FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Miss Fortune]

Heh, not bad! Certainly reminiscent of those old Newgrounds Assassin type games where you beat up a celebrity. This game does have, despite its low effort appearance, plenty of subtle effort put into it actually through its many detailed and smooth animations, decent all-around graphics and charming sound effects. Found myself chuckling at some of the fatalities like the coffee and fan fatalities.

Having said that, though, the game was a bit lazy and confusing in some aspects. For example, I found the punch/knife/gun buttons really lackluster: you'd expect multiple repeated punches to escalate the damage they pile on until their face is all mashed up, but it never goes beyond the damage you get from the very first punch. Even worse, any damage from an attack, like a knife, gets removed when you select a different attack, meaning you can't get any big combos and lasting damage going.

Finally, the biggest issue was that I have no idea who this woman was, so it felt really confusing to heap so much abuse on them. Assassin-esque games like this are usually about targetting someone that everyone hates and would like to see get punished and feel carthasis from it: I dunno what carthasis we're supposed to get from this random woman.

Anyway, I'd say it is a decent intentional 3 star game which is what it is going for: alright in concept and shows promise, but has a rather confused and lackluster execution. Well done!

[The Present]

Pretty neat game! I thought this had a pretty good concept to it and also had a good sense of progression to the presents that slowly built up dread and tension to the finish. It's a short but sweet horror adventure!

Having said all that, I was a little disappointed in some respects. I felt like the game started to drag on a bit in the final sequence with minor additions like red lighting and such, which felt a little silly: would've been a bit more powerful if it ended quicker while I was still engaged, and maybe introduced more cool changes like maybe a chase event. Also I felt like the game relied a bit too much on eardrum-shattering jump scares: would've loved a bit more subtlety and a more intriguing plot or story that gets uncovered. Also a lot of the scares were just goofy and practically comical in retrospect: the cheap clip-art looking eyes that plaster the walls, the low-fi polygonal teddy bear at the end, and so on: would've much preferred some more scary attackers with more unique designs and effort put into them, I dunno, at least smear 'em with blood or something, haha.

Still, for something made rather quickly, I think it had some solid fundamentals: it was a good concept with a nice sequence of events that was just flubbed in some of the details in my opinion, but overall well done! I still consider the jumpscares a cheap shot, but I did feel rather immersed and tense through my playthrough, so nice work (though I am a pansy, so take it with a grain of salt, haha)

[Loveblade]

Hmmmm, this one was a bit tricky for me. I really like it in concept: swinging this sword around to stylishly slash projectiles while also being careful not to swing your crosshair into enemies and take damage. An interesting and chaotic multi-tasking battle! But in execution, I just felt incredibly confused on how to control and play effectively.

First impressions were a bit odd: the game used a sword icon for the thing you are magnetizing toward the crosshair, but it kept pulling the handle towards me and not the blade, leading to me hitting enemies with the handle instead of the blade during a pull which felt bad. Not only that, but you could hit enemies just by clicking the button for a sec to make the blade red: feels like that shouldn't be allowed since there is no strength in motion. Swinging the sword was possible with big motions, but it felt really unintuitive and difficult to pull off. It almost felt like the game should just be about attracting an orb towards the crosshair, an orb that discharges electricity when you click: that's what the controls felt like they were built for, in a way.

It felt like the most effective and safest way to play the game was to just sandwich an enemy between the crosshair and the sword and click to pull it towards you, making it hit during transit. But it felt really unsatisfying because you're just bonking the enemy with the handle instead of the blade, which a sword isn't built for. So I would try and do big swooshy motions to swing the sword and hit enemies with the blade: this had the effect of making satisfying feedback when hits were made and also made the power-ups work, clearly giving me thought that this is the intended play. However, this was incredibly unsafe because it would either lead to my crosshair bonking into enemies and making me take damage, or my big motions taking my mouse outside of the screen and losing focus since the game doesn't lock the cursor. Either way, it felt like I was stuck with an unsatisfying situation: play safe and win but don't have fun, or play wild which feels fun but leads to loss and unwieldly controls.

When it works, this game does seem quite satisfying to play! The effects for smashing enemies with a good swing, as well as even taking damage as a player, are quite satisfying in their sense of feedback. I'm sure a lot of people can have fun with this, but for me, I just couldn't get used to it, unfortunately.

[The Wizard Ran: Chapter 1]

Certainly an intriguing game! It's one of the more 'sane' adriendittick games I've played as it is quite straightforward, which is a bit of a shame in some respects, but it still has plenty of weirdness and subtle craft and charm to it, what with all its hidden endings, lore and deep story, ambitious mechanics like guard AI and a sandbox that responds to various player behaviors, and so on. Had a good time figuring out my escape in the first run and then playing around and seeing what else was there, like changing responses based on gathered information and watching the characters react. Could certainly be considered as shallow if you just do it straight for the first ending, and the game is a bit janky with low-fi graphics which can give a bad impression, but again, the hidden and subtle elements to be found are impressive.

As said, it was pretty janky in some respects: my first run had the guard glitch out his pathing and act oddly, then suddenly start attacking me, eventually knocking me clean through some walls (which I didn't know I could phase through yet) and killing me. Subsequent plays had the guards pathing go awry many times as well. The stealth mechanics felt really unreliable as well: I got seen by someone who had his back turned to me (this might've actually been because they just started to walk upwards, but they don't have up/down sprites, only left/right sprites, so it treated them as walking upwards while looking left at me despite going right previously).

Looking forward to seeing the rest of the chapters!

adriendittrick responds:

thanks as usual for the great review :)

[STRG.SNEK]

Hey, pretty neat game we got here! Certainly an interesting premise with a cool story hook to keep me motivated, neato ASCII aesthetic and blending of a scavenger hunt with snake mechanics, and a nice big world to explore around with tons of different obstacles like warps, hidden proximity tiles that keep the challenge and pacing up, and so on and so forth. Definitely a lot to love here and it feels like a great adventure through cyberspace!

However, I do have some complaints with the game that did kill some of my enjoyment:

You'll laugh at me for this, but I had no idea how to start the game for quite awhile: it was a cool reveal once I figured it out I could go past the footer (which I thought was a wall just like any of the other walls), but I came really close to thinking that the game was broken or I was just misunderstanding and almost turning the game off from confusion (thank goodness I didn't).

I appreciate a good challenge, but the game could be incredibly frustrating in unfair ways and led to me losing patience in wanting to continue. There were plenty of times where you transition between screens, either normally or through a warp, that could put you in a spot where you have zero time to react and end up running into a wall immediately in front of you: sucks that you feel like you have to trial and error and memorize sooo much.

Not only that, but the game loved to have warps and corridors, even ones outside of challenging situations, be just one single character wide which made the game feel so cramped and requiring an annoying level of precision, even for things that aren't part of the challenge, but just trying to use a warp room, for example.

Another issue with the game that might've led to a lot of these annoyances is the adherence to the ascii aesthetic, which makes horizontal movement very slow compared to the lightning speed of vertical movement due to the different way characters are spaced compared to new lines. Entering a new room vertically that has a wall immediately in your way leads to constant deaths.

These constant unfair or annoying deaths when coupled along with the checkpoint system, which only spawned you at the last character collected or checkpoint added insult to injury. The checkpoint system isn't too bad, but at times I would've preferred if the game would just spawn you at the entrance (or wherever you warped in) to the room you last entered, though I understand if maybe you think it would make the game too easy. In my opinion, I feel like being set back potentially a lot after a failure doesn't add much to this game, making it just an annoying addition. In particular, backtracking through areas you've mostly cleaned out but you feel you might've missed something is super annoying, because you've removed all potential checkpoints in your first run and now a single mistake can set you back so far.

Overall I'd say the game was an unfortunately frustrating game due to some of its design choices, but I still had a really good time with the game and think its pretty cool.

[Santa Clauminid (Demo)]

Hmm, not too shabby, but in its current state it is quite rough.

The game certainly did have some nice things about it: some of the more subtle special effects like how the sleigh and gun arm tilt based on direction was nice, and I liked the way the enemies exploded (especially the bosses). I also liked how it tried to do some interesting stuff like rewarding risky play (grazes) with MP to use for a special attack, being able to change powerups by shooting at them, and it looked like it had some sort of present dropping mechanic that could create an interesting multitasking challenge.

But the game also felt really janky in many ways. There's a few obvious ones like in how short it was and how the Santa boss was absolutely nothing, but in terms of other complaints:

*For example, I kinda hated how power-ups blocked bullets which would actually end up not only giving cover to enemies behind them but also make it too risky to pick up since you could get insta-shot by someone right behind them due to the lack of attack telegraphs.

*Doing grazes felt incredibly awkward because the actual hitbox of the character felt very vague and ill-defined, and it wasn't worth it anyway since you barely get anything out of them and the payoff special move is pretty lacklaster, being just a rapid-fire gun, similar to your regular gun, instead of a cool bomb or beam or some such.

*The present dropping mechanic felt really silly and not emphasized enough: it only comes into play briefly later on and it's not worth the risk to engage in it. Maybe if the present dropping gave you power-ups back it could be worth the risk to keep an eye out for houses, or maybe if it was an objective you have to accomplish to beat the level or keep an acceptable score similar to Paperboy it'd feel crucial. I definitely feel more importance should be given to this mechanic as it could be a clever and interesting Christmas themed twist on typical ground-bomb weapons seen in space shooters.

My biggest complaint though, as stated before, was that the game just felt really rough and unfinished: more of an alpha than a demo, I'd say. Not only was the game overall a bit rough and stiff with things like how static and unanimated enemies, space shooter games are kind of a dime-a-dozen and this didn't really bring anything interesting to the table to hook me in and want more, which should be what a demo does first and foremost.

I certainly think this game could be cool in a finished version, what with if the bosses and enemies become better, more mechanics like present dropping get expanded and so on, but it's hard to see that potential in its execution at the moment. Still, fingers crossed!

Chdonga responds:

Thanks for the long review LMAO.
I'm glad you see potential in this. I actually started working on it in '21 but stuff got in the way and it was even more rough than what I released this year. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it by winter '23!

[Sophie The Slug]

Cute little puzzler! Got some nice pep and overall good construction to it all, what with its goofy music, satisfying squishy sounds and animations for movement, and solid level design that keeps you hooked with its constantly increasing difficulty and new mechanics being introduced!

Well, I say it keeps you hooked, but I have to admit that the game is somewhat generic overall, being a sliding game that has been seen many a time before, so I found myself dropping off after some time. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad: it's well put-together and does a solid attempt at keeping things fresh by introducing crates, buttons, and so on, but in general it is kinda same ol' same ol' without anything really unique or eye-catching.

In summary, it's a solid game with no overall complaints, but nothing really incredibly or noteworthy either, so it is merely 'good' (which is fine, of course)! Again, general construction felt well-crafted so I look forward to seeing more games in future!

[Doodlepup's Feeding Time]

Hah, cute little game! Very accurately captures that old-school Newgrounds flash feel in some obvious ways (general presentation and coarse/graphic themes) and more subtle ways (like Tangerine's Pico-esque arm-flailing panic animation). It was a blast to explore the house and not only see all the various references and crazy ways the game could end.

I was a little let-down at how easy the game was: never really needed to use my brain to find items and figure out where to use them (for example, the key to the trunk is in the same room as it), and the 5 minute time limit was a non-issue with some endings being as simple to find within 5 seconds. Would've loved more puzzling out things and more exploration in order to get a perfect run within the time limit eventually after a couple failures, but all in all, it was a short and sweet adventure and still fun for what it was, so not bad at all!

[Aurora]

Wow, this game is amazing: can't believe this one got missed out on for the best of the month for November! Ok, that's a lie, I can easily see why people might've skipped this one as this is some Avengers Level Threat nerd shit that is niche as heck and might've been updated before I got my hands on it, but still!

This game heavily reminds me of some of my favorite Zachtronics games like TIS-100: very similar feel of messing around with building instructions for tiny systems that move inputs to outputs and reading manuals to figure out how everything works.

All-around I felt like the presentation and construction of the game was very professional and solid: loved how the game had a really cool story and theme to it with its cutscenes and style that made progressing more than just wanting to solve puzzles, and despite being a very complicated game, I felt like the HUD was very intuitive in how it was laid out and operated, especially due to the way you could hover over things to get tooltips which made me practically not even need the manual (that being said, I loved how the manual was in-universe crayon scribblings from Sasha: adds so much charm and immersion to the whole experience)! I ended up getting quite addicted to this and loved solving not only the puzzles but the puzzle of understanding how to be able to solve the puzzles in the first place!

While people rating the game low because of the complexity of the game could be taken as them just not being the target audience, I do think the game could have some slight room for improvement:

For example, I spent an incredibly long time stuck on the Dye Mixer program because I had no idea that moving a color onto another color would combine them: it seemed silly to expect that over a more logical overwrite/replacement of colors, and so I got stuck trying to get something done with add/subtract color and just got confused. I feel like I had a similar experience in TIS-100, but in that, I feel like there were more hints/example code in the manual that helped me learn these kinds of unobvious tricks, whereas in this there was nothing I could find.

Speaking of the manual, as charming as I think the it is, it might be a bit too obtuse and confusing to decipher its chicken scratchings: perhaps it could've been written a bit less busy or something to make it easier to read. I do appreciate the in-game manual which has both the crayon drawing and an attempt at deciphering it on the side.

It did feel like the game started to get to some complex stuff pretty early on, what with complicated jump commands and the like within the first four levels: as a programmer I appreciate it cutting to the chase and not babying me, but maybe for general public there could be some more tutorial-esque levels to let you learn concepts, maybe some programs that are finished but 'broken' where you fill in some missing lines, you know, simple stuff like you did for level 0, before letting them loose and writing their own stuff. I mean this is some college-level tough stuff that automatically assumes familiarity with binary numbering and assembly and so on: I like it but feel bad for everyone else!

Could also maybe make to have the manual have it's own dedicated shortcut button on the HUD instead of hidden away in the esc menu: I think that's an ok place to have it, but in my experience it took me awhile to find it so perhaps if it was more prominent people might have an easier time (instead I used the manual found in the description since I couldn't find it in-game).

Seriously can't believe something was made in a week: well done on this and hopefully you can take it as a compliment that it was missed out on as it's definitely niche stuff that isn't meant for mass appeal (though perhaps with some better tutorials and slower steps you could do it, but most likely at the cost of reducing its mystique).

EDIT: Getting a weird bug with Blue Green Separator: the program works, but it just keeps spinning its wheels after going through the first string of example inputs and never moving onto the next set. I've tried refactoring my code several times but it doesn't seem to have an effect: very strange!

EDIT EDIT: Bug with Blue Green Separator has been fixed woo~

crow-seeds responds:

Late reply, but thanks for going through and playing! This was super helpful, did not realize that color combining could trip people up haha, will probably make some edits to the manual.

The game was inspired by Zachtronics! I really found those games to be really fun because of the fun in trying to decipher how to operate the different mechanics in the game. Once you take the time to learn the mechanics, programming in it becomes a sort of flow. Like you code in this almost alien-like language almost natually, and then when you run the program and see all these complex dot sequences move up and down, you're like "Holy shit, I wrote this. I wrote this indecipherable block of code" and it just works! It's similar to when you first learn how to code, where it's painful to learn but really fucking rewarding. Wanted to make a game like that for programmers like me and you, but also able to be picked up by non-coders (Which it actually did! People who aren't in the field like JimmyCarlos and qwerty741 aren't programmers, and they actually beat all 11 levels in the main game!! Like holy shit, JimmyCarlos even beat it in a version without a text translation of Sasha's drawings!!!).

Maybe making it a free game on Newgrounds isn't the best target audience (though I want the game to be on a free platform, I would feel bad taking someone's money!). I don't really care about score or being front-paged nominated for best of the month (If I did, I would be making drastically different games, though views would be nice, especially on the multiplayer games!). I just thought it would be really funny to make a machine coding game, a completely alien and extremely different game from what you would typically see on this site, for Robot Day. The judges didn't really like it, but I didn't really expect them to!

Anyways I'm going on for way too long, Aurora is my favorite of all the games I've made by far, and I'm really glad there were people who genuinely enjoyed this nerdy programming game! I wanted to make a game that reflected the theme of a "robot day", and by making it about the true essence of making a robot (Like the low-level coding shit in real life, not the cool laser shooting stuff in pop-culture), it hopefully embodies what a "robot" themed game could be!

[『さかさま MOOD』]

Hmm, certainly a strong contender for 3 stars coming from the leader himself, but does it maybe do too much?

It's certainly got ups and downs...

It starts off strong, as the game certainly is rather shallow and insubstantial, being something like a single minigame from a Warioware collection, feeling like a paltry serving that begs more content.

However, just like a Warioware minigame, it has a rather charming and funny design to it in general and is filled with many variable interactions like not only hitting the bomb, cheese or Tom, but also kissing the forehead or, uh, nape, that are great to witness and belies the facade of shallowness.

Shikashi, the way you get those interactions is awkward and strange since not only is the hit detection kind of vague, the game is not robustly designed enough to always generate a scenario where you have a chance to kiss the lips for maximum points, forcing you to have to frustratingly accept a forehead or nape kiss.

Sarani, it sucks when you die and the game just skips whatever the event that caused your death and goes straight to a restart: feels very awkward and reduces what should be a strong point of the game.

Chinamini, there isn't a way to succeed at all, only death, so what point is this game?

Demo, as short and shallow as it was, it did make me have a memorable fun little time, while a 3 point game would probably not induce any emotions in me beyond boredom, so perhaps it deserves more credit? Hrm, tabun...ma ii ka!

panpikidaan responds:

FuturecopLGFさん、、、
Kiku is Big Fan..I look forward to your next YouTube video Upload(((o(*ﾟ∀ﾟ*)o)))