FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Downhill to Infinity]

Hmm, bit mixed on this one! Certainly a pretty stylish and cool game, but at the end of the day I was left feeling a bit frustrated.

Overall the presentation of the game is nice: it starts off on a great foot with a cool title screen and menus, and continues with some smooth and slick animations and gamefeel during actual gameplay. Speaking of gameplay, that classic Tony Hawk skateboarding gameplay is here and while it isn't anything new, it is nevertheless fun and addictive to chain tricks together for big combos. I say it isn't anything new, but there are some interesting touches like being able to up+flip as a psuedo-double-jump, and I do like the stylish way you wipe out in the game (though sometimes the camera would glitch out for me).

Having said all that, though, the game did feel a bit frustrating:

There were times where I wasn't sure if I was in control: for example, I'd hold left or right to slow down/speed up, but since the change was so gradual and my character wouldn't change stance or anything, I wasn't ever sure if the game was even reading my inputs. Similarly, the physics of the game would be really wonky at times, as sometimes when I'd ollie I would barely leave the ground, sometimes I'd launch to the moon, and other times I wouldn't ollie at all and just fall straight down a pit: just never felt like I could get a handle on it.

The camera was definitely a pain in this as well and felt like it suffered from the classic Sonic problem: you're simply feeling too fast that you can't see far enough ahead of you to plan for anything. In this I would want to go fast so I could get big air and so I'd be stable enough to grind, but that would always lead to me not being able to see far enough ahead or below and plummeting into a pit or other hazardous situation.

Moving on from controls and camera, the game also just felt a bit pointless after awhile. There didn't seem to be any sort of goal or sense of progression: every run would just go through the same endless randomized level devoid of any checkpoints and always end with my death (mostly an unfair feeling death) and that'd be that. It never felt like I was improving or winning since every run ends in a "game over" and it never does anything like praise me for a new record: you're just stuck in this endless void.

I still think the game is pretty neat and well put-together, but the rough edges really stick out for me since it shows so much promise. Planning to revisit and see if I can do better!

cheesycoke responds:

Jesus, thank you so much for this incredibly detailed feedback!! Glad to hear overall about the core gameplay n the presentation and stuff, really appreciate that. (Can't actually take too much credit for the spin trick, got that idea from Kingdom Hearts 2)
All these issues are things I really wanna look into. The ollie thing, I do wanna mention that sorta like TPHS you "charge" it by holding the button, so small presses get you less air but I might need to fine tune how quickly it charges. And I especially need to figure out what's happening if some just aren't registering.
Really appreciate the feedback on camera, was definitely thinking that needed some kinda work. Was thinking about just minor positional tweaks on it but mayyybe something more dynamic will be a better choice? I dunno, I'll think on it, might not get anything out too soon but this is all helpful!! Really looking forward to the video, too, since that should be good for helping pinpoint where the issues might lie.
AND yeah that last part is totally understandable, making games that're more rewarding is def a big next step of mine. Thank you so much again, though, for the detailed write-up and the overall interest in the game!

[NG BBS Awards 2022]

Haha, I don't frequent the BBS or anything like that so this game doesn't really grab me, but I found myself having a ton of fun due to all of the various hidden clickables and jokes scattered within! Yes, there is some low-effort jank such as how the sound icon doesn't change to an X if you turn it off, and some of the text layouts can be awkwardly arranged and such, but the goofy old-school Flash aesthetic of the game and its plentiful extras made me want to stick around and check out the awards, so well-done in making what could be just a boring list of folks be a fun interactive adventure! Would still love if I could click on people's names to see their profiles, similar to how you do for the credits in the start menu!

[International PixelArt Gallery 2022]

Hmm, my general impression hasn't changed that much from previous years: it's a nice project with its heart in the right place to bring attention to all sorts of cool art all across the world, but the actual construction of the gallery feels very clunky and confusing to navigate.

Complaints I've had before like how its difficult to see what countries actually have art within them on the world map are are still present (Spain doesn't flicker to indicate it can be interacted with but it can, and India does flicker to indicate but it doesn't have any art within).

The navigation can be strange and confusing as well, just as before. Say I want to check out all the art in Spain, so I click on Spain and it brings up the artists. I click on an artist, check out their art and profile, and then want to go see the next person's art within Spain. I click on the flashing recommended 'next' button to continue, but it takes me to some artist in a completely different country! You'd think it would take me back to the listing of artists in Spain so I could pick another, or go to whoever was the next artist in Spain. It feels like the navigation doesn't properly account for the context in which the user is viewing the gallery through.

I could go on but previous reviews have already covered most of it, so just refer to those.

[Pengu Survives Christmas]

Hmm, not too shabby! It's a bit of a shallow game and its appeal doesn't last that long, but it was nevertheless a fun little arcade game that I had a decent time with!

I especially loved the way the various obstacles would telegraph their entrance: made every death feel fair and avoided the cheapness of getting hit when near a wall. The variety of obstacles were nice as well and the way they increased in frequency made the game exciting. I also loved the little touches like the way the score counters spin up at the end screen, and the way Pengu's expression changes to disappointment if you don't get a new high score, haha!

If I were to give any complaints, I'd love if the game would have some sort of ranking/grading system to make me more inclined to play again for a better score: just staring at Pengu's blank face when I worked hard for a good score makes me feel like there's nothing else to go for. Also, there were a few oddities like a time where I heard a fish chomping but didn't see him on-screen (maybe the spawning coordinates put him off-screen?)

[Flanders Killer 8]

Haha, I'm not really a fan of this game, but I gotta say it sure does have that old-school Newgrounds Flash feel to it, so well done on capturing that aesthetic!

While I'm down on the game, I will say it's not all that bad. Some of the levels have a lot of environmental destruction and shootable objects outside of just the Flanders family which can be quite fun to find and blow up: reminds me of those fun kids games where every object reacts to a click. Also, there are a ton of Simpsons references, mini-games and really amusingly bad impressions to see and hear!

Overall, however, the game just does feel very repetitive and amateurish, and I found myself quitting quite quickly. Also c'mon, how you gonna have a shooting game where you don't even have a crosshair cursor? It just ain't the same when you're mouse-clicking a hand icon over someone's head!

Aprime responds:

Yeah, I can't say it was hard to capture that asthetic when the first one was made over a decade ago :D

You're right, it needs the crosshairs, sorry :(

If you want to Beta test: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aprimegames.flanderskiller

If you love Flanders Killer - please become a fan http://aprime.newgrounds.com/follow :)

[Spider]

Hmm, this one was a bit rough for me. I feel like the game does have a lot of charm to it and can be quite addictive, but overall it felt very repetitive and janky, like it was barely holding itself together.

As said, the game does have a somewhat charming and mysterious aspect to it, what with its goofy graphics, mouthed sound effects and hand-written manual clashing with its overly serious and gross story and concept. It also does have that combination of a clicker game feel where you keep powering up bit by bit, along with an ant farm sim feel where it can be fun to watch your units go to work.

But still, despite all that I think I had an overall bad time with the game due to some really wonky design decisions and bad construction.

First off, without a tutorial and more intuitive language and symbols (for example, every building just being some sort of weird mass of grossness) it was really rough learning how to even proceed in this game. Eventually I felt like I got the gist but even then, it just felt like the game was taking forever and my spiders barely made a dent in the boss, let alone its army, so I still felt like I was misunderstanding something.

The game also just has a lot of annoying waiting in its design. Nighttime was so annoyingly dark that I just never wanted to go out since there was no reward to negate the heavy risk, healing was so annoyingly slow but I didn't want to upgrade it since its technically free and thus a waste of resources that could be better spent elsewhere, it was annoying that I couldn't dump all the corpses in at once and instead needed to wait for it to process food multiple times, it was annoying that I couldn't access the shop menu anywhere I wanted, and so on. The game made it too easy for me to optimize the fun out of it, I suppose.

There were also a ton of weird glitches. I hated how even if you were full up on food, you could pick up more food and waste it. And speaking of food, while typically you think you can only feed one unit per food, you could actually feed multiple at once if you placed the food just right into a tightly-packed crowd.

I could go on but you get the idea: an interesting concept that could work, but constructed and designed very oddly so as to create a very confusing and frustrating experience. Looking into it, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it was constructed by a bunch of devs who couldn't talk with each other over a very short period: it certainly does give that slapdash feeling, so uh, well done?

[ᴘᴏʟʏ ᴘᴏʟʏ ᴘᴏʟʏ]

Cute little game! I have to admit it's not really my cup of tea since its entire premise is my mortal enemy: slide puzzles (seriously, I almost quit playing Parasite Eve 2 since it had a mandatory slide puzzle for progression). But nevertheless, I think the game does have some good construction and charm to it overall.

The cute little title screen with its animated bouncy logo, talking helper who reacts when you hover over things, the overall slick graphics and satisfying click-clack when you slide tiles are all subtle touches that really elevate this game. I'd love if it had a little bit extra juice to it, such as some visual FX when you slide tiles, buttons that they themselves react on hover, and an animated background, and I also wish the text was more readable (sometimes it gets so tiny and I wish the text box was more darker to make the white text pop) but for the most part it's all quite good and I had a decent time making my way through the easy and medium difficulties.

It's not exactly going to set the world on fire or get me to love slide puzzles, but this is a very nice and well-constructed basic game: it's like a very good first-timer student project vibe I'm getting, so well done in that regard.

DuskyLW responds:

I really appreciate the review! I made this game for the very same reason, I was not good at these puzzles nor am I a puzzle kind of person, but I had the itch to figure them out. Luckily, making this game solved my inept-ness at them haha. I definitely wanted a lot more out of this game but got to a point where I really wanted not get stuck working on it indefinitely, so I eventually cut my losses and picked a deadline. Really wanted to move on from this project and keep growing with other projects. Glad you still had fun with it despite it not being your thing <3

[Floe]

Wow, this one really took me for a ride!

I'll admit, my first impression was mixed: while the game is gorgeous and polished in multiple respects and the core gameplay fun to move around and mess with the grappling hook and all that to the point where I feel like I need to open my wallet, I started to get a little disappointed at how linear, scripted and all-around guided it was. For a game themed about exploration, it pretty much had no actual exploration to do beyond following the one single path. Yes, there are little secret rooms that you can find, but I felt like the game was just playing the same notes over and over: pink blob here, green bomb there, spiky walls there, over and over and over. The only puzzles and combat to be found are incredibly non-challenging and token: thus, engagement was lowering on my end and I was very worried this was a bit of a style over substance situation.

Nevertheless, once you accept the game for the guided cinematic experience it is, it does do a great job in doing so. The dialogue between the characters is amusing and rich, the lore of the game is very mysterious, extensive and chilling, and there are tons of events that keep you hooked and wanting to see more, especially once you get to the deepest part, where you have some great chase sequences and the like. Loved some of the more subtle events as well, like a green bomb puzzle suddenly being subverted by the world shifting and making it no longer exist and leave you holding a hot potato, haha!

It's a bit of a downer ending and I wish there was more to do, both in terms of content and challenge, but it nevertheless was a very impactful and cool experience: well done!

[Fire]

Wow, I'm not much for idlers but this one really grabbed me!

Love the presentation and theming present with it: gives it a real mysterious aesthetic which elevates the experience and immerses you. The sense of progression was very fun and addictive: building up the light bit by bit, getting new structures and visitors, clearing dungeons, balancing your passive income rates, there's just so much to do and unlock that keeps you busy the whole time wanting more and more. Also felt it was quite an intuitive experience to manage thanks to all the helpful popups and tooltips.

It's certainly a little clunky in some respects. There are some weird glitches like a weird 'quest' button appearing in the journey section that is placed weird so as to overlap a bunch of other text, and interactions like clicking on birds on your farms was difficult to tell the effect of since it spawns a bunch of pop-ups that overlap each other. Progression also feels weird in some respects with you swimming in certain resources you feel would be rare while other resources pile up at a snails pace: made it a right absolute slog bottleneck in the later game at times. Similar experience with journey: first it starts out feeling like you gotta babysit them the whole time, stuffing food in their mouths to keep their health up, then just a few pieces of equipment later they effortlessly clear all the dungeons first try.

Furthermore I'm not even sure if it's winnable? I got far enough to complete all the dungeons and build a shrine but absolutely nada happened afterwards that I could tell. Still, it was an interesting adventure while it lasted! (Ah, visited this afterwards and figured out the weird sacrifice/portal mechanic: maybe I'll delve further?)

ErikSwahn responds:

Thank you! Yes some things need work and it is not balanced rn. Feel free to sacrifice a character and try the portal :)

[CAKE QUAKE]

Wow, quite the interesting game here! I love the general presentation and craft on display here, and I find the concept quite unique and fascinating. Reminds me of other destruction puzzlers like Teardown and the like. I found the game very satisfying to play due to the mind-bending puzzle design and all sorts of crazy mechanics I've never seen, like venting explosions, setting up chain reactions, and so on: really works your noodle!

It definitely is a toughie though, and that's both in a good way and a bad way:

I certainly like that it doesn't baby you and starts hitting you with new mechanics and challenging puzzles almost immediately: sometimes it can feel refreshing and more satisfying to learn stuff through experimentation instead of being handheld through guided tutorial-esque puzzles.

I do definitely think that the game maybe goes overboard though: as early as level 4 I was getting incredibly stumped due to the rate of new mechanics being introduced and the level of complexity going up way more than I expected. But it was more than just the difficulty going up quickly, it's more that the game is very difficult to experiment to learn all the various facets: for example, every time you wanna blow up a wall or door or whatever to gauge its strength, you then need to restart and watch that lengthy scroll and get all the way back to where you left off, time and time again. Exhausting stuff!

While I did get roughed up, I do nevertheless have a positive impression of this game and want to delve deeper into it to challenge myself (but I wouldn't blame a lot of people being scared off)!