FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cursed Dreams]

I really liked the concept behind this game: going into the dreams of each family member who has their own themed minigame is promising for helping to keep things fresh and interesting with a lot of variety. And I did like that walking around the house wasn't just a vehicle to get to the family members: there were a lot of interesting interactables with fun flavor text for people who want to explore!

But at the end of the day, all of the minigames felt incredibly simplistic, bland, and one-note: sure, there were a lot of them, but it was a real quantity over quality situation where none of them were particularly fun or deep, all of them feeling like they put the bare minimum effort in design. Some of them at least kept things short to match their mechanical depth, but then you had games like the sister's top-down shooter which overstayed its welcome: seeing that I had to kill 100 dolls made me practically quit right then and there. If I were to sum it up, this felt like a clone of Action 52: more games doesn't always equal more fun!

Pitigamedev responds:

Thank you for the detailed feedback as always. I hope one day I will make a game you will 100% enjoy.

[Parking Ticket Mayhem]

Hah, quite the amusing game! I've always thought that if I were rich, I'd love to have a room filled with breakable objects and weapons where I could de-stress, so the idea of creating a rage game is right up my alley. And considering we're on Newgrounds, this feels like a close brother to the Assassin games where you can really get out what's grinding your gears.

At the same time, however, the game was a bit less satisfying than I hoped. While it was amusing to smash cars and even discover that I could smash buildings and shoot as well, the amusement was short-lived as it soon became quite monotonous due to the lackluster feedback and rather shallow world that doesn't allow for much creativity. Even more disappointing was that, after taking the time to smash everything, the only reward afterwards were just more of the same cars falling from the sky to smash once again, instead of something new or game-changing.

I understand this game likely didn't have lofty ambitions or anything and I don't mean to be down on it, but it's a great concept and I would've loved if this game just had more to make the act of smashing more satisfying. More detailed damage modeling, hit-freeze and knockback and screenshake, more explosive effects, charge attacks that absolutely blow shit away to a ridiculous degree, more fun toys to wreak house with: just take everything to eleven, like a modded version of Teardown or Saints Row!

Anyway, hope you're feeling better now that you got it out, haha.

Raccoon-Formality responds:

hey, yeah, i made a comment on your youtube video but i'll just respond here also.

thank you for playing, i really appreciate that and the feedback. I made this game in a week right after finishing another project so yeah it's not exactly my magnum opus.

i am feeling better but i do still have a lot of rage for a continuation at some point. i want to do like a directors cut and release it on steam or something, idk, i'm really just going with the flow.

also, i'm quite new to newgrounds lol, I usually just post my games on itch.io but this one was doing very well on itch so i thought i'd try some other platforms as well. So yeah, i am not very well versed in the LORE of newgrounds lol.

anyways, thank you, have a nice day

[Fall from Space]

Hmmm, this is quite the interesting Fallout/Zelda 2 adventure you got here!

Was definitely quite impressed with it in a lot of respects, obviously starting out strong with the very stylish and cinematic (albeit a bit over-indulgent) opening that plays when you start. But the game itself also had such a huge scale and variety to it: side-scrolling action sequences alongside top-down exploration, so many people to talk to and objects to examine with loads of flavorful text, a huge world map with all sorts of locations and random encounters, tons of secrets hidden around, lots of quests and unlockables...it goes on and on! Clearly, a lot of effort and love has been put into crafting a huge adventure here!

Having said that, though, the game also felt incredibly awkward, stuttery and laggy to play at times. Combat was particularly bad feeling with no satisfying and intuitive feedback to it: just made me never feel like I was connecting with my blows, and I was constantly getting surprised when I got hit despite being so far away or giving my best efforts to dodge the telegraphed attacks. While combat was the worst, the awkwardness also extended to other elements, like the pause menu taking so long to come up after a press, dropped inputs, or weird collision detection and such. I understand these might be limitations of the engine, and while you have my sympathies, it doesn't stop it from feeling bad nonetheless.

Apart from that, there were some other minor complaints, like how tricky it can be to keep track of quests: it seems like the log only tracks your main quest, but none of the other quests like tracking down the child. Yes, if you go back to the quest giver, they'll likely tell you something about what your current setup is, but still, that's so inconvenient and they didn't always provide all of the details you needed.

I dunno, I'm a bit mixed on this one. Like I said, I really appreciate this huge world you've built with so many characters and quests and such, but as much as I wanted to keep going, I couldn't get over how sluggish and bad the combat and general movement felt: it just sapped my motivation. Almost felt like the game would be much better if it scrapped combat and just stuck to exploring: perhaps that might better fit the limitations of the engine, assuming there is no better way.

JoelJGames responds:

Hi, thanks a lot for taking the time to leave so much feedback. It's really useful.

Lag and sluggishness I'll have to put down to perhaps taxing the Gameboy hardware a bit *too* hard, it's built to run on the 1989 OG Gameboy so I'm limited to how fast it can run in general and in New Grounds it's the ROM running in a Gameboy emulator (so replicates how it would be). It'd (hopefully) be more impressive running on the original device, but I'd still like it to be enjoyable in the browser!

Saying that, I'm going to make a note to look at how I can improve the responsiveness of the combat as while not modern console comparable, I'd like it still to be fun! The impacts in particular, I'd like them to feel more meaningful.

The pause menu has a wait before it, it was to work around a bug if someone pressed it straight away so I'll make a note to see if there's a better solution than that so it doesn't suffer on every press.

More detail in the log I agree with this too, I'll try and get some more guidance in there for the missing child quest!

Thanks again for the feedback

[THREAT != CONTAINED]

Not too shabby execution of your classic "avoid the stalker while collecting macguffins" horror game! It's not exactly the most original thing, but nevertheless I found it to be a decent short and sweet spooky adventure: of note is that I found the presentation and graphics to be quite cool, especially all of the various caged monsters (almost made me feel like I was viewing an art collab) and I appreciated that you didn't utilize ear-shattering jump scares! I also liked the small touch of being able to race by the guy at the start to interrupt him: always cool to see a skip mechanic be modeled in-universe!

If I was to have any complaints, it would primarily be that I could barely understand a single word that anybody said: would really help if you had some subtitles, or at the very least reduced the distortion that's present in everyone's dialogue. And in regards to skipping the dialogue at the start: as I said, its cute that you can do that, but it also might've been better if it just starts you off in the power room on subsequent plays?

Frosty responds:

Thanks for the reviews as always!!

[Greedy Goblins]

Not too shabby for a little retro-style arcade game! Overall found it quite the charming experience and loved the little touches it had, like the funny cutscenes between levels that reminded me of Pacman with its intermissions. It starts out a bit slow and was feeling quite repetitive and unchallenging, but later on the levels did start to get more creative and provide new obstacles and layouts to keep things interesting.

The main complaints I have against the game:

*There is this really annoying friction that is apparent when you run against the walls that can slow you down or stop you in your tracks: feels very unnecessary and gets in the way constantly.

*There would be plenty of times that I would plant a bomb next to an archer, only for it to immediately explode and kill us both: I understand that they can set them off, but I swear I was leaving even of a space between us and it just felt dumb.

*As stated before, the levels can be a bit silly in how unchallenging and relaxed they are at times: most of the goblins and obstacles and collectables just felt like window dressing at times, not actually providing any sort of interesting risk/reward or strategy to take care of them. Yes, the bombs do provide a bit of excitement with how they can hurt you just as much as they can hurt the enemy, but usually it wasn't that much to keep me interested. I dunno, I know I'm being vague, but it just felt like it was lacking some core appeal or mechanic.

*It felt like I was constantly holding the run button to the point where I feel like the default speed should just be running and the button can be removed so I can relax, or perhaps invert the buttons purpose to become the walk button instead since it is needed much more rarely (if at all).

KageKMB responds:

Glad you liked it! If I'm not mistaken, this is the highest you've rated one of our games.

Response to the complaints:

-Wall issue should be fixed, (changed movement from move_and_slide() to move_and_collide() ). Please tell me if it's better.

-On adjusting the bomb next to archer issue, unlike the walking it'd require significant adjustments to the backed of the game. Which in turn requires a lot of testing to make sure it doesn't break the game. I'm not going to rule out, but it won't be adjusted within this week lol. Hopefully resizing the hit-box does the trick.

-A trend with your feedback on CubePunk's titles tends to be related towards the complexity/difficulty being a bit low; Keep in mind the majority of people who play browser games skew more casual - and majority of feedback praises the rate the challenge increases difficulty level (with some saying the peak challenge was even too much). Future games will try to add "challenge" or "expert" game modes; made for the hardcore players; so that'll hopefully fix that issue. In the case of Greedy Goblins - an iterative sequel with a harder difficulty cap is more likely than an added game mode.

- If I ever updated it to reversing the walk/run toggle - it'd be an option in the settings and not the default. Going against the muscle memory/convention that's been a thing since SMB1; it'd frustrate the majority of players.

[Sofia the Witch Curse of the Monster Moon - Demo]

Oh, this was a rough one for me. I really, REALLY want to like this game as it's just so bloody cute and charming on many levels, and I feel like there's been a lot of love and considerable effort into constructing this. While I'm a bit more of an action junkie, I did find the simple low-stakes scavenger hunt-style gameplay where you're searching and collecting friends to be cute and fun. All in all, there's a lot of potential here and it legitimately feels like it could be a great adventure that stands alongside other games like Kirby's Dreamland, Super Mario World, McKids, and so on.

But unfortunately, I found the gameplay to just be quite boring and repetitive, mostly due to how sluggish it is to move Sofia through these arduous and maze-like environments. For such a cute game, it was actually quite the stressful affair, and not in the good challenging way, but in a tedious way. Whenever I fell from a tree branch from a unsuccessful jump or died, I groaned at having to make the trip back: compare this to movement in a Mario or Kirby game, where I'd be glad to zip, zoom, and jump right back to where I was. I also hated having to check every nook and cranny to see if there's some friend lingering on the edge of the screen that needs a leap of faith to reach. It didn't help that every level just seemed to be the same thing over and over without any new things being introduced to keep it novel. In short, the core movement and traversal of Sofia is just so damn unsatisfying compared to other platformers, and due to the environments being so static and large with no flow or fun obstacles, it just amplifies the boredom.

In terms of other feedback beyond the core gameplay:

*When you use the wand to make bubbles, you shouldn't be able to make them within walls, and due to the way the wand currently makes bubbles at an exact position no matter what, this is what unfortunately happens. If you create a bubble when standing close to the wall, it should create the bubble at the nearest open position: it just makes more sense.

*I understand that water is a witch's enemy, but I was shocked when I was killed by jumping into a waterfall: I thought I only needed to look out for jumping into a pond of water, because waterfalls looked like they were just part of the background, not the foreground, and thus I thought I was just jumping past them, not into them.

*When you bounce on a turtle enemy to flip them over, you shouldn't take damage when you land on their flipped state afterwards: it just feels unnecessary and cruel and damage should only be given when you make contact with their unflipped state.

*The save/load function didn't seem to be working for me. I beat the first two levels of the forest zone, took a break, and then when I came back, I was back at the moon altar and the first two levels were locked again. Why did it not save after beating those levels?

As much as I'm harsh on this, I hope, considering this is a demo, that the feedback can be helpful in making this out to be the best it can be in the final version!

jakemacher responds:

Thank you for all the feed back. I'm going to look into some of your suggestions.

Saving is done manually. In your home there is a spell book where you save your progress. After you complete the tutorial level the owl tells you this, and the cat in your house reminds you too. To make this easier on the player if you hit select you can teleport right back home where you can save your game quickly.

The bubble going into walls is not something I can control sadly, it is a limit of game engine I'm using, sprites do not have collision detection like that.

[Spooky Season]

Wow, what a cute, cozy little game! Always enjoy a little scavenger hunt adventure and this delivered that, as well as a quaint and goofy world filled with funny characters and wacky dialogue. I was also impressed with some of the more surprisingly elaborate little touches, like a whole minigame just for petting the cat and for sweeping the cobwebs: not necessary, but the effort is appreciated!

If I were to have any complaints, its that I was a bit bummed out at how automated it was at times. As stated before, I liked that it had a little minigame to sweep the cobwebs instead of just fading to black and fading back in with a clean room. So, when it came to events like having to know a magic spell to undo the barrier or knowing the exact characteristics of the headless horseman's pumpkin, it was disappointed that you didn't need to memorize those facts and be quizzed upon them: instead the barrier is automatically undone when you learn it, and the pumpkin can be brute forced by just picking up the only interactable one. It's fine in the grand scheme of things, but still, it's what I felt at the time.

I was also a little bummed that there is no save/load feature. I understand it's not the longest game, but it'd still be nice to have. Nonetheless, I had enough fun that, despite losing my progress, I still replayed it to make it to the end, so take that as a compliment!

arudasics responds:

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you appreciated the details I spent so much time on! I only gave myself 7 days to make the game by myself, otherwise save/load would have been the next feature I added! Thank you for replaying!

As for the spell, Skellington the Magical isn't the smartest perhaps and actually says the words to unlock the Witch's hut himself. I do like the idea of quizzing the player though, I might add some variation of this in the sequel next year. As for the Horseman's head, I actually wanted to add the ability to brute force the pumpkin, because unfortunately some of my play-testers got very frustrated checking each individual pumpkin. The compromise was to make the interaction area as small as functionally possible so that I would decrease the chances of just bumping into it.

[Featherless-Cake Delivery!]

Hmmm, this was a rough one for me! I really want to like it: the game makes a solid first impression with wonderful graphics and a cute world filled with amusing characters, and the idea of making these deliveries while also exploring to acquire upgrades to handle all the obstacles that get in the way of said deliveries was quaint.

So much got in the way of the adventure though!

First and foremost, the game just feels really stiff and laggy. General movement and actions just felt really awkward with strange delays and ignored inputs: felt like I needed to be overly slow and delicate with the game, like it wouldn't be able to keep up and break if I was to play naturally. There were tons of weird events such as, if you break a pot with a heart in it, the space where the pot is will still awkwardly block your movement until the shattering animation and heart has disappeared.

The game was also rather confusing and unintuitive. Why is a furball projectile, something that's technically very soft, necessary to destroy crates, when you'd think that would be handled with stronger melee attacks? If anything, I feel projectiles are best used to hit out-of-reach buttons or something akin to that. Also couldn't there have been some sort of hint that a sponge could be given to the frog, like maybe having the frog say something like 'oh i can't help you right now, i have a massive spill to clean up': I only gave them the sponge out of random desperation. And why is there no interaction prompt above the bunny cop when there is over everyone else, especially considering how important it is to talk to them?

As if that wasn't enough, the game also descends into outright being buggy and glitchy. I had plenty of times where an enemy would be invincible against my attacks for no reason. I found it incredibly awkward how when you pause or look at the map, when you go back to the game, the level will have reset to have everything back in their starting positions instead of preserving where they were. Speaking of pausing, my game eventually crashed when I tried to switch from the map to the pause menu too quickly, and when I reset, suddenly I was locked in a state where I had already finished my deliveries yet still hadn't delivered to anyone...and my jump was suddenly really powerful?

I think it could be a nice game with some more time in the oven: right now it is simply too janky. Not sure how much of it is limitations of the GB Studio engine, but as much as I can sympathize if that's the case, what feels bad is bad, no matter what the excuse.

Elv13s responds:

in my testing the game i havent encountered any lag or slowdown, unless theres more enemies and projectiles on screen. i dont know if the lag is an issue with the game itself, as ive checked with other browsers/emulators.

yeah the pot/heart sprites share collisions so im at fault for not fixing that part. but i feel like the movement and inputs are fine in my part, will tweak them in the future when this game is gonna be a full game eventually.

the furball is a projectile that so happens to be overpowered, in the future, i will reverse the tail and furball's function so its a bit "realistic".

the hint on the sponge was the frog's animation is he's scrubbing the fish tanks, it was supposed to be a "so this is where i needed it" moment, and the game doesnt really lock you in progression if yuou dont notice it at first, the game is open enough that you can just do the frog mission last, but yeah ill have the rog say lines that he needs it in the future.

the level resets every time you switch scenes because its the enemies arent really killed ion the game, just stunned.

oh there was a bug like that? thanks for pointing that out,

thanks for playing the game and giving feedback, i promise ill strive to e a better dev

[Six Seats Left]

Cute little game! I really enjoyed the concept of picking people who deserve to get the last seats on the ark: might be easy to think "oh, I'll just pick everyone who isn't rude to me" or something akin to that, but considering the situation, I think its understandable that some people might be desperate or rude and that doesn't necessarily make them a bad person or unworthy (and the endings reflect that in some cases). So many factors to think about beyond that as well, such as diversity, "women and children first", and so on: very fun to ponder if you allow yourself to get immersed. Enjoyed the epilogues as well as they were nice to see play out, and I was especially impressed that some characters actually influence others: going that extra mile is quite nice, as you'd expect it to just be all character-specific with no overlap. Speaking of going the extra mile, I like the subtle touch of everyone turning to stare at you as you walk around talking to everyone: really amplifies the stress and importance of the situation!

Only big problems I had was that there was no way to fast-forward text: it's common for games to allow you to press the button mid-dialogue to automatically fill out the text to the last, whereas this game forces you to wait for the text to play out, making multiple playthroughs quite annoying (or even regular playthroughs for speed-readers). Speaking of multiple playthroughs, its also a bit annoying that you're forced to listen to them talk before being able to make a decision: I understand, but it would be nice if you could have the option to choose to talk or immediately skip to decision (after all, even on a first playthrough, perhaps you would just want to choose passengers by random to be fair instead of letting yourself be influenced?)

F1Krazy responds:

I'm planning an update now that the jam is over, and allowing text to be skipped definitely need to go on the list. Thanks for reminding me, I almost forgot!

[The Skibidi Toilet Collab]

I have no idea what the heck skibidi toilet is, but this seemed like a somewhat decent art collab (though quite rough in a lot of aspects, though)!

For the good, I like that this art collab didn't just default to the usual boring slideshow presentation and instead opted for this sliding showcase angle instead. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty much a slideshow at heart so I'm not giving you full points, but something about being able to slide everything smoothly to the side and seeing the art pieces as if they were statues on a table: it lends a bit more physicality and immersion to the experience and deserves some small amount of credit. The general presentation as well had a somewhat goofy charm to it all, especially with the title screen and transition into the gallery, albeit sometimes it was to the point of being garish and hurting my eyes.

As for the bad...while I can understand a lot of the mistakes I'm about to list off excused or brushed off as being part of some sort of goofy charm, I don't feel the same:

I felt like the text was very difficult to read due to the text box opacity being very low and the art pieces overlapping too much. Furthermore, the text was difficult to read because there were a lot of mistakes that could've stood to have been proofread a bit, and the text wasn't formatted properly and would even bleed off of the edges of the box at times. Again, I can understand if some of the typos were intentional, but still.

There was also some missing interactivity that I would've liked to see, such as being able to click on the art pieces to zoom into them or just have a clearer standalone view of them, as well as being able to click on artist's names to go to their NG profiles, thus making it easier to see their other art and potentially follow them.

All in all, it may not be great, but it's an ok art collab: always nice to see little community events like this.

name responds:

Thou know not skibidi toilet!? thou might not but join from England. Thou are belike settling, what's thy name?