log. I wish I could scroll through the log to be able to review everything that's happened as it would really help me understand.

*Maybe it's part of the appeal or maybe I'm just not good enough to see the game at a deeper level yet, but it does feel like the game is so wacky and chaotic that it's practically all up to luck. I like it when there is some sort of strategy or improvisation skill I can get better at, and while this flirts at it with all the sticker effects and aiming, it feels ultimately uncontrollable, so should I really put in any effort beyond just randomly applying stickers and always aiming dead center and hoping for the best? At that rate, it just turns into a slot machine where I keep cranking it blindly, and that isn't my jam (but I can see the appeal, so it's up to you).

*In order to better grasp everything that's happening and feel rewarded when you get something special to happen, I'd suggest that the game pause or go into slow-mo at critical moments such as when you hit all the dice or trigger a synergistic sticker effect to highlight them. Obviously this comes at the risk of becoming tedious in later rounds when so much is happening and you're used to it already, so I'd suggest adding a 'fast-foward' function, and that the current gameplay should be this 'fast-forward' mode.

*The game is already pretty juicy and satisfying, but it nevertheless still has a rather dry feel to it due to the plain black background, lack of music, and lack of distinguishing/rewarding the act of pulling off rare events. Gambling is all about the jangling keys, so jangle them even harder with increasingly pitch-shifted sounds and all that jazz!

bilgetbd responds:

thank you so much for playing and detailed feedback!!

[Aestheta Classic]

Pretty neat tower-defense roguelike-deckbuilder RTS thingy you got here! Kinda reminds me of Lords of Verminion (mostly because I'm not familiar with Clash Royale, which I assume is the closer approximation). I liked the diversity of all the teams since it allowed for some interesting replayability from experimentation, and the game was very charming as well with the amusing interactions and cute art.

It's fun, but I'm not sure if it's as balanced as I'd like, nor open enough to strategies beyond saving up for a zerg rush, especially due to the short match length. There are some slight quibbles as well like how you can't see card info/level during a battle, and it's a bit awkward in how you can't drag and drop cards onto the field, but are instead forced to click to pick them up and then click again to place.

[UpSlash]

Hmm, bit of a mixed bag! I think the game plays with some promising ideas such as only being able to attack upwards and your head serving as your shield and weapon, but it doesn't have enough time to expand upon these ideas in interesting ways. The boss fight is pretty cool, but the combat against mooks was rather repetitive, especially because of needing to take time to lure enemies back up so you can take a swing at them from below again. It also suffers from some graphical issues like improper sprite layering which can make combat difficult to parse. For a game jam, it was an ok attempt in my books!

[Lonely Duck]

Hmm, it's a pretty decent puzzle game with good presentation and solid construction and all that...but I didn't find it that interesting. It's not that I hate it or anything, I could still see myself playing it just fine, but it just doesn't really stand out in any interesting way and is just more of the same ol' sliding puzzles you can get anywhere else...but with ducks.

If there was one thing that disappointed me above all else, it's that I feel like the puzzle elements don't fit with the theming at all. You'd think that the puzzles would each end with the duck joining up with one of the flock, or even better, if the puzzle mechanics involved doing something like moving two ducks across the board to reunite side-by-side. But no, it just has a duck pressing buttons and bumping into boxes for some reason: what does that have to do with being a lonely duck? It just feels shallow.

[VAMPIR NYMPH]

Not bad! While I don't think it executed it as strongly as I'd like (the start is rather slow and boring, and the color switching mechanic isn't as interesting as it could be since all types play the same) the core concept of juggling all these various resources/aspects of defending the nymph while simultaneously feeding it your own health is exciting and fun! And then when you add nice graphics, juicy effects, and the strong motivation of booba to it all, hoo doggy!

As a side note, how the heck did I miss Gruel? I'll need to check that out!

My best time so far is 5:30.

[Five Day Detective: Browser Version]

Not too shabby of an old-school adventure game! Reminds me of classics like Police Quest and Monkey Island and so on and so forth. I like that it portrays a less glamorous insider view of the police: gives the game a rather unique vibe to it.

For the most part I had a good time, but I'll admit that there were a lot of rough edges and points of confusion during my adventure that I feel could be fixed up:

*I hate it when I'm trying to examine an item in my inventory, but since I'm close to an interact point, it ends up trying to use it instead of examine it, and I have to walk around until I find a free space. The addition of an 'examine' action would be helpful.

*The movement system is a bit awkward and unresponsive: I'd be trying to turn around and sometimes my character would take an extra step before doing so.

*I feel like it needs to give better hints at times. For example, I was eventually able to figure out I needed to put the car sticker on my car, but it would've been better if the character would say something like "Before I go in, I should do something to avoid getting a ticket. I can't park anywhere else, so..." when he tries to go in instead of his little meta joke about it being a tutorial.

*It'd be nice if the journal would give more detailed information for your objectives and what you've accomplished so far as you can easily lose track of things that are only said once from people or certain halfway steps.

*Some better signposting would be nice. I wouldn't have known that I could go downstairs to the basement without people telling me because it looks like the stairs only go up. It would be helpful if you can see a bit of a railing going downwards to hint that you can go down, or maybe a 'basement' sign pointing down on the wall.

*I was disappointed with certain actions, like when I tried to examine the phone book and it immediately got the relevant information from it without me even realizing what I was supposed to do with it in the first place. I wish the action was more interactive with me actually having to flip through pages and find the appropriate ad, like, you know, a detective!

*Unfortunately when I say this reminds me of classics, that also includes the bizarre puzzle logic they used to have. Lighting trash bags to illuminate a basement? Cleaning up graffiti to distract someone to steal paper from them? In what world are you supposed to logically figure out these actions beyond just faffing about and rubbing every item against everything to see what it does?

KrunchyFriedGames responds:

Oh, wow- thanks for your thoughtful and detailed critique! I'll try and address your points one at a time:

Character movement- yeah, we're trying to think of ways to improve this. Your specific issue about turning is because it's a detailed character animation and Dermot needs to reach the end of his walk cycle otherwise it becomes really twitchy and awkward. Difficult to get around this.

Examination button- it's something we've been thinking about. The current idea is to keep the UI as simple as possible. Maybe we'll change this.

Hints/ signposting- this is a major issue in any point and click style game, and it's different for every player too. I've seen people on Twitch and Youtube shoot straight theough the difficult bits, and then struggle with things I didn't even consider to be puzzles! I certainly agree that the basement could be better signposted, and the notebook function improved.

I think there's something slightly off about the phone book ordering (people can assume this is a linear game- but it really isn't as I know from trying to make sure everything works and makes sense in whatever order you do it in). I Something's changed with the phone book from an earlier edit, so we'll try and work out what exactly, and fix it.

*spoiler* Puzzle logic is always very subjective. I did already add a hint for the basement light puzzle- because it was driving people insane (it was "I think there's something blocking the window" or similar). I maintain the the printer puzzle makes logical sense: the only time you see blank paper is in Madman's office, she's angry that the toilet mirror has penis graffiti on it, and there's a sponge item you haven't used but, yes, it is difficult.

Thanks for your comments!