FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[RADARE]

Not bad! Felt like a decent little score game with a nice mind-bending concept and some slick minimalist presentation: add some haikus to that and it was quite charming and fun to play! The appeal doesn't last too long, but it's quite fun to get skilled at keeping track of your mirrored partner and making sure they don't run into any trouble.

Not many complaints to be had here, except for the bombs, which I was really confused about. It just felt like they were worthless due to taking too long to explode and having no way to tell where enemies would spawn in future and thus where would be a good place to plant them. For the most part, they'd just end up killing my partner as the timing of the cycle would sync with the bomb and rotate them around to be next to them perfectly. I could've just ignored them, I suppose, but I felt like if the developer put them in, there must be a way I'm supposed to use them, so I kept searching to no avail and was just left frustrated.

[This Date Blows!]

Hmmmm, this is a really rough one for me!

I actually really, really like the concept and the game was exactly what I was hoping it would be, where you need to manage two tasks simultaneously in a chaotic juggling act. Trying to maintain eye contact with your date and answering her questions correctly while also memorizing complicated bomb defusal rules and cutting wires is a hell of a combo and, once I finally grasped it, I found very fun!

But that's just the thing: the game is very difficult to grasp and play due to so many confusing and janky elements. It took me multiple sessions to even understand how to play and what people were talking about as it dumps so much on you.

I understand that you added subtitles to try and help with the overlapping audio and such, but I felt like your execution incredibly hurt my experience more than helped. It made no sense to me that I could only see the subtitles for the date and not the bomb guy when I'm looking at the date, and vice versa: they're both clearly talking to me all the time, so why not display both of them? The entire point is that you're trying to listen to both of them at the same time no matter who you're looking at, so it makes no sense to only be able to read one at a time. At the very least, you could maybe have a set of subtitles grow or shrink when you switch who you're looking at, but again that makes no sense as you should always be seeing subtitles for bomb guy since he's in your ear and is more important.

The game also just gets really hard way too fast without any break and it was exhausting. It felt like the bombs were constantly going without a single break to look up and talk to the date. Might be a case of the game being set too hard because the developers have been play-testing it too long and didn't feel like it was a challenge anymore. I feel like I should be able to quickly defuse a bunch of bombs to reward me a sufficient break period to then talk with my date, but the bombs just kept coming and coming! Anyway, this led to the game feeling way too bomb-focused instead of date-focused: I wanted there to be more questions from the date to feel like I needed to keep both juggled equally, but the date questions only ever seemed to be dumb jokes.

Also, and maybe this is just a nitpick, but the whole defusing bombs through a phone just seemed really weird and nonsensical: felt it would work a lot better if maybe you were defusing an actual physical bomb in your lap and you just keep getting deeper and deeper into it. I know it seems like a minor thing, but I think it did add to a lot of my initial confusion.

Definitely not too shabby considering its a game jam game as it sells the concept: just wish there was a better, more polished final version of this that fixes a lot of the issues I had with it. For all the difficulties I had with it, I do want to come back to this and try it some more and get an actual good ending, so well done in that regard!

[Bygone Melodies]

Huh, not too shabby! It's certainly a charming little story with some nice graphics and music. Very much reminds me of a Rhythm Heaven type game with the general gameplay and the way the world gets more animated as you succeed, and I feel like I had an alright time going through this. I did run into some slight issues though, and I'll try to explain my experience below:

*I felt like the difficulty was a bit too harsh and out-of-order at times. The very first level tripped me up a lot: at first it felt nice as it slowly built up complexity, but then it added on way too many rhythm changes as the song went on and it overloaded me: would've appreciated a more simple, monotonous beat to start with, which ironically the later levels become! So it feels like a case where the game starts out way too hard and then gets way too easy. Feel like it could've been reordered: heck, Level 1 should've been the final level with the way it gets so complex!

*The game could get really monotonous at times as huge portions of the music could be beat by just doing the same rhythmic movements over and over and over, with only slight occasional changeups that threaten to trip you up. As said before, it felt like only the first level really had a nice progression to it, while every other level was 90% looping the same rhythm.

*Maybe it's just me, but I was really hoping that the instrument or situation would change up with every level. It's fine that it stuck with the guitar, but I was kinda hoping that maybe, I dunno, the ship level would have you raising the sails or bailing out water to the rhythm, instead of just stomping your feet and raising the guitar the same as before. Maybe I've just got Rhythm Heaven on the brain with the way it changes for every level. I dunno, was just hoping for some sort of change-up: maybe an extra guitar maneuver to manage could've been sufficient, or maybe this is just a case of the same complaints above, where the later levels song progression wasn't as exciting so it made me look for something else.

*The game was a bit unintuitive at times with its rhythm tells: the animations could vary in really unfair ways at times, sometimes not even having a tell at all and you just need to feel it intuitively (which is ironically unintuitive, haha). The game also felt like it had too many times it wanted you to hit melodic beats instead of strong beats, and the song didn't blast those melodic beats you're supposed to hit loud enough to make it easy to grasp.

[Pizza Kidd: Beat 'Em Up Demo (prototype)]

Hey, pretty promising! I love me a good beat-em-up and this definitely had a lot of good points to it. Neat animations, tons of cool moves to use on enemies in stylish ways, satisfying feedback from attacks, good PS4 gamepad support, and so on.

Having said that, though, I am a lover of beat-em-ups and so I gotta be harsh on this with feedback so hopefully it becomes great in its final form. I might be going overboard with some of this stuff as its tough to tell what you already know you need to do since it's just a prototype, but here we go:

*Tutorial was kinda bad in that it throws way too much information on you and I could barely remember it all. Don't get me wrong, some of it is intuitive in that it uses rather universal controls that a lot of other beat-em-ups do, but it also had a lot of wacky stuff that flew right over my head. If I had my way, I'd like it if the tutorial was separated into bite-size sections: basic movement, basic combos, special moves, grabs, etc. Also it'd be great if you could actually control and participate to build muscle memory and learn by example. Also it'd be great to have a move list to quickly reference at any time, like in a fighting game.

*There were some wonky control issues that made moves come up when I didn't want them to. The biggest issue was running: you should only initiate a run when you press the same movement direction twice in succession! In this demo, it was possible to run by pressing two different directions quickly, when constantly screwed me up. Basically, you should only run when you quickly press left+left or right+right, don't run when you press left+right or right+left.

*The enemies were incredibly boring and brainless and lacked any sort of variety or threat to them. Sure they were kind of fun to beat up like sandbags at first, but it started to get real monotonous really fast. Changing their colors and giving them more health and just increasing the amount of them doesn't make the game fun: I need enemies with different attack patterns to contend with that really make me think, improvise, and crowd control. You know, maybe get some jumping enemies, some grabber enemies, some fast enemies, some projectile throwers, whatever it be. Quality over quantity is the goal here. Without that I can't really get a feel for whether the combat is any fun in the long term.

*The fact that you couldn't go up or down in the space felt very limiting: usually beat-em-ups are 2.5D and have a great strategy to them where you need to use the whole space to crowd control: moving around to dodge or herd or control enemies. Don't get me wrong, 2D beat-em-ups can work, but this game didn't really show me it working at all: as said, the enemies were really brainless so all you had to do was just punch left and right and that was it: felt like there was no strategy to be gained, though if you vary the enemies to make up for this and work with the 2D space, then it would be fine.

*There were a coupla cases here and there where the game just felt kinda wonky, like maybe my punch hitbox being a bit shorter than I would expect, and the ground pickups being offset so much it looks like I shouldn't be able to pick them up: just subtle stuff like that, hard to explain it all.

Best of luck on working on this: love me some beat-em-ups and I'd love to see this become great as, while I do have some complaints, I think it has a solid foundation to work from!

PizzaKiddo responds:

thank you for play testing the early demo prototype... we'll have new updates late November early December. For more weekly updates, join our Discord or follow us on Twitter. We have noted all of your feedback... Thanks again!🙏

[Clockmachine Chaos]

Hmm, not too shabby! It's a bit too short, the levels feel really out-of-order which messes up the difficulty curve, and the game is a bit too unforgiving when it comes to getting totally stuck in a shape if you so much as dip a single pixel into the area when it reappears. But despite the simple graphics it felt very juicy, smooth and satisfying in terms of feedback, transitions, and effects, and the concept was interesting and intuitive and built upon in a nice, progressive way as the levels went on to keep me hooked. All in all, a nice little adventure!

[Spiders in Psy's Attic!]

Hmmmm, I dunno if this is a worthy sequel to the original smash hit by Levi "Spiders" Ramirez. While the original had some spiderific music play right at the start, this game only plays music once you die for the first time for some strange reason. It's also lacking those juicy effects like the damage feedback from the original, though this does try to make up for it with a heck of a game over message. The score doesn't even seem to reset properly on refresh either at times. I dunno...well, I'm more of a 'Hangover' kind of guy anyway, so I'll give you some points for the inclusion of Snoop Dog in the description.

[Garden Of The Crow]

Not bad at all! Felt like a pretty decent, short and sweet (or rather, short and spooky) point-n-click adventure! All in all had a good time and enjoyed the presentation and atmosphere that the game built (though some of the visuals were a bit too cutesy to be spooky, but eh, it works for my scaredy-cat self, haha). I wish there was a little more variety to the gameplay such as the flower coin matching game or the frog riddles to mix things up: felt like 90% of the game was just trading items over and over in a rather simplistic manner, not even having to think outside the box or combine items or what-have-you. Still, I did find myself getting addicted and before I knew it, had made it all the way through: what a spooky twist ending!

[Cavern Collapse]

Not too shabby! I don't think it necessarily has enough going for it to appeal for that long, but I think it has some solid fundamentals, in a sort of 'good student project' kind of way.

As said, the gameplay does show some promising aspects to it: I like how you are rewarded with more points for making skilled long-range shots. Similarly, hooking those double-sided gem rocks felt so great with the way they clear the entire board. I especially like the subtle touches such as how your score ticks up when you get points instead of just instantly changing: very satisfying! There's also a nice strategy where you want to hook big ones, but you need to think whether its worth the risk as it might entail letting some rocks go and losing precious bridge real estate. It's a simple game, but its decent!

However, I feel like it didn't take too long for me to get bored. For one, the game is rather dry: while the ticking up of the score was nice in terms of making it juicy, I wish there was more feedback on making more difficult shots, like getting a flash or voice clip or nice sound effect or just increasing the font size when hooking a 100 or even better, a 500 pointer. The game was also a bit confusing despite being so simple: I couldn't figure out why I wasn't being rewarded more points or some sort of bonus for hooking gem rocks, especially when the tutorial gave such importance to them: only the double gem rocks yielded any kind of benefit (and a good benefit indeed, though perhaps too overpowered considering how easily you can get so much of them later on).

As said before, this feels like it was put together for a decent little arcade experience: would've loved to see more complexity and progression from this, more levels and hazards and power-ups and all that, but you got the basics down and that's pretty solid.

Cyranek responds:

Thanks for playing and taking the time to write this all out. Really helps to get good feedback!

The geodes / crystal stones repair the bridge you're standing on when caught. Single gems repair 1 and double gems repair 5 (while also clearing the screen). I could've shown this better in the tutorial screen / telegraphed it better during gameplay.

Would love to come back to this and add a progression system and new game modes. It would definitely add some needed depth to the game. :)

[HELP! NO BRAKE]

Wow, pretty cool game! Love the special effects in play here: the feeling of speed from making turns and boosts and so on felt really satisfying, and I enjoyed myself with this simple to grasp but difficult to master wacky physics-based gameplay. All in all felt quite well constructed and polished, and I got quite addicted to playing.

Unfortunately, I did feel like the levels were really wild and out-of-order in terms of difficulty spikes. There were tons of levels that introduced new concepts way too early and way too difficultly, only for a later level to do it better and smoother. For example, there was an early lilypad-ish level that got introduced when I was still just getting used to driving in a basic manner, let alone now having to handle complicated jumps, and then right after that the difficulty suddenly goes back down to simpler tracks, and then comes a level that could've been used to introduce jumping with way more comfort and room for error. While some levels were great and felt good, it felt like too many of the levels were way too cramped and needing way too precise of inputs: sure you can have those levels, but leave for those later on, at least! It got to the point where I just lost patience and ended up quitting around the 13th level, lilypads (and I consider myself someone who likes a challenge!)

It's definitely a pretty neat game, just perhaps felt like maybe it was too cramped with too few levels: if there were more levels to be used for practicing techniques and if they were arranged better to slowly ramp up the complexity, I think it would've been great, but at the moment, I feel like it had a somewhat botched execution despite the overall great concept.

[Comatoast: Unjammed]

Hmmm, this was an odd one for me, but I could chalk it up to be being an old fuddy-duddy, I suppose, haha.

On one hand, despite the rather seemingly juvenile art and presentation, I felt like the game has a real charm to the way it was constructed and showed a lot of hidden depth and effort. The game is certainly unique with all sorts of weird events and levels coming up to keep things interesting. There are a lot of cool subtle touches like the way you character slowly gets ripped apart with the more times you die and get closer to game over. I definitely loved the weird warp zone bonus levels as well: gave me a real Super Meat Boy 8-Bit levels vibe. Overall, it is certainly quite the unique and weird trip.

The game can definitely be pretty janky though. Hitboxes for spikes felt really unfair and difficult to determine, and movement and physics felt really weird as well, possibly due to the way the graphics (especially the player) kept wiggling around and changing shapes so you could never get a clear read. For example, I actually thought my character kept sliding across the ground like ice, but it was just the weird idle animation and the way it shifts sidewise a bit as it loops. While the levels could be quite interesting at times, a lot of them would sometimes be incredibly boring and having nothing of interest. The combat was also lacking any satisfying feedback or strategy to it. The descriptions for item pick-ups would come and go so fast without me being being able to read them, and there wasn't a way I could click on my inventory items to see what abilities they had as reference either. Just made for a really confusing time.

And this is the tough part for me but, the game just felt super cringe, with the voice acting being the primary culprit. I know, I know, it's supposed to be intentional and all that, with the way the character keeps taking a gasp so he can continue his run-on gabbing and the way everyone is being all goofy, but I was straight into that menu and cranking the voice volume to zero pronto. I wouldn't mind if the voices would appear here and there at notable events, but it was a constant audio onslaught with voices and sound effects and other voices overlapping each other and making everything just a garbled mess and difficult to parse. It can work, but it just needs some construction to it, I feel: less is more.

crow-seeds responds:

Thank you so much for the feedback!

Haha, as a developer it's kinda hard to tell if something feels jank or weird when you've played the game for so long that you've gotten numb to the weirdness. If it's causing you too much trouble, the wiggling doodle effect can be turned off in the main menu settings!

The combat does feel a bit lack luster. Tried to add a combo system where you whack and then click stab to launch an enemy further (or the other way around for a different effect). Wanted to make it simple and easy to use to put more emphasis on the platforming, but I guess it still feels two dimensional. Maybe some more audio and visual feedback is in order? The levels in the beginning chapters are made to be simple to teach the player the mechanics, the later ones are much more interesting I promise!

Anyways, I wanted to say I appreciate long comments like these, I'll try to implement some of these changes in future updates!

Edit: Just realized the slippy moving back and forth and jankiness is due to frame rate and lag! Working on a fix, thanks for letting me know, testing on my lower end devices rn. This was not intentional and the janky hitbox was a result of this. Working on this asap