FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Unprofessional Mischief]

At its core, I think it's a pretty fun shooter with a nice variety in enemies, great juicy effects, a goofy story, neato bosses and so on. Reminds me a lot of games like Gunsmoke, a favorite of mine. Certainly a solid first impression and a good core!

However, while it starts out strong, it feels like it stalls out very early on: once you've gone through one level, I feel like you've pretty much seen everything the game has to offer already. You have to go through too many levels of pretty much the same set of enemies and geometry to eventually make it to a boss, which only after then mixes up the levels with the simplest of additions like someone who chucks bombs in a vain effort to distract you from the fact that yes, you are just playing the same levels still. While the game has purchasable upgrades, they felt very token and don't spice up the runs enough, with many of them feeling very lackluster and boring (like the pipe bomb, which just flashes the screen without even an animation of throwing the pipe bomb or an explosive sound effect). The game being so long also makes it much more punishing with the way it forces you to start all over on death, making me feel less inclined to replay since I don't want to retrudge through so much to get to the cool boss fights.

At the moment it just feels like a classic case of a good game being stretched thin over too much repetition and filler to inflate play time lengths. I prefer a short and sweet experience that leaves you hungry for more than a game which just keeps going until you get bored! If the game was cut shorter, for example 2 levels inbetween boss fights, or if the game had the levels feel more different by adding in more extensive variety and increasing challenge as you go on at a quicker pace than it does now, I think it would be great!

Peti responds:

i wasn't expecting to see you in my notifications so this was a futurecop jumpscare

[Fruity Feline]

Wow, really impressive game! I absolutely loved just how slick and professionally put-together it all felt: the general presentation is so cute and smooth, the tutorial was wonderful in that it used pictures instead of just being a wall of text, and even without the tutorial the game just felt so intuitive and fun with the way everything is laid out! Everything is just bursting with life and as juicy as the fruit you manage!

Having said that, though, I did feel like the game was pretty hard! Maybe I'm just bad, but compared to a game like Tetris where the speed slowly builds up, I felt like this game reaches incredible speeds at, well, an incredible speed! Don't get me wrong, I do like games with shorter playtime commitments, but this was overkill for me, haha!

There were a lot of times where I was playing that I wish I had more control. Yes, the game does have those nice previews at the top that let you plan ahead and it does have the swap mechanic and you can cleverly exploit the pause that comes with scoring points, but those just didn't feel enough to contend with everything. There would be so many times that a fruit would be half-down the track and it'd be too late to do anything to save it due to the rigid nature of the tracks, making it feel so stressful to watch the inevitable unrecoverable failure. If I were to have some suggestions:

I'd love it if, similar to Tetris, we had the ability to make a fruit fall down the track faster so we could get it out of the way and try and prevent scenarios where two fruits are simultaneously falling and need to be dealt with. Either that, or maybe change it so that we can control when the fruits come out from the top, but have them heating up due to impatience if we don't let them out fast enough (similar to fulfilling orders in a restaurant game). Another thing that would be nice is if we could draw/erase our own custom paths instead so we could really be in control and save a fruit that has gotten too far down, though I bet that would be a headache to code, haha!

The swap mechanic also felt pretty useless: usually whenever I'd try to use it, it'd be last-second to try and save a fruit going in the wrong basket, but the fruit it'd swap to would be wrong as well and just add to the headache! If I were to make it, I'd make it so it would smartly swap to whatever basket it is leading to like a get-out-of-jail card (but then have a cooldown on usage since that would be very powerful).

For another complaint, I was a bit bummed out that every play session inevitably ends in failure with a game over screen where the cat is pissed off at you. Kind of kills motivation to get better! It'd be nice if reaching certain score thresholds or a new personal high score would congratulate you in some way, like how in Tetris you can build up to launching the Kremlin into orbit with a high enough score! (Then again, maybe this is the case and I'm just not good enough to reach it)

Even though I'm bad at it, I can't find myself hating this game because I really like how well put-together it is in general!

tonyfinale responds:

Oh wow thank you for your extended thoughts! YES I do lament how there ended up being a bit of a lack in more PROACTIVE things the player is allowed to do beyond just fiddling with the lines. Going forward I def wanna make things that aren't as raw reactionary based.

Alternate end screens depending on your score is also a rly good idea... noted...

[Cauldron Caverns]

It's a decent, cute little game, but I felt like the tunnel trip got old quickly due to the simple flying controls and lack of challenge and variety in obstacles to contend with.

Once I got one bat to the end (which I did on my 2nd try easily) I didn't really have the willpower or inclination to go through it again as the game expects you to since 1) the track just goes on and on and gets boring since it caps out on difficulty early and doesn't throw in any new exciting obstacles 2) the upgrades don't really add anything new or exciting that would make further trips down the tunnel feel fresh (likely it would just make it feel easier which would just make it even more boring) and 3) it didn't seem like there was a clear end goal to reach, making me feel like it would just go on forever with no ending and feel pointless.

It's an ok core gameplay at its heart that could be nice with some further development: at the moment though it's just too simple to justify the amount of grind and commitment it expects. Perhaps you should need to get a set number of bats through with each subsequent set having different control schemes (maybe one of them having a flappy bird-esque movement pattern), perhaps the tunnel could change and there could be other obstacles and new power-ups to try and help combat those, and so on.

Oh and also I feel like the bat should probably be on the left side of the screen, instead of the center, to make it more fair and give you time to see obstacles coming from the right. That is, unless perhaps later on you make certain obstacles fly in from the left: that would justify it and add some variety!

LionJeff responds:

I love your comments :) Would you be interested in being a game tester? lol I feel like your comments would be very useful during active development.

There's a lot to digest here, but another player made a comment with similar suggestions and mentioning a sequel - if we choose to do that, I think we'll be able to incorporate a good amount of game play changes and ways of keeping things fresh. However, we have a few projects that are in process and we're excited to keep working on so we'll focus on those for the time being. You've given us a lot to think on and we will take what we can into these newer projects.

I really appreciate the honesty, it will help our future games be more engaging! Hopefully you'll like the next one a little more! We appreciate the play and feedback!

[JelloTetrix]

Hah, I think I saw a Youtube animation about this concept once: nice to see it created into a real game!

I wasn't sure if I would have a good time with this game at first: while the jello physics can be fun to watch at first, they can be very frustrating to contend with for scoring purposes! Pieces can lean or fall over in odd ways since they aren't supported by rigid physics as they typically would, and the distorted squishy shapes can make it difficult to tell how many pieces you've placed horizontally and whether it's enough for a line. Indeed, there would be many times where I would have pieces in place that I think would complete a row, but the game wouldn't recognize it for some reason or other, and it would feel very unfair (and sometimes vice versa it'd actually consider a row complete when I didn't think it was).

However, when you accept the game and its imperfections, it can actually turn into a very fun game of improvisation and recovery. I found it very fun to try and, for example, prop up a leaning piece or move an out-of-position piece by smushing another piece into it, all the while enjoying the satisfying jelly feedback the pieces gave. It's kind of like a crane game where you don't focus on picking up the stuffed toy with the crane, but instead moving it into an ideal position by just pushing it with the crane. Unlike Tetris where your placements and mistakes are rigid and stuck in stone, this game always has everything able to be moved about which can make it always feel like you can get back in the game. Very interesting stuff!

At the end of the day, though, I did find that whatever algorithm is used to determine completed rows to be quite bad and lead to plenty of games where I make a perfect tower of blocks with no gaps and yet don't get a single point. Nevertheless, there was something inherently satisfying about the weird act of stacking these squishy blocks and trying to make the most of it, so I'll give it a pass!

[Konkr.io]

Wow, really surprised with how slick this feels! This isn't my type of game, but because it is so welcoming with its tutorial and designed so smoothly, I enjoyed it and found myself getting hooked! I especially love the subtle hints at how mechanics work by utilizing visual elements, like how coins appear over each tile you own and then get vacuumed to each unit: a very elegant representation of the income and upkeep system that can be understood without words (but it and other mechanics are also backed up by an informative HUD and tooltips and a hint/guide as well)! Like it says, it's a simple yet deep game that's quite fun to play!

While the game does do a decent job at explaining a lot of things intuitively, I still ran into a lot of confusion on my attempts to play and feel like the game could've done a bit to its design to help in subtle ways. For example, it'd be great if hovering over interactable things like units would have them react in some way, like wiggling or growing in size or glowing, to let us know (and in some cases, the tooltips on hover wouldn't appear until you double click or wait for a long time for it). Similarly, it'd be nice if units that we'd already moved would be grayed out to indicate their inactivity: just stopping from jumping around isn't quite as clear. More importantly I wish important events like units killing another or becoming bandits, for example, would happen with a bit more fanfare like an explosion or sound effect since sometimes I wouldn't even notice them at first glance (it does try to help with the exclamation points after the fact, though). The game is general is very lackluster when it comes to sound when it could be a great service to signal events like this, or make other events like the act of coin collection more satisfying.

[Rolus in the Outskirts]

Pretty cool game! Certainly makes a great first impression with its stylish art and professional-feeling construction to its world. The story is a bit too aimless for my tastes without even a hint of some greater goal or motivation beyond this weird crystal, but it was nevertheless fun to check out all the locations, chat with everyone, and just explore, learning bits and pieces here and there. I was really impressed at all the little touches to the environment, like being able to kick or crush cans, ruffle grass, and so on (though there is an odd sound mismatch where kicking a paper milk carton sounds like a tin can): stuff like that can add so much life and make it fun to wander around. Loved the various special events like getting run over or the exploding dog as well. Cool to see the crystal baby respond to events as well like getting hurt or scoring a kill! For the most part I can see myself enjoying the game as a straw millionaire type of game: search around for items to fulfill quests that lead to more quests and so on and so forth, all the while enjoying the dialogue and general weirdness!

Right now the biggest sticking point for me was the combat: it's just so bland. Don't get me wrong, there certainly was a bit of effort in creating a nice mix of various enemies and this whole crystal magic system and such, but it just feels really dry and simplistic and just not fun. I was having a pretty good time just wandering around, talking to the wacky characters and such, then I got into this school dungeon and it just really killed the mood with how repetitive it was, especially since it led me to a dead end (at least it felt like, only later did I realize I needed to move those unnoticeable cans to serve as bait for the mousetraps) and it was so boring to walk back out through the empty halls to the entrance. I suppose it does add some variety and I think it could work, but I almost feel like currently it adds nothing and even hurts the game.

Apart from that, there were some other slight nitpicks here and there: lots of backtracking, lack of music and maybe being a bit too slow in mood, lack of a quest journal or some sort of inventory to help keep track of things, it doesn't stop you from picking up crystals beyond your limit which wastes them, lack of button prompts or a tutorial, not sure of the purpose of benches, and so on. Still, despite all this, the game is shaping up to be a really funny little adventure!

Toony responds:

Interesting to hear you liked the quests but was uninterested in the combat. We plan on keeping the half and half focus of questing and combat, but improving the combat with better dungeon layouts that are less meandering, and more options other than shooting.
Also I really want to better establish that the "greater goal" is getting the cheeseburger.

[Faster Blaster Asteroid Master]

Pretty decent game! Bit surprised to find an asteroids-esque game where you just move in absolute directions instead of using a forwards jet and turning, but nevertheless the game did provide some ok arcade fun of blowing stuff up. The shield bomb move added a bit of variety with the way it vaporizes asteroids (and blocks bullets), and I enjoyed getting close to a tightly-grouped cluster of asteroids to make the most of it.

That said, it is quite the simple and unchallenging game, being just a generic asteroids-esque space shooter that is indistinguishable from hundreds like it which students make for projects every day, and I found myself getting quite bored quickly and killing myself intentionally to end the game since it seemed like there was no end in sight. I was actually surprised to see after the fact when I peeked into the stats menu that there are bosses: I was playing for so long and yet I never encountered one! Definitely could stand to make the game more exciting so as to keep the player's attention with more events and new elements such as said bosses popping up earlier on.

Again, it's decent, but didn't feel like it has anything really unique or exciting to it: kind of the equivalent of a good piece of plain toast. Still, it's well-constructed and didn't have many issues to it (beyond boredom), so it's a good foundation to work from!

LionJeff responds:

Thanks for the play, rating and honest review, I appreciate it!

This game was a little challenge after a hiatus from game development. It took ~2 weeks to get it all put together and so from that aspect, I'm happy with it. True, I wasn't trying to make a world changing game with this, but it sounds like the "make a solid game" goal was achieved for an asteroid inspired game. I like my toast plain some times ;)

I don't blame you for getting bored and I appreciate that level of honesty - if we return to this and make bigger updates, more challenges/events would be a great addition!

FYI - the bosses pop up every 250,000 points and has a handful of different attack patterns for variety. Some attacks can take you out pretty quickly if you aren't careful so the idea of the build up until then is to have as many gun/bullet upgrades as you can have while not losing lives to survive the fights.

[Dungeon Reaper]

Hmm, quite the interesting little game! It's pretty shallow right now and could use a lot of polish and a better definition of what it's end goal is (how long does the game go and how does it evolve during play and what is the player striving to do), but nevertheless I felt like the game at its core was very fun and satisfying to play even without these aspects yet!

It's definitely a little clunky in some respects. I had no idea that you could double-jump, meaning I was quite stumped at how to get past the tall wall at first, and I was annoyed that if you let go of the slide button while in a narrow tunnel you get killed immediately, instead of the game more logically just keeping you sliding until you get out of the tunnel and automatically standing up then. There are also some weird glitches here and there like bullets sometimes making explosions when they hit a wall and sometimes not.

Finally, I was a bit annoyed at the money with how it doesn't magnetize to you and also has weird physics and collisions tied to them, which meant that it would just scatter randomly and be incredibly unfair/hard to pick up. Speaking of money, I was also curious why the game has you buy the heart pack instead of it just happening automatically when you get enough money, like getting a 1-up in Mario or Sonic when you get enough coins/rings: part of me is worried it is there to create some sort of proof of concept for a gross microtransaction system where you can buy lives with real money and I'd prefer that not be the case and just be my silly paranoia, please.

Certainly has a lot of potential in my book and has a great start by focusing on a satisfying and fun feel to the core gameplay: looking forward to updates!

[Auto Necrochess]

Pretty dang cool game! Love the very stylish presentation that everything has to it, always appreciate a story about overthrowing the man, and the gameplay felt very intuitive to learn, well-constructed and satisfying to play! That being said, the game did feel rough initially in many ways and it took me some time to warm up.

There was a lot of confusion at the start of my playthrough where it was rough to get used to the controls. For example, I thought that clicking on something once was enough to freeze something since the freeze text does pop-up when you do that, only to realize later on that you need to double-click. I was also surprised that holding down click and dragging minions around wasn't possible when I felt like it would've felt much better. It was also real annoying if you buy a unit mistakenly and try to sell it to undo the action and get your money back, only for it giving you 1 coin back: I only think you should get 1 coin back if you are selling something that was done in a previous turn, not the current turn, in which case you should get the full 3 back. There were also other times where I just didn't know what to do, like not realizing I'm supposed to click on the necromancer to add the bone when I get a tier upgrade: the graphic makes it look like I should pick an item from the circle or something.

I was a bit bummed out on some of the design decisions as well. The biggest point for me was the limited 'spy' actions: I'd much prefer if spying was something that you can just do anytime so it always feels fair and you can reorganize your lineup each turn to try and counter whatever changes the enemy has made, instead of it as just being up to chance and you having to make a generalist line-up to try and deal with any possible situation that could arise. Having limited spys just makes me feel so stressed with paranoid and makes me want to hoard them instead of using them. Usually these tower defense games show you a preview for free, so seeing it limited here was frustrating as it can make strategy feel up to unfair dumb luck instead of being able to puzzle it out as best you can. I'd also think it would be nice if, considering how long a play can be, if there was some sort of save/load feature so you can take a break.

All that massive wall of text aside, I do think the game is pretty dang cool both from a presentation point and actual gameplay point, and I'm looking forward to getting good enough to eventually achieve victory!

[Nutbuster (✨THE CANCELLED UPDATE ✨)]

Hmmm, this was a rough one for me!

The goofy story with funny characters and dialogue, along with the stylish art and world really intrigue me and want to play further. You've got a great dumb protag that kicks nuts and some weird antagonist who can't even pronounce clan correctly, and it just keeps going from there: it's quite the comical adventure! I also always love a good beat-em-up, so the gameplay should've sold me.

However, the game itself felt really awful to play. I want to like it since I really like beat-em-ups and this does seem to make some good steps in the right direction with decent boss design and attack telegraphs and so on, but it just felt really bad. Hitboxes felt terrible where I would keep whiffing my kicks despite standing right next to enemies and enemies would hit me when I felt like they should've and not hit me when I felt like they should. The enemies were dumb and repetitive with no variation to them and with attack telegraphs that delay their blow so long its actually hard to parry than if they were sensibly quicker. I kept trying to pull off parries and other stylish techniques but it never really seemed to work in a logical manner. Finally, for a game about kicking nuts, it looked more like I was kicking people's toes or shins, and our player movelist felt so limited and shallow. It tragically feels like a style over substance situation: the game looks pretty, but it doesn't play well.

The final nail in the coffin was that I've even had the game hard-crash on me multiple times: thankfully the game does save progress but crashes really don't give me confidence in its programming. It kinda feels like one of those games that is only built for the best-case scenario and just doesn't work for anything except that. I can practically hear the ghost of the developer screaming in my ear when I feel that my attacks keep whiffing and that the parries aren't working that I "must be standing in an incorrect position" or "didn't read the tutorial" despite my position looking perfectly fine and I'm hitting all the buttons correctly, among other things. Another example that might help illustrate this, though minor, is that the game doesn't disable functionality during a transition animation: yes, in a best-case scenario the player will wait for the transition to finish before resuming input, but since you don't lock it down, a player can accidently press buttons during the transition and end up activating something else they're not supposed to and ruin the game. True programming should acknowledge that a player won't always move like you want them to and construct a game robust enough to work with that worst-case scenario.

I think I will continue to play to try and see the rest of the story since it is very amusing, but it will unfortunately be a case where I feel like I have to suffer through the gameplay to get to the good story part.

ChalTheChalk responds:

Your feedback was greatly appreciated! I do agree that the gameplay do feel shallow and i acknowledged that (after alot of tries on the game), and i am still a mediocre programmer (despite making 9 games already) so bugs may occur onto this lil buggy game of mine, i am very sorry for the inconvenience that you go through for this and i will try my best to improve the game as much as possible so it can make a much more funner experience than it is rn in the next update, again i am really sorry for your inconvenient experience with the game and hopefully the next update will have more substances than it has rn