FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Split-shot West]

Hmmmm, it's unfortunately very rough in its current state. Not only does it have some bugs and general jank to it, but I found the combat to be really crude: everything is just too chaotic with how fast bullets can fly and enemies shooting so erratically without telegraphs for it to feel like I can skillfully play and get that ideal cowboy tussle. Elements like the tables and such felt underused too.

I will say, however, that I find the concept very interesting and wish it would be built upon. I find it very reminiscent of much-loved Resi Evil 4's combat where you switch between movement and stand-your-ground precision aiming, and I could definitely see this working in a similar manner with better enemy and encounter design. So in that regard, I think this is a pretty cool prototype and a great example of a game jam result: despite it all, I find it having a lot of potential and I can't help thinking what it's final version would be like!

Oscura responds:

Thanks for trying it, I agree with a lot that you said and really wanted to do more with this concept when making it, however I struggled with time to get the results I wanted so I wasn't able to create the game I had exactly imagined. I had a lot of fun making it nonetheless and learnt a ton which I hope goes to improve the way I approach/make future games. Thanks for playing!

[sinesurf]

It's a simple game, but something about it feels really chill and smooth, and that ends up making a rather addictive game. Takes a bit for it to actually get exciting, but once you get pretty far into a high-distance run it can get really wild and crazy: maybe too crazy to actually ever be able to consistently get high scores from skill and not luck, but it's fun nevertheless. Not exactly long lasting in its appeal, but its decent while it lasts.

I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill, but I found the separate scores for both distance and hangtime to be very confusing. Typically a game just has one type of score and that helps the player realize what the goal of the game is, but since both have their own scoring and both work against each other (by going for high hangtime you create too much risk for distance to safely work, and by going for distance you must play it too safe to ever get high hangtime) I didn't know what I was supposed to do. You'd think that if the game wanted to reward you for both, it'd make them synergize, like by getting high hangtime you get boost power that you can use to get better distance, or something like that. I guess I should just think of the two separate scores as two separate games in one package, but I dunno. Anyway, weird rant over, haha.

[Incestor]

I'm probably too old to enjoy this, haha. Some of the jokes were alright, and the idea of going back in time and messing with history through incest is...interesting, but I didn't feel like it was used to its full potential here. Would love if it had a bit more to the jokes, as well as some more polish (you can't even put the effort in to have the cursor be layered on top to he speech boxes?) but eh, some of its laziness adds to its amusing appeal, I suppose.

[Assembly Destruction]

Wow, not that bad at all! It's a bit rough and doesn't have a story or goal to strive for at the moment, but the combat reminded me a lot of something like Hammerfight or Highfleet, and I absolutely loved the sheer chaos of improvising whatever bits you could find to build the best you can, as well as the cool locational damage and the deep strategy it provided as you decide how to prioritize your attacks on different enemy ships weaknesses. Felt like it had a pretty good amount of polish to as it intuitively flashed whatever parts you're hitting, and always felt quite satisfying to blow stuff up and watch it crumble!

As said, though, it's definitely a bit rough. I found it incredibly confusing to understand the whole attachment system and would love a better explanation for that: even when I feel like I did understand it later on, I would still connect or not connect pieces in weird, unexpected ways. Controls were a bit annoying: kept trying to hold-release to grab-drop objects but instead it wanted me to click to grab and then click again to let go, and that really made the rapid assembling you need to do during combat very frustrating.

I'd say this is an excellent example of an ideal game jam result: it's rough and shallow at the moment, but it makes me very intrigued to see a more polished up final product of this since it has a very cool core mechanic and lots of potential!

[Maptroid]

Huh, it's certainly an interesting subversion of Metroid games. I can imagine the pitch meeting: "what if we made a Metroid game where the map screen and the game screen are switched?" And well, it was intriguing enough that I stuck around to play for a bit and see what it was like: maybe you really can boil down a Metroid game just to its raw map elements and it would be just as fun.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the intrigue to dissipate and I was just left bored. With no sounds or music or juicy effects apart from a few token screenshakes to help the lackluster minimal graphics, the game just felt incredibly dull. Every dead end I encountered just made me dread the absolutely dreadful amount of backtracking I'd eventually have to do considering there was no fun movement or combat or anything to spice up the travel time.

So while it was an interesting experiment, unfortunately this was an experiment that didn't work for me. Graphics aren't everything and sure, if you had a Metroid game on Atari or something lowfi like it this would probably be what the game would be like, but still, I think this proves there's a good reason to have a fun character to control and an interesting world to see. Reminded me of playing Doom from the 2D map view: sure it's possible, but it's definitely not the exciting experience I want!

[Spent Shells]

Feels more like a prototype than an actual game at this moment: it's not bad, but it doesn't really feel that good either? Reminds me of the introductory example of a juiceless game in Game Maker's Toolkit "Secrets of Game Feel and Juice," unfortunately.

It's certainly got all the essential pieces for a top-down shooting roguelike, and it can give you a few minutes of shooting fun. It's got a decent variety of enemies and even includes some nice boss fights to fix things up. Everything seems to run fine and all that hoohum.

But I found the game getting incredibly boring and repetitive very quickly. Not only is it lacking any juice or pizazz to the combat with its lackluster feedback and uninteresting combat mechanics, and not only is it lacking any sense of a goal or progression to it with its repeating levels and bland stat upgrades, but it hasn't done anything to add its own interesting flavor to the genre, making it just feel so redundant, like you were building some sort of engine/toolkit for other devs to use to make an actual game with (maybe that is the case?)

As said before, it's a decent prototype, and I'd hate to see the effort go to waste with just this: hoping this isn't the end and you continue to build upon this to make an actual interesting shooting roguelike game with some sort of unique twist or fun mechanics!

[Tower of the Scorched Sea]

Wow, what a great adventure we got here! Overall great in all aspects I could find. In particular, I never found myself getting bored with this: not only does the game keep introducing new fancy mechanics like the variations on the light beams, and not only does the game do a great job at making so many varied and unique rooms that showcase all sorts of creative combinations of said mechanics, but also the game varies between slow-paced puzzle-solving and fast-paced action platforming through traps which keeps things constantly feeling fresh and exciting! And what a lovely boss fight to finish it all off.

If I were to have any complaints, is that the game might be a bit too easy: never really had a serious head-scratcher of a puzzle and with 3 hearts it felt like the action platforming could be a brute-forced at times. Still, even that simple nature is a positive of the game: despite it being easy, it didn't stop it from feeling fun and addictive and a heck of an adventure!

[The Reboot]

Pretty cool game! Definitely looks like it had a lot of effort put into it: the very fancy intro cinematic as well as the cool HUD with the robo-butler gave a solid first impression, and the way the grid shows where you can place things and the cards all snap into place and give previews and feedback and so on were all very intuitive and satisfying. Love the little touches like how every time you restart, a nuke goes off, giving a very diegetic/in-universe reason for the restart, haha!

I'll admit, I had a real rough time with the game initially: there was a part in the tutorial where you have three lower districts that look like they all need help to get balanced up otherwise you lose, yet you still have a quota for total to meet, so their just didn't seem like anyway to win. I was stuck for a long time there and the confusing lack of feedback it was giving me whenever I failed kept me in a loop until I solved it in a way I didn't think would work but it did??? Beyond that, I also had a tough time with the game as well where I didn't understand why I wasn't able to not build something where I thought I could, and it just felt like a lot of it was up to RNG and such (though maybe that's the point, just nuke it until it works out sometime, but still, this subtle feeling of futility was annoying, though I'll admit I might just be bad).

Overall had a lot of fun trying to get good at optimizing this city with all these crazy goals to meet: certainly an interesting balancing act to pull off!

(By the way, the robot-butler-whatever keeps throwing me off: they have these two lines right beyond their eyes that look like lips, so I feel like that's their mouth, but then they've got a mustache looking thing below that, so those two lines must be the nose and the tiny bit way below must be the mouth, but I just can't accept that and it disgusts me, haha)

MartinJacob responds:

Thank you so much for your detailed comment!

You are right about the tutorial part on balancing populations, which was quite hard to bring about (I am still not 100% satisfied with it) as it explains a mechanic that isn't intuitive at all...
About placing buildings, you can always only place them at the "end" of calculations (next to the building that has a number displayed on it), except for the "NEW" buildings which you can place next to any other building. I agree it's another part that would deserve more signaletics

About the RNG, yes it's meant that way, especially when reaching higher scores you sometimes have bad luck... But planning ahead and optimizing your strat will get you a long way

About the Butler, lmao I can't unsee it

[Egg Time Rewind]

Not too shabby! Decent little space shooter game with a cute little twist of previous lifes coming to help you out. The presentation is pretty charming, there's an alright amount of enemies and obstacles to contend with, the power-ups are nice, the charge-up shot added some strategy, and it was surprising how many control schemes it supported. It didn't really blow me away with anything unique or amazing, but I had fun playing.

I will say that I feel like, despite its interesting twist of previous lives coming back to help your future runs, I did find myself not being driven that hard to go for a high score or anything: while the game does intensify as it goes on, I did find it to nevertheless get quite repetitive and sometimes I'd just not have the willpower to go for yet another run through the same stuff once it came to my final life. I guess it's understandable given the small space you were going for since it reduces the space you have to vary things up, but still, it is what it is.

(The bonus game was pretty decent as well, being a little Outrun/Pole Position prototype thingy! To be honest, I might've actually liked that more than the main feature, especially if it was just polished up a bit more!)

KilledByAPixel responds:

Thanks for the review, good points!

[Wacky Emvi Simulator]

Hey, this was a really cute game! I was super impressed at how polished and juicy the game felt: the first impression with the very animated and explosive menu was incredible as developers typically skimp on those, and I'm glad to see you don't! Gameplay was no slouch either: the animation of the character when they jump, the great feedback for dashes and other effects, the fancy power-ups, the fun design of so many of the enemies such as the risk-reward nature of turning that one enemy around to bounce them for more points, and so on: it's all so fun and lively!

It's definitely got some rough edges here and there, such as the layering where enemies can appear in front of something that they technically should be behind, and I was confused on how some of the enemies worked like the DVD logo since I wasn't aware at first it was generating points when it hit the screen edges (otherwise I was like, wait, am I supposed to avoid activating them in the first place?) Additionally, in general the game is a bit short-lived and without any high score tables or some such. But nevertheless I had a good time with it and would love to see more!