FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[GANBATTE!! ROBOCHAN - DEMO]

Hey, this is pretty neato! Definitely succeeds at emulating those retro vibes: love that classic intro, and the gameplay was very authentic, like playing some long-lost entry into the NES library! One particular aspect I enjoyed was the boss fights, which felt like they had a good assortment of moves, with their horizontal rushes that require you to move out of the way being a highlight!

There were a couple of stumbles for me, though. For one, I didn't like how when you 'advance' in the intro cutscene, it skips completely to the next card without filling out the remaining text first. Another aspect was that I felt like the game was way too easy. Now, not all retro games need to be Nintendo hard, sure, but boy did the game feel pretty unthreatening and boring without challenge!

If I have to be honest, though, the game, while kinda fun, didn't necessarily spark joy for me, being just another Megaman clone. Now, there's nothing wrong with making clones: everyone, including me, starts out by copying their favorites, and its a great way to learn and grow. But competition is fierce, and while this game is fun to play for free, without any sort of unique mechanic, clever twist, challenging gameplay, or just some certain je ne sais quoi to elevate it above just a mere copy, this just isn't anything I'd whip my wallet out for. Still, good on you for making this, and best of luck in your future endeavors!

WLCSoft responds:

Thanks! I'll keep all that in mind for my next projects.

[DON'T FLIP THE DOOM CARD]

Hey, this was great! Not only is this a very fun twist on the classic memory card game with the introduction of doom cards, but the game overall has an incredibly polished construction to it, feeling very intuitive and smooth, and with an especially charming presentation, what with its whole stylish windows 95? 98? aesthetic.

One subtle aspect that I think was done very well was the length of sessions. A lot of these types of arcade games, while fun, can overstay their welcome, turning repetitive from endlessly looping play that only ends when you eventually get bored and quit. With this however, right when I thought I was getting a tiny bit bored and considering quitting, it signaled to me that it was already the last level, which made me push forward and finish strong. It was then that the game introduced the extra modes, which immediately made me want to give them a go! Excellent pacing! A game that has the discipline to leave you hungry for more instead of stuffing you full is great.

One aspect that I found a bit confusing when playing was the whole card previewing when you select a card. I assumed it would show me the neighbors, but I could never figure out why other seemingly random cards were being shown as well. It's true that it technically explains that it also flips cards across in the instructions, but all I could remember was the picture in the instructions which only showed neighbors, so can you blame me for being a bit confused? Anyway, it didn't really get in the way of my enjoyment: just something that puzzled me for a bit!

tonyfinale responds:

always satisfying seein your big reviews on things. thanks as ever man <3

[Air Hockey League]

Wow, this was quite the journey!

Gotta admit, I didn't have the best first impression of this. Not only did I find the decision to move the mallets with the keyboard to be very awkward (c'mon, being able to use the mouse would feel so much better) but the game just felt incredibly dry: functional, sure, but without any pizazz. To me, the game just felt like a prototype of air hockey made by an amateur developer for their first project: nice as a proof of concept and as an introduction to coding, but as a complete game? I found myself quitting after only a few points from boredom.

Thankfully, I took a peek at the reviews and saw people talking about a 'twist', so I went back, played a match to completion, and whaddya know, there's a whole crazy horror segment and boss fight! To think I would've missed something as cool as this! I don't know whether to call you brave or an idiot, developer, for hiding the twist so well, but here's to you!

While the boss fight was definitely pretty cool, it wasn't perfect: it was particularly annoying how unintuitive it was to determine when the boss was able to be hit. Many times I tried to strike the boss when his head was lowering, but no, you can only hit him when he's completely finished his descent for some silly reason, despite the puck clearly being able to collide with them. Stepping back, the whole spooky twist was also a bit cliche and juvenile, the equivalent of just flailing your arms and going ooga booga: would've liked a bit more build-up and reason for it. Still, a neat experience overall despite my nitpicks!

[The Anvil Game]

Hmm...isn't this just go fish? I mean, it's novel to me as a person who doesn't play card games, but to anyone else, c'mon, who are you fooling with this anvil nonsense?

Anyway, jokes aside, it's a pretty cute little game. There was a bit of confusion at the start as the instructions didn't do a good job at explaining how to make stacks, but luckily the game's interface makes it intuitive to figure out. The gameplay is mostly luck-based, which can make it feel a bit pointless, but there was a certain subtle strategy to it where you make notes of what cards the enemy is looking for as well as when they get 'lucky' so you know what to call on them for to steal their hard work. I surprisingly got into it despite being so reluctant at first!

It's nice, but ultimately felt rather meagre and I didn't feel inclined to play again once I played once. Would've loved if it was more like a tournament where you have to work your way through multiple opponents who introduce their own quirks or new rules to keep things interesting.

[Cold]

An interesting emotional twist for an idle clicker game! It has potential...but it left me cold from how half-baked it was.

Don't get me wrong, as a fan of games like The Long Dark and Frostpunk, I love the concept of fighting against the cold and the emotional journey it can be. But this just felt so...low-effort and cheap, and I hate to say that because I know how tough it can be to make games, but I'm just trying to be honest. Call me cynical, but it reminds me of those manipulative 'game over' screens you see in arcade games like Final Fight, where the only way to save your hero is to insert more quarters: don't you try and manipulate me!

As said, it has potential and hooked me in at the start: I certainly tried to help the little guy survive for as long as I could. But as an old man with old man hands, I didn't last long, both because of the wrist pain and also because I didn't feel motivated that strongly for how cheap the game felt in its construction.

If I were to offer some advice in how to make this work better:

*I don't think it makes much sense to warm the guy up by clicking on him: what sense does jabbing him over and over make? Instead, perhaps you would warm him up by rubbing the cursor over him? Might be a bit less painful on the hands to do so. Or, perhaps you could do something else like shielding him from snowfall by blocking it with your cursor like an umbrella, or by dragging logs into a fire, or just building and tending a fire in general?

*I found it really disappointing that the temperature seems to drop at a set rate, not being affected by aspects like the sun: would be much more interesting if it was really hard to keep him warm during the night, but during the day its a bit easier, to serve as a nice break for your hands. You could even make it more of a journey by having the weather get more intense as the game goes on, causing the player to have to commit harder.

*Would be nice if the little guy would emote or react more based on his current state, to get you more attached to him. Like, if you get him up to a high temperature, maybe he could smile and shiver less, whereas if he gets low he starts getting scared and shivering violently. Could also just get spooked by changes in the weather and such.

*For a clicker game, it's a bit strange that there's no sense of progression or upgrades like there usually is. Going off of an earlier suggestion, maybe you can upgrade his campsite with blankets and a fire if you get enough clicks, and that's a necessary strategy to keep him warm enough as the game gets harder later on when the weather gets worse.

I hate to be all cynical, but this really just feels like a trick, using emotional manipulation to try and elevate a very low-effort game. The concept has merit, though, so that's why it's so disappointing to me: would love to see it revisited and done justice.

[Painter Blazer]

Hey, this is a pretty cute adventure! The gameplay gives me old-school arcade vibes both with its general presentation as well as its gameplay, which I'm a big fan of. There's also a lot of charm to this: for example, I love the cartoony aesthetics with the amusing effects for your actions like 'hop' and 'zoom' for jumping and dashing. Furthermore, it also does a lot of things to make the journey stay fresh and interesting, such as new worlds with unique mechanics, cool boss fights, and fun story cutscenes, all of which were a definite highlight for me. Nice stuff!

There were a few bumps in the road that I encountered, though:

*I found it really weird that the tutorial character gives you instructions based on the alternative control scheme (JKL) when I had the default control scheme (ZXC) selected. Perhaps it is hard-coded instead of dynamic text?

*First impressions were a bit rough due to aspects like the jump being so wimpy which made certain jumps so annoying to pull off, and the lack of any sort of interesting scoring system or tricks to pull off like combos or chains. Just has a bit of a slow start which it makes up for later as it introduces boss fights and some interesting levels and mechanics, like the balloon puzzle level.

*First impressions were further diminished when I fell down a pit and...didn't die? I was stuck with no way out and had to reset the game, causing me to have to redo a bunch of levels I already completed (including the tutorial all over again!) Quite frustrating!

*There were coins to collect, but I'm not sure what purpose they served: it didn't seem worth it to collect them since they almost all required you to have to make awkward jumps that would set you far back, having to climb back up to where you were before, wasting a lot of time.

It's a bit rough and awkward in some respects, but overall its charm won me over and made me want to keep going further, and I was impressed at how it kept evolving!

GGishere responds:

the alternate control scheme was the only control scheme before it was updated (idk why either aapi is weird with keyboards)

the coins are just for achievements for getting all of them per world

[Pablo Post-It's Journey Home]

Hrmm, this was rather disappointing to me, unfortunately!

It showed a lot of promise at the start. I like the whole sketchbook aesthetic and the usage of post-it notes, erasers and sharpeners as these unique traversal tools. The levels that require you to move the post-it notes to create platforms is something I've seen before, but it was still nice, and I looked forward to seeing how the game would evolve and challenge me. It makes a token effort to keep things interesting with stuff like portals and the like, but...

Unfortunately, the game never seemed to go anywhere interesting with the initial concept. Most of the levels were fairly brainless, requiring you to just walk to the end and make obvious interactions with no chance of error. Compared to post-it notes, erasers and sharpeners were severely underutilized in any sort of creative way, and in general it felt like the game didn't know what to do with its mechanics to create interesting puzzles or platforming challenges, instead just repeating the same ideas and levels over and over with insignificant differences, the equivalent of just shuffling the pieces around and waving your hands wildly as a distraction.

It's a bummer because I do want to like this! It's cute, and the levels where you're moving the post-its around to create a bridge or staircase are interesting...it just...doesn't do anything beyond that. Get creative!

[Botanica (DEMO)]

Nice to see some updates on this project! While some of my previous complaints still remain, I feel like a lot of good work has been done, as this version felt like it had an overall better sense of flow and just felt better to play in a lot of respects than the previous version. For example, the new directional melee attack allowed for some more interesting maneuvers, like pogo-jumping over the boss. While the game is a bit of a Kirby clone and starts off a bit slow, it does some interesting stuff with boss fights and setpieces as it goes on: nice work!

For feedback, I'll try not to bother reiterating previous feedback and such. Instead, I'll offer some new feedback that came up while playing this:

*When your seed power is on cooldown but you try to use it, I wish there was some sort of reaction from the player character, like have them shake/vibrate while playing an 'errnt' error sound, or something to that effect.

*I understand it might be for balancing or preventing some sort of exploit, but it sucks when you pick up a new seed power but need to wait for it to fully recharge before you can use it. I picked it up because I needed it, so I want to use it immediately!

*While I like the idea of switching seed powers, it feels like not only is the throwing knife too powerful, your levels strongly favor the usage of the knife to deal with obstacles like logs hanging from vines. Because of this heavy incentive to stick with knifes, I never felt like it was worth it to try any of the other powers.

*It's a little bit strange that you can use the mouse for the new directional whip attack, but you can't use the mouse for anything else, like advancing dialogue. Feels weird to have to disengage from the mouse just to press the keyboard, and then go right back.

Best of luck on your further developments!

[RoboNips]

Not too shabby! It's a nice little block-breaker arcade game with an interesting twist of the paddle being a platforming hero and your safety net crumbling away with every miss. Overall it's fun and has some good juicy presentation that makes everything look and feel good: the retro arcade vibes are strong with this one!

There are some aspects to it that detract from the experience for me, however:

For one, the game got very repetitive for me rather quickly, due to the lack of any sort of evolution or progression to the system or challenge: for example, there were no harder blocks to break, no enemies, no power-ups, etc. There also didn't seem to be any sort of interesting scoring system, like combos, to try and get skilled at doing. Block-breakers can also just naturally be a bit frustrating when you're trying to hit some remaining bricks but you just can't aim at them properly. Speaking of...

The biggest issue for me though was the physics engine, which seemed to be very wonky when calculating collisions and would result in balls bouncing in very odd ways. At first I thought it was just wonky when my character would jump into balls, which I could understand because it's two fast-moving objects colliding and that can get confusing to calculate. But no, even when it was just the ball bouncing off of blocks, it would get weird occassionally, particularly when it would hit the corner of a block, but the block was part of a wall of blocks, so it doesn't make sense for it to go off at a weird angle suddenly.

Anyway, still had a decently fun time with it!

[The Supernatural Power Troll]

Huh, quite the interesting game! It certainly has a very humorous vibe to it, especially in regards to the intro and other cinematics, and has some neat experimental stuff like the generated dialogue for NPCs which react to seeing a troll, eating food, and all sorts of other events. The levels have a lot of variation to them as well and were fun to puzzle through, with the intermissions serving as a nice motivating factor. Some stand-out moments include the Medusa fight: that was really cool to lure humans into the beam with food and then throw them for damage!

It's nice, but there were a lot of rough aspects that got in the way:

*The game says you can use the arrow keys to move around, but they actually don't work, and you can only move with WASD.

*As humorous as the intro is, it was incredibly indulgent in how long it took to let me play the damn game. Could stand for some editing.

*I don't understand how the power-ups work. I keep finding these things for super-jumps and shrinking and so on, but all I can do is throw them at enemies to give them the powers when I would prefer to benefit from them myself instead. Is it just impossible to use them on yourself?

*What's up with the ads coming up when you die? Just feels really out of place and gross in a game like this.

*Had some weird bugs like how trying to quit to the main menu would just keep darkening the screen and not actually quit.

*I dunno how helpful this is, but something about the game just feels kinda...off. Like, the levels almost give this kinda vibe where they are something like you'd see in Mosa Lina where it's a puzzler with the freedom to solve issues in multiple ways, yet all of the power-ups scattered around seem like unhelpful red herrings that I don't know how to use and the solution usually just boils down to throwing food at humans to distract them. Either that or the solution is too hard-coded and doesn't allow freedom, like needing to throw the jump powerup to get the human to jump over the snail with no other way to proceed.

*In addition to the above, the game just feels really janky at times with weird collision and physics. For example, there's an area in the medusa fight where you fall slowly for no reason at all: what the heck is going on there? If you jump or go off a platform in other parts of the room, you fall at a normal speed. I just get the feeling that the game is barely holding itself together, and this screwed me over with unfair deaths at times.

Overall, the game just has a very weird, janky and experimental vibe in many respects: in some ways it's amusing and I like it, and in other ways it throws me off with how unintuitive it is. I can see this being a bit of a divisive one!

jacklehamster responds:

The powerups are only meant for humans. That's really the premise of the game, where the troll can't use powerups but can only grant them to humans. Most levels are designed with powerups in mind, though there might be multiple solutions. Towards the end, you pretty much have to use all powerups to solve levels.
I run into issues with physics. It was the first time I worked with Phaser, so I haven't gotten everything figured out...