FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sokobird]

Damn, I dunno if I'm just dumb (don't answer that) but this game felt like it started off way too hard! Don't get me wrong, I don't like it when games baby me and take too long to get to the good stuff, but damn, the first few levels felt really rough, only for it to suddenly get easy again, then get super hard again, so I feel like the level ordering is out of whack in terms of making a good difficulty curve. Nice change of pace in a way, though!

Moving past that, while the game is just sokoban which has been seen many times before and is thus not that exciting, it did nevertheless have a decent craftmanship to it, what with the cool graphics, nice animations and sound-effects for moving/pushing, and large amount of levels. I did find myself dropping off due to the sameness of levels and lack of any new mechanics being introduced, and the lack of any sort of grade/rank system (like a number of steps/pushes to beat), but I had a good time while it lasted. For the most part, not too shabby!

[Hexagon Puzzle Blocks]

...I mean, it's quite literally just Fit Puzzle Blocks, a game you already made, but using Hexagons instead of Squares, so I'm not sure what to say as most of the feedback I'd say here is the exact same feedback I'd already given for that game. This isn't a bad game, per se, but I feel confused as to why it is repackaged here like some sort of chinese bootleg with a different name and no noticeable improvements, so I do feel like I need to rate it lower for that.

[BOTKILLER_]

Hmm, it's a decent little shmup that I want to like since it has an interesting style to it, but I found the gameplay ultimately a bit boring without enough meat on its bones.

Game certainly made a pretty good impression at the start: its got a pretty cool retro graphic style to the whole thing, and I liked seeing the character bios and different ships and so on. Gameplay was interesting as well with the various enemies and bosses you could fight: definitely some effort was put into this! The most memorable boss for me was the giant one who traps you in a laser grid, but there were plenty others that were cool: definitely the star of the show here were the bosses, so I see why you made a boss rush, haha. Also appreciated some of the neat options like being able to display hitboxes: made it clear whether my hitbox was the tiny point style or whole plane style.

But as I played, the game quickly got repetitive. While there were a lot of enemies, they never really differed in significant ways to make interesting combat. In a similar vein, the one ability you get was never interesting enough to cover up the fact that all you do is just hold down the shoot button and that's it. Couldn't tell what the scoring system for the game was and if there was some sort of combo system or accuracy ranking.

Most importantly, the game just lacked any satisfying feedback to combat, especially in the audio department. Even after I changed the music/sound levels to make the music more muted and the sound effects louder, the game still lacked any satisfying explosions or other exciting sounds: there was just the constant drone of your own shots and a few token sounds here and there.

The graphics could also be very confusing: the first level especially was a nightmare where background blends into foreground and its so hard to keep track of everything since it all devolves into this incredibly sharp, neon colored hell. Could definitely stand to have the background more desaturated or something to make the foreground elements pop and more easy to track.

In general, I came away from the game feeling like it was more style over substance: while it looked cool and had some promise to it, especially in the boss department, in the end it really felt like a student project or something akin to that with incredibly basic and undercooked gameplay. Certainly does make me looking forward to seeing more projects from this team though, with this not-too-shabby experience under their belt!

[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