FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sh*t Rainbows Piss Thunder]

Actually had some surprising ideas and variety to it to go along with the goofy premise, but was kind of let-down by general feel of low-effort and jankiness due to weird glitches, confusing design and lackluster graphics. There's some great stuff in here, just buried under some junk that could be buffed out.

While the game starts off rather slow, I definitely was surprised at the mechanics and design on display for the later levels. Gravity switching and stamina management were quite interesting, especially when combined with some of the more puzzle-or-chase-oriented levels where you really gotta focus to make it through. I'd love some more of those later chase levels where you need to keep running and react to obstacles that come up quickly: in fact, wonder if the game would work better if you don't even have a run button and just run automatically.

That being said, I found it difficult to get into the game at first glance because of the really lackluster graphics and boring intro levels, especially with things like out-of-focus fonts, lack of transition effects and so on and so forth. Yes it did have some nice juice to it with the funny voice callouts and fart effects, but even the fart particles were strange with how they would shift along with the body when you jump in a nonsensical way. But even moving on from that to the point where I started to get interested in the game during the later levels, a lot of weird bugs and glitches started to crop up, especially revolving around the gravity switching and collision detection.

Definitely feel like, with a bit of focus on the more interesting and complex levels and a lot of polish to spice up the general presentation and gameplay satisfaction, this could really be great!

TappyWara responds:

Thanks

[Bad Monday Simulator]

Wow, as much as I'd like to be a contrarian grumpy gus and disparage this game for being some sort of Frankenstein nostalgia/meme bait, I just can't because I love it too damn much! As both a kid who loved Garfield and recognizes all the old references and an adult who loves the challenging combat of Undertale, this game gives me everything I want and more. The graphics, animation and just general construction of the game is top-notch and gives off a really professional feel, the combat design is very creative and fun with tons of attacks and phases, and the game just has all sorts of subtle touches and references. It's hard as heck, but I enjoy playing the heck out of it, so well done on this!

Having said that, there were still a few points that bothered me.

For one, as great and impressive as the animations/attacks are, some of them are really long in the tooth and overstay their welcome, making you just get sick of 'em. For example, the "where is my pipe" attack and the kicking of Odie off the table both have these overly long introductions that really start to get tiresome compared to the snappy start of attacks like the Pooky lasers: wish they would get cut to start faster either in general or on repeat attacks at least. Likewise, as nice as the eating animations for items were, I was wishing I could just press a button to skip them on repeat.

Similarly, I feel like the repetitore of attacks per phase can be a bit limiting: it's decent, but I would love if there were just one more attack per phase to reduce repetition and increase the randomization. Surprised to see that he never makes Odie run a different way on the bone attack, for instance. Also, some attacks, like the water drips from the sandwich, just seem way too reliant on RNG to be in your favor since there is no pattern or effective tell for the drips. Luckily, the drips aren't too damaging, but I'd hate to contend with that on Monday mode.

I can maybe understand if these are just part of the whole rage-inducing difficulty to test your patience, but still...anyway, again, despite it all, these are just minor nitpicks for a very fun and great game.

[Somnokid]

Pretty neat game! Certainly has that Team Bugulon quality to it where it just exudes a sense of professionally where everything looks and sounds great, right from the very start with the title screen and menus (elements which usual developers would skimp on). I thought the whole 2 phase sequence to the levels where you have a prep phase followed by a combat phase, along with the risk-reward part of the prep phase where you weigh reviving potential enemies, was a very interesting concept.

I gotta admit though...I didn't really find the game that fun or addictive. Not sure exactly what it is, but it just didn't really hook me. In fact, I found the game very frustrating from how spongy the enemies felt (couldn't believe that even the most basic of enemies take more than a single charged shot to kill, making charging feel pointless) and repetitive (didn't feel like it was evolving with enough new stuff by the time world 2 came around), among other things.

Again, I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad game or anything, and I do think it is quite professionally made and good looking, and that should be applauded (especially considering the time it took to make). But I guess at the end of the day, all that doesn't always equate to a fun game being the result, at least in my case. But hey, this is all just part of the fun of experiments in game dev, so best of luck in the future!

[Slim Wall Reslimed]

Auuugh, this was a really rough one for me! I want to love it so bad, but I came away feeling frustrated.

When the game works, it absolutely nails it: the smooth feeling of speed and momentum that you get from dashing in and out of the blocks is sublime, and the game delivers so much great challenging content to go through! This game gave me the need, the need for speed!

But goddamn, the game really felt unpolished: when it wasn't bugging out and glitching me into areas I shouldn't be in and just being wonky with collision detection, it was constantly dropping my inputs leading to tons of unfair deaths. The game desperately needs to iron out the jank: first and foremost I would suggest some sort of coyote time mechanics to allow for easier edge jumps and last-second jumping out of blocks, because even when I tried to get used to this game's unforgiving input buffering and hit my inputs earlier than I traditionally would, it would still drop them tons of times.

Please, please, if you can, release a more polished version of this game! The core mechanics here are fantastic and deserving of more work than the two weeks challenge can offer.

Oh, and I also liked the tunes.

[Temple of Kashteki]

Wow, really great little adventure here! Gives me Celeste vibes from the similar type of bubble mechanics and the professionally-made graphics, animation, and game feel (well, I did feel like the size of the orb hitboxes were a bit too small, but otherwise everything felt pretty smooth). Just moving the character around by itself was a delight, and once you add everything else, it was awesome. Definitely had a blast playing this: it started out a bit slow, but eventually really ramped up the challenge with some hard layouts and then ended it with a great boss/chase setpiece. My only real complaint is that I wish there was even more to it, as I felt it ended before the challenge could peak and get really crazy and creative, haha!

I did have a weird bug where my movement would freeze for a second at random times? But I think it was something on my end: seemed to resolve itself once I unplugged my controller? Since, maybe worth investigating to see if something weird is going on there. But otherwise, it's all good.

SECURAS responds:

Thanks and also thanks for making the video. The feedback is most appreciated. I apologize for the movement bug but I really could not replicate it. Unfortunately, browser games sometimes are more or less friendly depending on the browser so that may explain it. I really only tested using chrome. I would have liked to make more but I really had no time. This was made for a game jam and I only had a week to make it. So I just did the basics and, as usual in game jam games that are to be played for less than 10min, I made it very accessible.

I did enjoy that you quickly picked up on my "fake challenge" rooms that look like a complicated challenge but actually run almost automatically. Not everyone gets it so its clear you have an eye for level design. I needed to place these rooms to give confidence to the player. Then, when the real challenges come along, the player will have an extra boost of confidence. I also had zero effort rooms right after harder rooms for a similar effect... To calm down the player and avoid a death right after beating a challenge. You never want to kill someone's streak.

[Newgrounds Intern DEMO]

Definitely an interesting little platformer! I love the cool 3D title screen where it zooms around to the various options, and I thought the gameplay was pretty decent, finding these various quests and going exploring here and there. Liked some of the inclusions like a helpful checkpoint button that spawns a box in the warehouse to make it easier to recover after a fall, and how you put money on the warehouse lamps to let people know you could jump on them.

However, at the end of the day, the game felt incredibly bland. Now some of this could be explained because its a demo, such as the lack of satisfying visual/audio effects for picking up money: perhaps that's going to be added later. But I'd argue that something as core and repeated to a platformer as collecting should be made satisfying post-haste, and I was sad to see how muted it was in this game. The worlds were also really unexciting with you jumping through boring warehouses or sewers: definitely could use some more colorful terrain and more interesting obstacles (it did feature some fun moving platforms in the sewers, but too little too late for me). Finally, the game really didn't have any interesting movement mechanics: just a stock-standard run and jump. They say that you can tell a platformer is going to be fun if you can have fun just running and jumping around a practically blank room: it's certainly something I was able to do in games like Super Mario 64 where I could spend hours just running around the courtyard, not even playing a real level, but in this game? No dice.

I also did have a frustrating bug where the camera would sometimes snap several degrees to another direction without my input: sometimes this would happen mid-jump and cause me to fall to an incredibly unfair death.

Hoping that this game can continue to get worked on: with some more juice to the important interactions like collecting, more exciting worlds and obstacles and a more interesting movement/jumping physics system, it could be a neat little Newgrounds platformer!

[Kolo Terorita]

Hmm, had some decent fun with this, but really felt mixed on it.

On one hand, the game does have a subtle but rather effective addictive nature to it where your armament keeps increasing bit-by-bit to thwart the ever increasing enemy horde: very Risk of Rain of Vampire Survivors type stuff. I was impressed to see that new enemy types were being added over time, and I was also impressed that enemies actually had damage/stun states with animations for them. And of course, the game does have a certain charm to it with its wacky presentation and comical game over messages like "the shakeover is shake over". Definitely gives it a certain Newgrounds-esque vibe, particularly with the meme references.

But on the other hand, the game really does come off as a lazy babys-first-top-down-shooter game. Overall the game just feels incredibly bland, dry and lifeless due to the lack of animation (especially for movement) and visual/audio effects (especially for feedback), along with the very boring world and repetitive gameplay with enemies that can mostly be easily thwarted by circling around constantly. And as said before, while the game can be somewhat addictive due to the pattern of increasing armament, it doesn't have anything original to add and easily just makes you want to play a better version of this type of gameplay.

With a bit more polish to the core gameplay to make it feel more exciting and satisfying to match the amusing charm and wackiness that the game already has, I feel like it could be a pretty fun shooter, but for now, it just feels very amateurish (but if you're just starting out, I'd say that it's a good first attempt).

[GansWare]

A pretty lacking, but nice prototype for a Warioware-esque game. It definitely does have some issues, the most obvious being the lack of unique minigames (it starts repeating them so quickly, sometimes the same one over and over) and the lack of any sort of increasing difficulty/speed as the game goes on, leading to boredom quickly. Some of the games also seemed quite wonky, like how the art juggling one ends so fast with a single juggle instead of requiring you to juggle until time ran out (I'd mostly win without me needing to move at all, in fact). Finally, I found it weird that none of the games were goose-themed despite the game seeming to be themed around geese (yes, the arms are there in the intermissions, but c'mon, that's pretty shallow). However, at the end of the day, it's impressive for a weekend jam and I could easily see it being built upon to be a great game. I also liked how nice the title screen was considering it is a jam game: some fully-released games don't even have nicely animated title/buttons as this, surprisingly!

[Defend 'Till the End]

Solid arcade fun! It's a simple game to pick up and understand and it feels quite satisfying to blast asteroids away thanks to the juicy effects. It's also quite exciting to see your options and weapons build-up bit-by-bit. Was also really impressed at some of the effects such as how when an asteroid hits the planet, it models a crater on the earth at the exact point of impact: so cool to see that as it spins around, it's like Doom Eternal level of visible damage feedback. It's not the longest lasting game as it does start to get a little repetitive, but it's a solid and fun score-attack while it lasts.

Only major issues I had was that I feel like the ammo counter shouldn't be overlayed on top of the weapons: it just turns it into a graphical mess that is hard to parse (for example, it made it difficult to see how many bullets were being used for each weapon). And speaking of that, it was difficult to figure out the weapon system in the first place and keep track of unlocks since the pop-ups for them come and go so quickly. Oh, and I did have some confusion when the game would auto-switch back to the machine gun when I run out of missile ammo: I always expected to have to switch back manually so the automatic nature actually caught me off-guard.

KJScott responds:

Yeah, totally agree with the ammo counter (I wasn't happy with it myself). I tried multiple iterations and at the time I hadn't figured out a good way of resolving that as of yet. If I do an update I'll focus on that to try and fix that. Maybe a new ammo bar and fixed max ammo cap might help?

I messed about with the message speed and how long they last. I found adding an extra second or so obstructed view too much and I did have a feeling that the current level was too short. Again, if I update I will have another look at that. The main reason why it's too quick is that due to the ongoing "research" I would have had to added extra code to handle multiple messages at the same time. Looks like if I update I'll need to address this issue.

With the auto-switching back to the machine gun, I found during playtesting by myself if you had to manually switch back by the time you realise it's not firing you have pretty much lost the game as the half a second to second to realise and make the switch meant you were dead. So unsure about changing that.

[Newgrounds Burger Quest]

You know, for as low-effort and goofy as the game looks, there's actually a decent little adventure in here. I liked wandering around and picking up clues from the various denizens to figure out how to get all 5 dollars for whatever a Newgrounds burger is. I also liked all the little touches that the game had, such as the cool shooting animation (and ending animation, speaking of), the ability to blast everyone, the hidden fishing minigame, and of course the funny dialogue and sounds. So unlike how it looks, there is some intentional design and effort put into it here and there, and it is quite charming in that respect.

But at the end of the day, it definitely was a pretty janky and short game. Now some of the jank could be excused by it being true to the design and goofy aesthetic, but some of the annoyances like the vague hitboxes, delayed shooting animation, random spawns and so on could just be plain frustrating, leading to unfair deaths.

And I gotta say that you did commit a game design cardinal sin in my book. If you design a dialogue system with text that gets typed out, a player should always be able to hit a button to have the text immediately fill to the end (and not skip to the next line until another press). This game does not allow that, and for that, you will burn in heck for you have damned so many players to waste so many seconds waiting for the text to fill out: so many seconds!

plufmot responds:

Thanks! Also you can press and hold Z or M to speed up dialogue!