FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Salmon Jam]

Hmm, a bit mixed on this!

On one hand, the game is pretty decent and reminiscent of deckbuilders like Slay the Spire and all that jazz. Despite it's simplicity, I did have fun trying to strategize and use the various cards to the best of my ability, and I think its designed rather intuitively that I was able to grasp how to play despite going in blind. Definitely feels like it has the basic core structure in place for a promising game!

However, the game does feel incredibly underbaked and unpolished in its current state. So many aspects feel so clunky: there's no music, it feels very dry, the 'combat' title is left on clearly non-combat phases, sprite/text layering is all screwed up and leads to unreadable text at times, the output for damage is confusing (why when I block all damage does it both play a punch sound instead of a block sound and still popup a number like I got hurt, for example), it's not clear at times how you're supposed to proceed with all these buttons and such left on screen, and so on and so forth.

Furthermore, typically with jam games I like to see brand new concepts or wacky ideas get field tested to see if they are worth more work, but this is just a deckbuilder that is imilar to other deckbuilders, so there's not much to gain here (though obviously it's not a sin to be unoriginal, lord knows I am). At the end of the day it's a jam game so I don't want to be too tough on it, but it's out here and you can't always count on people respecting that context so I do want to deliver the best feedback I can think up.

[Beck Gets Bitches!!!!]

Well, considering it was for the 3 star jam, I'd say you've done an excellent job at earning this 3 star: whether you want to take that as a compliment or an insult, I'll have you decide, haha!

As said, it very accurately captures that feel of a 3 star game. Playing this puts a picture in my head of a newbie creator who was very proud at being able to pull off very basic player movement and collisions: it's nice as a step forward on their journey to game dev improvement, but it definitely doesn't make it a good game or ready for the limelight.

I almost actually want to dock points (or add points? this jam is confusing) because the game does show a little bit too much effort in putting bonus characters like Pepsi man and also just having a lot of goofy sounds: it shows a bit more craft and professionalism that you wouldn't see from a legit 3 star game. However, you clutched the 3 star in the end by having a score counter that doesn't properly reset: good save!

Taka responds:

Thanks bro! However I didn't know the counter didn't reset right LMAO
Good thing I made sure to do mid testing HAHA

[Biome Conquest]

Not too shabby! Feel like, despite being a very simple and drab game in theory, the construction of this felt quite polished and well-done overall. My favorite part was how, despite the game not really teaching you much except how to drag a tile onto the board, the game subtly teaches you all of the other rules through how it animates effects, such as how tiles will fade colors to signify territories being conquered, or how numbers pop to signify them getting reinforced, or how the tiles snap to a position so it's always clear where you are going to place something. Other games would just have that stuff happen instantly and it'd be too fast to notice and grasp what happened. Nice stuff!

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I didn't have too much fun with this. That's partly my fault: this just isn't my type of game and most likely it is built for two players facing off each other instead of a computer for maximum enjoyment. But even then, other games that aren't in my wheelhouse have been able to hook me through means of progression or juice or other such things, so this game could be seen as lacking in that respect. Curious whether the game would be better if you could preview the tile of the next move, like you'd see in something like Tetris: maybe that'd allow you to plan ahead and strategize more? Anyway, as said before, while it ain't my game, I appreciate the effort in construction.

rvh86 responds:

Thanks for your review! Previewing the next move would've been a nice addition too the game.

[Stall]

Hmm, not too shabby! I think the game actually does a pretty decent job of building up dread with its graphics and sound. I liked the way events progressed and thought some of the events such as looking at your watch upon seeing the graffiti, the appearance of the hole in the wall, and the bloody bag being dragged were highlights for me. It's definitely a little bit sparse and lacking polish so it's not as immersive as I'd like, but it's decent and showing promise.

The big killer for me in this was the controls: I appreciate the attempt at creating these smooth analog controls where you can fine-tune how you open doors and such, but compared to games like Amnesia which do it very well, this felt painfully awkward. Just the way you get your movement locked down when not only you're trying to use a door, but examine other objects, felt so awkward and difficult to disengage from. The worst was the chase sequence which I felt was ruined by this: not only do you feel like you have to exploit it by moving diagonally to get enough speed since the initial scare comes too fast, but unlocking and opening the door at the end fast enough was an exercise in frustration. There was also some other silly aspects like attempting to leave without investigating the hole getting you jumpscare killed: didn't feel like a satisfying way to guide the player to the hole naturally.

Oscura responds:

Thanks For Trying The Game, This Was My First Time Trying Out Something Like This So I Wasn't Sure How Well The Features Would All Work Together.

[Generic Fishing Game]

Damn, can't believe I almost missed this one! I feel real foolish for not sticking with it long enough to see the twist: perhaps a combination of impatience and a long line of other previous 'spooky' fishing games not going strong enough to give me faith in this one. But for the grace of Stepford I gave this a deeper go and it hooked me all the way to the end!

In retrospect, I think that the entire game, including the introduction, is paced very well to bring about a perfect choreography and rhythm of intrigue and excitement. It felt similar to some of my favorite movie-esque games like Out of This World or perhaps an exciting Warioware boss fight. The game moved from event to event with great timing: it felt like each time the game was about to go on a bit too long and test my patience (with the most egregious example being hooking the blubs in the mouth) it would pull the rug out and mix things up with something new. All of the games felt well-balanced for difficulty in that, while not being overly challenging, they were challenging enough to 'feel' deadly, again keeping the ideal pace where you are not likely to die and suffer the horror becoming an annoyance. And not only that, but the minigames do all, for the most part, center upon the basic premise of fishing and yet build upon it and recontextualize it in fascinating and clever ways.

Definitely a great short and sweet experience!

[Darkraid : Delilah]

Wow, getting some great retro shooter vibes from this one! Dunno what this one is doing buried underneath everything else as for the most part it hits all of the important pillars for a good shooter to me: nice gore and feedback for shooting, nice enemy variety, good combat telegraphs, a great old-school shotgun, interesting levels with all sorts of enemy formations, secrets, and so on and so forth! Found myself easily getting addicted to blasting through the demons!

If I had to point out some parts I feel could be worked on:

Jump felt really bad: not only is it incredibly short, it also screws up if you try to jump too close to a stair, making you awkwardly have to step back to jump.

Weird that you don't carry over anything between levels: yes, some games do allow you to start fresh upon death, but usually that's only if you die in the level and restart instead of load, not if you just got into the level from a previous one, no?

No way to restart after dying apart from going to the menu and selecting restart level? I know that makes some sense, but that extra step feels unnecessary: feels like you should be able to just click fire and have you restart the level right there.

No save/load feature? I don't mind it so much as I always try to beat levels without save scumming, but still, I'd like to be able to save my progress in general if I want to take a break.

Picking up items is kind of lackluster and uninformative due to the same sound effects being used for everything: maybe use different sounds and flashes of color to signify what you're picking up?

And the big one: while I think it's great overall and that the aesthetic is kind of unique, it is perhaps lacking a unique hook (or gameplay that feels so good that it doesn't need a hook). There's just so many boomer shooters out nowadays that I can easily see this one getting shunted to the bottom of the pile despite being good: just feels like another Doom conversion mod. Dunno exactly what the best approach would be: maybe more wacky weapons akin to something like Blood or Heretic instead of the more standard shotgun and rifles? I did feel like the initial slow-orb-fire pistol and melee combo was pretty neat, only for it to get overshadowed. Maybe play up the story angle more with dialogue and objectives and events? It did feel like apart from quips at the start of the level, everything was quiet and directionless. Maybe some sort of unique combat ability like glory kills that adds some spice and strategy to the combat? Up to you in the end.

Borington responds:

Thank you so much for the detailed review! I 100% agree with the list of your issues, and these features will be added for the desktop version (though some might be added as a quick update to this version as well). As for the hook, that's exactly the problem I've been struggling with, but I hope the story I'm working on can make the continuation something special.

[Eat Bean: Another Plane]

...surprised I made it to 100 beans. How'd that happen? I guess that's a compliment? Can't see myself making it much farther than that though, haha: I can only be amused by funny words for so long (and again, gotta admit it was amusing for longer than I expected, so good work on the funny words).

Warning! Do not walk next to a wall, face it, and hold down the lick button. The sounds...

tscoct responds:

Saliva asmr was too much i guess lol, still, thanks for checking it out!

[A Halloween Cat-Tastrophe]

Not too shabby! Certainly a cute little puzzler that's got a rather unique concept and art/presentation, but man, I really went back and forth on this game.

Tutorial didn't make the greatest impression as I felt like it took waaaaaay too long to explain something that, in the end, is very simple to grasp once you get into actual gameplay: pictures would be worth a thousand words in this case! It just wasn't really effective: I actually didn't even know you could rotate the pieces for a bunch of levels because of this, though I'll say that the rotation is very wacky in that its more like its shifting the order of pieces around while keeping the shape the same.

Once I got going with the game, it felt alright for the most part, but it felt like it was really feast or famine: if you got lucky with your pieces, you could end up sometimes clearing the stages in like 1 or 2 moves (which unfortunately despite winning felt unsatisfying) however if you got unlucky with your pieces, then you can spend so long trying to dig through the clutter to get to the objective, only for it to be covered up once again. Just so punishing and difficult to recover! Because of this, I was always really tense and prone to feeling hopeless if things didn't go right: the last level was an absolute nightmare where I almost beat it but then from a few unlucky moves felt like it was unsalvageable.

Its a cute game, and perhaps I'm just bad at puzzlers, but the whole feeling of everything being up to luck and the lack of control or recovery hurt it for me. I'm probably not gonna beat it, but hey, I had a nice time while it lasted: I'll leave the last level to the real puzzle lords, haha!

KittyhawkMontrose responds:

Hey! Thanks so much for taking the time to play and review our game! I see what you mean about the intro/tutorial, and we're thinking of tweaking that in the next game. But I'm glad you got the general concept quick! It's definitely a different way of playing. Sometimes luck does play into it, like you can get a bad run of pieces, but for the most part, each puzzle does have a "simple" solution, if not obvious sometimes. We are definitely going to be working on the difficulty curve and the role of randomness on our next game.

Glad you like the theming! And thanks so much for the feedback. It's got us thinking about things for the future. :D

[Minimum Mage Effort]

Wow, this one really surprised me! Glad I came across it as I'm surprised it didn't get into Best of the Month - thank god for the Halloween tag!

It definitely had a bit of a rough start for me. While the game definitely does sport some adorable art and charm, the tutorial is an ugly, overly verbose wall of text that takes way too long to explain what is essentially a very simple game: could definitely stand for more pictures or maybe a guided day one. Next, the game is pretty tough! Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge, but some of the difficulty does come from some really unfair-feeling aspects like how you have to get right in a customer's grill to serve them (heaven forbid you try to serve them across the table) and it's so easy to get bogged down on regular tables slowing you down, let alone the ghosts and rats that end up appearing later. It can feel really crushing as well when you make a single mistake: customers are so impatient, you have to get the order in the exact stack order, going to the bin to reset takes so much time that it feels pointless, argh, it all adds up and makes it difficult to recover!

But again, despite that whole screed of negatives up there, once I got going with the game, I ended up getting really addicted to it! The tutorial being an issue didn't last long due in part to the game having intuitive design with clear visual signals/symbols and logical feedback: I practically didn't pay attention to any of the tutorial text and still found everything easy to pick up. While I did have a rough time and those missed customers or occasional dropped orders did hurt, I found that as long as I put the pedal to the metal, I was clearing even the last days without much issue, and it felt oh so satisfying! And again, the game was just so cute and charming with great feedback and goofy sounds.

This game is a real toughie, no doubt, and some of that challenge I think could be more forgiving or elegantly designed, but I was glad I was able to rise to the challenge and get to the end: well done with this one!

Just-a-ng-dummy responds:

Wow didn't expect ya to cover this game haha! I think the reason why this didn't get into Best of the Month was due to it didn't get frontpaged in October

For the tutorial, I overcomplicated it because I was afraid someone was gonna not know a crucial mechanic, fail horrendously, and quit the game with a sulky impression, I will try to make a simplified tutorial soon though

"Order in the exact stack order"
Ack! That's the problem!! You don't! The bottom part of your serving must match at least one of the customer's orders! Hopefully I can explain it clearly in a simplified tutorial!

The bin has been a concern for me, maybe I'll give a positive to outway the difficult recovery time like faster movement speed

Thanks a lot for complimenting the visual feedback for the game! I will try to decrease some of the difficulty sooner or later, thx for playing Futurecop!