FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bullet Dodger]

You know, I wasn't sure what to think about this at first since it seemed rather simplistic in terms of gameplay and presentation, but I'm glad I gave it a try because it's a pretty neat little arcade game! I was impressed at the escalation of difficulty as the game goes on and had a lot of fun trying to dodge the patterns however I could, even using wall-jumps and such, and the game has a neat sense of style and energy to it. Simple but fun!

However, while it is a rather promising game, I didn't stick with it for too long as I found it a bit janky and odd with some of its design decisions. In terms of feedback:

*I feel like the damage feedback is too muted as I could barely tell when I was taking damage. The only way to tell is to see your health bar go red, and that only lasts so long because when you're low on health it stays red all the time. I would very much like if a sound effect played when you took damage and maybe your character reacts by flashing red or blinking or whatever.

*I didn't like how when you're riding a platform, you don't ride along with it naturally, instead needing to keep shuffling to the side to stay on. It's especially frustrating and finicky to stay on the tiny platforms because of this, and my hands quickly got tired from this repetition.

*I felt like the shield was an unnecessary inclusion and hurts the game. The way the levels are built feels like a direct response to trying to work around your inclusion of the shield: the early levels are too easy where you can just stay in one place and use the shield to block everything, while the later levels bombard you with way too many bullets that you're forced into using the shield as it's impossible to dodge otherwise. I would much prefer if the game kept its purity by just having the player dodging the bullets: it's called 'bullet dodger' after all, not 'bullet absorber'!

errorerratum responds:

Thank you for your review!
1) The damage being too muted was a stylistic decision to not bother the player with too much information during the gameplay, but I realize now that with the health bar turning red at low health would be misleading for a player. I was worried that adding noise for every bullet strike would be too annoying for a player.
2) Not being able to ride with the platform seems to be a pretty common critique of this game. I did it because I felt that the player character moving with the platform made the game far too easy, but I can see why people don't like that feature.
3) Interesting view of the shield mechanic - everyone else seems to like the shield. Trying to make the early game reasonably easy and the end game hard was always a challenge, and I did want to make playing the game for a very long time to be very difficult. I felt that shield helped with balancing the game as much as I could while still making the late stages very difficult.

[Trivial Trivia: Flags of the World]

Nice trivia game you got here! I must admit, I've never been a fan of geography or anything like that, so this game didn't appeal to me that much, but I still had a pretty good time when I gave it a go, mostly thanks to its good presentation and helpful hint system which actually led to me picking up enough tidbits to get some following questions correct. Good stuff, and I liked seeing the improvements to the interface that have been made from the previous entry!

For the most part it's solid, but in terms of feedback:

*While it has a lot of nice things like slick transitions, chill music and animated backgrounds, I do wish that it had just a bit more pep to its presentation. If I were to point at anything, I'd love if the buttons were more animated and responded to hover, but I understand if this isn't a big priority due to the rise of mobile interfaces which don't have hover in the first place. (Looking at it, it actually seems like there is hover, but its so subtle to the point of barely being noticeable)

*I'm ok with it, but I do feel like not giving the answer after getting a question wrong, except if you have tokens, is a bit needlessly convoluted, especially when I don't even know how tokens are awarded (I got some after finishing a set, but how is the quantity determined? is it a set amount, or do I get more when I score better?) It's also kinda goofy that when viewing the questions list, even though it doesn't give the answer when you didn't get it right, you can clearly infer what the answer is by viewing the source URL.

[DYNAMITEHEAD TNTSON (The Toxic Demo)]

Yowza, what a cool beat-em-up you got here! It's seriously impressive how absolutely bursting with style and energy this game is: love all the crazy animations, transitions, and juicy touches that this game has not only to the main gameplay, but to other elements like the menus and title screen! I'm a big fan of beat-em-ups and this game provided a nice bit of button-mashy punchy fun and demonstrated some pretty solid fundamentals to make the hits feel satisfying, vary the enemies, and have a cool boss fight to top it off. Solid work!

That being said, by being a huge fan of beat-em-ups, I am also very critical of them, so if you wouldn't mind, here is some potential feedback you can use (or not):

*It did feel like the play area could easily get overcrowded and cramped, leading to messy and confusing gameplay: perhaps you could stand to zoom-out the camera and increase the arena size to assist with this. I think it would also have a knock-on effect of allowing for more room to fight and maneuver, bringing more strategic designs from that.

*While the feedback of hitting opponents was pretty solid thanks to factors like screenshake and so on, I do think the game could stand to have a bit more to it, specifically some hitstop/freeze. I love it when your punches get that extra bit of slowness when hitting people to differentiate just swinging in the air!

*I found it really odd that you can't use the mash move when you have full TNT meter: you'd think that as long as you press instead of hold you could still use it instead of going for the explosion, but for some reason it is not allowed.

*Wish there was a bit more clarity on what the power-ups do: couldn't tell whether power-ups were giving me health, TNT meter, or both.

*While the moveset has a lot of moves to utilize such as an uppercut, slide, sweep, jump slam, and so on, they don't seem to have clearly defined purposes for any of them: they pretty much all are just some flavor of quick knockdown. Wish they each had something special to them to allow for more strategic play. For example, maybe the uppercut could juggle enemies and allow you to get bigger combos at the cost of higher commitment leaving you open to interruption, while the sweep can hit grounded enemies instead of having to wait for them to get back up, and maybe the slide can get under enemy blocks, and so on.

*As alluded to above, the game feels overly simplistic at the moment and feels like a brainless button-masher: while this can be fun in the short-term, it's lacking depth to allow for skillful and strategic play and this hurts long-term satisfaction. Not only was I really disappointed I couldn't juggle combo enemies launched from a uppercut or jump slam among other things, but also I felt like the enemies are too simplistic in their AI patterns, both in the way they attack and in the way they never attempt to surround the player or juke them out.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling: there's some serious potential in this and I look forward to seeing how it develops!

swackyGCF responds:

This is a REALLY good review. You've provided some great points here. Things like being able to mash through enemies at full blast and having a better moveset are considered! After all this is my first attempt at making a beat-em-up, like, ever. It'll get better in later demos!

[Adventure Kitty drill Buster: Light's Out]

I'm a fan of this game so it's great to see another new chapter come out! For the most part, I love it just as much as the other chapters due to its cute story, great presentation and fun gameplay, and I was surprised to see this chapter differentiate itself from the first with a whole new theme and set of mechanics to boot!

*As much as this is a standalone game and it introduces new mechanics, it is still technically the second chapter and thus I would prefer if it would be treated as such in terms of challenge progression: this game feels like it's the first game all over again in terms of difficulty, starting from zero instead of where we left off.

*The goggles mechanic felt a bit gimmicky and unnecessary, especially with the whole cooldown attached to it. In the best case, such as the escape sequence where you have a time limit and a sniper breathing down your neck, it can be a sort of dramatic tension that forces you to make a choice. In any other case, though, it's just boring tedium as you sit there waiting for the cooldown to recharge. At the very least, it'd be nice if the googles immediately recharged when you go through a checkpoint.

*Scoring system can still be really confusing in how it determines a high score, especially when sometimes I would get all C's yet still have a final grade of A somehow? I just don't know how scores like 'tiles preserved' are supposed to work, and for time, I wish it would give me more information on the nearest time I'd need for a higher rank, for example. I don't know whether coins or time are more important too, especially since it seems like you'd need to sacrifice a lot of time to collect all the coins since it could involve restarting runs.

*A lot of my previous feedback is still present, most notably being the fact that levels seem to be designed to make you not be able to collect all of the coins in a single run unless you intentionally fail at a checkpoint to force a restart, whereupon you keep the coins you got from the first attempt instead of being restarted back to zero like you'd expect: just seems really illogical.

[Stumble Duel]

Hmm, I certainly like the concept behind this game, being a very simple fighting game that still allows for some tricky mindgames, similar to Divekick, Footsies, Nidhogg and so on. I also find the general presentation and construction of the game to be impressive because of how juicy and lively it is, even more so with it being a game jam game. And indeed, I did have a bit of fun battling the AI.

But while it has the right ideas, the execution left me a bit underwhelmed. Just something about the way you've setup the physics for the characters made it feel really unsatisfying: the way the characters leaned back and forth felt so awkward and weirdly delayed/unresponsive. I can't put my finger on exactly what it was, but it just didn't feel good to me. Also, while I do like how simple it was, I couldn't help but wish there was something else to the gameplay, like maybe an extra set of buttons to manage upper-body leaning, or maybe special moves like a dash forward or feint backward to add some high-commitment gambles.

Something to note is that I did play it from a single-player perspective, so I'll admit that maybe I didn't see the game in its top form, so to speak, since I'm sure a human opponent would offer more interesting strategies to contend with.

[Circlebound]

Pretty cool sci-fi visual novel resource management adventure game! Reminds me a bit of other games like Frostpunk, Ixion or The Alters, in a way, with the story being akin to Interstellar and Nexus with the weird physics-defying planet you land on. I got really addicted to the battle between wanting to research a way out and trying to stay on top of managing resources: you really gotta learn to roll with the punches if you wanna learn the truth of what's going on!

It was definitely pretty cool, but in terms of feedback, I'd say:

*I got confused with how the resources work, especially when starting out. For example, because the energy counter is a single number, I thought that spending energy was a finite resource that you could only get back by repairing generators or reviving crew members: I didn't realize that once a task is done, the energy would be refunded. Because of this, I think it would be much more intuitive if the energy counter was current/maximum, somewhat similar to how food looks like.

*The pacing of the game can be a bit weird at times with the way it can go from really boring where you're just farming to waste time, to suddenly having everything constantly breaking and struggling to keep afloat. I like how it forces you to improvise and I appreciate a challenge, but sometimes it can just feel like unfair and such a hassle to maintain or start over.

*While I do think that the circle-based menu structure is pretty neat and fits the theme, the way it keeps rearranging itself when you pick up a card and put it back down can make it really annoying to keep track of things. Not only might it be nice if they stayed in the same spot when you put them back, but it might be nice if the tasks were separated into different category-based circles, such as one being for repairs, another being for resource gains, another for research, and so on.

*It's a bit of a bummer that the game doesn't have a save/load feature so I can take a break and come finish the game later. I can understand if you don't want to allow save/load so you can prevent savescumming and make people live with their choices, but even then, a suspend save (a save on quit that deletes itself on load) would be nice.

[GEMSTONE DREDGING]

Pretty neat take on minesweeper! For the most part, the game is very addictive and fun thanks to your gorgeous presentation and satisfying gamefeel, and the introduction of battle segments to replace instant death when you trip a mine was a novel concept to differentiate it from your typical minesweeper clone. I really like all the cool and juicy touches the game has, like the way the screen shakes and the bubbles that appear from the scuba helmet. I had a lot of fun playing!

If I were to have any feedback, it's that as neat as the combat segments are at first, they end up feeling like a silly gimmick due to how simplistic they are and how they fudge the numbers (the health bars mean nothing because damage is always a certain percentage). And after all, as long as you play well, you'll never encounter combat, so it ends up feeling like a waste to have this new element only exist as a punishment? Maybe it'd be better if you always encounter a fight at the end, but the difficulty depends on how well you did in the level beforehand? I dunno, just something about it felt rather token in its current execution.

Some of the other mechanics like how you won't trip kraken tiles if they are within your 3x3 uncover seems to make the game too easy as you just flag them immediately instead of having to math it out to figure out what's what. I guess it makes sense because you wouldn't want a user to get penalized when they have to uncover a large area...but then why do you make it that they uncover a whole area instead of just 1 by 1? Again, similar to the minigame, it feels like you've added something new but it just ends up not necessarily enhancing anything.

[Telly the TV]

Hmm, the game is a rather cute platformer, but from what little I got to play of it, it felt rather bland and bog-standard with neither eye-catching presentation and gamefeel, nor any sort of exciting or unique hook to pull me in. It feels like a prototype or a rough draft, as in it has all of the nouns and verbs to make a platformer, but it hasn't done anything special to create a fun gameplay loop yet beyond setting the foundation. It's like a plain piece of white bread that's just begging to be toasted and have some butter or jelly put on it!

I don't want to be too mean because this game really feels like a 'my first game' programming project, and if that is the case, then it's quite decent for a starting point on your game dev journey and you should be proud. But I feel like I need to be more critical because this is looking to compete on Steam and potentially even ask for money, and I'm just not seeing anything worthy about it in that context. Sorry, but there's just so many superior games on offer, even free ones, when you step into that arena!

Some bits of feedback:

*I felt like the enemies were a bit annoying for a first level, with it being quite tricky to ensure you get high enough to hit the pogo demons and the turrets being placed to catch you out if you don't carefully trip them off.

*It could be personal preference, but I don't like it when a game lets you keep jumping when you hold down the button: I prefer that another jump is only possible if you release the button and press again. Letting you hold it down can create weird situations where you make contact with the ground sooner than expected and prompt another jump that you didn't intend.

*Wish the game had a bit more juice and direction. For example, it'd be nice if the TV would display that you still have keys remaining if you go to it too early. Likewise, it could be nice if there were guidance arrows for locating the keys, or for where the TV is after you collect them all (along with a nice fanfare, perhaps).

*As said before, there's just nothing particularly special about the game at the moment, and I'd love if there was. The game doesn't need to be beautiful or anything as long as it has a cool twist. Take a look at games like VVVVVV for example: its very simple, but the gravity switching mechanic and the things it does with it makes it stand out from the crowd and punch well above its weight.

I'll admit I'm a bit confused because the demo I've played looks to only have one level (starting at 2-1 for some reason) and nothing else, while a lot of the other reviews mention playing to higher levels. Unsure whether this used to be the full game but got changed into a demo, or if I'm just missing something. Might explain why it was a bit lackluster to me since I only got to play one level and not see how it might potentially build up to something greater.

[VGUV]

Huh, interesting little level-editor gadget you got here!

I'll admit I was a bit disappointed at first in how simple it was. I was trying to build a staircase to the top of the screen hoping that it would reveal some sort of secret hidden adventure up there, but alas, it is just a construction kit, no more no less. Even once I accepted it for what it was, I had to admit that it's no Mario Maker or Minecraft, lacking the sort of sheer complexity and freedom to create something cool that you'd want to challenge or share with others. It also had some jank to it, like how weird the ladders worked.

Despite all that, though, I surprisingly got into working with the tools to make a nice looking level. I kinda felt like Bob Ross painting, just trying to get a well-balanced composition going, all the while just having a chill, pleasant time in doing so. It may be simple, but something about the simplicity and fluidity of the controls, alongside the nice looking tileset and lo-fi atmospheric music, worked wonders to win me over. So yeah, wish it was more, but it had some nice vibes nonetheless.

[Topeka Drift]

Hrmm, this one is a bit weird for me!

As someone who loves games like Crazy Taxi, I was totally down for what this game was putting down. Driving around delivering passengers in a wacky world filled with crazy stunts, God himself, and plenty of cows and deer to run over, all while collecting cash to buy weird upgrades: heck yeah, that's my jam!

And while I do think the game is pretty cool, at least potentially, it didn't take long for it to wear on me and ultimately lose me. The controls were pretty awkward to get used to, in that you have a weirdly forgiving and arcade-y handbrake for drifts, but everything else like normal turns and brakes and so on are annoying stiff and unresponsive. The world you drive around in not only felt too punishing with how restrictive it is which makes using all the fancy powerups or just having fun in general a liability, but also it's so small which makes all of the deliveries quickly turn repetitive as you run the same laps over and over. I just didn't feel compelled to keep playing and unlock the rest of the upgrades and get an ending.

Basically, I really want to like this game and get all the cash and have goofy fun, but it feels like there's just not enough meat on its bones or freedom to have the fun I was looking for.