FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Witch's Familiar]

It's a decent concept that shows some good promise, but at the moment it feels a bit underwhelming due to a lack of content/progression and the presence of bugs.

I enjoyed the basic premise of picking up and dropping objects, but it really didn't evolve in any significant way to keep my interest: many of the levels do the same pattern of 'drop package on switch to get rock to put on switch instead of package' and it was only the very last level that finally changed things up with a few interesting tricks before it was over and left me feeling unsatisfied. Would've loved if there were more mechanics to deal with or really brainy puzzles that took advantage of the premise more: as it is, it's ok, but quite boring and doesn't feel unique or memorable.

The game was also quite buggy, with the major bug being that the objects like packages and rocks don't have their rotations locked, meaning that they can actually tip over if you place on the edges of platforms. This can create very glitchy behavior where, if you pick up a rotated rock and then drop it, you can end up blasting away from each other, most likely because your hitboxes are intersecting upon drop off since it isn't giving enough clearance between the two (since it expects the objects to be flat rectangles in their original positions) and the physics engine tries to rectify it by moving them away from each other. There are other minor bugs like how the 'z to drop' message doesn't disappear if you place a cog in a switch, and the animation of the bird freezes if you walk on the ground.

It's understandable since it was made in such a short time frame, I suppose, and like I said I did have a decent time and it does show promise if it was further developed, but I wanted to give my opinion on it lacking as a full game since, after all, this has been submitted on newgrounds, not the game jam site, so I think the context is fair. Would love to see an enhanced version with more meat on its bones!

nion-ne responds:

Thanks for the coverage and the lengthy feedback, especially impressive after playing so many games. I mainly kept the rotating and janky physics because it was funny in a kind of half life 2 sort of way, but definitely agree that a polished version would need to be predictable.

More mechanics would be nice. A struggle during the jam was thinking of mechanics that wouldn't be too contrived or difficult to implement reliably in the short time available. For instance a "draw string" that powers machines for a short time while pulled. But ultimately I decided on being short, simple, and easy so that most ludum dare players would be able to complete it.

A more complete version is something I'd love to do after my current project. There's a number of ideas I'd love to implement, both narrative and mechanical.

As for submitting to Newgrounds, it's mainly because they were advertising for the game jam, that being said these are all points I will take into account if I take this project further.
Thanks again :)

[Boxbrawl Delivery]

Wow, I loved the hell out of this game! Feels like a fantastic combination of great polish/presentation with a solid execution on a unique gameplay concept, and while it does use a retro look to add appeal, I found it legitimately charming and well-done, not some sort of nostalgia bait to garner points. The strategy the game promotes is cool: it was a real pleasure to chuck boxes at enemies and catching the rebounding box all in a smooth motion, and I loved racking up a huge load of stunned enemies before turning in the package for a big bonus. Game also has so many little touches to it that add so much flavor: the animations for your partner in the truck, the speech bubble responses from customers based on the box's condition, the ending point tally which spins the time down and depletes the stars one-by-one, the way the time flashes red to let you know that it went down from your damage, all-around really wonderful stuff that I'm quite impressed got done considering it was a game jam!

That said, while I did overall love my time with it, I did have some feedback for improvement:

*I loved chucking the box at enemies and catching the rebounding box, but it was very frustrating that it only worked if you were spaced a good distance: if I tried to chuck a box close-range at an enemy, the box would just fall to the floor and ruin my flow. This was especially annoying when dealing with snails who you want to chuck it twice at rapidly but can't if the box just falls to the floor when you should catch it for that second needed toss! Speaking of tosses, there were also some weird occasions where the tossed box would both hit an enemy and the floor at the same time, acquiring some unfair damage that should've been cancelled from the hit.

*The whole "damage depletes your time" mechanic was a bit annoying and I'd prefer a different solution: too many times I'd take damage and get time so low that I was in a 'dead man walking' state where I didn't have enough time to beat the level without dying no matter how hard I try so why bother? Do I keep trying despite having no chance or just hurt myself to bring it to zero? Very awkward.

*The game kind of peters out as it stops introducing new enemies and just recycles the same levels over and over with more packages to be delivered and larger enemy density. I wasn't sure if it had an ending to strive for or if it was just looping and it made me feel like it was a bit pointless. I know retro games like Mario Bros and Wrecking Crew and all that do just loop like this, but I'd love a bit more of a sense of progression and finality: as it stands, the game just plays until you get bored with it, which kind of sours the last impression you get.

*Difficulty is a bit wonky: snails are super difficult to deal with and they appear quite early on, while frogs are much simpler and appear after snails, creating an awkward spike. Feels like they should've been reordered in appearance. Enemy density can get so high and the flies which hurt you for stalling can feel unfair when compared to it since you might practically have no choice.

[The Hunt]

Initial impressions of the game weren't that great. While it does have a rather eye-catching and stylish presentation to it with its black-and-red palette reminiscent of a Virtual Boy game, I found the gameplay mechanics to be very bog-standard and clunky with all sorts of weird and buggy physics (like if you jump while running into a wall, your jump will be cut short for some reason, and you can get caught on edge pixels which awkwardly stop your jump where other games would smooth them out). Furthermore, the levels were tedious as well with tons of boring backtracking through already cleared areas to collect another blood mark all the way on the other side of a level (why not just have a blood mark teleport you back to the center instead of having to walk back, or maybe make new enemies pop up to make the trip back interesting?)

So overall, I found myself getting quite bored and feeling like the game was something like a student's first project: commendable for a first start but nothing great for public consumption. I will give the game credit, however, that it did seem to do a pretty good job with level design: every new level seemed to introduce some new crazy layout filled with unique geometry, obstacles, traps, enemies and objectives. I also did like some of the small touches made to the game, like the way enemies explode with gibs (though the gibs did also glitch out in weird ways here and there, like spawning in a different spot than where the enemy was). Certainly some good effort and potential on display: if the game just had a bit polishing and more interesting mechanics, I think it could be pretty decent!

[XOXO Puzzle]

Not too shabby! It's a little simple and barebones, so I was really surprised by how very addicted I got to this game, though that's all due to the bonus par score challenges pushing me to understand the optimal techniques better, and how it kept things fresh by mixing things up with new rules for placement of symbols, which were very intuitive to understand thanks to the great asterisk that previews your move. A nice short and sweet puzzler with a good amount of cleverly designed content!

[Dashmo]

Hmmm, this one's a bit of an odd duck! I really want to like it and I do think it is pretty cool for the most part, what with its crazy frenetic energy and unique strange yet appealing style, but I did have a lot of annoyances with it as well that brought down the experience considerably.

When the game is working, it delivers some great fast-paced fun like a Warioware minigame gone bananas. Keeping track of your character and making lightning quick decisions to deal with all the sudden obstacles can get you in this crazy trance, propelled by the eclectic visual style and crazy music. Or at least, it should get you in a trance state, but...

But overall, playing the game felt like constantly stubbing my toe, where I kept running into issue after issue that impacted my fun and made it just feel too confusing and unfair.

The placement of collisions/hitboxes felt very awkward, especially due to the tilted perspective: so many times I'd think I hit something but didn't and vice versa, like I'd think I'm standing right in the path of the bullet but actually I'm a little in front of it.

Adding to this was the difficulty in seeing where the character's shadow was: it was so faded and barely visible, especially when contrasting against the dark ground and so many other visual flairs competing for attention like the reflection that I could never tell where my exact position was.

Controls just felt really inconsistent and wild at times: sometimes I could dash over a red pit and other times I'd take damage, sometimes my character would be difficult to turn or ignore my inputs in random ways before going back to normal, and so on.

The game just felt super unfair at times, sometimes spawning you into a room where you take immediate damage from a rotating pit spinning unavoidably quickly, or perhaps spawning you into a room and you can't even tell where you are until you realize you're right under the floating chaser enemy blocking your vision or you just generally get lost in the sea of overly loud and garish graphics and can't pick yourself out.

I could go on, but basically, it might be a game that's a bit style-over-substance: a good concept for a game that delivers some decent fun but is a bit too overly-stylized that it hurts readability and brings it down.

[Genokids DEMO]

Wow, wonderful to see this game on Newgrounds! Been following it for a long time and I'm glad to see that the game played as well as it looked on twitter and other such places. In general the game feels great in practically all aspects: not only is it very charming and stylish from a presentation and construction side of things, but it gets a lot of the sweet science of character-action/beat-em-ups/hack-and-slashes/whatever you wanna call it, like that wonderfully subtle but generous usage of auto-correction magnetism that ensures that your combos fluidily connect from many different avenues of attack (even when not using lock-on), input buffering and such that ensured no awkward input drops, and the wonderful use of hit-freeze and sparks for great impact to attacks.

Now, I'm going to deliver a whole bunch of feedback that is going to severely dwarf the amount of praise I just gave, but please realize that I am still incredibly positive on the game: I'm just a bit crazy for these types of games and just want to give as much thoughts that I can offer to help you think about your game and hopefully make it even better in future! Ok, here goes:

*I found the default controls a bit odd: most important, I'd expect the light attack button and the dodge button to be swapped as that would more closely match common setups, and it created a very awkward first impression where I struggled to get used to it. I know, I know, it's probably rebindable and there are some games out there that do match this setup so it's just a preference thing, but I still think it's worth pointing out since it can make a really weird first impression and some people just don't have much patience and might leave without giving it a shot. Even with rebinds being available, I'm typically wanting to follow the default controls since I trust that the developer did it for a good reason and don't want to screw myself from changing it (for example, I like how you setup the flow moves to consistently match the regular moves, like how the flow move you do with the launcher button is set to a launcher-esque move), but I just wasn't sure if there was a good reason in this case.

*I had a lot of trouble with the 'chase' mechanic, most especially with world traversal as the lock-on logic felt very inconsistent. For example, on the very first pole in the game: I chased to it, jumped off of it to gain some air and hit the button to chase to the next pole, only for my character to chase right back to the pole I just jumped off of a few inches behind them! I didn't even have the camera pointed that direction, so how the hell did that happen? There were some weird chase behavior going on with the wall-run to where suddenly I've be running the opposite direction or something weird. Definitely feel that it needs a review: methinks it's currently only working for 'best-case' scenarios and doesn't account for all the little deviations that players can have (for example, me jumping off before chasing to the next thing instead of just chaining-chases).

*I had a lot of difficulty keeping track of resources like flow and health and hype and all that since the bars for them are all crammed in the corner of the screen in a very perhaps too-stylish-and-small-and-therefore-difficult-to-parse ensemble and I'm busy focusing on my character in the center. A lot of times I'd hit the buttons for a flow move I want and nothing would come out, making me feel very silly. Would love if I could get more feedback when I do a move that I don't have resources for, like an error sound and maybe something pop-ups above my character with my current flow and how much is needed, like 2/3 or whatever. In fact, I'd love if maybe we have a little mini-HUD right by our character that displays health and flow and such, or at least maybe we can get signals for important events, like have our character glow or play a sound when flow or hype is full, and maybe have a red health bar appear above their head when low on health, perhaps!

*The world felt a bit barren. I'm not talking about the literal fact that the world is all crumbling and barren and bombed-out and such, it's more the general feel of the world being a bit lifeless. This is going to be a bit tricky since I'm not sure of the exact cause as it's just a subtle feel to it all, but it just felt like the world had a lot of too big and boring open and empty spaces that added a lot of boring travel time between fights and a weird sense of mismatched scale that makes us and the enemies look so tiny and insignificant. As stylish as the world looks, it just felt off and a bit too gamey, like it's one step away from being a gray box dev level what with all the silly placed traps that stood out like a sore thumb. Didn't have much of a sense of progress being made either as I just kept seeing the same type of stuff and not many landmarks or changes. I dunno, I might be being silly as perhaps this level is just a showcase demo level built to show all this stuff and so perhaps it is off since it's cobbled together. At the very least, could stand to have more interesting fighting places, perhaps with a lot of clutter to chop up or throw at enemies (there was an attempt with the bumper car, but that did not offer enough damage or abilities that I ended up ditching it fast since it just slowed down the fun).

*There were a few things I had difficulty accepting, like the inability to be able to recovery from knockback with the jump or dodge button, instead being forced to use the character swap button. There were some other things like how some flow moves would pierce past/through enemies instead of stopping in front of them (though maybe that's on purpose since chase already serves that purpose). It's all something I can get used to but it definitely felt a bit unintuitive at times, but nothing major.

*Little nitpick, but there were some occasions where the camera is showcasing something cinematic but I can still move around instead of being temporarily locked: could lead to bad things like someone running into a pit during the cutscene or just messing around and making goofy noises, haha.

*While it's nice and all and that could certainly be enough, I wasn't fully sold on a unique hook and feel for the combat. For example, I think there could be a strong hook with the character swapping mechanics, but at the moment they didn't have enough defining and differing strengths/weaknesses to make me want to utilize them in a strategic/synergistic way. For example, perhaps one of them could be good at guard-breaking blocking enemies so you'd feel compelled to swap to them for those, but in general the characters all feel generally competent at everything. At the very least, if each character had their own health bar you might want to switch if one gets low, but since it's a shared health bar, there's little incentive to stray away from your favorite. In a similar vein, enemies didn't offer enough resistance or abilities to promote interesting play either and they all just felt like pathetic punching bags at times: fun at first to style on but loses its appeal. This might just be a case of not being deep enough in the game yet as perhaps later enemies and synergies and such will become more apparent, but I wanted to point it out nonetheless. It could also just be a developer preference: some games want to force you into stylish play with big design incentives, and some games are content with stylish play being an optional challenge or a flex that isn't required.

Very happy to see that the Kickstarter worked out: it is very well deserved based off of this demo and I look forward to the future release (and hopefully I'll have helped in some small way!) Stay motivated!

NukefistStudio responds:

That's lengthy!

Some of that feedback can't be done now, other has already been noticed and will be taken into account in the future.

The defaults may be changed in the future, but for now only the CTRL modifier on this web version has been changed, to avoid more people closing the tab by accident. It's been many people already who found Square and Circle swapped, though there was other people that wanted even more exotic mappings, which means we will have to wait and test more to see what the best default mapping is, understanding that not everyone will like it.

The chase has been improved already (when there's a "next" chase target, the previous one won't be that prioritized, plus it now takes into account where you are looking, like with the enemies. Parkour is less fleshed out than combat right now, it's a difficult thing (well, the whole game is difficult, it's a lot of knobs to tune and a lot of stuff to try and maybe add, or remove).

We are considering having non-intrusive UI close to the center of the screen to show the flow meter, we already have some ideas but they won't land on this demo. It's been a problem with many as it requires a lot of playtime to get used to knowing how much flow specials cost and how much flow you have. At some point you end up getting a ton of flow, but until that point is reached (and even at that point) it could be helpful to have the flow on the UI closed to the center of the screen. We don't think health and hype need to be on the center of the screen, though, as it's not that time sensitive.

World needs more love, yes. It's a difficult feedback, as you say one possible reason is the apparent scale of the world vs the scale of the characters. Ultimately, we will need to spend more time on it figuring out what makes it work the best. The thing we have worked the most on, with difference, is on the combat, so that left the map behind.

We like being able to move while the camera is in cinematic mode. The solution for this will be being invincible instead of removing this "feature". Some people have already taken damage due to this, but again won't be solved in this demo.

About the combat feedback, sadly, I hate to write this but not only because of our gameplay, but also from seeing many others play (after trying the demo many times, none on the first try) it already has a lot to combine, be stylish, and there's reasons to be stylish not explained in the turorial (for example, the highest your rank, the highest the amount of flow you get, plus switching after dealing damage will give flow. There's a lot of hidden mechanics, only hidden because we can't shove more tutorials into the demo, it already feels like there's a lot of them. The full game will have time to explain stuff and in a better way).

You have helped, thank you. The most helpful thing, I think, was pointing out the possible discrepancy in scales. It's not the only problem with the maps (we are limited with how much we can improve them as we are only 2 and time is limited, but we will improve them).

[Shadow Gauntlet]

Hmmm, I really want to like what this game is going for, but I found myself incredibly frustrated and confusing and dropping it early on.

I definitely feel like the idea has merit: moving around the world through grappling is practically always very fun, and utilizing the side-effect recoil of shooting to move yourself backwards was a fun puzzle to work around, especially when combat was also involved. The levels also featured a lot of interesting setups, going from the simple mazes and obstacle courses to the more complex crazy stunt maneuvers where you fling yourself across a field of spikes from a duck. Furthermore, I applaud the effort to try and be fancy and have the controls all be done with a single button.

However, the game just felt very wonky and inconsistent, both due to the physics of the game feeling very strange to tangle with and the controls being very unintuitive. I tried my best to make it through the levels, but I kept experiencing tons of confusion from many elements of the gameplay.

The fact that the controls are done with a single button was a frustrating decision as it just led to a lot of confusion for me from how unintuitive it was. Common interactions like wanting to fire out just a few bullets to adjust myself, or wanting to, stop shooting for a moment while I swing my gauntlet to point the other way while swinging, were not possible due to the bizarre control scheme, and led to things like the grapple coming out instead of the grapple ending when I'm still trying to swing, respectively. Call me dumb, but I kept making these and other mistakes over and over since it just felt like common sense that I should've been able to do it, but the controls just didn't work with it.

I feel like if the game just has some more time in the oven to be polished up, and more data from players could be gathered in order to refine the controls to be more intuitive, this could be something really nice, but at the moment, it's a bit of a rough sell.

[Maerl Bay]

Pretty cool game that's very cute and fun in general, but has some odd design decisions that threw me off.

The game overall has a very good and professional sense of construction and feel to it: everything is so lively and juicy and charming, and the gameplay is solid with a good sense of feedback and steady progression of challenge to it as it introduces more obstacles and logistics/planning to consider for your dive. Some of the later levels were great battles were you need to contend with the darkness making it more difficult to ascertain where coral is and needing to memorize the position of air plants to make your return trip possible: thrilling! For a game made in such a short time frame, it's seriously impressive how reactive and juicy all of the elements feel and how many little touches are in place that you'd think would be cut, like the noises for clicking on fish and the way the pictures cascade into the boat upon collection.

There were definitely some issues I had with the game however:

*While it sure does look cool that you can see pictures of what you just snapped, it's a bit frustrating that it covers up so much of the screen and hurts visibility in an unfair way! There were plenty of times where I was swimming up on the right side of the screen and couldn't see anything because it was blocked by those photos: would be much better I think if they were transparent or disappear after awhile, or occupy a different portion of the screen.

*Found it a bit odd that taking photos isn't limited in some way, like making it use battery if you use it on enemies and not coral. Since it's not limited, you can technically spam click it on every single thing instead of having to be strategic with it, which feels silly, but since it's possible and a safer option, you'd be dumb for not doing it! In general, I found the battery a little confusing at times where I swear it drained faster for going down than going up? I dunno, probably just playing tricks on me!

*It can feel incredibly demoralizing to go all the way down, feel like you took photos of every bit of coral, go all the way back up and realize you missed one. I know it's part of the challenge, but the few times I missed one made me practically feel like quitting the game due to having to backtrack, especially since I don't feel like the game changes the state of the color enough to signal one you haven't collected (maybe instead of just changing the brightness of it, the color itself should change to another to be more significant).

*Speaking of demoralizing, I was gobsmacked when I lost and found that, despite selecting retry, I would have to go all the way back to the first level. It felt like such an unnecessary punishment: here I am having fun with all of the challenging mechanics and now I need to go back to the kiddie pool and wade through so many boring levels to get back to the level of challenge which entertains me. This can be especially annoying when I did plan everything out, but for some reason the air plants didn't respawn on my return trip upwards when they did the last time: got unlucky due to not realizing they needed more time, I guess.

Overall the game left a very nice impression on me, but the harsh punishment and nightmare scenario of missing a coral and having to go back do weigh heavily on it. Still, impressive work!

[Cargo Truck Racer]

I love the concept behind this game, and while I did have a decent amount of fun, the execution of it felt a bit strange and a bit of a missed opportunity.

As said, the concept is so simple yet so brilliant, being an amusing twist to the standard racing game where you drive a very uncommon race car, being a cargo truck, and not only have to make it to the end of the course at a fast pace, but you have to do so without spilling your cargo out! The concept is very comical and a great hook, and in general the feel of driving is fun. Tons of potential here! It's like Initial D meets Death Stranding!

However, there were a bunch of issues that got in the way of the fun:

Crash detection was very weird and way too sensitive: I'd barrel straight into a cone and not have an issue, but if the side of my truck lightly grazes a tree or barrier as I pass by I'd suddenly explode! In reality, I don't think the explosions from object collisions are even necessary, as crashing into something would already punish you by having your cargo pop out naturally, so there's no need to add salt to the wound (though I'll grant you the explosions are amusing in theory).

Movement of the truck felt a bit wonky, and the physics for the cargo in the back felt random and inconsistent: sometimes I'd be driving so carefully and it'd suddenly just spill out for no reason I could tell. Would help if maybe there was more fine control you could impose, or a rework of the physics system, as without it, it could feel very unfair.

I was also getting some performance/stuttering issues and other weird bugs in the later levels.

Finally, the design of the game might like a real missed opportunity:

For a game about deliveries, I found it very odd that there is not a time limit to the courses, or at least a par time to beat. You've got this whole boost mechanic that could be used in conjunction with the time limit to pressure the player to have to take risks and get good at driving quick and dangerously while preserving the cargo. But since there is no time limit, you may as well ignore the boost mechanic since it can only get you into trouble, and instead just drive safely and have a boring risk-free time.

I am befuddled as to why the stars on the course are randomized when the rest of the course remains the same. You'd think that the stars would be placed in a specific way to make the player have to pull off difficult moves that they wouldn't normally do when getting through the course as an extra challenge. Since they're randomly placed, though, it's completely random as to whether you'll have stars placed in a very easy spot or put in a practically impossible spot like right in front of a barrier (which happened to me!) This totally ruins the challenge as its up to luck and not player skill.

Similar to the stars mentioned above, I felt like the game should have some sort of three-tiered reward system based on the objectives of 1) beating the par time 2) preserving all cargo and 3) collecting all stars. It'd be fun if you go from bronze to silver to gold depending on whether you're able to beat the course with all three: newbies could have fun just beating the level, while experts would go back to beat it while accomplishing all three. However, currently it only rewards you for stars collected, which as mentioned above are completely random. Without some sort of reward system like this, I just didn't feel compelled to retry levels or even continue as I could easily exploit the system for easy wins.

I find that if I turn off my brain and just drive while imposing fun challenges upon myself, there's a good time that can be had, but I feel it's a missed opportunity that the game itself doesn't provide these potential fun challenges, as by not doing so, the player can play the game in a very safe and unfun way. This should be the next Crazy Taxi, but without an incentive system, it's unfortunately not.

MrNannings responds:

Thanks for your long review. It's always interesting to read what your thoughts of a game is.

Looing forward to you monthly video reviews!