FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Franco Fox in Fairyland DEMO]

It ain't bad but...it's not that great either? Basically, the game reminds me very much of those memes where they're like "that game sure was a game" or something akin to that, haha.

Again, it's not a bad game, heck, I'd even say it's a good game. Certainly does make a good impression with its cute intro, and overall the game has a solid sense of craft to it in all respects: graphics, sound, music and retro aesthetic. Couldn't see any major complaints with the movement or anything either, other than it was a little confusing that the bounce you get from an enemy goes higher than the bounce from a box (maybe you shouldn't even bounce that much from a box in the first place, if at all). So yeah, all in all, it was good.

But in general, while it was "good," I just found the game to be very plain and bog-standard, and therefore not very fun. It pretty much just felt like a basic platformer or Mario clone without any unique mechanics or ideas of its own, leading me to questioning why I should even bother playing it. Not only did it not seem to have a hook or anything like that, the game was also in general very unchallenging and thus not very engaging, and any bonuses to strive for that might've engaged such as those big stars were both very simple to get and ultimately pointless as I was unsure what their purpose was.

There are also some slight bugs like how you can fire the weapons as fast as you can press the button: feel like that should be limited to a locked fire rate, otherwise it is an unfair advantage for people with faster fingers to cheese certain parts of the game by absolutely blasting them away.

Might just be a case of the game being a slow burn: the bonus level does showcase some more challenging late game levels that we might see in a full release, but even then the overly simple movement and lack of juicy effects or some sort of unique style made it still feel less than impressive. Furthermore, even if the game is a slow burn, I'd still argue that the game should step up the pace and hook us with something early to keep us interested and all that, but despite my complaints, I am looking forward to seeing the final version of this eventually since it is promising and shows effort, so best of luck!

LuckyDingoStudios responds:

Thank you for your thorough review! I wanted this game to be relatively simple and basic so it would be easy for anyone to pick up and play, but I can see how it being too standard would make it feel like it's nothing special. I don't think I will be changing the core mechanics to be more complex at this point, but I will try to add more unique elements that will hopefully help the game form more of its own identity and to be more engaging to play.

The unlimited fire rate on the weapons was intentional because I thought it would be fun to spam it, but most players seem to think it was an oversight or makes things too easy, so I most likely will limit the fire rate in the full game based on the feedback I have gotten.

[Bird Tapper & the Great Krampusnacht Cleansing]

It's a very goofy and fun game, but I actually found myself getting a bit too annoyed with it in the end and thus feel very mixed on it.

Overall the game starts out strong and feels quite well-constructed. Speeding around the map poking and throwing the enemies was very satisfying due to the strong feedback and gave the game a strong feeling of reckless abandon and power tripping. I especially loved some of the subtle touches like how enemies react and scream on your approach like Metal Slug enemies: very nice stuff! Seeing all of the cool power-ups and fighting the bosses were also real neato: certainly lots to love here!

But there were just so many annoyances that got in the way of my enjoying this game:

For one, it felt like unless you get lucky and guess the intended route to destroy all the hives and make it to the exit in one go, you'll end up doing some really tedious backtracking. Speaking of backtracking, I found the handling of respawning enemies really weird: sometimes I'd leave a screen with an enemy left alive on it and come back to the screen and he's nowhere to be found, but more often than not I'll kill everyone, leave the screen, come back and suddenly they're all back and since I move so damn fast and am not expecting them I crash headfirst into them and game over, argh!

I also found the powerups less than ideal. Yes, I love how wacky they are, but for the most part they felt more like they made the game harder than easier. The poke/slap combo is very consistent, fast, and controllable, but power-ups like the maestro and phone suddenly make your attack incredibly inconsistent and random. Yes, I could just not pick them up and play the game without them, but where's the fun in that: I want to use the power-ups, but they just shouldn't feel like a downgrade!

There are also some slight annoyances like being able to pick up a health item when you're already full on health and thus wasting it. These annoyances that can get me killed when combined with the overly-punishing continue system that makes you start a level all over on death, as well as a lack of a save/continue system, kind of soured me on the game, despite me wanting to love it.

[WHAT THE HELL?]

It's very nice and promising for a beat-em-up, but in its current state I'd only say it's a good rough draft or prototype: as a full game it gets incredibly stale very fast.

It's clear that a lot of effort has been put into this and it is very cool in a lot of respects. The art, sound and music are all very charming, the basic fighting system feels satisfying and intuitive, it has some unique mechanics like the use of the yoyo to both crowd control and keep combos going, and so on. For as much as first impressions go, it was looking pretty damn good, and I love a good beat-em-up.

But because I love beat-em-ups, I'm very harsh on them, and as said, this felt really rough in its current state:

*In general, the game felt very stiff and slow. I don't know if I can detail all of the things that make it feel stiff, it's just little subtle things, like how long it takes to be able to move after doing an action, how you can't hold a direction when doing a combo to slightly nudge yourself in that direction, how lenient inputs are treated and whether the game drops them, etc.

*The game got very stale very fast, and I could barely force myself to get through the levels. It's just walk a bit forward, fight a group of the same enemies over and over with only minor adjustments to their formation, with the same background looping over and over, and every level using the same music track. Without any sort of special events/minigames to change up the pace, without any changes to the background or music, without extra little interactables like weapons or debris, without a large variety of enemies that actually need to be dealt with in different ways, it just feels endless and that you're not making any progress.

*Enemies felt very spongy: having to do 2.5 combos to finish off the weakest mook felt like too much work and just made combat a real slog as you gotta keep knocking them down over and over. It also just made every enemy feel like each other: you'd think the wisps would have weaker health to match their ethereal state and faster/lighter movement.

*I was confused at the purpose of some moves, such as the jump. Typically jumps can serve as a dodge, but in this game I found that I always got hit by enemy attacks even when I was at the apex of my jump and should, in theory, be over their attacks.

*Parries felt rather unsatisfying to pull off due to the lack of a nice riposte, and I could barely even tell whether I was getting health back since the bar updates immediately instead of previewing how much health I got and slowly filling up, or something akin to that. Parries also felt awkward to time since enemies attack so fast: could maybe stand to give them better telegraphs, similar to the beefy skull enemies.

*The game puts a lot of purpose in keeping combos going with the yoyo and all that, but for what purpose? What do combos do and why should I keep them going? Do I get more points and maybe it leads to getting a 1-up or other power-up?

I give all this feedback though because I do think this shows an incredible amount of promise and can be something great: if you can, I'd love to see a more polished and enhanced version of this! I want this to go from "WHAT THE HELL?" to "WHAT THE HELL?!"

[good: baseball]

It's a simple game, but I wouldn't consider that a detriment as I found it to be very fun and addictive!

The tense feeling of trying to get both the charge and angle just right for a smash hit is incredibly satisfying due to the cool touches of slow-mo and freeze feedback from an exact hit. Sound design is also great: love the different clangs of the bat depending on how hard you hit the ball, and the various sounds the ball makes against environmental objects like the road and fence (haven't been able to hit the car yet, but I'm super hoping its windows shatter).

I also found the design touch of having strikes not take away from your potential full allotment of successes (unless, of course, you get three strikes) to be quite nice as it ensures consistency with scores and avoids people restarting a run in progress.

If I had any complaints, is that I'd love if the game was a bit more juicy in some respects: for example, sometimes I'd get confused by the slow-mo, and I'd love if there was some sort of sound dilation or heartbeat or tint/fade on the screen to signify the transition to slow-mo. Over all though, nice work!

[Gappy's Playground]

Alright, you know the deal, it's a really cool game and in general it feels great and I'm looking forward to seeing more, very impressive, yadda yadda yadda. Let's get right to business and give proper feedback since you're looking for opinions on the movement, which I've listed in severity:

Dragon Tier Level Issues-

*I find it incredibly unintuitive that wall jumps put you into a committed uncontrollable jump arc, like something out of NES Castlevania. Feels very inconsistent and confusing since in general the rest of your jumps have very generous mid-air control, and indeed if you use a double-jump after a wall-jump you get control back, so why is the wall jump so rigid? I don't mind if wall-jumps give you a powerful directional impulse that you can only slightly adjust against, but being completely rigidly stuck in an arc without being able to influence with directions at all feels awful.

*Had a few times where I swear I jumped right at the edge of a platform, only for it to either eat my input entirely and I fell like a log, or for it to use my double-jump instead. Feel like some coyote-time input forgiveness might be in order.

*If you jump off a wall and hold back towards the wall and double-jump, you will as expected double-jump back towards the wall. However, if you jump off a wall and hold back towards the wall and dive, you will confusingly dive away from the wall, completely disrespecting your directional command.

Tiger Tier Level Issues-

*I found it confusing that I couldn't Mega Man X/Meat Boy jump up a wall by wall-jumping and holding towards the wall: instead I have to use a double-jump after the wall-jump to change my direction to go back towards the wall and proceed up. Not too bad since it felt kinda good to get skilled at remembering it, but still, very awkward and against common practice. If the more primary issue with wall-jumps above were fixed, I wouldn't mind if you still couldn't climb with just wall-jumps and you had to use double-jumps to gain height.

*Similar to wall-jumps committing you to an hard-coded arc, if felt a little bit bad that dives also hard-commit you into an arc without being able to influence it slightly. It doesn't feel as bad as wall-jumps and kinda makes more sense, but still, a bit of influence would feel nice (but I deem this a lower threat since it feels more acceptable).

Wolf Tier Level Issues-

*Felt like the wall stickiness was too much: I don't mind the stickiness since it allows people to more easily hold away from the wall and pressing jump to wall-jump without falling off of it too quickly and using their double-jump instead, but in general it felt hard to disengage from a wall when you're trying to rush through a level and accidently graze one, and also it felt like you just slide too slowly: perhaps you should slide down at a fixed rate instead of this awkward increasing speed.

*Wish when you're sticking to a wall it would have some puffs of smoke or a nice sliding sound effect: feels very bland and static compared to all of the other juicy effects for jumping and the like.

*Feels like the run doesn't do much, takes too long to start up, and might just be unnecessary? The basic movement already feels fast and fun enough. Maybe if running gave you a faster initial boost and a satisfying puff of smoke instead of slowly accelerating (like in Kirby, I think?): boosts are more fun than runs.

LeviRamirez responds:

Thank you for the feedback! I'm gonna try and tackle all of your teirs of concerns because a lot of work has already been done in the background on this project!

=Dragon Teir=
- Coyote timing has been tweaked & being able to dive in the direction you are holding on the fly either from a wall-jump or in general has been added! Those were just mistakes I didn't account for in time for the demo and those 2 have specifically been addressed! As for the jump arch from the wall-jump, this is something that I'll talk about in the next tier but I want to jump off the wall to feel "realistic" I guess. When kicking off the wall I want the player to be repeled entirely in the opposite direction of the wall, and the double jump is there for players to be able to some degree to do it with the double jump. This is a dumb hill to die on but I like this feature a lot. However, it has / will be continually tweaked as the project progresses. In this prototype you are able to repel forward or be idle and not move with no deceleration. Now, As of writing this response you can do the repel against the wall or hold back / no key control and be in a less strict arch (I.e Holding back lets you slowly come back towards the wall) I hope that makes sense, it's the best way I can describe it.

=Tiger Tier=
In this game I wanted my wall jumps to NOT be like the Mega Man X and Meat Boy wall jump style. I know it's popular and I know people like it but I don't want that to be in this game, I just don't. Also, the dive arch being in a committed arch is also important as it's a trade-off for the speed and extra air time on top of double jumping. (You can break out of a dive from a double jump if you haven't done one yet.)

=Wolf Tier=
One of the most common complaints was the wall stickiness, and that was fixed very quickly! It isn't in the demo but in the continual development, the walls are much less sticky! Also acceleration and movement will be tweaked in tandum with the game so by the final product hopefully, the game feels even better!

I'm glad you liked the game and took the time to write a very strong list of issues you had with the game! I would say 9/10 of the things you brought up have already been addressed!!!!

[The Witch in the Woods]

Hmm, it's certainly quite the interesting game and it shows a lot of promise, but I found its execution to be really wonky and buggy and that damaged my experience with it unfortunately.

As said, it's a pretty promising game. The graphical techniques used for the 3D environment and the main character rotation were pretty cool to witness, the world is rather interesting to explore with its whole dimensional hopping system, and the combat revolving around exploiting elemental weaknesses while dealing with the different ranges that each elemental spell operates at as well as your limited mana made from some fast-paced and exciting strategic engagements. Also, I always like a game when it ends with a big ol' boss fight!

However, the game just had an overall feeling of being very halfbaked and unpolished. The biggest annoyance for me was the collision physics: walls were constantly way bigger than I felt like they should be and were therefore not only annoying to walk around without constantly bumping into them, but my spells would constantly get interrupted by grazing a wall in really dumb ways (for example, if you shoot a fireball when your back is against a wall, the fireball will immediately collide with the wall behind you and go nowhere). But beyond that, the game also felt really shallow in terms of exploration and enemies: there just wasn't much variety and it was over so fast without me feeling like I accomplished anything since what was the story anyway. Just felt like a real case of style over substance: cool camera techniques and all that, but the actual gameplay was clunky overall in multiple ways.

I know it's a game jam game so obviously it's understandable that something ambitious like this came out halfbaked, but a halfbaked game is halfbaked no matter the context. I really want to love this game because I think a lot of its ideas are really cool though: would love to see a more polished version of it, or, at they very least, I'd love to see another game from you guys where you aren't beholden to a time limit!

[Charles, the Bee [Beta]]

It's a cute little game, but it definitely felt pretty rough (which is understandable given its a game jam game, but still, rough is rough and this ain't the game jam site).

While I enjoyed the juxtaposition and sudden twist of going from a harvesting game to a dancing game (I imagine in my head that the bee is supposed to give the pollen to the hive but through cooking the books is able to hide it from auditors to use for his personal illegal dancing), doing the same thing over and over without any big changes to them started to turn stale, especially since the harvesting game felt like the weakest of the two and most repetitive since the amount gets larger and larger.

It's certainly impressive that we get two games for one, but in this case, I would prefer quality over quantity: one strong game rather than two weak games. The harvesting game was pretty generic and lacking any sort of unique elements to it, and the dancing game, while the most interesting, felt really lacking in several factors: the note charts didn't feel sequenced to the beat properly, the feedback from hitting or missing notes was missing and made it difficult to tell how you're doing, the opponent isn't involved in the dance-off during so it feels less thrilling, scoring was too lenient, and so on and so forth.

It's cute and could be an interesting adventure, but it felt so unpolished that it really made the journey less than ideal: would love to perhaps see a more finalized version of this if this is indeed version 0.1 and not version 1.0.

BluePinGames responds:

Wow! Thanks so much for taking the time to help us make the game better :D

Whether it's 0.1 or 1.0, we intend to make many, many changes. Your feedback will certainly help us get to a more fun place with this game. We are already working on improving both the harvesting and rhythm sections.

The latter is definitely easier to improve, but we're committed to making both experiences great. Again, thanks for the nuanced feedback!

[MS Paint Collab 2023]

Hey, pretty cool collab! I always appreciate when a collab goes above and beyond the typical slide show, and creating this whole virtual 3D art gallery with fun little gags and so on is great! Really turns it into a fun little adventure that I believe gets more people to check out all the art and spread the love, so the effort is much appreciated.

The only complaint I can think of is that there's no way to click on the artwork to see the art on Newgrounds (where you could vote on it) and no way to click on the artist name to go to their page and follow them: I know you can find 'em in the credits but convenience is key to get people the attention they deserve. Oh, and it's weird that the game doesn't just automatically lock your cursor in since it's necessary, but at least there is the option. Nice work all around, and man, it's amazing what people can do in MS Paint nowadays!

Frosty responds:

the reason why it doesn't auto-lock the cursor is that it doesn't work unless it's attached to a physical button, as far as I'm aware. I'm glad you liked the collab : P

also yes ms paint is a surprisingly strong software for what it's worth

[The Wizard Ran: Chapter 6]

Goddamn you Albatross! I was on track to collecting all of the orbs and you just had to go a-murderin' the two hunters and lock me into another ending I wasn't going for! Now I gotta do minesweeper all over again! Arrrghh!

Anyway, another fun chapter in this thrilling adventure! So far I've got three endings: murdering by Albatross (goddamn you Albatross, I'm trying to avoid killing those two since it plays the sad music), story ending with jumping into the tear (didn't expect the game to actually put important stuff into the main ending as a lot of it is contingent on doing additional endings from previous games, and you've had a pattern so far of the main ending being the ignorant 'run away' ending, so I'm interested to see where it goes as it was pretty epic) and the 3 orb ending (which, as silly and low-effort as that boss fight was, it was actually pretty intense haha). Had a blast getting all of these and will see how many others I can get.

(Little bug I found: if you go to the south wall of the research room you can peer into the blue dimension? Probably just some malfunctioning collision, but you never know with this game, haha)

adriendittrick responds:

thanks for playing :)
The blue dimension was indeed initially a bug but I've discovered it and put a bunch of respawn demons in it (the ones that appear when you press R) so now it's a feature :p

[Billiard Hero]

I really like the concept of this game, where you don't know what the rules are so you just make up rules as you go and it gets all crazy like a game of Calvinball! Definitely very promising and I feel like the general construction of the game is very juicy, smooth, and cute. As the levels went on and started to introduce wacky elements like balls that move, I enjoyed the challenge of trying to think of the best way to handle it. But, overall I found myself having a bad time, unfortunately.

Call me impatient, or maybe I just suck at billiards, but I feel like the game takes way too long to get to the good stuff. Too many of the early levels are just whacking around balls with very uninteresting changes like different weights and such: fun at the start, but it was such a slog to power through and I found myself quitting around level 5 as even though it introduced a new ability, said ability wasn't explained very well and didn't seem to change much, so I lost patience. I know you said that I have to be patient at the start, but I think that's more up to the game developer to create a well-paced game for all potential players, not beg and guilt-trip your players to keep going.

It didn't help either that the controls of the game were really janky and unrefined. Because the game doesn't lock the cursor within it, you can't make powerful shots when the ball is near the edge of the screen because your cursor will go off-screen and not register when you let go to make the shot. So I felt really cramped and unable to control as I'd like. Combine this with what I said before about the early levels being too simple and yet simultaneously a slog by having really big quotas and requiring annoyingly precise shots, I found myself frustrated and don't see myself making it to see the more interesting later levels, which is a bummer since the screenshot previews make it look cool!

Would love if maybe there was a save/load feature in this: that'd make it so I don't have to play it all in one sitting and take take it bit-by-bit.

EDIT: I did end up going back to this and playing it to completion because it was just so intriguing: what a really bizarre and cool game!