FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[SymmetryCats DEMO]

This is pretty cool! It's exactly what I expected and wanted from the title and thumbnail, being a mind-bending puzzle game about a pair of cute cats in mirror dimensions. I feel like it does a great job at escalating the difficulty as it introduces more tricks and new mechanics to the levels, and it really kept me on my toes and wanting to see what's next. Very nice!

It's nice and I don't believe I encountered any major issues, but if I were to have any feedback:

*I took a break and was planning to come back to finish it, only to realize it didn't save my progress! Definitely feel like it needs to save progress and offer a level select.

*Wish the levels that have spike-flipping had some sort of signal to let you more easily track when they are going to flip, like a rhythmic sound effect, or maybe a shaky animation telegraph.

*The music is quite monotonous: wish it would change up as you progress and/or be more complex in general.

CleitonEldorn responds:

All of this is gonna be on the final version, the music, save and level selection were already on the plans, and I like the flip platforms feedback.

[Slimeslinger]

Fun little game! It's rather simplistic, doesn't have much meat on its bones and feels a bit dry due to the lack of music, but the feedback for combat is very juicy and explosive, which when combined with the wacky arsenal of weapons you get to use, creates some chaotic fun. I like the strategy of being careful not too blow up too many nests so as to not generate more enemies than you could handle, as well as chaining level ups to keep you in a powerful state. Not too shabby!

Unfortunately its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, being its chaotic combat. Getting good at chaining level ups to keep yourself equipped with powerful weapons is great, but it stinks when everything's exploding and you can barely tell what's going on anymore, and your weapons have turned into a crazy roulette from all the level-ups where you can get screwed over if you weapon suddenly changes into something else too quickly, like when you get the melee weapon and go in to attack and suddenly now you're carrying a heavy ranged weapon and boom, you're dead. It's part of the challenge, sure, but it nevertheless can feel frustrating.

KingStache responds:

thanks for the feedback!

[Balls, Dice & Stickers]

Huh, pretty interesting game! Reminds me a lot of games like Balatro, Luck Be A Landlord, Peggle and so on, as it's got a certain gambling appeal to it. Overall the game seems very promising: the presentation is polished and charming, the core loop is simple but addicting, there's some good informative feedback through effects like number pop-ups as well as the log, there's some cute affectations like being able to interact with the portraits, and there's a lot of strategic potential in aiming and equipping your dice. Very nice!

It's very promising for an alpha, so in the interest of helping, here's my feedback:

*I wish there was a tutorial because there was a lot of aspects that took me a long time to learn. For example, I had no idea what the aiming cone was or why aiming away from it gave a bonus, until I learned that the golden dead center seems to always be an optimal calculated shot. It's also so difficult to keep track of all the numbers popping up and the reasons behind them, like how once you hit all the dice it triggers all of them again (I think?). In general things happen so fast and it can make things unclear: I didn't even realize the dice were rolling since they stay still and instantly change without some sort of animation for it.

*It's a bummer that you can only read the last lines of the log. I wish I could scroll through the log to be able to review everything that's happened as it would really help me understand.

*Maybe it's part of the appeal or maybe I'm just not good enough to see the game at a deeper level yet, but it does feel like the game is so wacky and chaotic that it's practically all up to luck. I like it when there is some sort of strategy or improvisation skill I can get better at, and while this flirts at it with all the sticker effects and aiming, it feels ultimately uncontrollable, so should I really put in any effort beyond just randomly applying stickers and always aiming dead center and hoping for the best? At that rate, it just turns into a slot machine where I keep cranking it blindly, and that isn't my jam (but I can see the appeal, so it's up to you).

*In order to better grasp everything that's happening and feel rewarded when you get something special to happen, I'd suggest that the game pause or go into slow-mo at critical moments such as when you hit all the dice or trigger a synergistic sticker effect to highlight them. Obviously this comes at the risk of becoming tedious in later rounds when so much is happening and you're used to it already, so I'd suggest adding a 'fast-foward' function, and that the current gameplay should be this 'fast-forward' mode.

*The game is already pretty juicy and satisfying, but it nevertheless still has a rather dry feel to it due to the plain black background, lack of music, and lack of distinguishing/rewarding the act of pulling off rare events. Gambling is all about the jangling keys, so jangle them even harder with increasingly pitch-shifted sounds and all that jazz!

bilgetbd responds:

thank you so much for playing and detailed feedback!!

[Five Day Detective: Browser Version]

Not too shabby of an old-school adventure game! Reminds me of classics like Police Quest and Monkey Island and so on and so forth. I like that it portrays a less glamorous insider view of the police: gives the game a rather unique vibe to it.

For the most part I had a good time, but I'll admit that there were a lot of rough edges and points of confusion during my adventure that I feel could be fixed up:

*I hate it when I'm trying to examine an item in my inventory, but since I'm close to an interact point, it ends up trying to use it instead of examine it, and I have to walk around until I find a free space. The addition of an 'examine' action would be helpful.

*The movement system is a bit awkward and unresponsive: I'd be trying to turn around and sometimes my character would take an extra step before doing so.

*I feel like it needs to give better hints at times. For example, I was eventually able to figure out I needed to put the car sticker on my car, but it would've been better if the character would say something like "Before I go in, I should do something to avoid getting a ticket. I can't park anywhere else, so..." when he tries to go in instead of his little meta joke about it being a tutorial.

*It'd be nice if the journal would give more detailed information for your objectives and what you've accomplished so far as you can easily lose track of things that are only said once from people or certain halfway steps.

*Some better signposting would be nice. I wouldn't have known that I could go downstairs to the basement without people telling me because it looks like the stairs only go up. It would be helpful if you can see a bit of a railing going downwards to hint that you can go down, or maybe a 'basement' sign pointing down on the wall.

*I was disappointed with certain actions, like when I tried to examine the phone book and it immediately got the relevant information from it without me even realizing what I was supposed to do with it in the first place. I wish the action was more interactive with me actually having to flip through pages and find the appropriate ad, like, you know, a detective!

*Unfortunately when I say this reminds me of classics, that also includes the bizarre puzzle logic they used to have. Lighting trash bags to illuminate a basement? Cleaning up graffiti to distract someone to steal paper from them? In what world are you supposed to logically figure out these actions beyond just faffing about and rubbing every item against everything to see what it does?

KrunchyFriedGames responds:

Oh, wow- thanks for your thoughtful and detailed critique! I'll try and address your points one at a time:

Character movement- yeah, we're trying to think of ways to improve this. Your specific issue about turning is because it's a detailed character animation and Dermot needs to reach the end of his walk cycle otherwise it becomes really twitchy and awkward. Difficult to get around this.

Examination button- it's something we've been thinking about. The current idea is to keep the UI as simple as possible. Maybe we'll change this.

Hints/ signposting- this is a major issue in any point and click style game, and it's different for every player too. I've seen people on Twitch and Youtube shoot straight theough the difficult bits, and then struggle with things I didn't even consider to be puzzles! I certainly agree that the basement could be better signposted, and the notebook function improved.

I think there's something slightly off about the phone book ordering (people can assume this is a linear game- but it really isn't as I know from trying to make sure everything works and makes sense in whatever order you do it in). I Something's changed with the phone book from an earlier edit, so we'll try and work out what exactly, and fix it.

*spoiler* Puzzle logic is always very subjective. I did already add a hint for the basement light puzzle- because it was driving people insane (it was "I think there's something blocking the window" or similar). I maintain the the printer puzzle makes logical sense: the only time you see blank paper is in Madman's office, she's angry that the toilet mirror has penis graffiti on it, and there's a sponge item you haven't used but, yes, it is difficult.

Thanks for your comments!

[There's just something about u]

GooseStranger, don't take this the wrong way, but I want to throttle you like Homer does to Bart after playing this game.

Ok, that's a bit harsh. Let's take a step back and I'll try and explain my thoughts.

*Ahem*

Everything starts off great with this game! Really gorgeous and high-quality presentation, unorthodox story delivery through a fake Instant Messenger interface, a platforming minigame that slowly evolves as it turns the letters into obstacles, and a story that slowly devolves into drama, oh boy, drama! With so much promise, I was hooked and highly anticipating where this would go.

However, as things went on, I just got really bored, disappointed and miserable.

First off, the platforming:

Unfortunately, I felt like the platforming was just very tedious, unnecessary, and never really went anywhere. Despite all of the letters having all sorts of different mechanics in the way they move and act, it takes absolutely forever for them to be sloooooowly introduced one-by-one, and even when they are, 99% of the time you can just jump over them, completely ignoring them and negating their purpose. It's just so braindead and begs for more interesting puzzles to be made from them. For example, you could make it so that there is a big gap between the word 'wanted' and the next word, and what you need to do is intentionally make the d disappear so you can free the e and ride it across. Maybe there could be a level where the exit is far upwards and you need to jump up lines by using l's, and maybe as a bonus, by reading it in this new upwards order the text is parsed in an interesting new perspective that changes the meaning. So much wasted potential!

In addition to this, I rarely felt like the displacement of text was ever used in some sort of poetic way to enhance the emotional reading of the text. Sometimes it does, but a lot of other times the placement doesn't, so it just ends up feeling random and purposeless. Again, there are a lot of interesting tricks you could be doing here but nothing happens. Maybe the player needs to do something to a sentence in order to reach the exit like getting rid of letters that ends up changing the sentence to something bad and that makes them conflicted. I dunno, it's not my job to think this up, I already gave you some freebies!

Part of me really wishes I could just read the words in a text file...but maybe you could argue that the platforming serves some sort of subtle pacing purpose, like by dragging things out but not being too difficult it somehow makes you pay more attention to the words or really feel the turmoil which you could skip over if you were just reading a text file...but I dunno. I almost feel like it was put in to be the equivalent of jangling keys, something to try and keep people interested in the text, and I guess that works, but feels like such a waste.

But even if the platforming is bad, there's always the story to pick up the slack!

Indeed, I did find myself continuing in spite of it all because I wanted to see if the story would finally lead to something. It does it slowly (too slowly) but the game does intensify the relationship drama in a rather authentic youthful way, and because of how high-quality the game was presented initially, I had faith that it would lead up to something big, like a twist where it flips the script and suddenly the character you were rooting for is now the jerk or whatever.

And then I found myself groaning. Inadvertently. Not even realizing I was at first, but unable to help myself even after noticing. And then came the screams. End. End! END! END ALREADY! FOR GODS SAKE, FREE ME FROM THIS TORMENT!

Now to be fair, about 25% of those screams are what you would expect, being investment in the story: in that I want them to just goddamn put their foot down, end the toxic relationship already and move on. But the rest of those screams are from desperately hoping and praying for the game to end before I shoot myself from boredom due to the absolute mountain of text and aforementioned tedious unengaging platforming, from the sunk-cost of being in so deep and knowing in my heart that there is no save function so I can't stop now because what if it finally gets good and heaven forbid, I miss out and seem like such a fool?

In the end, through sheer force of will, I finally wrestled myself away from the game, leaving it uncompleted. Some would argue that I lost by giving up before the end, but I'd argue that not giving up would be the path of least resistance and I would be losing by doing so.

Now I will admit, part of me is conflicted. Part of me wants to be all like, oh, you pulled off the master plan, my emotional turmoil was exactly what you intended as it mirrors the turmoil of the decaying relationship! But another part of me is like yeah no, don't try to play this off, I was super disappointed and couldn't bring myself to finish the game not because it was good but because all this was just a bunch of style-over-substance will-they-won't-they blue-balling rage-baiting crap like a Rumiko Takahashi manga (does anyone get that reference?) I guess it's a bit of both. Such is art! Anyway, you win just by making something that made me write this essay: that's an emotional reaction no matter how you slice it, in a 'any news is good news' way. And I win by making you read this?

GooseStranger responds:

Woah, what a response!

Again, I am very thankful for you're huge amount of feedback. You're are absolutely right, I missed some really good puzzle opportunities. That "wanted" puzzle idea is genius!

Even if you didn't finish the game, or even liked the parts you played, I appreciate you playing and leaving a review! Thanks FutureCopLGF!

[Heroes of the Seven Islands]

Pretty neat RPG you got here! While it certainly reminds me a lot of party-based RPGs like Wizardry and Might & Magic, its goofy vibes and point-n-click interactions remind me of games like Kingdom of Loathing or Shadowgate. I enjoyed my time with this: building my party from a diverse roster of classes, adventuring the island and clicking all the secrets, using the best of my parties skills to beat monsters, seeing all the interactions locked behind skill checks that I wanted to level or do on a separate game, and so on and so forth. It's all fun stuff and feels very well put together overall!

A few notes and feedback on my experience so far:

*I found it a bit strange that the game is so generous with giving back MP fully after a fight. On one hand, I loved this because it meant I could use all of my parties abilities in a fight instead of always holding back and just picking the boring attack option over and over: what a breath of fresh air! On the other hand, I felt like it reduced a lot of the long-term strategic layer to the adventure and allowed me both to cheese fights and healing as well as avoid using camp.

*Small control nitpick: when you select fire arrow from the spell book, it then lets you click on an enemy to finalize the action, but if you select toxic cloud from the spell book, it uses it immediately. I understand the reason behind this, but I do kinda wish toxic cloud has you click an enemy for extra confirmation to use it: keeps things consistent and lets me preview the effects more clearly.

*Some explanations are a bit confusing to parse. For example, willpower says that it powers up 'special abilities', but I don't know what those are: is it referring to class abilities like Cacophony and Concentration? Weapons were a bit strange to in that I wasn't sure if there were all equal when you don't consider any of their extras, like is a pirate cutlass with +1 speed just as powerful damage-wise as a soldier sword?

*I kinda wish the combat log was available at all times like it is in RPGs like Fallout, Pillars of Eternity, and so on, instead of being hidden away in a separate window. I know there is a small log at the top of the screen, but that can vanish very quickly. In a similar vein, I wish I would see the enemy statistics in the lower right when I hover over targets instead of seeing my character's statistics.

*I like that there is a scoring system that gives you bonuses for doing well in combat, but I don't feel like it gives significant feedback and satisfaction when you get a high score. It'd be nice if, say, you can see the bar slowly fill up and with every tier it passes, you see your gold and exp get boosted, for example, as that helps illustrate the system more clearly.

rap2h responds:

Thank you so much for your feedback and for playing!

Some quick answers (each bullet point represent one of your bullet point in the same order):
* Yes, MP is fully replenished when you rest. In the first versions of the game, it was not the case: players complained that they always had to rest between combat, so I changed it (to only heal mana to not totally remove the need of rest which is something I like in RPG, even if it's a kind of chore sometimes). Maybe I can make it an option, not sure if it's a good tradeoff.
* Not sure how I can fix it. I keep it as a suggestion in my backlog.
* Willpower description is an error, I definitely have to fix it, thank you! The weapon system is also not clear. The idea was: if you don't have the skill, it does 50% dmg of your strength, then 100% on Novice, 115% on Expert and 150% on master (or something like that). Then, there can be additional bonuses such as +1 speed and so on. I realize it's not clear, so I have to do something: either change the system (cost me more) or explain better (cost me less)
* Log all the time was also asked by other players, so I have to consider it! Currently, I have not found a way to add it in the UI without breaking the... uh... harmony (I have not found a less pretentious word, English is not my mother tongue) of the UI.
* This is a super idea and should not be that hard to implement. One of my friend told me: you have to add feedback everywhere, like in modern games, and this is definitely something I should do to both increase fun and comprehension for players.

I copied your comments in my backlog, it may be implemented.
Thank you for your feedback, it helps me improve the game!

[Swordius]

Hot damn, this kicks ass! I love me a good boss rush and this is definitely hitting all the right spots with its excellent boss variety, simple yet expressive move set, and incredibly juicy and satisfying special effects that make even dying feel cool. As said, the gameplay is technically rather simple, but I thought it was really cool that there's a lot of neat tricks you can pull off as you experiment, such as utilizing the cyclone move right after an attack to stay in the inner circle layer for more damage or to dodge (this helps a lot with clearing the sword turrets next to Swordian of Earth while dodging his outer circle wave, for example).

If I were to have any complaints, they'd be small nitpicks like so:

*I wish I could hold down the button to keep slashing with the sword instead of having to click multiple times, but I guess you have a charge move so it can't be helped. Speaking of that, I wish I could hold to charge without being forced to have the initial click trigger an attack.

*I'm no stranger to very limited dash invulnerability, but I had so many times playing this where I swear I did a well-timed dodge only for me to eat an attack. Could just be me being bad, but something felt off.

*It's a silly complaint, but I do feel like once you get good, the bosses can get melted too easily, especially due to how generous the game is with limit break. Near the end of my session with the game it felt like I could just chain limit break after limit break and barely be vulnerable at all. I know that's because I've gotten better, but still, it just felt like a bit much.

In the end, my biggest complaint would be that I wish there was more to the game, and that's even counting the light/dark bonuses. You got me drooling for more, so I'm really looking forward to the sequel!

Yword responds:

Wow, thank you so much, FutureCopLGF! It's always great to read your detailed reviews, they're very helpful! I'll definitely keep your feedback in mind, and thanks a lot for playing too! :D

[Jane's Pumpkin Patch!]

Hmm, this was a rough one for me! The art is cute and all, but unfortunately the gameplay is non-existent, largely due to the fact that the crows don't pose a threat and without that, the points don't matter and there's no satisfaction from swatting the crows.

Ideally, I think this could be a cute arcade game in a similar fashion to classics like Missile Command or Defender, where you're running around trying to protect your pumpkins from being carried away by crows through swatting them. Little by little, the amount of crows to deal with could increase, causing the gameplay to become more hectic and exciting as you need to optimize. Maybe there could be power-ups, special events, new crow types and so on that would shake things up and add more strategic layers. A high-score table could inspire competition between friends. And while I'm dreaming up things, maybe it could give everyone twenty bucks gratis.

Sadly, the game just feels like a very amateur or unfinished project in its current state, which is a shame because I want to like it! Better luck next time, and I hope the suggestions above give some food for thought.

As a side note, the game doesn't even play music if you click to start the game instead of pressing space. I had no idea why ConnorGrail was credited for music as the game was completely silent for me until I realized this!

BoiledMilkz responds:

thanks for the advice! i'll look into it!

[Bunny Smoosh (Nokia3310)]

Cute little arcade game! It's rather simplistic and a little clunky so I can't see myself sticking with it, but the Nokia aesthetic is an amusing novelty and the foundation for an endless runner is executed decently, especially when you put it in the context of respecting the limitations of the Nokia. I like the neat little touches like how the game over screen keeps trying to roll over you until it finally does. Not bad for a game jam result!

Sjhillustration responds:

Thanks for the feedback! It was nice to just make something simple in a short space of time.

[waxweaver]

Wow, this is pretty dang impressive! Feels very much like a clone of Terraria and just like it, I easily got into that addictive loop of exploring to discover new resources to build new stuff that lets me explore into dangerous territory to discover even newer resources and so on and so forth. All around very professional stuff that feels smooth, polished and intuitive: it's something I could easily see on the Steam store for people to whip out their wallets for!

If I were to have any feedback, it'd be that:

*Getting the game to play in the first place was really awkward. Trying to play it in Firefox just caused my computer to start melting down, fans blazing like a jet engine, and Chrome didn't fare much better, though it at least loaded up the game eventually. I followed the advice and downloaded it on itch, but still, there must be some sort of optimization issue going on that could be addressed.

*Would love it if the crafting menu organized objects into categories, or if some sorting/filtering options existed (beyond hiding uncraftables). It's just too awkward and tedious to try and find or figure out what you can craft.

*Would love if I would attack in the direction of my mouse instead of where my character is moving: so many times I had my mouse to the right of my character and they'd swipe their sword to the left, for example, causing me to get killed.

*Is there no way to pass time by sleeping? Resting in a bed only seemed to save my respawn location, whereas I was hoping I could use it to skip nighttime.

*Could be nice to have a targeting indicator for placing blocks, as well as a range indicator for objects like crafting tables so you can figure out the best place to put it when considering how far you can access it.

*Player footsteps are kind of loud and intrusive: I'd lower their volume or even remove them altogether. Maybe it'd help if they generated little puffs below your feet so my brain knows they are coming from me and not from an enemy I can't see?

*Could be nice if I could see tools that I have equipped in my hands at all times, similar to how I can see torches in my hand when I have those equipped.

*While there is nothing wrong with imitating your favorites as it's a great learning tool and we can always use more of a good thing, this game is very much a Terraria clone to such a degree that, well, it makes me want to play Terraria instead of it since Terraria has much more content and quality-of-life in comparison. I would love if this game had some sort of unique twist to it to make it stand out: perhaps if it leaned more into this 'wax' theming?

kaiakairos responds:

there was originally gonna be more space related stuff to make it less derivative, but they all ended up not being very fun, and cutting it was better for the game and better for me and the scope. sorry about the performance!! the game doesnt work on firefox at all (unknown why) and generally whether or not the game chugs on chrome seems unrelated to computer hardware (ive gotten it to run flawlessly on toasters and its chugged on high end machines. i am not smart enough to fix it lol)