FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Time I Was Stranded in Some Planet]

Wow, this was a really great adventure: it's short but incredibly sweet in my book and surprised me quite considerably!

It's true that it is a little short especially in terms of exploration where all of the collectables are within like 10 feet of each other, it's a little janky with bullets not functioning sometimes and some events not resetting properly like how the alien talk prompt reappears on continue even though you've already gone past that point, it can be a bit annoying with the floating eyeball enemies showing up and the way they phase through walls to attack you with no way to defend, and it is a little simple in a lot of respects, but goddamn if I didn't have an absolute blast with this!

I absolutely love the Blaster Master-esque player/vehicle synergistic gameplay with various upgrades, and I found the story and dialogue so wonderfully goofy and charming: I just couldn't stop playing with the way the pace kept everything going. The end boss fight was a great cherry on this sundae that I was really impressed the game had, especially with the cool escape sequence at the end. Very well done!

streq responds:

Thank you so much for the feedback! I agree with all of the negatives you mentioned. Some of it is due to a bunch of "I'll fix them later"s that I straight up forgot or got used to. Regarding the flowers, they were originally a last minute addition (the game was a submission to a 9-day long game jam, it featured no boss fight, and ended after collecting the flowers), so some of the flower spots were chosen at random and never questioned again!
I'm very glad you enjoyed it, thank you for playing and taking the time to write this!

[Orderless: New Skies]

Wow, I'm usually not a fan of RPGs, but this one really grabbed me! Definitely hits a lot of good points for me: not only does it start quickly and get you right into the action (whereas most other RPGs would lock you into watching hours of unskippable cinemas and exposition before deigning to let you control) but the combat has fun action timing for both offense and defense and doesn't baby you as it actually starts out pretty hard! Another great thing to note is the stylish menus and overall presentation: definitely gives it a real professional feel to it all (though I do think the font can be quite tiny at times). Pretty neat stuff!

In terms of feedback, and I know this sounds odd considering what I said earlier, but the pacing and story felt very odd. Again, I don't mind that it doesn't give you any exposition and gets you right into the game pronto: that's awesome. What I do mind is that there barely seems to be any dialogue at all as you proceed forward: you'd think the characters would chit-chat about their confusing situation a bit more, but they just get on with things a bit too fast! The worst part was the boss fight after the knife guy: after you win, considering it's such a big event, you'd think the game would take a breather for a second, have the characters talk about what just happened and what was wrong with that guy. Nope, they don't say a word, and in fact get right into a fight with some nameless mooks after a few footsteps! Did that last fight not mean anything? Are our characters mute? I'm not asking for an exposition dump or hour-long cutscenes, but jeez, I want at least a little crumb of story and interaction here and there to know what the heck is going on, haha!

Anyway, for the most part, despite some oddities here and there, I think this demo accomplished what it was going for, in that I'm definitely intrigued and am going to be following the development: best of luck and looking forward to seeing how this shapes up!

[Merged Gravity DEMO]

Hey, pretty cool precision platformer you got here! It's simple, but I found the gravity switching mechanic very fun to pull off, and I felt like the game did a great job at keeping me hooked with the well-paced increase of difficulty and introducing of new mechanics to contend with. I also liked how the game taught controls and concepts with intuitive design, like the gauge around the ball that signals your charges left, and the warning that pops up to remind you of the restart button when you're out of charges. All around pretty well done and fun!

In terms of feedback, I'd say that the order of levels felt very odd at times: not only did it feel odd that there were some suddenly super easy levels appearing after other levels were ramping up the difficulty, sometimes a new mechanic like the timed buttons or gravity gates would appear, then suddenly they'd vanish and not show up again several levels later. The game was also lacking pizazz and juice: would've loved if there were some additional effects to spice things up, like maybe a cool warping sound effect when you beat a level to act as a celebratory fanfare along with your cool visual warping effect. Another real bummer for me was the lack of a save/load or continue option: it may not be that long, but I can easily see this being a game that someone (such as me) would need a few sessions to go through, so it not having anyone feels super unreasonable. Heck, even if it was a short game, a level select or save/load wouldn't hurt, so why it is absent!

EDIT: Jesus Christ, those last two levels were ridiculously hard gauntlets to get through! A bit overkill as I think since it's such a crazy difficulty spike compared to the rest of the levels, but through perseverance and confidence in the game's controls/physics I was able to clear it: (though I wouldn't be surprised though if some people would just quit here and feel justified in doing so!)

ChimeraDev responds:

Hi! Thanks so much for playing and the review!

I want to clarify that the game doesn't have a save system due to time limitations; that's why I focused on making the game easier to play if you come back to it! Since the progression is made in such a way that the earlier levels feel like a breeze!

Now for the level order, it might feel odd, but it's to introduce "hidden mechanics" like gliding! This is all taken in mind for introducing different segments for a final level, and not to over-load the player with a new mechanic!

I'll take this feedback in mind for future updates/games very kindly! Thanks for taking your time to write and give proper feedback! It's always extremely appreciated!

[Tricky Keys 2]

Wow, really impressed with this game! Certainly another great entry from Team Bugulon: the game not only had a pretty interesting and fun concept, but it has a very professional level of polish to its presentation and game feel. The way the game kept upping the challenge and introducing new mechanics was very addictive. I thought I was gonna be able to carry some of my skills over from Tricky Keys 2, but this was so wildly different!

Can't think of many complaints, though I'll admit it did take me a bit to grasp and remember all of the controls and rules: might've been some ways to more intuitively help in that regard. For example, it'd be great if a red 'enter' prompt would appear with a undo symbol to let you know how to go back and edit your code, similar to how there is a green one to signal that you can start. Perhaps it'd also be nice if, during the AI edit mode, the playing field would be grayed out or unanimated to more delineate switching modes and that you can't move yet. Also I'd like it if there was a more significant wiping transition when you go back to edit: it isn't necessarily clear at first that the world has reset. But as said, I was able to grasp it pretty quickly with some trial and error, so it's all good for the most part.

I'll also admit that there didn't feel to be that strong of a story aspect as it lacked the powerful antagonist from the first game and there was no real goal or stakes explained. Furthermore, this game never felt like its puzzles fully challenged me with some of the latter ones being quite simple and also tutorial-like for being so late in the game, and the ending was a bit of a dull thud with no grand finale or boss or anything. But still, overall excellent work once again!

[Mini Arrows]

Cute little game! It's quite easy at the start with it's one-button controls and simple levels, but it's understandable considering they are teaching the mechanics and I was glad to see how complex it ended up getting towards the end with very hard routes that you need to plan out or react quickly to: always fascinating to see how challenging one-button games can be! Overall I felt like I had a great time: my only complaints would be that I wish it had a few more challenging levels at the end, and that I do feel like the music is a total mismatch, being way too overly loud and energetic for a cute puzzle platformer like this! A nice short and sweet experience!

[Crazy Office Escape Part 2]

What can I say? Similar to the first part, this is a pretty decent escape room game. It's nothing groundbreaking, some of the presentation aspects are a bit lackluster and it can be a little annoying/confusing at times with the puzzle logic and the hitboxes for the interactable areas and such, but for the most part it does a good job at keeping the momentum going with clues and items and puzzles that keep popping up and you can't help but keep making connections, making it a rather addictive experience!

[Shotgun Spire]

Hey, pretty cool game you got here!

It's definitely not the most impressive game from a graphical standpoint or anything like that, but the core gameplay mechanics of blasting around with the shotgun felt very satisfying and intriguing to get skilled at, and when you top that off with a great sense of progression through a combination of upgrades/level changes/boss fights/story beats as well as cool music (albeit cool music that doesn't loop properly) it made this a great little adventure! Also felt pretty well-polished: for example, I loved the little touch of the pitch-shifting for the depleting ammo as it really helped teach the ammo mechanics in a subtle way!

There definitely is some clunkiness to the game: as stated before, the music doesn't loop properly, and furthermore there are some weird bugs here and there and unbalanced upgrades and the shotgun controls can be a bit frustrating to get used to and the checkpoints are sometimes too harsh/too forgiving and so on. I also felt really annoyed that it didn't have a save/load mechanic. But despite all that, I felt like this was pretty fun nonetheless, or at the very least, a great prototype that makes me want to see a more polished final version, so I'd say that's a good game jam result!

[Hello User]

Pretty interesting little game! Definitely gives me Hypnospace Outlaw vibes with its fake OS and goofy old-school aesthetic.

My first playthrough was pretty good, but ended prematurely. I really enjoyed solving the crazy login puzzle and then had fun tinkering with the impressive OS you put together along with its various apps, but felt disappointed that I didn't really find any sort of secret story hook or anything like that: I just figured that the game was just a jokey experiment with nothing to it, so I left.

Luckily, I eventually came back and on my second playthrough I did discover the hidden catcha puzzles (again, I just initially though the catcha was a joke with no real solution, so it was quite the surprise) and the very tricky firewall minigame (great minds think alike, haha) and so on, and that did elevate the experience for me! I still felt like it started off strong and then, even with the secrets, just kinda petered out and didn't have a very satisfying ending or story beyond this assistant being some sort of weird boogeyman, but it was still an interesting puzzle experience.

CaperCube responds:

Thanks again for the review, dude!

For being a 72 hour jam game, I'm super happy with what we were able to make here, but the points you made here and in your video are totally valid takes I'll be thinking about in future work.

Cheers!

[Pixel Mania!]

This was a bit of an odd duck for me with a lot of ups and downs, making me a bit confused on how to feel about it!

On one hand, many kudos for hiding a game within a game, and done in such a secretive way that many people might not even realize there is a secret in the first place and might just write this game off as a bog-standard collectathon platformer that it appears to be at first glance: takes some balls to pull off a risky move like that! Even though the whole 'player rebels against the creator' angle has already been done many times before, it was still a neat twist and I enjoyed how the gameplay evolves in so many ways and had multiple endings and such as you get deeper.

On the other hand, I came very close to quitting this game two times and it was only through the grace of god that I got lucky enough to make it through. The first time was me boring myself on the initial boring collect coins gameplay loop: as I was just quitting the game, I happened to glance at the description and luckily see the hidden clue, for any other time I would've just quit and thought the game was dull as dishwater. The second time was in the big unfinished RPG world where I was starting to get really annoyed with how big the world was and how easy it was to lose so much progress from a flubbed jump or a dumb trap: I was just about to quit since it felt like I was making no progress, but again, luckily I happened to find the spaceship at the very last moment and then get a cool ending boss fight.

So yeah, it's a bit difficult to judge! While I enjoyed the secrets and subversions, I still found it a bit of a pain to play at times: even looking past the things I mentioned, there are also other silly things like bad feeling platforming physics and the annoying need to redo all the dialogue/cutscenes on a fail. It's like if parallel worlds exist, I think this is the only world where I got lucky enough to actually play and beat the game, whereas every other world I would've quit out of boredom or annoyance and I wouldn't blame them for doing so. I mean, I did get the ideal experience, but does that mean it's good, or that I got lucky, and how should I score it? Ok, now I'm getting silly, but anyway, it's a mixed bag I guess!

blit-blat responds:

Thanks for the review! On reflection I'm not happy with how well hidden the "real" game is. I knew I wanted all to be revealed on the end screen to make people go "wtf? Where were the gems? I best play again!", but it could probably have been signed posted a bit more in game. Throughout development I did worry that the base game wouldn't hold people's attention long enough for them to complete the game, and unfortunately this was borne out in the fact that people unlocked medals to about word 2-3 and then stopped. Does no one read the Author's Comments before playing anymore?! :P

Improving the base game was difficult for a few reasons, the first and main reason being time. I started developing the game on January 4th, giving me just under 3 weeks to build the game and release on Pixel Day. The second reason was variety. The obvious thing to add to the base game to spice things up would be enemies. However, I wanted to make the two games feel fairly different and if there were enemies in both I felt this would be a bit of a cop out.

I'm interested that you found the RPG world to be too big; in my view it felt far too small! My original plan was for it to be much bigger - the four zones (green, blue, yellow, orange) were all meant to be large separate areas. Ultimately time got the better of me and they were combined into one. Maybe it's because I know all the shortcuts and secrets, but combining them into one world made it feel very small and easy. Will seek more outside views next time.

In terms of losing progress, can you expand a little, please? All collectibles should be retained at death, you just start back at the entrance to Proto-World. If you meant during the initial Code Monster chase or the battle at the end, then yeah I meant to add different dialog in after replays and fails, but alas, again time got the best of me!

[Omen of Trident 2704]

Pretty nice point n click adventure! There were definitely a few rough spots here and there, such as the sometimes awkward logic used for puzzles and note gathering, as well as the minimal amount of sound/music, but for the most part I enjoyed this short and sweet adventure! Definitely thought the game was very charming with the dialogue and various interactables containing flavor text, and the presentation was very classy as well with the pixel-noir graphics. Also loved the little touches like how the title screen gets corrupted after the ending: left quite the lasting impression! Would love to see a more expanded entry of this or something in a similar vein.