FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Impact-Effect]

Decent little arcade game! The whole aspect of switching between defensive and offensive modes like Pacman was a fun pattern, and the game did a pretty good job at keeping things interesting with upgrades, new enemy types, and a general escalation of difficulty as it went on. Graphics and effects were pretty minimal, but delivered in a kind of sleek, brutalist way. Had a decent time getting to around level 10 where it kind of lost steam for me, but had a good time getting there.

If I were to have any complaints, it'd probably be that, like I said, the game does start to get rather repetitive. Once I got to around level 7 or so, the upgrades and enemy types started to constantly repeat the same over and over without providing anything new anymore. Couple that with the larger and larger XP gap meaning less rewards, along with the special effects of the game being quite bland (seriously, the sound effect for destroying missiles is so unsatisfying, I want a bunch of slow-mo booms for each missile destroyed followed by a big boom for them all once attack mode slow-mo stops) and it led to me getting bored and not really wanting to replay. But I mean, it's an arcade game, it doesn't need to last forever.

Also, and this is just me thinking instead of complaining, but I wonder if using a more classic Asteroids-esque control where you have momentum and drifting and such to contend might be more fun and have more room to learn skilled play rather than the mouse pointer controllers the game has: the mouse controls are nice in their own right, but it did seem to have a limit and got a bit repetitive after awhile, and could get confusing with hit detection if you try to make heavy swipes.

IdeasPerSecond responds:

Thank you for the highly detailed response, FuturecopLGF! I appreciate all of the points you put forward here. You make quite a few excellent observations that will help me to improve as a developer! Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed review!

[Multimove]

Another nice puzzler entry from Rob1221! As usual, the concept is quite creative and the levels do a good job at both teaching you and hooking you by slowly amping up the complexity in a very instructional and intuitive way. I like the little symbols popping up to help you gauge distance and determine where you can go, and the fact it doesn't punish you for trying a bad direction.

If I were to have any complaints, it's that the game can feel very guided and linear. A vast majority of the levels just had me naturally following whatever single path there was available after eliminating non-options, which usually just led to me collecting all the powers when possible and proceeding to the exit. It was alright, but it didn't really engage my brain: I just let go and let the developer take the wheel, so to speak.

Of course, the fact that it was guided wasn't that bad for me, as I was a bit fearful of how the game would be if it made me keep track of distances and offsets through multiple steps as I found it very difficult to keep gauge distances (especially due to the vague purple zone which doesn't have clearly delineated tiles) and plot ahead more than a few steps. Luckily, the few courses that I did encounter which did have traps that required me to be careful and plan ahead never asked too much of me, so it was alright. Still, it made me think of whether the concept was such a good idea in the first place if I was having all these fears: maybe it had a limit to the concept where asking too much just wouldn't be nice for the player due to it not being intuitive enough for them to grasp. I dunno, haha.

[Parachute Peril]

Nice little fun arcade game! It's very simple, but something about these physics-based games can be so addictive due to their analog controls, and the concept of controlling the wind rather than the player is a neat twist. Couple that with a good sense of progression from shrinking the tunnels and adding enemies, very forgiving hitboxes that along you to scrape the walls without dying, and some nice special effects for animating the wind and player, and it's well put-together all-around! If I were to have any complaints, it might be that it doesn't have very long-lasting appeal due to a lack of variety in runs and such, but hey, it was a nice time while it lasted!

bluswimmer responds:

Thank you!

[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!