FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Anxi's Carnation]

Hmm, this is a tough one! I was definitely pretty intrigued by the game at first because it just gives off this mysterious and artistic vibe. I dunno what it is exactly, but just something about the art and atmospheric music, as well as the little extras like the bonus dialogue on the title screen as well as seeing all of the achievements allude to these endings and bonus modes, makes me think there's a lot cooking here. The gameplay as well was neat in how it keeps adding layers and layers to the basic loop and it becomes this crazy plate-juggling challenge.

In spite of all that, though, I bounced off of this game hard, unfortunately!

*As much as the game tries to help with the tutorial screens before each level, there were a lot of times I was confused as to what I was supposed to do since the pictures can be very vague and easily misinterpreted. Look, if you're gonna tell me what to do on the game over screen, maybe just say that on the tutorial itself so I'm prepared!

*To continue on with the point above, it doesn't help either that the game is incredibly muted and lacking feedback for your actions, leading to further confusion. For example, because your basket doesn't fill up with a flower for each flower you click, I spent a long time confused as to whether I was making progress clicking flowers or whether I was picking the wrong flowers and was only making progress when I got lucky and clicked the right flower. As another example, it'd be helpful too if some sort of effect happens when the red mist reaches the time where it deals damage, otherwise it's like, did anything even happen?

*Being sent all the way back to the start of the game because of an honest mistake is too harsh a punishment for me, especially since the very start of the game is incredibly slow and boring, making it so frustrating to work your way back up to where you left off.

*In general, while the gameplay does add a lot of layers as it goes, it is still at its core just repetitive click-click-clicking, over and over and over, and it wears down not only on my soul, but my old hands as well.

So yeah, the vibes were neat and I wanted to like it, but unfortunately it wasn't to be since the gameplay let me down. A good attempt at least, since to me, you got the game half-right, so next time just make sure the other half is good and you're golden!

Tyhond responds:

Sweet, yeah, It was something I try out for fun xP I'm not really a game designer.

Thanks

[saraOS]

Hmm, an interesting...game? I guess? It kinda sits in a weird spot where it's as much of a game as a DVD chapter select menu is, largely just being a collection of goofy short movies. Sure, it does have those short minigames at the end which were nice, but they were such a small part of the complete package: wish we had more of those! Anyway, as much as I'm ragging on it, I think the presentation is nice and polished, and I had some good chuckles at the content on offer, so yeah, not bad.

Nabella responds:

Pseudo DVD menus with little animations are the next big genre to plague the indie scene like rogue-likes and deck-builders. Just you wait, lolololol.

[Eyebot VS Scarlet]

Cute little choose-your-own-adventure movie/game hybrid, kinda like Henry Stickmin or Dragon's Lair! It's kinda short and doesn't have much meat on it, but the animation/presentation is very nice and it's got a good sense of humor, so I had a decent time. I imagine it ain't easy to animate all the failure states compared to if this was just a straightforward movie, so kudos on the effort: well done! Looking forward to seeing what the great mind behind Eyebot comes up with next!

TheGuyWhoMadeEyebot responds:

Thanks! Huh, yeah, I guess it is a bit like Dragon’s Lair, I never thought about that. If I ever make another game in this same sort of style it’ll definitely have more to it, assuming I won’t have a deadline to worry about then, but as for what my next project will be, I’ll probably do something a bit different.

[Contract Rush: Mission Sin]

Listen, I gotta be honest: as much as I love and support you guys, I could never really get into Contract Rush that much as a game. I'm not saying it's bad: it's stylish and cool and I wanna love it, but it just didn't feel good to play for me for some reason, which is a shame because I love me some side-scrolling shooters and wanna be supportive.

But this? Mission Sin? Whoa mama, this is a whole different ball game: playing as Sin goddamn rules! I'm almost baffled at how much better it feels to the point of being unsure of myself on where I stand, but it makes sense in a lot of ways. Being a melee character means you need to get close to enemies with is generally more challenging and engaging since you can't cheese them in safety from a distance, his moveset is way more expressive and allows him to pull off stylish tricks like pogo-ing, the feedback for melee hits feels much more instantaneous and satisfying, and if we're talking about aesthetics, swords are cool and the protagonist story of turning against their race is intriguing.

So yeah, hmm, I guess I'll think about revisiting Contract Rush if Sin is there, haha!

If there was something I wanted to give feedback on, it'd be that I wish the shoot button was on a shoulder button instead of triangle, since holding your thumb on triangle makes it difficult to access the other buttons like jump. Speaking of shooting, I wish that you'd continue to glow/sparkle as long as you're holding charge, since without that serving as a signal, you could be mistaken in thinking that you've lost it.

Figburn responds:

i appreciate you continuing to check it out! sin is the earliest unlockable character in DX and you can play as him for nearly the entire rest of the game after you unlock him if his gameplay suits you better! buttons are also remapable in DX (something we had to forgo in this web game to keep development simple), and we will look into making held charges more clear to the player. thank you for the review!

[Underboard Demo]

Hey, it's fantastic to see this game again! I had a blast with the previous version, and I've now had a blast with this one as well: autobattlers aren't my usual genre, but this one easily tickled my fancy due to how polished and intuitive the experience is, and how addictively fun it can be to build up your army in all sorts of creative and improvisational ways. Great work, and I wish you the best of luck on your Steam release!

As said, the game feels very polished, and what little bits of confusion I had, such as with the Trait system, were easily remedied by a bit of experimentation and reading tooltips, so I don't have much feedback to offer. Having said that, I would very much love if the game had some sort of save/load or checkpoint system, as runs can get pretty long and I don't always have the energy to do it all in one sitting: I was really hoping that my run would autosave when I left, but alas!

Braveado responds:

Hey man, glad you liked the new version, thanks! We're definetely going to add a save/load feature for your runs, as well as a save slot system for your entire progression.

[Based Defense]

Wow, this one really surprised me! The sense of humor and style, while perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, really captures that old-school edgey Newgrounds nostalgia factor, and the gameplay is some good addictive fun where you get to blast away at loads of enemies with an arsenal of crazy weapons and abilities that you're constantly adding to with your gains from battle. I was shocked not only at how easy and intuitive it was to move and place units in defensive positions and leave them to it like a classic RTS, but the game really keeps you on your toes with new units being introduced, different wave patterns, and the interesting risk/reward concept of pushing waves forward for a cash bonus. Basically, the game is a lot smarter and polished under the hood than I expected!

If I were to have any issues, I'd say that it can be rather overwhelming when you're starting out and you want to learn what you can buy in the shop, but since the game doesn't pause, you either panic and make sub-optimal purchases or throw away a match just for learning purposes. Also I found it weird that the game bothers to display health bars over characters since they don't even get attacked, and yet it doesn't bother to display a health bar over the important base (granted, the health bar is in the corner, but still). Also, some of the cooler mechanics like being able to push waves for extra cash are easily missable due to how tiny the message for it is.

Jin responds:

I appreciate that you picked up on details that tend to be taken for granted. A lot of time was spent on that.

Every point of feedback has been noted down. Thank you! My goal is to facilitate more players to get to the ending.

[Sunday Drive 2]

Great arcade game, this! Feels really well put-together, not only in terms of its presentation and vibes, which are fantastic due to its great graphics, juicy special effects and energetic music, but the gameplay is also a treat in how it has a great level of challenge to it due to the varied obstacles and neat risk/reward systems where you get pissed up for higher score. I had a great time!

If I were to have any feedback, it'd mostly be about higher level discussion about the scoring system. I love the idea of the game getting more challenging the more you drink, but I wonder if the ability to drink coffees to reduce the visual penalty without reducing the multiplier, as well as just being able to ignore beer at the cost of playing longer and safer to eventually get the same score, allows the player the ability to lame it out and avoid the fun stuff, whereas they wouldn't if the beer was made necessary through some sort of time limit, perhaps. Ah, whatever, it's all good!

Chris responds:

I also considered this whilst making it but left it as is. I have a few gameplay modifiers in mind that I’ll eventually use in a Sunday Drive 3. I think if I do make this game I’d have something the requires you to drink more. Maybe you could get pulled over for driving sober or something daft like that.

[Parry the night]

Oh wow, this is quite the promising strategy game you're got here! It seriously feels like it's got almost everything necessary for some great combat. It took a bit to get used to it, but once I did, and if I kinda squint, I feel like I'm legit playing Fire Emblem!

Unfortunately, I feel like this might be a case where you got a bit overambitious for a game jam, as while it is quite impressive in what you've got done so far, I'd say that it is still very much in a rough state and not ready for prime time, so to speak!

There are a lot of little nitpicks I could poke and prod at, such as how the game lacks the ability to click on an enemy to see their movement/attack range preview, for example. But the biggest issue I had to point out was the controls and how unintuitive they felt: I was constantly tripping over myself trying to get things to work, having my inputs ignored or misinterpreted. If it helps, I think the biggest issue with the game might be the mouse, as it felt like it worked better when I stuck to just the keyboard only: perhaps you should just nix the mouse altogether so it doesn't get in the way.

And maybe I'm just bad, but I felt a bit overwhelmed with this demo in how it just throws you into what feels like the middle of a game, having to manage loads of units and battle an absolutely huge army. Don't get me wrong: I like that you start in medias res and don't waste time with exposition or babying us with loads of tutorials! And I understand you wanna show off all the unit types and the amount of scale your engine can deal with. It's just that I still think the scale of this battle should be cut in half to make it more manageable, especially since even a veteran like me is not familiar with all the differences that this is bringing to the table.

Again, as much as it is very rough, it's also very much going in the right direction and I think it could be something great if you continue to work and polish it!

Alex303 responds:

Thank you for reviewing and sorry for the late response! wish It could have been a more complete game but I do get carried away. After seeing your youtube video it made it really clear where the issues are. I'll make sure the whole process is more keyboard focused. And Im so ashamed to not realize people would use the move to see enemy movement/attack because i only set it to Z. Im gonna watch the video multiple times to make sure I nip all those bugs.

I plan on releasing a more complete game in the near future with smaller and more levels.

[Captain Laser Rabbit Saves The Earth!]

Hey, this is a pretty cool SHMUP! Overall it felt like a great short-n-sweet adventure that looked good, felt good, and kept me hooked the whole way through, especially because of how it kept things exciting by always escalating the stakes with new enemies and mechanics to contend with. Level 3 in particular stands out to me because of its very creative mini-bosses! I also liked the way you setup the difficulty levels, and liked the design of having to earn power-ups since it adds some depth to the gameplay.

It was cool, but there were a few points I wanted to give feedback on:

*The bosses were cool, but kinda let me down because only the first boss does it right where it gets harder to beat the closer it gets to death: all the other bosses get easier not just in general, but also easier as they get closer to death, which made it feel kinda lame to me. When the owl loses an eye, for example, it should start spraying bullets from the leftover socket or something like that, similar to how the first boss starts spraying bullets from the leftover socket where their shield generators were.

*I like the idea of having to pull off certain stylish tricks like blasting an entire wave to get a powerup, but that made it all the more annoying when I would do just that, but wouldn't get a power-up. I just don't understand why it is so inconsistent: maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if that's the case, I think it should be explained better.

*Speaking of the laser powerups, I found them really annoying to deal with due to how awkward it was to pick them up and how fast they can disappear. There were loads of times I was trying to click on them to pick up and I'd end up firing off my laser, practically negating the gain I'd get from picking it up!

TeamTamago responds:

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you liked it!

*Yes, I totally agree about the bosses! They all have extra phases designed but time meant getting the basics working was more important. Alas...

*So the Desperation Blast doesn't trigger power ups, It's a thing I was debating on for a while but then I found a humongous coding error in the how bombs worked on bosses last minute and fixing that took priority! But, yeah, it should be clearer either way. Laser and bullets shouldn't have any issues!

*This! This is a thing I was worried about the most while having no one play testing, "I can do it, but maybe I've just played it too much, maybe it's too hard for everyone else??? I don't know????"

Anyway, lots to consider. Thanks!

[The Whicher 2]

Hey, nice to see a sequel to the Whicher! And for a sequel, I feel like it's improved on the concept in a multitude of ways, turning into a big and fun choose-your-own-adventure with loads of amusing choices and reactions. Not only was I hooked to this game because the humor was on point and it was constantly providing some new absurdity to see like the running animations, I was also hooked to replaying it to check out all the different endings as well. Nice work, and boy did you get a lot of mileage out of the choices being misinterpreted as a gag, haha!

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

*Sometimes it was a bummer where one choice resulted in an amusing joke, like the 'give food' prompt for the urchins, whereas the other choice resulted in absolutely squat happening except you immediately moving on: I feel like some sort of reaction should always happen.

*It looks like the medals are bugged out? The game was awarding them, but I'm not seeing them being displayed: unsure what's going on there. Maybe an issue on my end?

Joeyag responds:

Thank you so much for your review! I hope you liked my mountains better this time, haha
Regarding the medals, they're not working due to changes on the site, requiring a flash API update for as3. PsychoGoldfish told me the update would be made in a couple of weeks