FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Roxy's Windows]

Hmm, it's certainly an interesting idea very reminiscient of games like Hypnospace Outlaw and Gone Home and such, games were you piece together a story from scattered documents, but unfortunately, unlike those games, a lot of things kind of bogged it down for me and it never felt like it had a strong initial purpose so it made me lose interest rather quickly.

For one, the controls are quite wonky. It gets most of the controls right and intuitively follows most OS rules, but there were plenty of times where it would act in odd ways, such as selecting the wrong file when trying to click on a file next to another one. It actually took me a long time to even realize I needed to tap a document to make it create other lines: I thought they were just all one line documents at first, haha! The worst part for me was trying to read documents in a folder, as there was no back or next button: I'd read a document, close it, then have to open up the folder again to find the next document and click on it: sounds minor but when you have to do it constantly it really killed my motivation.

But more so than that, I just felt lost without some sort of guidance or goal or story. I mean, there was a story about these characters and dealing with normal angsty young people things, but I didn't really have any setup or much reason to care about the characters. Most of these other interactive UI games or investigative games provide some sort of impetus or quest or reason, but it was absent here. Most other games start small and build up some tidbits of knowledge to work from first as a basis, whereas this one just dumps it all on you at the start. Besides story, I'd also love if maybe there were some more puzzle elements or something, like having some documents locked away behind the cloud and you need to search for the wifi password and enter it to get access, instead of the wifi password just being a little joke. Basically, for me, this was just a haphazard array of documents that felt aimless, but that could just be me: some people might actually like the level of freedom that this provides to just wander about.

Bleak-Creep responds:

Always appreciate a detailed review. I think a lot of these thoughts are totally valid too. We had originally planned there to be more puzzle solving elements in there and we had even made up some locked folder icons, but we didn’t have enough time to work them into the game to meet the deadline. I’m not sure if that’s something we’ll add in later on, but I do think it’d help shape the narrative in a bit more linear sort of way, which could be a better way to experience the story.

Thanks for playing!

[Super Chicken TD]

Hmm, seems like it could be a decent little tower defense game, but overall I found it quickly turning repetitive and boring (though it is quite understandable given its a game jam game, of course)

The number one thing I think the game is missing is juice: there are so many events in the game such as upgrading your crops, resources being gathered, enemies being killed, and so on, that have absolutely no feedback to them. Not only does this make the game really bland (especially considering its already an idle game), but it makes it difficult to read and understand its mechanics. For example, would love to see crops, when they generate resources, bounce or sparkle or spew particles out which are gathered up by the counters, as it felt really unsatisfying and slow to see resources just unceremoniously tick up the counters. Also was super disappointed that the crop graphics never get updated when you level them up: really made progression felt pointless.

Besides that, I also found the game just very slow and without any sort of strategy needed to it. So much of the game is just waiting around and letting your chickens do their thing, which they do easily: I never felt like I needed to build a certain chicken to counter some sort of enemy type or plan for a certain upcoming wave or put my chickens in some sort of formation or anything like that. Ultimately, it all just felt pointless as I had no idea what my goal was or whether it was keeping score or anything.

There were also some frustrating aspects of the game like how you could be trying to upgrade a chicken, but they run away in the middle of your click and you end up selecting something else since they moved the button! In addition to that, it was annoying how you could be trying to click a button for something like upgrading a chicken, but since the button is on top of crops you end up selecting that as well: should have proper layering and precedence to avoid this. I also accidently restarted my whole game: I paused the game and then saw a green button in the center of the screen under the 'game paused' message which led me to believe it was an unpause button, not a restart button!

Again, I'm probably giving way too much feedback considering it was a jam game, but I think there are good lessons to be learned from this. From what it was, it does have a decent skeleton to it for an alright idle tower-defense game: with some more juice, more strategy, and a goal to strive for, it could be dynamite!

[Catatattack!]

Augh, this is a rough one for me!

I really want to like it as I love the concept: fighting against enemies on top of these moving cars is such a cool action setpiece! Reminds me of that highway fight from the Matrix, or Contra/Metal Slug with all its epic craziness. Definitely has a solid first impression, and I had plenty of fun combo-ing the crap out of these black cats while trying to maintain my footing: satisfying hit feedback and managing the chaotic situation were very cool.

Unfortunately from there, my impression just got worse and worse.

For one, the players moveset and physics were really annoying and frustrating to handle. The grounded attack combo is satisfying to pull off, but I really hated the air attack: all I wanted was just some of neutral jump kick or something, but instead you get this ineffectual dive that flings you off the damn screen. So annoying when you get hit and you want to attack back, but since you got pushed into the air slightly you end up doing that stupid air dive and kill yourself. Physics were annoying too in that air control was really annoying: something about it and how you end up gliding forward too much and can't stop the momentum.

I can appreciate that the game tries to amp up the excitement by introducing more obstacles into the mix as you move forward in phases, you know, to make the situation even more chaotic, but I just found all of them incredibly annoying and unfair. Despite having a telegraph for the dropping animal meteors, I never felt like I had enough time to dodge due to the unintuitive diagonal movement, wack hitboxes, and that they can layer on top of each other without being able to tell. The cop crosshair was super annoying as well since it was difficult to tell when he is actually going to fire: would prefer if maybe you did a lock-on system that you can dodge instead of it just pinballing everywhere and firing randomly.

As said, I definitely think hearts in the right place: the concept of an epic chaotic fight on top of moving cars is really cool, the air move probably has an intended use that I'm just not understanding, and the numerous obstacles are intended to increase the chaos and fun. Unfortunately it just didn't work out for me and I dropped it rather quickly out of frustration, especially since I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to attack the boss anyway. Good attempt for a game jam game!

[a s c e n t]

Decent little Metroid/Flashback-style game! It's a rather simple, small game without quite enough challenge as I'd like through platforming or combat, but I nevertheless found it fun to get in the addictive loop of exploring to gain new powers to make it through locked paths I remembered to explore some more (and it does still have some occasional fun precision platforming here and there). Never did anything too amazing to wow me, but all in all it felt like a short and sweet adventure.

Having said all that, I was really disappointed to find that the game doesn't have a save/load feature. It's probably not the longest game, and I understand it was a jam game and all that, but I quit for a moment after making some considerable progress and was hoping to finish it later on, only for me to see that I was put right back at the start. Unfortunately, as much as I want to see the end, I don't think the game is fun enough at its core to make me replay the whole thing just to get back, so alas, it will remain unbeaten! Still, I had fun while it lasted!

[Alien Hominid Art Collab [20th Birthday]]

Decent little art collab! It's nothing mindblowing, but its got a good assortment of art, some decent backgrounds and music, nice little sounds and feedback for buttons, and its nice to see links to the artists profiles below them. It's got some minor issues like how some of the text is difficult to read (could stand to have it be outlined or use a thicker font) and how the arrow buttons are difficult to click (should probably have the click area not be the arrow itself, but a bounding box for the arrow), but for the most part everything is functional.

That said, I do wish it was a bit more creative in its presentation: it's not bad or anything, but it's a very general slideshow-style presentation that has been seen a hundred times before. Considering it's Alien Hominid, it might've been cool if the game was presented in a more wacky way to fit with the game: perhaps you could make a side-scrolling level where you wander around as Alien Hominid and can either collect the artwork by getting points or just see it in the background of the city. But again, taking it for what it is, it's alright.

s-zenmode responds:

HI FUTURECOP!!!!!!!!!!!
sorry bounding boxes are hard as shih to do in scratch thats why i usually dont.
and i was actually going to do something like that wacky thing you mentioned but it was scrapped because I made the engine when I was a total newbie and was too lazy to actually rework.

thank you again our saviour FuturecopLGF

[Seven Fridays Cat]

Pretty funny choose-your-own-adventure game! Really loved the graphics and presentation for this: love how everything is so lively and animated, including stuff like the title screen, text and menus which would usually be an afterthought. All in all had a good time with this: got really addicted to seeing how all of the various choices played out, helped by the comical situations and outcomes.

For the most part, it was fine, but I did have a few minor complaints. I did feel like the game was a bit too 'real' in some cases: so many times I would follow some wacky decisions hoping that they would take me into some comical and unique scenarios, only for the game to punish me for trying to have fun with an immediate ending. I'm not saying that every stupid decision should lead to good things, and I could be just blowing some minor situations out of proportion when maybe the majority of the game does go along with it, but I'd like if the game took me for a loop a bit more, if it'd riff on the situation instead of giving the more realistic ending. Speaking of, I also really wished the endings would be a bit more varied in terms of visual outcome: it felt weird to get some more happy-ish endings but still get the same ol' dead body ding-dong ending as the rest of them. Sure, the text differed for every ending, but seeing how every ending had the same visual and same sound effect really made it monotonous and killed my motivation to collect more. Also there were a few bugs, like how when I met the stray cat but then left him behind yet he stayed wandering around on my screen in spite of that, and then I met him again later and then had two of them on my screen for some bizarre reason, haha!

[D.Va Clock and the Quest for Flash 8]

The game doesn't make the greatest first impression with its rather lackluster graphics and presentation, and it certainly is a bit janky, but I ended up enjoying myself quite a lot with this point-n-click adventure! The key to it all was the amount of humorous interactions, flavor text, and events in the game: I loved that everything had a unique response to every action even if it was nonsensical like trying to talk to a knife, and I loved that the story went some crazy places with all sorts of weird achievements and hidden endings like if you just go to sleep immediately. I found myself easily wanting to go back and replay for more endings, while other more flashy games never could get that kind of grip over me! The game could definitely stand to be constructed a bit better (for example, there is a bug where interaction windows don't go away if you open up and then go to another screen, and I do wish objects would get highlighted when you hover over them for clarity), but I still think this is a good example of graphics not always being the end-all be-all for games if it's just fun in the end!

[Kill-BOI 9000]

Pretty neat game! An interesting twist on a survivors-esque bullet-heaven game where instead of empowering yourself, you play as the weak master empowering a powerful minion. Felt like it had all of the basics in place for a game of this genre and it was decent fun to blast away slimes and watch them split into smaller and smaller versions.

That said, while it wasn't bad or anything, I did find it a bit unsatisfying to play after awhile and didn't feel like replaying after I easily won my first run. While it was fun at first to get my bot equipped, it didn't take long for it to have all of its weapons and then for all of the upgrades to just be boring slight upgrades of the existing weapons, causing it to feel very repetitive. It also felt kind of odd to not be able to control the bot in any way: while I agree that the gameplay loop of being a weak scavenger risking going away from the bot to collect hearts to bring back was intriguing, it eventually just felt really frustrating to not have any combat feedback and not feel like any of the kills were from me: a weird sense of disconnection, I suppose. It didn't help that the game felt very muted with lackluster sounds and special effects: could stand to have some more juice in both gameplay and menus, like how I was disappointed that dying just immediately boots you unceremoniously back to the menu.

While the bot concept did end up alienating me, I still had a decent amount of fun and thought it was a cool experiment, so well done!

PlayWithFurcifer responds:

Have you checked out the hard mode? :)
Don't fear, more juice is coming. The game was made in a 3 day game jam, so there is a bit of work left!

[Panpukin Panic]

Very cute and charming game, but ultimately was a bit too stiff, frustrating and repetitive to really have fun with.

As said, I love the presentation of the game with its wonderfully cute art and the story is very goofy and comedic to read with a great range of expressions (though maybe a bit too wordy for my liking, but perhaps I'm just an impatient sod). I also found it impressive that the game, considering it was built for a mobile jam, since had PC controls and effects, like buttons that react when you hover over them. Gameplay was alright in that it was going for an interesting bit of manic fun where you stave off a flood of ever-encroaching pumpkins, so it felt good to try and get faster and faster at making good and efficient quick decisions.

However, the controls really killed it for me: I just couldn't get the controls to be fluid for me and was constantly frustrated. It just demanded so much precision to move and drop things: so many ignored inputs because I didn't tap on the exact perfect pixel it wanted me to, or because I was 1cm away from being considered close enough to an object to pick it up, and so on and so forth. To add insult to injury, even when I'd put in a movement control the way I want, the game would constantly be tripping me up with vines that seemed very inconsistent when they'd trip or not: just so annoying! Even when I tried to switch over to a mobile to have the intended experience I still had a lot of difficulty controlling it: maybe even more than on PC, actually.

Even moving on from the controls, however, the levels were pretty monotonous and didn't change things up. Every level felt like pretty much the same thing and it never introduced a new type of obstacle or challenge: the only thing it did change was the number of pumpkins you could carry for some bizarre reason. Didn't help that the game didn't do a great job at explaining the mechanics either: I didn't even realize you could carry multiple pumpkins, and what was this new fire spell we got, and so on and so forth.