FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Into The Web Of Swine]

Hmm, this felt like a miss to me. Really feels like a work in progress that ran out of time (understandably, game jams are hard) as the game just felt incredibly dry and plain and just not fun to play. The idea of having to commit to certain movements and thus time it right to dodge obstacles is an alright concept, and playing the more difficult contracts where there are tons of different obstacles can lead to some fast-thinking improvisation, so the concept is not without merit. It's just that, without any sort of pizazz or sense of progression, it feels so boring and ultimately pointless.

My initial impression was really bad because I picked an easy contract (which I think is logical since I still didn't know how the game worked) that was absolutely, pathetically easy and devoid of any challenge. As said, picking a harder contract later on helped me see the game in a bit of a better light, but by then the damage was done (and even then, the game was just devoid of any exciting feedback or effects). Oh, and there were plenty of bullshit deaths were obstacles would be right where I initially spawn, so that didn't garner any faith in me for the game's construction.

Speaking of the contract system: not to backseat game dev, but I think it would most likely work a lot better if, instead of picking contracts where you can get stuck in a boring configuration for a long time like I did, you throw that away and just make the game be an endless mode that keeps ramping up the difficulty with each level you beat, and then you get a high score at the end: I feel like this would keep the novelty and pace up a lot more.

[Crimp Kicker]

Hmmm, this was a bit rough for me. It's a funny story with some amusing art, and I really like the concept of the game being some sort of crazy fusion of pinball and kitty cannon where you have to plan your initial launch to hit a bunch of targets: it certainly allows for some fun physics/ragdoll chaos but with a strategic twist. And I do like the little touches it has, like that little pause when your crimp hits something to add a bit of satisfaction. But the design just seemed more chaotic than the gameplay itself and it left me feeling confused and frustrated.

The controls were a bit confusing to get used to as they were inverted from what I expected, but as long as I changed my mind to think of it like physically pulling your leg back instead of stating the trajectory, it was alright. Still, though, it made it difficult to aim, and I hated how if I dragged my mouse off the screen it would shoot instead of waiting for me to let go.

The level difficulty seemed all over the place. Some of the later levels were pathetically easy like the car level (you'd think the cars would take a few hits since they're so big or something to shake things up) and the levels where you get bouncy balls so winning is almost guaranteed since they keep picking you up. The very first level, in comparison, is practically a nightmare to beat since you need to ensure you hit all of the lamps and various other high up items before you lose too much altitude. Definitely feel like the levels were incredibly out-of-order and create a terrible first impression since the difficulty only seems to go down past the first level.

The novelty of the game ended up wearing off quickly. All the levels were pretty much the same and any sort of novel obstacles like the bouncy balls or the cars which should've been tougher to kill were too few and put haphazardly around without any sort of sense to it all. Also it was super frustrating that the game put so much weight on the initial kick: the game was practically screaming for some sort of limited powerup that you could use to slightly influence the crimp post-launch, similar to something like how Burnout lets you slightly steer the car and blow it up after a crash.

I really, really want to like this game because I think the idea is great. But as said, right now it just feels like the levels aren't setup in any sort of intelligent way: you were setup for glory but it ended up being some sorta Jackson Pollock painting.

[Grunko Blocks]

Wow, really great little puzzle game on display here! It's not really showcasing any new or unique mechanics so its not the most original or progressive game, but for what it is, it feels good to play, has a charming caveman theme, teaches the mechanics well, increases speed as you go to keep the novelty up, and has plenty of juicy and fun feedback, so all in all, I had a good time and ended up getting quite addicted to it! Definitely a solid, well-constructed game! The only thing I was a bit disappointed in was that there wasn't any sort of special response or fanfare for getting a big combo: would've loved to see the guy get excited or for the game to have some text to say how many bonus points I got for such a move. Oh, and there's some weird sort of issue with the font/text that makes it look rather choppy and hard to read. Other than that, though, great stuff, and very impressive given that its a game jam! Would love to see this get enhanced into a bigger game with more levels, more special mechanics, and other cavemen to meet and battle against!

[Rainy Day: Pixel Art Edition]

Bit surprised by this one! It didn't make the best first impression, what with its incredibly small and difficult to read text, its odd, stilted english that makes me think it was badly translated from another language, and its middling graphics and animation (particularly the way you die where you just flop down immediately), but once you get past that, I actually found a rather creative puzzle game with some really unique mechanics! The whole transferring between dimensions and managing your ghost dog and solving the various riddles using the clues: I thought the game taught this concepts very effectively through its subtle tutorial and I easily found myself getting addicted to solving puzzle after puzzle and seeing the main pillars light up.

It's definitely a little clunky in some aspects: for example, I solved the floor tile puzzle by standing in such a way to glitch-hit two panels simultaneously, the hitboxes for the red fires were a bit unclear, and the bad translation really hurt the hints for the animal statue puzzle (I'm actually not sure why I solved the second one with three locusts). I also felt like the game was too short and therefore the story didn't get enough time to build up and deliver any emotional weight, but I got the general gist of it.

I think its a good case where, despite being a little janky, buggy, and confusing, it nevertheless has an interesting bit of mystery to it that makes you want to play more despite it all: don't judge a book by its cover and all that, so kudos on that.

Got the good ending eventually! A bit confusing though: only figured out I had to hold E and put flames in the bowl thanks to comments, I would've never figured that out myself.

[Stella Pro Skater]

It's a simple game, but it's not too shabby! I like the way it builds up the tension at the start by slowly tilting the hill as it really sold the speed build up, and I found the act of jumping around to be some good simple fun. Game has a decent assortment of obstacles to contend with, especially the cars which were a big highlight. Bit weird that the game always starts at 300m on the score board: you'd think it would display your previous high score or something. I like the touch that you crashing and sliding down the hill still adds to your score: reminds me of something like Kitten Cannon.

While for the most part I was able to skillfully dodge around obstacles and get the 1000m achievement without much trouble, I did feel like I couldn't trust the game to always build a fair assortment of obstacles, and that really bummed me out and kept me from getting addicted to this game. It just felt like my runs depended on the whims of the games random generation: some runs would have barely any obstacles, while others would practically stack 3 or 4 obstacles on top of each other to form an unwinnable scenario. Still, for a little game jam game, I guess I can't expect you to build some sort of super algorithm to ensure that only fair configurations of obstacles are generated, so I'll accept the bit of fun I had.

As a side note, I did find it a bit disappointing that you didn't even bother creating a different graphic for when Stella jumps: looks so silly for her to stay stock-still when jumping, and lazy considering you did create all sorts of other wonderful graphics for crashing, haha. Oh, and Stella is cute.

[Figure Fumble!]

I do think the game shows a lot of promise: the presentation is very lively and charming, the graphics are cute and filled with juicy effects, and the act of swiping to throw your little figures around is both intuitive and very satisfying. It can be very amusing at just how chaotic it can get when you have tons of figures bonking around everywhere!

But all that satisfying flinging and charming presentation felt like smoke and mirrors, as the game was, at its core, incredibly, pathetically simple. The entire game is without challenge as there is no time limit that I can see and the enemies are totally unthreatening and don't force you into employing any sort of tactics: the enemies may look different, but they are all the same in that they are nothing against the tidal wave you can summon by brainlessly swiping up and down on the screen forever and ever, amen. There's just no design to it that I can see!

The only thing in the entire game that showed any aspect of challenge and required any sort of thought was the very final boss (I think it was the final boss? it was for me at least since I quit shortly after), where you need to build up an army of 100, but you need to smartly maneuver around the spike floors and the bosses ground pounds lest your guys get killed and you need to build them up again: while I enjoyed this, it was far too little, far too late. I'd much prefer if the game had a greater focus on more interesting combat scenarios and clever design like the final boss instead of just having a bunch of gacha to unlock.

Again, it is a satisfying prototype that does show some promise, I just think that too large a portion of it is without any sort of actual gameplay design to show, and that left a really bad first impression.

[Snow Yourself]

Hmm, I think it's a pretty unique and creative concept, but unfortunately maybe it was a bit too unique for me as I just couldn't wrap my head around it and found the controls to be very unintuitive and clunky.

It started out pretty strong with the first few puzzles: I had some minor issues understanding the controls and grappling with the camera, but for the most part it was ok as I enjoyed shaping myself around and thought there were some interesting tricks like shaping myself within the slanted pit to form the shape since doing it on flat ground wasn't feasible. I did feel like the aspect of finding of the snowballs to be able to actually start to create the target shape was unnecessary filler/busywork, but I guess without it the game might be too easy? It almost felt like finding the snowballs was the hard part while building it was the easy part, when it should be the opposite.

Later on, tho, it just got more and more weird: I solved a lot of puzzles through some ways that I felt were not the intended way, like exploiting physics by chucking snowballs, but I just didn't know what else to do since I still found many aspects, like the whole remote controlling of snow based on your circle of influence, to be very unwieldly and difficult to parse. Eventually I got stuck at the puzzle where you get some gray outlined snowballs: I imagine they had some sort of property that I needed to utilize, but for me, they just felt very frustrating to manipulate as they'd get stuck on things and eventually glitched through the floor for me. I also found it weird that, when you get into an unwinnable situation like dropping your snowball down a bit, the game doesn't automatically reset.

Again, I think its a unique concept that has merit, but overall the game just felt very janky and difficult to control and understand, and that got in the way of what could've been some enjoyable brainteasers.

[Towerland]

Hmm, I think it's got a decent core to it with all the proper elements for a roguelike shooter as well as an interesting visual appeal/aesthetic, but as it is now, I found the game to ultimately be very shallow and boring.

The enemies were dumb, unthreatening and lacking in any sort of creative attacks, the player feels stiff with a slow projectile that lacks any sort of satisfying feedback (for hits, that is, as deaths feel satisfying with the way they gib), the dungeons were way too linear and without any sort of interesting paths or obstacles to shake things up, and there was no loot or objects to be found in the dungeon to spice up the run during it: instead it is replaced by a very boring statistical upgrade menu at the beginning of a run that you can barely notice its effects.

Considering it takes after Binding of Isaac, I was very surprised to see so many features lost, such as loot, shops, branching paths, and so on and so forth. In general, the game just felt very plain, like a prototype that only has the bare essentials and missing any special sauce to it all. It also was janky in some respects with the money magnetism being pretty weak, movement a bit too stiff and acid puddle hitboxes being way too big, to name a few.

I will say, though, that I'm not the biggest fan of the Binding of Isaac because of its, to me, interminable slow start of every run (which I think you've unfortunately recreated too faithfully here with the hero's slow and piddly projectiles) and some other aspects, so I will grant that perhaps I'm just not the ideal audience considering that this does look to be following in those footsteps.

As said, I think it is a decent prototype for a game that can only get improved from here!

[Stress Quest]

Wow, what a crazy good time! It's a simple game, but I love the amusing story concept of managing stress and love the madcap race to do all sorts of quests like a warioware game. Presentation is great with its very stylish cartoon graphics and everything so animated and full of life. Got really addicted to this and just had to play it to try and get a higher score!

I do have a few nitpicks with the game:

For one, I wish the map screen didn't have to involve scrolling around: I found it very unwieldly and clumsy to control, and was super frustrated when it screwed me over by not allowing me to click on quests fast enough. I would've preferred if the map was static/small enough that everything just fits on the screen without scrolling needed.

Two, there were a few minigames here and there that I felt were a bit confusing: for example, the cooking minigame was difficult to parse at first as you can barely tell there is a pot to put ingredients in and I thought I just needed to click the ingredients in order. Also I found it disappointing that winning the duel minigame doesn't even give you an animation of the bandit being blasted away.

Three, the sound mixing was a bit out of wack: some minigames like the slay creature one and the cooking one have barely audible sound effects while others have perfectly audible sounds.

Four, some minigames were a bit too forgiving: I won the photo one when I had like one pixel of the serpent in frame, haha.

These are just small nitpicks however: in general I had a blast playing this! Would love to see if this game had some sort of campaign to it, like a week long saga where every day gets harder and harder with a bigger quest variety, more tough deadlines, and faster speed increases: almost a bit of a shame that it just has the one difficulty mode at the moment!

[Little Fellas]

Hmm, seems like a decent concept, but at the moment it just didn't seem to have much to it.

Usually with these types of games it can be really fun to see how the little guys grow and evolve as it can change their behavior pattern so that they have all sorts of fun dynamic interactions and such on their own accord that are fun to watch, similar to a fish tank or a game of the Sims or Spore or whatever.

Unfortunately here, the little guys just seem like boring shells with no personality or autonomy: they just exist for you to directly make them breed or feed instead of it happening organically. Because of all of the guys being boring shells with no personality, I felt no reason to want to breed or grow them into evolved forms since it was purely cosmetic: what's the point?

Not only that, but the controls were frustrating as well: was never sure in what way or how long I needed to shake to get them randy, and a lot of times my shakes would end up chucking them into the wall for insta-death.

Again, I think it could be a good idea and it floats some interesting ideas around like how you have to sacrifice units to feed others, but in the end it just felt repetitive to grind out all the different forms and it just hurt my arm from all the shaking.

0chin responds:

Its a bit hard to animate all of that in two weeks of work with some of us working actual jobs on the side and only 2 animators. Maybe with an update we’ll add more 👍🏾