FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rushdown Rivals]

Hell yeah, I love me a good beat em' up and this delivers in spades!

All-around I feel like this game looks and feels wonderful and has a very professional level of polish and huge amounts of content. There's just so much to love, like the great variety of enemies and bosses to fight, all the referential humor, the combat with its fantastic feedback and subtle guiding auto-aim/stickiness and clear attack telegraphs, tons of characters to play with all sorts of distinct playstyles and unique hidden techniques like whacking back bullets with Pico's bat, the great menus and controller support and so on and so forth. I probably can't even list all of the positives about this game because they are innumerable and also subtle: so good you don't even necessarily notice it (but you sure as heck feel it from how fun this is)!

If I were to have any nitpicks, it would be:

*Would've loved to see character stats/bios being accessible on the character select screen instead of only in gameplay: can end up going back and forth if you end up picking someone that doesn't gel with you because you didn't have a chance to study beforehand (though I felt like I loved all the characters I tried).

*Sound was kind of weird if you wear headphones. If you walk to the right side of the screen, you'll end up hearing footsteps coming from the right side of your headphones as if someone is to the right, not realizing its your own footsteps. Basically, its kind of strange that the 'ears' are centered in the center of the screen instead of tracking on your character: would be much better for a more informative audio, I think, but maybe some people playing view themselves as an outside observer and not the character so it makes more sense to them, dunno. Maybe it's because it can be a 2P game?

*Was a little disappointed that there was no story or campaign after it seems to be building it up during the tutorial: instead you just play in separate arenas at your leisure that largely have the same enemies to fight, not much unique stage hazards or geography or variety in minibosses, and in general no major differences between them except the final boss. Because of this, unless you're a score/difficulty junkie, it can feel like it's lacking a sense of progression and being a bit repetitive, like once you've seen one level you've seen 'em all (except for the boss, of course).

*I do love how simple and mashable the combat system is, but I was a bit confused and unsure whether it had a deeper strategy to go for beyond just comboing to get powered up. Would love to learn some strategies like how to proc 'vunerable' status on enemies and any other neat tech, as so far I couldn't find anything definitive in my attempts to research it. Think it could create a whole new deeper level of strategy and intention in the combat if there were enemies with certain weakpoints that you need certain moves or timing to exploit and get 'vunerables' with: as it is you can kind of just mash through everything no matter what, even if they're a shield enemy which you think would need another approach (which is a positive in some respects).

*While most of the characters are awesome and unique, some seem rather imbalanced and confusing in design: for example, Pico has the ability to whack back bullets with his heavy attack bat, and Hank has the ability to parry bullets or attacks with his special, yet Cassette can only parry specifically melee attacks with a very tightly timed up attack (why so specifically only melee? just seems so limiting and hard to pull off when I feel it could've easily just reflected any damage like Hank, but I dunno, maybe she'd be OP if she could)

*Weird mouse bug: if you're using the controller on the menus but stop moving for a second, the selection will suddenly snap to what your mouse is pointing to when I'm not making any major mouse movements to make it think I switched control schemes.

*I do find that the characters move a bit too fast and snappy: they all remind me of Fox from Melee whereas I liked playing characters like Marth for more slow, controlled movements. This game, however, has enough auto-aim and subtle guidance that it's not an issue: just an initial personal preference thing that bothered me slightly.

*Difficulty can be a bit wonky and up to luck at times: sometimes you get a round that gives you a lot of health and assist trophies, other times you're on your own. Sometimes you get a wave of normal enemies, sometimes you keep getting Dad-bot popping in over and over who is seriously way too spongy and way too much of a mini-boss to be within those waves of normal mooks. Maybe there's some way to reduce RNG, like a way to guarantee health drops (for example, I liked how Pico gets a free psuedo-health point for getting his combo up) and hand-craft the enemy waves for each level?

*I could see some people complaining about the fact that the boss fights have random mooks popping up in them: usually this design is treated as the boss not being strongly designed enough to stand on its own, random mooks being a cheap way to artificially increase the boss difficulty. I don't really have a beef with it since I think it works with the chaotic nature of this game, but maybe something to think about.

*Not sure how assist trophies work? I pick them up and they happen after a weird delay of time, or sometimes they don't even happen at all? I would expect them to either be used immediately or go into my inventory and press a button to use: maybe I am using them and not realizing?

*Medals seem to sometimes work and sometimes not? I got some of the medals like the assist trophies and some minibosses, but none of my full clears as Pico, Cassette Girl, Hank, etc.

Christ, I know that's mucho texto up there, but again, the above are very much nitpicks that didn't really hurt my great experience with this game, I just wanted to point em out just in case. Sorry I dedicate so much text to that instead of the positives, but well, it's kinda what I do, haha. Well done on this game!

Spagato responds:

I appreciate the detailed criticism as it's the best way I improve. Your feedback last year really helped with the development of this one and I'm glad I delivered :^)

Thanks again for playing! Please keep doing what you're doing. It really helps me and probably others as well.

- I'll probably put a way for players to see the movelist on the character select in the future

- That's probably a bug since the game has a listener in the center of the camera. I'll see if I can adjust that so it's not so weird.

- Ah the story, I REALLY wanted to make one and put one in, but the work was HUGE for a free fan game lol. That might come in the future but I don't think for the web version as the loading times for this game is already crazy.

- The armor just gets destroyed by damage or specific moves that do more armor damage (usually on attack2)

- I wanted every character to have something unique for themselves so they won't overlap each other as much as possible. I was going to make her kick reflect but that might make Pico's bat look outdated so I made Cass the only character so far with a melee counter hit. I gave Hank the parry because it looked cool like his character and I wanted him to play as risky as possible so the reward had to be high.

- I think the dadbots are a little tanky, might nerf their health next patch. You do get a guaranteed hp from foamy if your health is low and he usually spawns more likely when you're low.

- I wanted the minions to change a person's strategy mid-fight and make them move around more. I haven't gotten a complain about that yet luckily, but I'll keep an eye on this one.

- The assist comes out when there are a lot of enemies on screen, but much faster if a boss is present. When I play-tested the game I noticed the assists kept being wasted alot so I tried to make it "take and let it do it's thing" as much as possible. I'll try to adjust the times, maybe that might be the better option.

- That's my bad :( . I'll try to fix the medals asap.

[Snack Slice]

I really want to like this game as I think it's a cute concept, but execution-wise it made a bit of a mixed impression.

As said, my first impression of the game was pretty bad. The initial levels felt very confusing and frustrating to get to work: it felt like the game relied too much on luck and strange/illogical physics that were difficult to replicate consistently. Sometimes I'd slice something and it'd slice how I want, sometimes it'd just stay still or move completely differently than expected, and it felt confusing and weird how to slice round objects to try and get them to roll. Was begging for some sort of force push I could use to clean things up or get motion going. Furthermore, there was a lot of annoyances like slices/clicks not even registering in the first place at random times.

However, it felt like when the later levels came, the game started to hit its stride, where levels became a lot more simplified, both in terms of the complexity/steps being reduced and the goals being more logical and achievable without relying on weird physics. One could argue that maybe it becomes a bit too much about vague timing for some levels which might be worse for some people, but I quite enjoyed myself. Certainly, while I enjoyed the later simple levels, ideally I would want these levels to be the first ones that people see, and then challenge them with more complex ones later on: basically the levels are out of order!

If the levels were reorganized or culled to focus on the strong ones and create a better difficulty curve, and if the game was polished up a bit more to reduce the jank and create consistency in physics, I think it could be really great! Presentation and concept are already very good and intriguing and make me want to see more despite my bad first impression, so I would consider this an ideal game jam result!

[Simple RPGs]

Hmm, it's a cute little retro game, but unfortunately it might have been a little too retro for me!

It certainly is charming to see these games and I do think they effectively capture what old-school RPGs might have been like: particularly their limits. Reminds me of people who make NES games and ensure that it will genuinely fit on an NES cartridge and obey the palette limits and all that jazz. However, playing through them was an exercise in frustration as it just felt overly simple to the point of being boring and I was constantly stepping on traps with no way to know except from memorization. The little things that could've added some excitement, such as special effects for your abilities, gathering items and equipment, satisfying combat feedback, and a quest or sense of progression, were totally absent here and made me lose interest practically immediately.

As a side note, I was confused at the inclusion of two separate games: at first, I thought the idea was that two RPGs would be mashed into one for an interesting combination, not just two completely separate games. While it was certainly novel to see the technological difference between the two RPGs, like seeing one from the Atari 2600 era and another from the 5200 era, it felt like quantity over quality for me as both of them suffered the same issues.

I suppose take it as a compliment that you might've too effectively captured the boring, bygone era of old-old-old-school retro RPGs! I'd like to say I'm old enough to appreciate them but I came in around the Nintendo era, not the Atari era, so I'm missing that nostalgia which could've helped.

[Into Ruins]

Hey, not bad at all! Quite enjoyed my trips though this game: it's a bit of a traditional roguelike so it's not exactly anything super new or creative, but the little unique changes to the system it does have such as light management and health management from falling as means of progression added enough of a nice twist to keep things fresh, and in general the presentation and game felt very professionally-crafted and fun to play with lots of satisfying effects for actions and subtle touches like being able to see your sprite change with equipment.

Being a traditional roguelike at heart, it does suffer the usual annoyances such as a run's success feeling like it might be too much up to the RNG god's favor. Additionally, having to experiment with equipment to identify them always chafes me a bit as well, though I understand it's purpose. Moving on from that, there are some slight annoyances like the game being very vague with feedback for actions like combat (though again, maybe it's mysterious on purpose). All in all, though, I still had a very positive impression from my runs, so clearly there is enough good construction to this game that makes the slight annoyances ignorable in the grand scheme.

[K I S S I N G]

I know you most likely tried to make this too confusing and wacky to grasp in order to get the intended 3 stars, but I'm sorry, this game was just too interesting of an experience that I gotta rate it higher than that!

Something about the way the game presents itself had a certain charm or mystique to it behind it's low-effort facade that made me think this really had something to it, and I feel vindicated since what I found was a really fascinating and unique puzzle game. Don't get me wrong, it did take quite a few tries to figure out how the heck everything works and I can see how some would be frustrated, but for me the entire process was a great journey, like being an archeologist and figuring out what these hieroglyphs meant, and everything finally coming together and getting me a win gave me a real sense of accomplishment. I think you struck a pretty good balance where there were enough hints put in place (the arrows next to the rows of keys, the origin points on the character/number symbols) that people could figure out the logic without being too obvious so as to keep the mystique: reminds me of something like La-Mulana level puzzles.

Really fascinating stuff: like a piece of outsider art this was fascinating to delve into and figure out what makes it tick!

Emrox responds:

I will gladly accept the label of "outsider art." Glad you liked it! Maybe if they do this jam again I'll have to go even weirder.

[SageRage]

Hah, quite the goofy game! Certainly has a lot of wacky special effects that add a lot of charm to it and it was fun to figure out that game's weird logic and goals.

Unfortunately, once the charm wears off, I felt like the game was quite shallow and frustrating. Just didn't feel like I was making any sort of real progress and there wasn't a sense of accomplishment in chaining mailboxes or keeping the fuel going. Difficulty was all out-of-whack as well: in the end the car just ends up going way too fast to be able to control effectively, which makes weaving through the busy street to get fuel an impossible task (that is, if you can even see the fuel coming due to it spawning in the corners where you can barely react).

Well, it was good for a few laughs and I imagine it's all an inside joke birthday present anyway not meant for general consumption, so whatev!

[Planetaario]

Huh, this is quite the interesting game!

Certainly a unique gameplay mechanic: was hard to grasp at first, but the whole prospect of trying to manage all these overlapping orbits of planets so that they don't collide while cramming them into a scan zone for points was very creative and led to some manic, improvisational gameplay. Was impressed at the game being robust enough to warn you of an incoming planet collision! I don't know if it translated to long-lasting appeal for me since I didn't find myself hooked to it, possibly due to its weird premise and initial confusion, but it certainly will stick with me.

Despite my mixed reception to the gameplay, I will say that the overall construction of the game itself, with the story and presentation of a diegetic room as menu really enraptured me. There just seemed to be something so zen and calming about it by being able to click around on the various objects, while also having a sense of mystique. And indeed, there does appear to be some other form of hidden gameplay to this, what with the mysterious box and codes that you can salvage from files. Really neat stuff, like a game within a game!

I dunno know if the game is fun enough to make me delve deep into the secrets despite me really wanting to explore that aspect: looks like the final code I need is implied to require all planets to be scanned and that's a tall order considering I can barely juggle a few without causing crashes, haha.

[World Fighting Soccer 22]

Oh man, this is a real tricky one!

In terms of presentation and concept, this is an incredible grand slam: from the very start with the way the title flips in and the menu pops up to some incredibly music, I could already feel the professional craft and charm exuding from this game. I just wanted to scream out Ronaldinho Soccer! Indeed, the game shows a lot of polish which continues even into the gameplay, where the game takes a more simplifed, arcadey stance to the game ala NBA Jam/NFL Blitz and goes crazy with intense fighting game style mechanics for more traditional soccer moves. There's just so much to love here with its charming presentation and simple but intense gameplay!

However, I had a really rough time enjoying my time in the gameplay. Once the appeal of watching the explosive effects wore off and I was trying to win the fighters cup, I couldn't even get past the first round! I really, really tried hard to work with the game, switching my formations depending on whether I was on offense or defense, using all of the various kicks appropriately depending on the situation, and so on, but the computer was just too tough. The game just seemed to work against me with it constantly changing my character to someone else that I didn't want, and the enemy seemed to practically cheat with its instant reactions and always kicking back everything I try to get past them no matter what. For something so simplified, it's just so damn hard!

Overall, despite my difficulties, I still respect the craft shown in this game and plan to keep trying to get better at it.

[Palmer's E-Girl Adventure]

Hah, another grand entry into the 3 star jam! It certainly takes a lot of the right steps to earn that 3 star, what with its very bland and bog-standard shooting gameplay, incredibly short length, stiff and unanimated characters, lack of polish/special effects, nonexistant challenge, and the cherry on top: a score counter that doesn't even properly reset on replay. Certainly a strong contender!

However, I feel like the game does show a little bit too much effort in some areas with some rather fancy touches. First, of course, there is the obvious inclusion of a dab charge shot with its own comical animation which also does increase the depth of strategy in the game by a tad. Then, there are some nice touches like how enemies get increasing battle scars as they take damage, and the fact that the game does have a decent variety of enemies and puts them into handcrafted formations. Finally, the game does overall have a bit of charm to its cheapness what with the flailing e-girl and goofy compressed visuals and so on. I dunno, I think I gotta punish you by increasing the score a tad!

maxxjamez responds:

Thank you for this

[Grapple Whip]

Definitely had a bit of a conflicted start with this game: usually I love a good grapple game, but this one's grapple design seemed to lack the freedom, timing, and momentum that usually comes with it, instead opting for a more rigid, automated system, what with its fixed points and lack of fine control and lack of detaching except to attach to another point.

However, as the game went on, it did seem to use its more core stricter system to build some interesting puzzle-esque levels to work through, which was an interesting take. It also introduced more and more complex mechanics such as grapple points that do fade over time which provide some of that feeling of freedom and momentum that would come from a more traditional grapple game, albeit a bit differently, of course, since it's on a timer. Because of all this, I do feel like I ended up having fun with the game, both as a combination of accepting its terms and the game doing a good job at spicing things up.

Having said that, it was still a bit of a frustrating and confusing experience. In particular I found that I had an incredibly difficult time discerning how my character would act after a grapple. For example, if I have a grapple point to the upper right, I would expect my character to sweep to the right by way of downwards if I grapple to it: however, typically the character would illogically bounce upwards and to the left to start! I know it sounds easy to just always expect the physics to be the complete opposite of what I think it should, but that's a taller order than you might expect, haha. The fact that the game doesn't require you to start over on death was a mixed blessing: it made all of the unfair deaths feel ok, but it did make the game feel a bit non-challenging since winning is a foregone conclusion without punishment.