FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Keep It In! 3]

Not too shabby! Certainly seems to be going for a simple-yet-fun arcade vibe, and the amount of game variations were rather intriguing. Had a decent bit of fun checking it all out.

However, I didn't have the best impression when playing this. At its core, the game just didn't really hook me with its concept, and despite having a lot of different types of games to play, it felt like a real quantity-over-quality situation as many of the games either felt superfluous and barely any different from classic (timed), or felt very unbalanced (multiball) or confusing (rhythm).

In addition to that, the game just had a very unflattering presentation to it, the music was way too loud and there was no option menu to turn it down, and it was missing quality-of-life features like being able to quit out of a game. Furthermore, I had a few of the games glitch out on me in weird, frustrating ways.

Also, and this might be a nitpicky personal thing that doesn't matter so much, but I really don't jive with the whole bouncecoin system where you're playing and logging in daily to purchase cosmetics and all that jazz: just feels really unnecessary and scummy. I know you're not trying to scam me or take money from me or anything like that, but it just rubs me the wrong way and makes me feel like you're trying to add this as a motivation to make up for the fact that the game can't motivate strongly enough by itself.

St4rryQueen responds:

Although it might not be the clearest, the BounceCoin icon doubles as a clickable icon that pops up with a pause menu, in which you can quit, or even change your background or style mid-game.

[Kill Laanie Race or Die Super Laanie Update]

I certainly think this has potential to be a nice racing game, but currently it feels rather underbaked and needs more time in the oven!

My main complaints are:

*While some of the visuals are pretty cool, you went way overboard with the filters like the monitor static/film grain/whatever and it just makes my eyes hurt and makes it difficult to read the screen. Get rid of that crap: your art looks good by itself and you don't need to hide it behind these dumb filters.

*Damage feedback is very lackluster: getting shot or shooting other cars isn't apparent as there is no sort of sound effect or hitspark to indicate contact. Also when you crash into a wall, the game starts draining your health and plays these loud, grating sounds.

*There's a lack of information given for the race. For example, what's my current position/place/rank in the race? How many cars remain? What's my speed? When I finish a lap, where's my current lap time and how does it compare to my previous laps?

*Unless you memorize the course, it's very difficult to determine where turns are, making it rather frustrating. Up to you how to handle this, but a few ways would be to zoom out the camera, add signals/signs onto the course, or to have a minimap/radar of the course in the corner.

*When all is said and done, the game isn't doing anything that innovative to create a fresh new experience, nor does it have core driving gameplay that is satisfying enough to make up for that as it feels rather basic in terms of functionality and slippery/awkward in terms of physics.

Hope this helps and that you continue to work on it!

GNOSTU responds:

Hi Mr FutureCopLGF

Thank you so much for your honest feedback. We are currently polishing Kill Laanie, we also want to state that this is a game jam entry for Gdevelops game jam 5 and we only had 9 days to make this hence the reason it seems underbaked.

Addressing your complaints

* The visuals effects we know does not appeal to everyone and we are aware of that. We are a retro revival indie game development studio that focuses on a sense of nostalgia to everything we do including art and music. We are sorry to hear that you have experienced pain in our visuals we are adding an options section to turn these effects off for players that do not like it.

* About the lack of visual information. Yes we understand that the industry standard is to know your position, speed and lap time. Again we simply did not have time for all the extra bells and whistles that go with racing games. However we are creating modes for players that want to have a normal racing experience.

* Regards to minimaps. Again not enough time to code we only had 9 days. We do not believe in hand holding when it comes to our games as many old games dropped you in the deep end with no help or info regarding things like minimaps and when corners need to be taken we were trying to go for a more realistic racing experience. Like I said we are working on modes where minimaps are an option to turn on or off. As for the zoom I do not think we are changing anything in that department as we are trying to keep the zoom like Konami's Road Fighter.

* Being fresh and new is not what we do at graphic nostalgia studios we focus on bringing life to old games from the arcade, sega and nintendo and adding things like physics and redrawn or modern styled additions like character select, color selections, PS1 and PS2 style 3d graphics and music. As for the awkward slippery physics the game jam theme was unstable so I think we delivered on that.

Conclusion.

We do not shy away from any criticism here at Graphic Nostalgia Studios and we try and cater to all gamers. Please keep in mind that we are a retro studio first and modern gamers 10th. We are a studio that still plays old games like pokemon blue, Rise of the Triad, Contra, Piko's School and SimGirl. We do play modern games like GTA V and Cyberpunk 2077 with innovation and new things to see and honestly as a retro studio we do not see much change in anything in the new games we didn't 15 years ago. We love how old games were simple and none instructive, we believe that this generation of gamers are too spoiled when it comes to help and instructions. We read all our comments and appreciate each one as well as yours. We will take what you have to heart and work on a better experience for gamers. Thanks again for the feed back and Stay Retro

[Pico Rubber 2024]

Hmm, not much of a fan of idle/clicker games in the first place, so feel free to take that into consideration, but I found this to be pretty subpar. Typically I feel the most important aspect of idle/clicker games is for it to, almost like a slot machine, dazzle the player with feedback that's so juicy and satisfying that it gets them addicted, and this has absolutely none of that (especially since it doesn't even default to having the sound on!)

Basically, it currently feels more like an alpha that's not ready for public consumption yet: it's functional, sure, but it doesn't have that special sauce to make it entertaining yet. As you mentioned in the description, ElRandomGMD's version of Pico Clicker has a bit more juice to it, but it's missing the innovative rubbing feature you have, as well as the other options: if only you could combine your powers to create a super version!

ElRandomGMD responds:

Sorry for your bad experience :(

[Power Solenoid Demo]

Whoa, this was quite the experience! Game has some immaculately trippy and weird vibes that pervade the entire experience that I think hit the right balance where, despite being a tad confusing, the game overall remains surprisingly intuitive and intriguing in a way that makes you want to delve deeper into the mystery. I certainly enjoyed my journey both through understanding what was going down and the various gameplay genres you've got, be it pinball, shmup, boss fights, and so on! Consider me hooked and looking forward for more!

In terms of feedback:

*The game can be a bit rough and glitchy at times. I got crushed by a block horizontally and upon respawning from death, I was nowhere on screen, yet the game kept going (think I was outside the boundaries?) I also phased through a barrier with an orbit smash that I don't think I should've been able to, especially since it didn't work on another similar barrier: probably just wonky collision physics at play.

*I found the orbit smash a bit frustrating, as I wasn't sure if I was understanding what its purpose was: is it simply a dash, or is there more to it? I mostly avoided using it because the charge-up time is unbearably long.

*Text can be very difficult to read due to its small size and whatever grainy filter or compression you've got. I don't mind a bit of visual flair, but readability should never be sacrificed.

By the way, the damage sound takes me right back to Marble Madness: was that an intentional homage?

jupitron responds:

Thank you so much for your time and video, was really helpful. I'm happy that you could see through all and still enjoy the game. Hope we meet again in the future.

[READY YOUR RUDDER]

Hey, this is a really fun and cool survival arcade experience! I really love the charming and lively vibes coming off of it, and I enjoy the core concept of every power-up you accrue coming with a new enemy being introduced, where sometimes that enemy is a direct counter to that power-up. It's a bit of a shame that whatever strategic value there would be to picking or not picking certain power-ups is inevitably lost once you get them all, but still, it's neat and I found myself getting addicted to weaving my way through the chaos and surviving as long as I could, especially since the game feels very fair and generous with its hitboxes.

Obviously I'd love if it had more meat on its bones because its got such a good core, whether it be new content or some sort of randomization to increase replayability, but for what it is, especially considering its a game jam game, it's solid.

I was a bit curious about the way the pirate keeps asking for gold, especially since we never seem to accrue any. Maybe some sort of cut content, like maybe it was planned that you needed to get gold that appears while dodging threats, but now they just assume that you come across a gold piece every wave despite it not being visible?

Was also curious about the crows nest and what its penalty is: I think it was doing something with the hitboxes, maybe increasing them in size a bit? Couldn't tell for sure.

FishDev responds:

Thank you for the compliments!! I'm thinking about expanding the game somehow, but in full honesty, I'm not totally sure where to take it. At a certain point, stuff would just get too chaotic, and more importantly, the upgrades that provide the controls -- which are the most important ones design-wise -- would get lost amongst any new upgrades I come up with that, most likely, wouldn't provide new controls. I'm honestly still chewing on it, well after release haha.

There's a few super minor QoL changes I have planned (e.g. making it so that the player can't accidentally skip the ending wanted poster if they happen to be pressing Z when they die) but I want to hold off on releasing any updates until the itch version gets its uploads unlocked, to keep the 2 pages in sync. One of the game jams this was submitted to is still having the judges look at the games, so I currently can't upload anything on the itch page.

The gold thing was sort of a mistake/oversight on my part. I wanted to give the character a lot of charm and thought "pirates love gold lol" without once thinking "I literally never give the player gold..." Maybe I could drop a gold coin on the player or something? Not sure yet lol

As for the crow's nest -- yup!! Sort of hard to telegraph though. Basically, every so often, a crow lands on it, and increases your hitbox by a pretty large margin (hence "bad luck"). The original plan was for there to be a few potential debuffs, like speed loss or increased spawn rates, and there'd be a bit of text going "Speed Down" or "Enemies Up" or something like that, but that ended up being too distracting amongst all the chaos on the screen so I cut it. For now, it's just the hitbox increase, I try getting the player's attention with a white flash on the hitbox when the crow lands, but admittedly I know that still isn't enough. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!!

[Portal Patrol]

Game certainly has some stylish presentation to it that got my hopes up, and I do think the basic gunplay is rather juicy as well as the whole concept of recruiting AI partners potentially interesting, but it feels like the game shows you everything it has to offer in a few seconds, and without any sort of sense of progression or evolution through new enemy types, new partners, boss battles, or other changes, it just feels like a rather boring, repetitive, and simplistic game.

I'm bummed out because it looks great on first glance and made me think of greats like Portal Defenders, but really doesn't have enough meat on its bones for a satisfying and addictive experience: real style over substance case here.

Doesn't help either that managing the AI partners feels very frustrating in how weak they are: I'd much prefer they be invincible, even if it made them much weaker to balance it.

Tyler responds:

Appreciate the feedback my dawg. I live for FutureCopLGF reviews. I agree with everything you said, we want to make an updated version. Your feedback is valuable.

[Citizen Pico: Pico's School IV]

Hmm, it's a decent little point n click adventure pico fangame that certainly has a nice sense of nostalgia to it and an interesting future storyline, but I couldn't help but feel rather underwhelmed by it!

The storyline has a lot of potential as an interesting sequel...but it's over before you know it and barely makes any sense. The world is large and it's got a lot of nice environmental interactions like opening lockers and turning on faucets...but none of it feels particularly meaningful as there are no fun easter eggs or flavor text, leaving the world feeling empty.
It's got puzzles...but it reuses the box moving twice for no reason and having to shoot the skull pile makes no logical sense (why not move the skulls out of the way like the boxes?) It's got a cool final boss fight...but it's a very dumb and simplistic DPS race that's way too punishing as it makes you play the whole game over if you die.

As said, certainly has some potential, but it just felt rather short and unsatisfying to me. Good attempt, at least! Oh yeah, one more thing: the music is way too damn loud!

Kolumbo responds:

Pleasure reading your review, thank you!

Most of the negatives you listed I agree with, they're a product of poor planning and cutting corners to make it on time. Not an excuse, but it is what it is.

On the bright side, if I do another one sometime down the line - or something similar - I now know how much time stuff takes, so avoiding these issues should be easy!

Thanks again

[Pico's Date]

I'm not usually one for visual novels, but I found this to be really enjoyable! The dialogue and characters were quite humorous and charming, and there was an incredible amount of amusing choices and creative endings that made it so addicting to replay over and over! Definitely feels like there was a good amount of effort put into this: was surprised at how many of the endings and events got custom art to present them instead of just fading to black like so many others would do.

If I were to have any complaints, it's that there is a brief period at the start where, since nobody has nametags yet, it can be confusing to determine who is talking, be it Pico, the main character, narration, internal thoughts, and so on. Yes, I know it was done somewhat intentionally as the character's haven't been introduced yet, and there's an amusing joke in there, but it would still be nice if there were some placeholder nametags even before they've been introduced, with names like '???' or 'You/MC'.

Also I've recently switched from Velveeta to Kraft, but thank god I answered with my old preference first!

Hattsoff responds:

Super glad to hear that you enjoyed it! And thank you so much for your feedback!! I'll try and keep that name place-holder in mind for next time! If you didn't get a chance to peek through the description ('cause it's long, and I don't blame you if you didn't look X,D) this is actually my first game!

The idea was to make something that I've been wanting to see for a super long time now. A Pico dating sim set in the Pico's School universe and treated as a Pico game first and a date sim second. :3

I won't yap your ears off anymore, but I do plan on making other Pico related games like this one! I have an idea or two already brewing on the stove. <3

(He never liked that processed powder cheese flavor. He doesn't explain it, but you can easily just add milk and shredded cheese just as easy and it doesn't taste nearly as wack. I dunno, he has standards with his cheese I guess LOL)

[PICO.exe]

Despite the fact that this creepypasta stuff kinda makes me roll my eyes and I'm certainly not a fan of getting my eardrums blown out, I feel like I gotta give this some credit as it did have some decent effort put into it and pulled off a fun little experience. Certainly a lot of fun tricks like the way it triggered the pop-up and remembered my refusal from the first time when I tried to refuse again by freezing, and I thought the whole alternate take on the Pico's School story was amusing. Sure, it cribs a lot of stuff blatantly from Undertale and such, but hey, I kinda did that too in one of my games, so who am I to cast stones?

You'll laugh, but I actually didn't even realize there was a whole 'game' portion attached to this as my first session had me just refusing and then leaving, haha. I'll admit, though, that it might've been for the best as I did find the 'game' portion to be a bit meh and so inelegant that it actually took me out of the whole experience, so perhaps there's a better way to do that aspect (like maybe it shouldn't let you retry as it kind of reduces the amount of terror you feel).

mrstiK101 responds:

Heya! Tysm for da critical feedbacks

That freezing part was TOTALLY unintentional, but I guess it ain't a bug no more. It's a feature XD.

And I later realized the kill or be killed part was from flowey, I guess playing undertalefor 100+ hours did something to my brain.

I had to time crunch, so i coudn't add any gameplay to it, but the next versions might have a LOT of gameplay, I have some stuff in my mind about it.

Thx

[Core Breach - CAMERA update]

Not too shabby! For the most part this game feels very well-constructed, both from a presentation and gameplay mechanics standpoint. I enjoyed the combination of snake movement with shooting, and the decision to have your bullets feed from your health as well as have currency left on the ground too long turn into enemies added a lot of strategic depth! Pardon the pun, but this game feels like it has a pretty good 'core' in place, and I got quite addicted to the frantic nature of the battles!

In terms of feedback:

*It's not too bad, but I'm a bit miffed at how the camera moves during combat, as I feel like it is completely unnecessary since the battlefield is already perfectly fit to the view, and moving it only serves to cut off parts of the field or throw off my aiming. I say just keep it static positioned.

*As nice as it is to keep the data bits being spent, it can take too long for them to be spent when costs get high (which can happen as early as the 2nd upgrade). I'd say either speed it up for high costs so that spending always takes around the same amount of time no matter what, or allow us to click to speed it up even further or even skip it.

*I swear there were a few times where the controls would bug out on me, like I'd try to activate an ability and it just wouldn't go off, leading to me dying because I was counting on it to get me out of a jam. Even though I don't think it's because it was still on cooldown and I just didn't see it, I'd argue that if it was the case, I'd like more feedback then, like for it to play a sound and pulse red if I try to use when it isn't available.

*Shop could use a few more niceties, like being able to see our current abilities so we can decide whether we want to get an upgrade before choosing it (and be able to back out of an upgrade and pick something else if desired).

*Was curious whether the upgrade room could have a bit more strategic purpose to it. For example, even if the upgrade room is finally open to you, maybe there could be a bonus for putting it off, like maybe you get a score streak if you stay in the game long and it resets once you go for an upgrade, or maybe the enemies keep getting harder but going into the upgrade room blows them up and you want to save that for when things get too hairy for maximum gains.

*My biggest complaint is that while the game is nice, it ultimately feels a tad bit pointless, lacking a sort of long-term goal and sense of progression/evolution: perhaps if it had a stronger narrative, plot setup or acknowledged ending you're going for, or more interesting checkpoints or changeups like bosses, stronger enemies or different biomes with new mechanics or obstacles and so on.

Looking forward to seeing how it evolves! As said, it definitely has a good core to it, which means you've already got the most important part in place.

EDIT: I'm liking a lot of the recent changes that have been made! I agree that I think the game works better without the overall metaprogression and that it should be run-based, for example.

GamesByLaurence responds:

Wow first of thank you for taking the time to give me this valuable feedback!!

I was super happy to read it as my new update that is coming out later today addresses a lot of your comments!

As for the camera movement I understand what you mean. I have tried to move it less.. It used to be a lot more zoomed in! I find that keeping it static kind makes the game feel very slow. I will experiment a bit more with it!

The spending of the data bits being slow has been resolved! A couple of people have pointed out that it takes far too long and it now takes a fixed amount of time no matter the cost.

I believe you not being able to use your skill was due to not having one body piece. Some attack skills require at least one body piece to use so it could have been due to that. However you are completely right... feedback is needed! I will patch this in today before releasing the new update.

As for your feedback on the shop. I plan to add a way of seeing your current worm stats at a quick glace.. and I also felt that there should be some more strat involved when it comes to passive skills.. The passive buffs are no longer permanent and the data bits no longer carry over from breach to breach. This allows two things as I see it. By not spending your hard earnt data bits on passive buffs you go for higher scores. As spending data bits lowers your score multiplier. It also means that everyone is on the same playing field and the game rewards high skill rather than players that have grinded out the buffs. I believe this adds a little bit more strategy. I am also tihnking about adding a combo system that rewards players who stay out of the upgrade zone for longer.

As for your last point I also understand. At the moment there is no narrative in the game. It's in my head! I need to work on placing more purpose and story into the game so that players get more of a drive to keep playing! Bosses are definitely on the list! I have added new challenge waves and a new wave system to the upcoming patch later today which I hope also adds some flair into the game.

Thanks very much for your feedback.. it is super valuable and I hope you like the changes that are coming in todays patch!