FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[K I S S I N G]

I know you most likely tried to make this too confusing and wacky to grasp in order to get the intended 3 stars, but I'm sorry, this game was just too interesting of an experience that I gotta rate it higher than that!

Something about the way the game presents itself had a certain charm or mystique to it behind it's low-effort facade that made me think this really had something to it, and I feel vindicated since what I found was a really fascinating and unique puzzle game. Don't get me wrong, it did take quite a few tries to figure out how the heck everything works and I can see how some would be frustrated, but for me the entire process was a great journey, like being an archeologist and figuring out what these hieroglyphs meant, and everything finally coming together and getting me a win gave me a real sense of accomplishment. I think you struck a pretty good balance where there were enough hints put in place (the arrows next to the rows of keys, the origin points on the character/number symbols) that people could figure out the logic without being too obvious so as to keep the mystique: reminds me of something like La-Mulana level puzzles.

Really fascinating stuff: like a piece of outsider art this was fascinating to delve into and figure out what makes it tick!

Emrox responds:

I will gladly accept the label of "outsider art." Glad you liked it! Maybe if they do this jam again I'll have to go even weirder.

[SageRage]

Hah, quite the goofy game! Certainly has a lot of wacky special effects that add a lot of charm to it and it was fun to figure out that game's weird logic and goals.

Unfortunately, once the charm wears off, I felt like the game was quite shallow and frustrating. Just didn't feel like I was making any sort of real progress and there wasn't a sense of accomplishment in chaining mailboxes or keeping the fuel going. Difficulty was all out-of-whack as well: in the end the car just ends up going way too fast to be able to control effectively, which makes weaving through the busy street to get fuel an impossible task (that is, if you can even see the fuel coming due to it spawning in the corners where you can barely react).

Well, it was good for a few laughs and I imagine it's all an inside joke birthday present anyway not meant for general consumption, so whatev!

[Planetaario]

Huh, this is quite the interesting game!

Certainly a unique gameplay mechanic: was hard to grasp at first, but the whole prospect of trying to manage all these overlapping orbits of planets so that they don't collide while cramming them into a scan zone for points was very creative and led to some manic, improvisational gameplay. Was impressed at the game being robust enough to warn you of an incoming planet collision! I don't know if it translated to long-lasting appeal for me since I didn't find myself hooked to it, possibly due to its weird premise and initial confusion, but it certainly will stick with me.

Despite my mixed reception to the gameplay, I will say that the overall construction of the game itself, with the story and presentation of a diegetic room as menu really enraptured me. There just seemed to be something so zen and calming about it by being able to click around on the various objects, while also having a sense of mystique. And indeed, there does appear to be some other form of hidden gameplay to this, what with the mysterious box and codes that you can salvage from files. Really neat stuff, like a game within a game!

I dunno know if the game is fun enough to make me delve deep into the secrets despite me really wanting to explore that aspect: looks like the final code I need is implied to require all planets to be scanned and that's a tall order considering I can barely juggle a few without causing crashes, haha.

[World Fighting Soccer 22]

Oh man, this is a real tricky one!

In terms of presentation and concept, this is an incredible grand slam: from the very start with the way the title flips in and the menu pops up to some incredibly music, I could already feel the professional craft and charm exuding from this game. I just wanted to scream out Ronaldinho Soccer! Indeed, the game shows a lot of polish which continues even into the gameplay, where the game takes a more simplifed, arcadey stance to the game ala NBA Jam/NFL Blitz and goes crazy with intense fighting game style mechanics for more traditional soccer moves. There's just so much to love here with its charming presentation and simple but intense gameplay!

However, I had a really rough time enjoying my time in the gameplay. Once the appeal of watching the explosive effects wore off and I was trying to win the fighters cup, I couldn't even get past the first round! I really, really tried hard to work with the game, switching my formations depending on whether I was on offense or defense, using all of the various kicks appropriately depending on the situation, and so on, but the computer was just too tough. The game just seemed to work against me with it constantly changing my character to someone else that I didn't want, and the enemy seemed to practically cheat with its instant reactions and always kicking back everything I try to get past them no matter what. For something so simplified, it's just so damn hard!

Overall, despite my difficulties, I still respect the craft shown in this game and plan to keep trying to get better at it.

[Palmer's E-Girl Adventure]

Hah, another grand entry into the 3 star jam! It certainly takes a lot of the right steps to earn that 3 star, what with its very bland and bog-standard shooting gameplay, incredibly short length, stiff and unanimated characters, lack of polish/special effects, nonexistant challenge, and the cherry on top: a score counter that doesn't even properly reset on replay. Certainly a strong contender!

However, I feel like the game does show a little bit too much effort in some areas with some rather fancy touches. First, of course, there is the obvious inclusion of a dab charge shot with its own comical animation which also does increase the depth of strategy in the game by a tad. Then, there are some nice touches like how enemies get increasing battle scars as they take damage, and the fact that the game does have a decent variety of enemies and puts them into handcrafted formations. Finally, the game does overall have a bit of charm to its cheapness what with the flailing e-girl and goofy compressed visuals and so on. I dunno, I think I gotta punish you by increasing the score a tad!

maxxjamez responds:

Thank you for this

[Grapple Whip]

Definitely had a bit of a conflicted start with this game: usually I love a good grapple game, but this one's grapple design seemed to lack the freedom, timing, and momentum that usually comes with it, instead opting for a more rigid, automated system, what with its fixed points and lack of fine control and lack of detaching except to attach to another point.

However, as the game went on, it did seem to use its more core stricter system to build some interesting puzzle-esque levels to work through, which was an interesting take. It also introduced more and more complex mechanics such as grapple points that do fade over time which provide some of that feeling of freedom and momentum that would come from a more traditional grapple game, albeit a bit differently, of course, since it's on a timer. Because of all this, I do feel like I ended up having fun with the game, both as a combination of accepting its terms and the game doing a good job at spicing things up.

Having said that, it was still a bit of a frustrating and confusing experience. In particular I found that I had an incredibly difficult time discerning how my character would act after a grapple. For example, if I have a grapple point to the upper right, I would expect my character to sweep to the right by way of downwards if I grapple to it: however, typically the character would illogically bounce upwards and to the left to start! I know it sounds easy to just always expect the physics to be the complete opposite of what I think it should, but that's a taller order than you might expect, haha. The fact that the game doesn't require you to start over on death was a mixed blessing: it made all of the unfair deaths feel ok, but it did make the game feel a bit non-challenging since winning is a foregone conclusion without punishment.

[27 pages [DEMO]]

Hmm, it definitely didn't make the greatest impression on me. The game overall just has an incredible feeling of blandness due to the lackluster graphics and almost complete lack of sound: whereas other games make aspects like jumping and such satisfying through visual effects and sounds, this game had absolutely nothing and therefore felt dull. If the intention was that the game is currently in a prototype/demo state where the graphics are placeholders and the sounds will be added later, than I can understand: just want to point it out nonetheless. The game also felt a bit aimless without any sort of theming or story to prop it up on (though I don't hate games that just cut to the chase and focus on gameplay).

Even if we look past the graphics and sounds such and just focus on raw gameplay, though, I felt like it was compromised due to the wonky controls. While regular jumping and movement seemed alright, it never felt like I could have confidence in my wall jumps, as many of them would not work and give me a much shorter jump than I expected for no reason I could discern, other than the controls being not as forgiving as they should be. This is a critical issue for a challenging platformer as I feel the more challenge there is, the more the controls need to be perfect so to make everything feel fair.

Having said that all that negative stuff, when the game worked and you look past the lackluster graphics and lack of sounds and so on, the game did have some fun obstacle courses to go through that kept getting more and more complex. I easily found myself getting addicted despite it all, so I think there is a lot of promise in its core here: hope the game can get fixed up a bit for full release.

jonaspatrik responds:

Thanks for the honest review. This is the reason why i made this demo.

[Coca & Their Shotgun II]

Hmmm, I'm a little bit torn.

On one hand, I would say that it deserves a 3 star because it is a very overly simple and boring game: you just stay in a very small and cramped room and blast away at the same simple melee enemy over and over while collecting stickers. There's no real sense of progression, challenge, or scoring so it ends up rather quickly feeling repetitive and pointless.

But on the other hand, I do think the game does have a decent amount of craft and charm put into it: for example, the way the enemies gib blood in the direction they were shoot from is very satisfying, in general the special effects for shooting are neat, and the graphics/characters are charming. It also does show some steps in making the gameplay more exciting by having cars drive by and sticker collecting so you can't ever fully relax but always need to be ready to react and push into danger.

So unfortunately I think it shows a bit too much potential and hidden professionalism that elevates it above a 3 star. Sorry!

[Sleep When I'm Dead]

Wow, considering this is a 'scrapped game', I was surprised at how much it blew me away!

Everything about this game just felt so bloody charming! Wonderful characters with great portraits (would've loved to see more expression variants), a goofy story that made me laugh a bunch, stellar graphics/music/sound, and super great combat that has very satisfying feedback and depth to it with charging/blocking and a ton of unique enemies to fight! Seriously loved the combat, especially the whole boomerang aspect of the weapons which felt good to plan multiple hits with. Just all-around felt like the game was very professionally put together on all fronts and delivered a solid short and sweet adventure that will stick with me. And what a twist at the end, learning that she made Treat Day in the first place!

In terms of complaints, well, there's the obvious one that it felt like it was over too quickly and kinda rushed the ending (albeit in an amusing way): I could've easily seen this being a much bigger adventure with tons of levels and story to go through (but then again, maybe it's good that it kept things short and sweet instead of extending too long to the point of getting sick of it).

There was also some slight annoyances here and there: found it confusing that you need to hold charge to pick up items in magic circles (why not just walk over the magic circle instead), I felt like pots/crates were too tedious to break considering you can't pierce through them and they can take multiple hits, and the controls weren't explained well so I had no idea about the charging/blocking mechanics at first. Also I have no idea what the purpose of the dash was: it has no invincibility and barely moves faster than walking (at least Suzy had an ok dash).

Again, if this is a 'scrapped game', I'd love to see what you consider a finished one, because goodness gracious this was a treat!