FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[TrashKitty]

Really cool game! Gave me Jump King vibes with its charge-jump based movement. Was really impressed with the level design that kept me hooked with its various challenging layouts, constant introduction of new mechanics like buttons, switches, the trashcan with wheels, and so on! Game also just had a really funny concept, charming presentation, and great music! All-around feels like a really solid game with great design. Absolutely loved the cool cold open where you go through the tutorial and it sweeps up for that title drop: stylish as heck!

It wasn't all good times for me though, unfortunately. One big frustration was the controls:

*I had a lot of difficulty getting used to holding a direction to both point in a direction and charge: kinda wish they were separate buttons as it felt very awkward. S'not bad and I could get used to it, just felt like maybe you were unnecessarily making the controls different from Jump King instead of just embracing what works.

*Charging also felt really weird where I would constantly try to half-charge but end up jumping way harder than I expected: felt like the charge time was too fast and finicky in that way. Again, I was getting used to it but it felt less intuitive than other games.

*Despite using a controller as the game recommended, the game 1) didn't display controller-based tutorials and kept displaying keyboard-based tutorials 2) didn't let me use the d-pad as it kept wonking out and not reading inputs properly for it which left me using the analog stick instead which I didn't like. Maybe it just didn't like my PS4 controller?

*Finally, there were several times where the controls just fully glitched out and stopped working properly. Like, I'd hold down a direction to charge up a jump and instead nothing would happen, or it'd do a little hop, or charge up but then just stay charging instead of jumping when I let go, and so on and so forth. Sometimes I'd get it working again if I spaz out enough and jump out of the trashcan and so on, but ugh! It wasn't even just my controller as I'd switch to keyboard and it would still be glitched out.

More so than the controls, however, the lack of a save/load or level select functionality really hurt me. I liked this game from my initial impression and wanted to take a quick break before coming back to it, only to find I'd have to start the game all over again! As much as I want to get to the end and beat it, it'd be such an annoyance to have to replay some of the levels all over again, especially that level where you need to backtrack multiple times to bring trash cans to place on buttons: fine on a first run, but to do it again would be so tedious!

I'm still overly positive on the game and think it's really neat, but yeah, the wonky controls and the lack of a continue option really hurt this for me. Looking forward to more, though, and maybe it can be patched hopefully!

EDIT: Got to the end on a replay and had a good time! While I did encounter some more bugs and such I was really impressed at the amount of levels and how challenging they could be, as well as how funny and stylish the game looks and sounds!

MadNukin responds:

Hey thanks for the review.
The control scheme for me felt okay, I didn't experienced any bugs with them, so I really don't know how to improve them.
I didn't have time to add the load/save system, but I understand your criticism.
I'm glad you still enjoyed parts of it.

[Madness Roulette FREE FULL GAME]

For an april fools game, this was actually kind of interesting! While the game definitely has a jokey low-effort feel to it, the actual gameplay and strategy of shooting as few bullets as possible while angling them precisely to ricochet and kill all the targets was very fun to puzzle out at times! Was surprised as well with the amount of content in separate campaigns and tons of hand-crafted levels, as well as the funny screams! Always like it when a game actually puts in some effort despite being just an april fools gag.

However, maybe for that same reason of it being an april fools game, there was a lot of confusion and uncertainty with playing the game: for example I couldn't be sure whether I was actually supposed to be able to move or whether you're supposed to be still, as perhaps the movement controls are just hidden as a joke, who knows? Also the low-effort presentation made me less motivated to keep playing since it made me feel like it was just supposed to be a joke and not lead anywhere or worth getting high scores when the physics seemed wonky and I could just cheese it by blasting hundreds of bullets and just winning through brute force (though there were some levels where even that didn't work, so maybe if the levels actually had some sort of developer's bronze/silver/gold par score it'd give me more confidence in their design and a goal to strive for).

[Clockify]

Goofy little april fools game! I appreciate the interesting twist on a typical dress-up game where you upload your own doll, so to speak.

I was a little disappointed at the lack of options though: not only are there barely any elements to play with and put over the picture, you can't even transform/scale them at all so they can match the uploaded picture closely (for example, my uploaded picture had a face which was much bigger than the clocks provided so it didn't fit) nor can you save/print/export your final clockify'd picture to share (beyond just print screening, I suppose).

Was also kind of expecting the game to auto-clockify an uploaded picture through face recognition and such, like you see on phone camera apps, but I realize I might've been asking too much from a april fools gag game (you got my hopes up tho!)

Little-Rena responds:

Sorry, I made it in 5 minutes lol

[Marshmallow Ninjas]

Oh boy, despite how cute the graphics are and how neat the music is, this unfortunately was a big miss for me. To be fair, perhaps I didn't play it in its ideal condition since I was doing a 1 player run instead of playing with another person, but I sincerely doubt having 2 players would've helped with the issues I had to contend with.

To start off with, the presentation of the game felt really bad with incredibly boring and gray levels, along with an irritating scan line filter which hurts my eyes due to how distracting it was (definitely feel like the opacity on this should've been turned way down, or just get rid of it outright).

The worst of it all was the core physics of the game which felt so inconsistent and janky. I'd be trying to make the guys jump off of each other's heads to reach higher points and it was wild: sometimes their gravity would suddenly increase and make them fast fall, sometimes they'd jump high and other times jump low making it impossible to tell when to move, sometimes they'd just slide off to the slide despite me not touching any sideways keys, and so on. I just couldn't trust the game! To add insult to injury, I felt like the characters just moved way too bloody fast which made it all the more annoying to try and line them up for cooperative jumping maneuvers.

It really made me feel like I missed something due to how difficult it was right out of the box to get anything going, but I feel like I did my due diligence and gave it all I could without much success. The game lost my trust due to how it seemed like it just could've produce consistent physics and I gave up pretty early on around the third or fourth level.

I'm, uh, looking forward to Orderless New Skies though!

[coocoocoocoo]

Interesting little game! It's got a cool and chill aesthetic to its presentation and despite not having any overt tutorial or explanation, I liked figuring out how everything worked due to its intuitive nature. Gameplay was pretty neat with a nice variety of enemies and a focus on precision shooting where careless shots will result in a new obstacle that you need to contend with as they loop back around and threaten to hit you with a vengeance!

In terms of feedback, I was a bit surprised that the increase of difficulty is handled through new clock hands that can get in your way, instead of the typical increasing enemy variety and density: not a bad thing but it can make the game feel a bit repetitive. While I was fine with our own missed bullets looping until they hit something, be it enemy or me the player, I was frustrated that enemy bullets will also loop but they will do so forever until they eventually hit you, and only you: it felt too punishing and I'd prefer if they fade out after some time or can also hit enemies.

The appeal didn't last forever for me since I wasn't sure how long the game goes and there wasn't a high score table or anything like that to encourage competition, but it was a nice and interesting experience while it lasted.

true-narwhak responds:

thank you!! im glad you enjoyed it!! and yeah the whole weird difficulty curve, and lack of highscores were absolutely the weakest points in the game. i didnt put enough care into those departments and it definitely shows

[WRRRMZ]

Wow, this was a nice little puzzler! Love the general cute presentation and theme behind it all and I loved how smooth and intuitive the wrapping mechanics played out: even when I tried my best to break it by wiggling around like mad, everything would remain consistent with no errors or strange behavior. I especially loved the way the worm would talk to you to drop hints on what is missing from your current solution, be it length or mushroom lighting and so on: very cute and clever in how diegetic it is!

As slick and cool as it is, the puzzle-solving element of the game can be a bit frustrating at times due to how trial-and-error it is: sometimes I'd solve levels immediately with the first thing I'd try, and other times I'd be going through so many different configurations before finally getting the one the game wanted. There just doesn't feel like there's a way to be smart about it than just brute-forcing it and getting lucky, unfortunately.

Despite the trial and error nature of the game and the dumb ad at the beginning, I found myself really getting addicted to this! Nice work.

[Unprofessional Mischief]

At its core, I think it's a pretty fun shooter with a nice variety in enemies, great juicy effects, a goofy story, neato bosses and so on. Reminds me a lot of games like Gunsmoke, a favorite of mine. Certainly a solid first impression and a good core!

However, while it starts out strong, it feels like it stalls out very early on: once you've gone through one level, I feel like you've pretty much seen everything the game has to offer already. You have to go through too many levels of pretty much the same set of enemies and geometry to eventually make it to a boss, which only after then mixes up the levels with the simplest of additions like someone who chucks bombs in a vain effort to distract you from the fact that yes, you are just playing the same levels still. While the game has purchasable upgrades, they felt very token and don't spice up the runs enough, with many of them feeling very lackluster and boring (like the pipe bomb, which just flashes the screen without even an animation of throwing the pipe bomb or an explosive sound effect). The game being so long also makes it much more punishing with the way it forces you to start all over on death, making me feel less inclined to replay since I don't want to retrudge through so much to get to the cool boss fights.

At the moment it just feels like a classic case of a good game being stretched thin over too much repetition and filler to inflate play time lengths. I prefer a short and sweet experience that leaves you hungry for more than a game which just keeps going until you get bored! If the game was cut shorter, for example 2 levels inbetween boss fights, or if the game had the levels feel more different by adding in more extensive variety and increasing challenge as you go on at a quicker pace than it does now, I think it would be great!

Peti responds:

i wasn't expecting to see you in my notifications so this was a futurecop jumpscare

[Fruity Feline]

Wow, really impressive game! I absolutely loved just how slick and professionally put-together it all felt: the general presentation is so cute and smooth, the tutorial was wonderful in that it used pictures instead of just being a wall of text, and even without the tutorial the game just felt so intuitive and fun with the way everything is laid out! Everything is just bursting with life and as juicy as the fruit you manage!

Having said that, though, I did feel like the game was pretty hard! Maybe I'm just bad, but compared to a game like Tetris where the speed slowly builds up, I felt like this game reaches incredible speeds at, well, an incredible speed! Don't get me wrong, I do like games with shorter playtime commitments, but this was overkill for me, haha!

There were a lot of times where I was playing that I wish I had more control. Yes, the game does have those nice previews at the top that let you plan ahead and it does have the swap mechanic and you can cleverly exploit the pause that comes with scoring points, but those just didn't feel enough to contend with everything. There would be so many times that a fruit would be half-down the track and it'd be too late to do anything to save it due to the rigid nature of the tracks, making it feel so stressful to watch the inevitable unrecoverable failure. If I were to have some suggestions:

I'd love it if, similar to Tetris, we had the ability to make a fruit fall down the track faster so we could get it out of the way and try and prevent scenarios where two fruits are simultaneously falling and need to be dealt with. Either that, or maybe change it so that we can control when the fruits come out from the top, but have them heating up due to impatience if we don't let them out fast enough (similar to fulfilling orders in a restaurant game). Another thing that would be nice is if we could draw/erase our own custom paths instead so we could really be in control and save a fruit that has gotten too far down, though I bet that would be a headache to code, haha!

The swap mechanic also felt pretty useless: usually whenever I'd try to use it, it'd be last-second to try and save a fruit going in the wrong basket, but the fruit it'd swap to would be wrong as well and just add to the headache! If I were to make it, I'd make it so it would smartly swap to whatever basket it is leading to like a get-out-of-jail card (but then have a cooldown on usage since that would be very powerful).

For another complaint, I was a bit bummed out that every play session inevitably ends in failure with a game over screen where the cat is pissed off at you. Kind of kills motivation to get better! It'd be nice if reaching certain score thresholds or a new personal high score would congratulate you in some way, like how in Tetris you can build up to launching the Kremlin into orbit with a high enough score! (Then again, maybe this is the case and I'm just not good enough to reach it)

Even though I'm bad at it, I can't find myself hating this game because I really like how well put-together it is in general!

tonyfinale responds:

Oh wow thank you for your extended thoughts! YES I do lament how there ended up being a bit of a lack in more PROACTIVE things the player is allowed to do beyond just fiddling with the lines. Going forward I def wanna make things that aren't as raw reactionary based.

Alternate end screens depending on your score is also a rly good idea... noted...

[Cauldron Caverns]

It's a decent, cute little game, but I felt like the tunnel trip got old quickly due to the simple flying controls and lack of challenge and variety in obstacles to contend with.

Once I got one bat to the end (which I did on my 2nd try easily) I didn't really have the willpower or inclination to go through it again as the game expects you to since 1) the track just goes on and on and gets boring since it caps out on difficulty early and doesn't throw in any new exciting obstacles 2) the upgrades don't really add anything new or exciting that would make further trips down the tunnel feel fresh (likely it would just make it feel easier which would just make it even more boring) and 3) it didn't seem like there was a clear end goal to reach, making me feel like it would just go on forever with no ending and feel pointless.

It's an ok core gameplay at its heart that could be nice with some further development: at the moment though it's just too simple to justify the amount of grind and commitment it expects. Perhaps you should need to get a set number of bats through with each subsequent set having different control schemes (maybe one of them having a flappy bird-esque movement pattern), perhaps the tunnel could change and there could be other obstacles and new power-ups to try and help combat those, and so on.

Oh and also I feel like the bat should probably be on the left side of the screen, instead of the center, to make it more fair and give you time to see obstacles coming from the right. That is, unless perhaps later on you make certain obstacles fly in from the left: that would justify it and add some variety!

LionJeff responds:

I love your comments :) Would you be interested in being a game tester? lol I feel like your comments would be very useful during active development.

There's a lot to digest here, but another player made a comment with similar suggestions and mentioning a sequel - if we choose to do that, I think we'll be able to incorporate a good amount of game play changes and ways of keeping things fresh. However, we have a few projects that are in process and we're excited to keep working on so we'll focus on those for the time being. You've given us a lot to think on and we will take what we can into these newer projects.

I really appreciate the honesty, it will help our future games be more engaging! Hopefully you'll like the next one a little more! We appreciate the play and feedback!

[JelloTetrix]

Hah, I think I saw a Youtube animation about this concept once: nice to see it created into a real game!

I wasn't sure if I would have a good time with this game at first: while the jello physics can be fun to watch at first, they can be very frustrating to contend with for scoring purposes! Pieces can lean or fall over in odd ways since they aren't supported by rigid physics as they typically would, and the distorted squishy shapes can make it difficult to tell how many pieces you've placed horizontally and whether it's enough for a line. Indeed, there would be many times where I would have pieces in place that I think would complete a row, but the game wouldn't recognize it for some reason or other, and it would feel very unfair (and sometimes vice versa it'd actually consider a row complete when I didn't think it was).

However, when you accept the game and its imperfections, it can actually turn into a very fun game of improvisation and recovery. I found it very fun to try and, for example, prop up a leaning piece or move an out-of-position piece by smushing another piece into it, all the while enjoying the satisfying jelly feedback the pieces gave. It's kind of like a crane game where you don't focus on picking up the stuffed toy with the crane, but instead moving it into an ideal position by just pushing it with the crane. Unlike Tetris where your placements and mistakes are rigid and stuck in stone, this game always has everything able to be moved about which can make it always feel like you can get back in the game. Very interesting stuff!

At the end of the day, though, I did find that whatever algorithm is used to determine completed rows to be quite bad and lead to plenty of games where I make a perfect tower of blocks with no gaps and yet don't get a single point. Nevertheless, there was something inherently satisfying about the weird act of stacking these squishy blocks and trying to make the most of it, so I'll give it a pass!