FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Void Scrappers (demo)]

Hmm, I think it's an alright entry into whatever we call this genre nowadays (Survivors-likes? Bullet Heavens?) but unfortunately I feel like this falls quite low on the list compared to its contemporaries. Sorry to compare it to other games like that, but I felt it was appropriate considering this is something that is on steam and is being asked money for.

Don't get me wrong, I think the game is decently constructed and there is some fun to be had here: once the game gets going and you've got a lot of power-ups, you can do some really crazy stuff and just enjoy the chaos. When I played I did enjoy some notable power-up combos like creating explosions on my dash and having my dash rewind me back to my previous position: really changed my dash from defensive to offensive with that in a cool way!

But at the end of the day, the game just felt really bland, boring, and muted to me:

*The collectables were really dull grey objects that didn't feel fun to collect.

*While enemies in these types of games are usually quite dumb and just charge at you, this game's enemies seemed especially dumb and robotic, maybe due to their weird jitteryness or lack of animations or something.

*I dunno if I was unlucky or something, but leveling up never seemed to give me anything cool, in fact it constantly gave me upgrades for things I didn't even have yet which felt silly.

*Weapons felt really disconnected and lackluster. For example, the artillery power-up just made explosions happen on the screen, but they'd just happen, instead of them coming from a rocket firing from my plane to make me feel like it was really me doing it. Orbitals were similar as well, with them not having any sort of visual tether to me. And the bullets fired by the gun were just very boring dots.

*And overall, while the game was juicy, it wasn't to a satisfying extent: like it had explosions and dialogue popping-up and stuff but it was all so muted and unnoticeable. This whole genre lives or dies on how satisfying it is to mow down hordes of enemies, and I feel like this one didn't deliver on that front.

Again, it's not bad, but I just didn't feel any sort of hook from this compared to 20 Minutes Till Dawn, Holocure, Rogue Genesia, Soulstone Survivors, and of course, Vampire Survivors. Maybe I'm just played out with this games nowadays, haha.

[Pizza Kidd in Pizza Time! (Mini Game)]

Hmmm, kinda conflicted on this one. I mean, it's just essentially a recreation of Burger Time, but with a pizza theme: it's purely cosmetic with no significant differences or upgrades from what I can tell. So it's like, am I rating this game or am I technically just rating Burger Time? Do I demerit it for not having any originality or do I just try and rate it on its construction? I mean, it's cute and all, but it's not even a great recreation either: not only did I suffer bugs like ingredients getting stuck and rendering the game unwinnable, it doesn't even recreate Burger Time's fun risk-reward mechanics like being able to weigh down ingredients with enemies to make them fall down multiple floors. I still had some decent fun with this and it was a nice nostalgia trip, but at the end of the day it felt lacking.

[Clocksmith Exorcist]

Oh jeez, I tried really, really hard to play this game, but it was just a very terrible experience all-around, I'm sad to say.

I certainly think it could be a good concept: I've played plenty of other flail-based combat games and I think, if done right, it can be a very satisfying experience. Unfortunately, the way you've coded the sword spinning in this game is the most unintuitive and frustrating thing I've experienced in quite some time: no matter how hard I focused and tried to play by its bizarre physics, it would just not work well. Even disregarding that, however, the game wasn't shining in any other way due to other elements like a lack of good feedback to attacks and an abundance of boring enemies that are just way too spongy.

Don't get me wrong, I know it's a game jam game and you deserve some praise for building something in such a fast time frame, but I just have to be honest with my experience. Maybe my brain just isn't programmed right and everyone else had a wonderful time, haha. Good potential concept that I'd love to see done right if you could polish it up or experiment further with it.

[Culpa]

Hmm, I think the game shows a lot of potential as it has some cool moments and nice graphics and sound design for the most part, but in the end the game just stumbled so much that it felt rather silly to me than scary, unfortunately.

There were just so many awkward and subtle elements missing that kind of piled on and killed my immersion. There was strange phrasing and dialogue that sounds like it might've been badly translated from another language. There was a lack of sound variety for important events like the footsteps outside not changing to be muddy plops instead of wooden taps and the tentacle event being incredibly muted (and again, lacking watery sounds for sludging through the water). Most events were just very telegraphed like the part where you obviously can't outrun the light monster, or silly like dropping your gun and it just hardcrashing back to the start instead of showing a proper ending sequence. Pacing constantly gets destroyed by moments where you just need to mindlessly rummage around until something finally happens. Finally, the story is just overall too short for it to really build up dread and weight.

Again, I think it was a good attempt, especially for a game jam game, and certainly could've been great with some more time to polish up its execution.

Meiallu responds:

English isn't my main language.
But yeah, I probably would have made a better story if I had the time. Thank you for the review!

[Super Bandit RIP]

For the most part, my feeling as mostly similar to my previous review: a promising fighting game and impressive that you've already setup online play and such, but still lacking in a lot of areas that make the game feel rough (but it is still in development I suppose).

I don't have a perfect memory of how it was before, but I think it has improved slightly: I got in a couple of matches and had a decent time catching people off-guard with some tricky blows and strategy. Nice to see so many characters to select as well with all sorts of fancy techniques. In that regard, well done.

However, a lot of previous comments I had such as an odd, unorthodox control scheme, moves that are impossible to pull off (how the heck do you do the rising blade?) and lack of input buffering which makes combos difficult to enter is still present (though maybe now I could chalk it up to intentional design to make it require precision timing). The game is also still incredibly bland, lacking any sort of satisfying, juicy visual/audio feedback from attacks, and not really having enough moves, levels, dynamic events or whatever to create exciting encounters and strategies that make me want to play for long.

Again, still rather promising and an impressive undertaking for what it's worth, but still very underbaked and prototype-feeling.

[deathened]

Hmmm, I think it could be pretty good, but I unfortunately found myself quitting before making it to the end.

The world does seem to have some intrigue built up through its visuals and events that I would like to see the end to. The combat is also alright, being a variant of Undertale combat where you need to play little minigames to both deal and avoid damage. Certainly could be a recipe for a decent game.

But as said, for me I got too bored and frustrated to a combination of multiple factors.

For one, I hate random encounters, and this one had an incredible frequency of them to boot: I would've much preferred you model enemies physically in the field and only engage in combat if you bump into them, as this just made me stress out over every step taken in the field and unwilling to explore since it would just lead to more and more combat instead of progression.

Two, the battle system wasn't that exciting, especially in the attack portion: sure it mixes up the dodge portion in a lot of ways, but attacking was the same everywhere and terribly dull.

Three, most enemies seemed to be way too spongy and required too much commitment which made the lameness of the attack portion feel even worse and made me practically forget where I left off by the time I got back into the world. All of these combined just made the game a slog to get through and killed the pace.

As a side note, it was also annoying I couldn't use potions in the field.

Again, it could be cool, but the execution just didn't agree with me here: with some tweaks here and there to keep the pace up, I think it could've been a nice little adventure.

[Portaboy+]

Hmmm, a bit mixed on this one, which is unfortunate since I think it shows a great first impression and has a lot of great work put into it!

For the most part, I do think the concept is really cool: multitask juggling between playing these warioware-esque minigames and fending off monsters all while you need to manage your resources and react to various random glitches leads to some rather interesting gameplay. The game is pretty crazy in terms of graphical and audio quality as well, both just in general and with all the ways the game glitches out. Certainly intrigued me and made me want to keep trying to understand the systems and get better to unlock more portions of the gallery mode, which seemed to be providing plot points.

Unfortunately, while it was cool to experience the twist the very first time where the monsters are introduced, it is just a pain to have to deal with it on subsequent tries: it takes so bloody long to get back to the good stuff (ie the twist) and the game is really boring and one-note until then, due in part to the absolutely low difficulty and lackluster variety in minigames (both in the types of minigames possible and the way the minigames vary their obstacles within). It also just seemed really confusing to deal with resources: ammo costs so much that you have to play so many minigames to get them, but you can only play them so fast and is also up to RNG and meanwhile monsters are spawning at incredibly fast rates that it just seems impossible. Maybe I was missing something, but it just frustrated me.

I still think the game is quite impressive in terms of production, but I don't quite agree with its execution. For me, it's a clear case of style over substance, unfortunately.

Enchae responds:

I agree with part about the first phase. It's paced well for a first playthrough but not the 10th. There is a skip arrow you can shoot but no one finds it. That might be something that's still worth changing.

[Last Christmas (Game Jam Version)]

Hey, a pretty nice point-n-click adventure game!

For the most part, I feel like it had all of the right fundamentals: nice, charming art and a big ol' area to explore, chockful of items to pick-up or interact with that provide all sorts of amusing flavor text/dialogue. The game does start a bit slow with both an odd puzzle (why not have the key under the rock to pick up, rather than examining the rock to get the key? does the rock open up? was it taped underneath?) and maybe a bit too many items to pick up, but nevertheless it felt good and I was getting addicted and fired up to solve the list puzzles.

There were some parts that I felt the game were lacking a bit, though:

For one, there were a lot of times where you interact with a container like a cupboard or a bin, and you just have the character tell you that they picked up an item. It felt so unsatisfying and confusing: I would much prefer if you can see the cupboard changed to be opened up and see the actual item within, and then hover over the item and pick it up yourself. You do this for some interactions like getting the soap bottle behind the curtain: dunno why you skimped out for so many others.

Another aspect was a lack of animations and feedback: felt really unsatisfying to, for example, unlock the door but not even see the character put his arm out and use the key or at least play a unlock sound effect. I guess I should be careful what I wish for, though, because while you did animate the character chopping down the tree, the animation was simply dreadful and absolutely nonsensical, haha.

Definitely a pretty decent point-n-click game overall that has a solid foundation: it was just a bit lacking in terms of satisfying touches like animations, sound, and other effects. I suppose I should be forgiving because of the short time frame it was made in, but take it as a compliment that you raised the bar so high that it seemed so lonely without those special flairs!

Polytelygames responds:

Thank you for playing and thank you for your comments, it is very helpful feedback that can help me shape my next game.
Two weeks to create a a game from scratch, isn't a long time, my priority was to have a working game at the end and i succeeded in that goal at the same time being place 3rd in the rankings out of the 97 submitted games.
I would like to revisit this game, with an expanded story(which i have) and new art and animations, but I'm struggling to find anyone who want to work on the project. maybe one day, in the mean time, If i could ask a favour, as Last Christmas has been selected for the "best indie game" and "best game jam game" category in the Game Development World Championship can you please show your support and give us a like on our page and if you would like to share it that would be great to.
https://thegdwc.com/games/last-christmas

Edit - Just wanted to let you know that it is nominated at The Game Development World Championship. If you have a moment to help a new indie game dev out, please follow the link and click the vote button https://thegdwc.com/games/last-christmas

[Leslie & Brianne's Galactic Rampage]

Charming little adventure! Enjoyed the intergalactic romp, platforming through some simple but decent puzzles, punching the heck outta some aliens, and interacting with all manner of stuff. The humor can sometimes get a bit too meme-y and reference-y for me, but most of the time it was delightfully crass. It's not exactly the most difficult game, and it can be a bit janky, but the game did a good job at being creative with its low-fi art and big variety of events and levels to keep me hooked to see what would happen next.

I gotta say though, the controls did get a bit frustrating at times. There were plenty of times where I tried to jump but ended up interacting with something that I thought was far away enough, or the jump bumped into something I thought I was clear of. Later on it does a gag calling this out literally (the pogo supply room), which is funny, but at the end of the day, in the words of Yahtzee: "if you know its bad, why are you doing it!?" Furthermore, I was disappointed that the game didn't have a save/load feature: it ended up being a lot more lengthier than I expected but I had to take a break, and now unfortunately I dunno if I can make it all the way back there a second time: it's a nice game but it's not that nice as it is, at the end of the day, a bit too guided and linear and without challenge to make replaying it fun, haha.

TmsT responds:

Oh man that's disappointing - I really thought this time I put all the flavour text under low ceilings or far from anything that would give you a reason to jump (except for two places where it was supposed to prevent you from accessing something). I didn't know it was bad, Yahtzee! Honest!

[Pumpkin WIng]

Pretty decent little shmup! Definitely quite impressive for a quickly made project: felt like it had a good variety of boss patterns to contend with, and it had a pretty neat aesthetic to the whole thing. Loved how the boss kept amping up and even transitioned into a new star mode: always love a boss as they go into their final-final-final phase, haha!

That said, it did feel a bit shallow and lacking, most likely because of its quick conception. Certain mechanics like the melee were nice but felt very underdeveloped: felt like there were hardly ever any bullets to parry in certain phases, and hitting the boss directly with the melee gave no satisfying feedback. Speaking of feedback, the game felt overall muted, both figurately in that actions didn't really provide any satisfying effects to them, and literally in that there were no sounds which made everything felt incredibly bleh. Also the art was a bit too overall red which made it hard to distinguish certain gameplay signals and elements as they didn't pop but just got lost in the sea of similar colors.

Pretty nice stuff though: would love to see a big shmup from you guys, or just any sort of project, considering you can make something as nice as this so quickly!