FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hank: Straightjacket]

Quite the short but sweet point and click adventure! It's unfortunately a bit short, especially if you just knock the book over and hit the button immediately (like I did on my first try) but the game does have a great amount of depth to it with a huge amount of dialogue and other interactables that intrigued me and made me want to go back and see what other routes and information there was to discover. Couple that huge amount of depth with the stylish presentation and interesting use of the rewind mechanic as a diegetic superpower of our character (or so it seems to imply), and I think this does a wonderful job at serving as a demo/prototype for the main game: consider me intrigued and wanting to see how this shapes up in the end!

In terms of feedback and potential improvements:

1) If you hover the cursor over the book on the right hand side, you can't read the pop-up text to 'pick up' or 'examine' since it's to the right of the cursor and it therefore spills off the screen. Hopefully it can be updated to make it so that text is always visible, perhaps aligning to the left if the cursor is close to the right side of the screen.

2) Might just be me being dumb, but some of the visuals were a bit too dark or confusing for me to tell what was going on. I didn't even realize there was a pit at first, and I don't know exactly what the bookshelf is doing by knocking it over: it says it is making a bridge but it doesn't look to be going across the whole pit, only half of it, so I don't know why it isn't sliding down into it or something akin to that. Also couldn't parse what was going on when Hank hits the button and the cinematic plays: looks to me like he just lands in the pit and the bookshelf bridge is nowhere to be seen. Also, how the heck are we throwing the book and such if we're in a straightjacket?

3) It might be asking too much, but there were some silly inconsistencies in the dialogue if you interact with it at weird times that I'd love to be addressed. For example, if you decide to ask about the gun after you've already knocked the bookshelf over, the villain says something akin to it being an insurance policy if you find a way out of the pit, but by knocking the bookshelf over, he's already acknowledged that you've found a way out of the pit by doing so. Maybe lock that dialogue interaction from happening if you're knocked the shelf over, or update the dialogue for the two different times you can ask it during? It's a lot, but it'd be a great touch to have that amount of reactivity and consistency.

Emptygoddess responds:

Blame the programmer/director! He cut out like 40% of my amazing words!

[A Date with Death 3 Confessions]

Nice to see a continuation of this story! While the game didn't necessarily have much gameplay to it, being mostly a glorified visual novel, it nevertheless kept my attention through its very amusing dialogue and characters as well as great pacing and shot composition, among other things. There were plenty of typos in there (misplaced commas and apostrophes, as well as incorrect usage of your/you're, among other things), but luckily typos can be considered as part of the charm of a comical story like this (but still, consider a proofreader).

I gotta admit, I did find the gameplay a bit too simple in that it mostly focused on sawblades and turrets (this Goddess has quite the failure of imagination) and worse than that, the gameplay was completely unchallenging. It had a couple of cool twists, such as the part where the Goddess tilts the board, but it felt too little and even with that, I still didn't come close to suffering from a single death. Now, one could argue that maybe it's good to have the gameplay simple so as to keep the pace of the gameplay going, like how a horror game should probably avoid killing you so as to avoid breaking the spell of tension, but still, I felt a good amount of challenge here would've been appropriate given the circumstances, and I couldn't help but be disappointed and bored with what we got.

Again, despite having such simple gameplay though, I enjoyed my time with this due to how strong the story picked up the slack. Quite the interesting stinger at the end there: looking forward to the continuation! (Also quite the interesting bonus ending, even with its own stinger!)

[Recontra]

Quite the fun short and sweet adventure! The game was pretty basic in a sense, being a simple shooter with powerups, but due to being short and keeping the pace up with lots of interesting twists and story beats, I loved every second of it! Seriously, the way the dialogue was worded and paced, and the way the story switched to a boss fight with a cockroach was very amusing. Also thought some of the bonus achievements were quite funny. That's not to say that the story was the only good thing: the gameplay, while basic, was definitely solid shooting action that escalates quickly with a good variety of enemy types and an alright boss fight pattern, and I liked the little touches here and there like the way enemy bodies ragdoll on death and can end up being juggled with further gunfire or even fall into the water. Would've loved a bit more, such as a second phase to the cockroach boss fight, but it's alright with what we got: better a game keeps it short and leaves you wanting more instead of being overly long and boring you!

streq responds:

Thank you for the review!! It's always appreciated! :)

[GRAPPLESHOT]

Hah, it may be goofy and low-effort to fit in with the 3 star game jam, and I'll admit that the gameplay is quite shallow as it's just a very simple survival horde shooter, but there's something about the energy that this has that is so infectiously charming! Seriously, I love how animated and lively everything about this is: the way the logos smash in the intro, the way the characters bounce around as they move, the way the bullets fly so fast, the way the enemies fly and explode after being shot, the smooth grapple mechanic and the satisfying smash at the end, and so on! To top it all off, the music is awesome as well and multiplies the inherent energy even further! I'd argue that there is some serious potential in this, or at least in you as a game dev in general, and I'd love to see a fully-fledged game sprout from this, be it an upgraded version of this or a new game in general, as this is a great example of a lil' prototype!

[Shinigami Run]

Neat game! I certainly like the stylish art and characters and the simple arcade fun, and laughed at its amusing way of teaching that the player has a double jump when it wasn't obvious, but have to admit that the game feels rather shallow: once you've played about 5 seconds of it, you've seen everything the game has to offer as the game doesn't increase in difficulty or introduce new mechanics to add complexity (beyond a simple speed powerup that appears randomly). I hoped that when I unlocked the other character that the game would do something to change things up like having the new character have different abilities like swapping gravity instead of jumping or maybe having different objectives like dodging souls and smashing spikes instead, but it seemed like it was purely a cosmetic change with no gameplay difference, unfortunately.

rotcivsette responds:

I wish you gave me those ideas earlier! haha
I dabbled with character abilities, but got stuck with no ideas.
And those were really cool ones, thank you for your feedback!

[Fruity Tower]

Overall I'm incredibly impressed at the amount of polish and professional construction put into this game. Every little thing in this game is absolutely bursting with juice: the title screen with its buttons that react on hover and explode on click, the satisfying way shooting has gibs fly out of enemies and screenshake to subtly signal kill confirmation, the shop menu with its sliding out tabs and shopkeeper interactions, the way money flies up to the money counter and flips the digits, the great music and how it transitions when combat is over, and so much more than I could list! The game itself is also very charming with a very cute story concept that bleeds into many facets, such as the weaponry named with all sorts of fruit puns and the various fruit-based enemies. Really, really cool stuff!

However, at the end of the day, the core gameplay really didn't excite me that much and I easily found myself getting bored and struggling to continue despite how good it looked. Don't get me wrong, it starts out pretty good what with its decent shooting against various enemies to fight, and I was excited to get to the top of the tower. But in the end it really just felt like a repetitive slog: the players moveset is very simple with no chance for unique expression, the enemies were pretty generic and unchallenging, there were no fun midway challenges like bosses, the combat rooms felt really cramped with no space for moving around, all of the guns were functionally boring and only differed in forced numerical advantages meaning that even slightly fun guns had to be unfortunately left behind due to lackluster damage, and so on.

I think the big killer for me was just how forced the metaprogression felt. It never felt like I was jumping from the balcony to get back to the store because it was getting too hard: it was more that the enemies were becoming too frustratingly spongy and thus I needed a new gun to make the time-to-kill feel less like a slog. But then I'd hate doing that since going back to buy guns would mean that now I'm cashless I have to climb all the way back through the previous floors to get back to where I was because I can't purchase a skip (and even if I could pay to skip a bit, do I want to risk going into debt instead of playing it safe?) Yes, climbing back with a new gun can be a bit nice since you can flex on earlier enemies with your numerical advantage, taking them out in one shot, but I felt that feeling didn't counteract the overall feeling of having to go through it all again to get back, especially since there wasn't any sort of randomization or special events to perhaps freshen things up on a return trip. I just hated having to deal with money and the debt mechanic and so on: it just added so much stress and paranoia that made me optimize the fun out of the game, playing safe to keep money but in doing so making the game so repetitive through backtracking.

There were also other slight annoyances with the game, such as how the gun is, instead of being more logically offset to where their hand is, is centered right on top of our player, meaning that we can't even see our cute lil' guy, and that combat could sometimes be obscured due to the sheer amount of visual flair the game was, what with the overall monochromatic theme, tons of blood, screen-shake, unnecessary limited field of view, and so on. Also I kind of hated whenever I had to buy multiple things from the shopkeeper as it meant watching their animation play out for each item without being able to skip it: little annoyances like that where the juiciness of the game was maybe a bit too indulgent. The tilted geometry of the game could be a bit confusing at well in terms of where collision boxes are, too.

Again, overall I think it's a great game and has some super professional polish to it all, but the gameplay was a bit of a miss for me due to how simple and repetitive it can be and how numerical it all felt. It's still fun and interesting enough that I still plan on trying to make my way to the top though!

EDIT: Made it through and beat the final boss! Boss fight was a bit of a letdown as it was very simple and just one phase, but I did appreciate what a spectacle it was, especially the intro and outro. You'll laugh, but I totally goofed in the outro: after I won the fight and was carrying him over to the balcony, I threw him, only for him to stop short of falling off. I then walked over to pick him up but got a bit too close to the edge and unintentionally jumped off! Luckily I was immediately able to buy my way back to the top and properly throw him off without even having to fight him again, haha! (oh it looks like there is an achiveo for this, so it was actually intended as a possibility, wow)

Prox276 responds:

Very insightful and thorough review as always! I always look forward to these! <3
I'll definitely be working on all of these things in my future games. Specifically creating a more exciting and deep gameplay loop. Kinda went style over substance with this one, I agree. :P

[Sadmin Night]

Hey, pretty cool stuff here! Overall the game has a really polished and refined feel to it: everything felt really smooth, I liked the look of the art/animations, the sound effects and atmosphere were cool, and the neat touches like providing hints on the game over screens and hidden references and so on were great. Also I really appreciate that, despite being an April Fool's game where most people would just treat it as a joke, this actually had some serious effort put into its construction! I could certainly dock some points to this for just being yet another FNAF clone with a Henry Stickmin paintjob, but I had a good time so I can't fault it too much.

I have beaten the game now and had a short but sweet time with it (and enjoyed the Extras as well), but there were some tricky parts to learn at first, especially since I've never actually played FNAF before, and some annoyances with the game that I had to contend with.

*I wish the whole 'securing power terminals' was a bit more eye-catching as I wasn't even aware of its existence for quite some time, and I also wish it provided a bit more feedback when you turn it on since I wasn't sure how it worked, like perhaps having the power terminal shown on camera have its buttons change color or even have an animation of it slamming shut like the doors do or shocking whatever Stickmin messes with it. In a similar vein, it'd be nice if securing the vents would also have a graphical change that can be seen through the cameras as feedback.

*While merely hovering around the boxes to change views/interact is smooth and does reduce clicks, I sometimes wish it would require clicks as confirmation instead as I'd have some strange misinputs at times due to unintentionally hovering over a button. Sometimes I'd have the cameras flip up only to immediately flip back down due to the game thinking I hovered over the button again, for example. But worst of all was that I had one annoying death where I had a Stickmin at the door and went to close it, but my mouse grazed past the reboot monitor button which flipped it on and allowed the Stickmin to get in and kill me: argh!

Again, nice work with this!

BioPlant responds:

Thank you for the feedback!

[FulpWare CLICKER]

Awww, ya really got my hopes up, what with the really cool thumbnail and FulpWare concept! I know, I know, it's an April Fools joke so I shouldn't take it too serious, and the fact that you did get my hopes up makes the prank that much better in a way, but still, I kinda wish this game had a bit more meat to it as it is pretty much just a glorified art gallery which is only a bit better than a slideshow. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see all the great art and I like the touches of providing links to the artists and so on, but at the end of the day, it just ain't much of a game as it is lacking any sort of clicker progression or other mechanics and is just a reskin of an existing game (Pico Clicker). Again, I know I'm overdoing it, but I'd just love to see this get worked on to make it more of an actually fun clicker game instead of just treating it as a joke since you've got such a great team of talented folks, or even better, I'd love to see FulpWare the game for realsies!

[Super Hard Quiz P2!!!]

Certainly gives me nostalgia vibes as it is pretty much a clone of The Impossible Quiz from back in the day. Can be pretty funny to go through and check out all of the goofy questions with equally goofy answers, and there's a nice assortment of trick questions that require lateral thinking (like having to click the question number) as well as minigames to keep everything fresh and exciting. Not too shabby!

Unfortunately, though, it rapidly just becomes frustrating and annoying due to the trial-and-error needed to guess what answer the game wants due to many of the questions just being jokes with no real logic to them, and making it all the way back to where you left off can be tedious due to some of the questions being minigames that slow you down due to required waiting. Maybe back in the day when I was younger and this type of quiz was fresh and new I'd have more patience to make it all the way through, but now that I'm older and this quiz is just a retread, I'm less inclined. Still, had a fair bit of amusement with this trip down memory lane while it lasted!

octopus58 responds:

Thanks! It's mostly a throwback type of thing, so I can see why it can be frustrating with the nostalgic factor excluded haha. The minigames were actually new to the sequel since the original was way too simple/a little boring even. But I'm glad you had some enjoyment from it :D

[Malice Boutique]

Decently fun little dress-up game! Reminds me of the Fashion Report in FFXIV where you build an outfit and are scored on how close you meet the style the judges are going for. Had an alright time trying to piece together a 5-star outfit and looking at some of the more oddball dress options.

It was a bit confused on how to go about piecing together a 5-star outfit though. It almost seems like the game has a bit of a 'tell' system where you can subtly notice what pieces work the best by looking at the facial expressions or dialogue from the client when you try something on, similar to something like LA Noire interrogations, but it's very inconsistent at times: sometimes I'd put a piece on a client and they wouldn't react at all, yet moments later I'd try the same piece on and suddenly they're reacting that they're all about it! The inconsistency leaves me in an awkward halfway state where I'm unsure if I should follow my own style based on the initial client prompt or just keep brute-force trying outfits until the client directly drops hints on what works: I guess it's supposed to be a mix of both.

Basically it's fun and cute overall but can be a bit of an annoying and repetitive trial-and-error affair when going for the 5-stars. Also the sound can kind of wonk out with strange delayed fade-in-outs.