FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ozzy's Rockin' Diner!]

This one was a bit of a rollercoaster for me, never being quite sure how to feel about it!

First impressions were pretty positive: I liked the whole appeal of this Atari-demake of Five Nights at Freddy, and I was impressed that it was all being done through RPG Maker as it really doesn't look like it from a cursory glance. It was starting out a bit slow, but I had hope for the story it was building up.

As it went on, though, I was getting quite bored. Every day was just mindlessly following very boring orders and I was confused on what this game was even supposed to be. Will I ever have to do something interesting, make choices, improvise, and so on? Yes, the game was delivering little tidbits of intrigue, but I've seen so many of these Five Nights at Freddy's parodies that all try to add some elaborate twist that I've grown tired with it all. Maybe that's on me.

I stuck through because of sunk cost fallacy and was finally rewarded with a chase sequence! I was excited...but then let down by how many times I needed to reload my save to finally find the stupid way you're supposed to get through it. Why in the world do those cones move like that? It doesn't make any sense! It's a miracle I didn't quit!

I pushed on, and as silly as it was, I did like the whole twist ending with the fake "new game" screen and getting revenge and all that. And with that it was over! On one hand, I do think it was somewhat memorable and I enjoyed it, but on the other hand, I felt like it was a bit boring and could've used a bit more work to make it fun. Definitely had a lot of potential, and it was interesting enough to keep me going despite my reservations, so that's something!

Azeleon responds:

Thanks for the review! I appreciate all the feedback, and I'll definitely be taking notes for future games or updates. I've never written a horror story before, so I didn't expect this one to be super interesting, but glad to see it was still enjoyable in some parts regardless.

[Driftmania]

Wow, this is a great little top-down racing game! It's simple, but lord have mercy, it just feels so bloody smooth, and nothing beats the satisfaction of pulling off a perfect turn or cut corner! I got really addicted to optimizing my routes to get more medals to unlock more courses, and I was glad to see that the courses kept introducing new elements like puddles, boosts, jumps, and so on!

Yes, the environments can be a bit bland and it can be a bit of a bummer that there are no other drivers to race against, but not only do I understand the limitations of working in Pico-8, but I was surprised to see that the game has cool car customization and ghost cars, so I think the right choices to focus on were made in development. I was also really impressed at some of the special effects for stuff like the puddles: it looked fantastic!

At first, I was a little aghast at how difficult the medals were in this game. I mean jeez, I was cutting corners like crazy and pulling off perfect drifts, but I still haven't even gotten a gold medal on the first level! The first level! But then again, I do feel like games give out gold medals and SSS's way too easy nowadays, so it's nice to have a game make you really earn it. It's not even that bad either because you can unlock levels just through bronze and silvers, which feels fair.

Frenchie14 responds:

Really looking forward to watching your Newgrounds Monthly playthrough!

[Blinded Sieve]

Quite the odd game! I found it really strange how comedic and silly the game was considering it was trying to be horror, but I really tried my best to give it the benefit of the doubt that the juxtaposition of horror and comedy might've been done intentionally to let my guard down or something to that effect. Alas, despite my best efforts, the game just ending up feeling incredibly dumb, retreading tired-out horror cliches with no sense of impact or style. Whether it was intentional or not aside, at least it was good for a few chuckles: ain't nothing funnier than blasting your son and being told you got the bad ending, like no shit I did!

By the way, how in the world do you screw up a title screen so badly? In what world is the highlighted option not the selected option? Was quite the awkward first impression to try and start the game, only to find out I just quit it, haha!

ChalTheChalk responds:

HELLO!! i really appreciate the feedback! thanks for playing! so yeah, since this is my first horror game ever i'm not really used to making games like these, and yeah you're pretty much right with the horror cliches, i use em to save time to finish a short game for a game jam lol. I promise that i'll do better next time! thank you very much for playing!

also the highlighted options is my bad lol, not really good when it comes to ui design like these xp

[PLOMO]

This one was a bit of a odd duck! On one hand, it was a very pretty and cinematic experience, and I enjoyed the adventure of figuring out what the game was even about and how it operated. For example, I felt overjoyed that I was able to intuit exactly how to handle the first duel without any overt instructions. On the other hand, though, the game was just pretty repetitive, I didn't like how the duels were hard-coded in terms of timing as I would prefer an actual reflexive challenge ala Samurai Kirby, and I have no idea what the twist at the end was or what the point of the story was, amusing and baffling as it was to experience. Memorable in a way, but not entirely in a positive sense, haha!

TheGorondorf responds:

Thanks for the feedback! Never really expected to gather attention at all with PLOMO, but if it lingers on people's mind I'll be happy no matter the reasons for it (next game I'm working on will be more traditional in terms of everything, so I guess that one will be more enjoyable).

[Your turn to Disembark]

Pretty cool story game you got here! Definitely reminded me a lot of those other 'death game'-esque stories like the Nonary Games, you know, where it's some motley crew of characters stuck in some mysterious place they're trying to escape, solving puzzles while their personalities clash and they get picked off one-by-one and so on and so forth. In that regard, this story was pretty cliche and not breaking any new ground, but hey, I was still very intrigued and wanted to figure out what the heck was going on, so you got me there! It also helped that the game has a solid sense of presentation too, and everything felt pretty smooth.

While the initial impression was solid and I was enjoying watching events play out, I have to admit that the game started to lose me. I could forgive a lot of things, such as the cliche setting and Deviant Art Fanfic OC characters as explained before, but the thing that ultimately ruined the game for me was the pacing: the story just moved way too fast that all of the deep emotional beats that the game tried to hit just came off as very shallow!

Don't get me wrong, I think writers should try to be concise, but it really didn't do this any favors and I couldn't take these deaths, redemptions, betrayals and twists seriously when they happen at such a lightning pace. Take Bree for example: even though I could see the whole 'jackass with a hidden heart of gold' coming from a mile away, it would've been fine if it played out slowly, but seeing Bree go from enemy to changing heart and gushing her whole back story at me in just two interactions just felt silly. It's impossible to take things like the hard-to-remember character's death seriously when we've known him for just a few minutes: it actually makes total sense that we'd barely remember them!

Now, credit where its due, I still was compelled to get through the rest of the game despite these pacing issues because the whole setting still intrigued me. But that's where another issue raised its head: the ending felt incredibly unsatisfying in that it didn't explain anything nor provide a believable emotional conclusion. Maybe it's just my bad luck for making the wrong choices or something, and I understand that the game implies that we should play it multiple times, but with no way to easily skip/fast-forward dialogue, I can't see myself retreading all of that ground just to see if a game that already let me down might not do it again.

Apart from all this, I do wish the game also had a bit of quality-of-life, such as allowing you to pause and save at any point, though it's not too bad as the game does a decent job at providing breaks. Also I wish the gameplay was a bit more involved beyond just talking to people: would've been nice to have some puzzles and other interactions.

I was also curious about the whole possibility to skip interacting with characters in the break periods: I wonder if that is supposed to be some sort of fast-forward to let you continue if you've already done them before, like a convenience feature, or if it's just a weird decision because you wouldn't be earning points to influence the ending.

SquidoodleDev responds:

Hiya, I’m not going to lie this was incredibly hard to read but I understand your point and agree.
I’m now going to go back through the game and see how I can improve the narrative and story so that I can hopefully make it better and more enjoyable.
- SquidoodleDev

[Bunny Bun]

Hmm, I really want to like this game, but my first impression of it was pretty rough!

I definitely do think there is a lot to like here. Sure, the platforming is a little generic, being your standard hop-n-bop with simple upgrades like dashes, but the world felt very mysterious and stylish with the way you rendered it, and I was very curious to see where the story goes. I also think that the gameplay was doing a decent job at keeping things interesting by constantly introducing new elements: breakable blocks, wall jumps, boss battles, upgrades, and so on! I also liked some of the creative enemy patterns, such as the blockers who need to be air juggled, and the cute sound effects for movement/footsteps.

But on the other hand, the gameplay and controls just felt kind of awkward and I was finding it difficult to get used to. There's just so many little things that crop up that don't allow me to get into a flow state with movement: for example, there's this weird delay where you don't cling to a wall immediately but have to wait until you start moving downward, the wall jump controls are odd in that just pressing the movement key without jump makes you jump and there's no way to drop down from a wall cling, there's no coyote time which constantly makes me miss my edge jumps, the way my dash keeps firing off if I try to jump a little too early from hitting the ground, combat feels kind of weird with its hitboxes and knockback, and so on.

There were also just some really weird design decisions, like why is the inventory so limited? Why would I ever want to remove an essential upgrade like being able to dash with some boring passive regen/lifesteal?

All of the above were things I was slowly getting used to, and like I said, I was still intrigued by the story and world, so I was going to keep playing. Or at least I was, until I decided to take a quick break, and was then shocked to realize that, despite the game having very obvious rest benches which you would think would save the game, did not save it at all, and I was forced to start all the way back at the beginning when I came back. Perhaps it is technically not a long game if you play it straight through, but still, why in the world is there no save/continue system?

EDIT: Ok, whew, there is a load/continue option, it's just hidden in the corner for some reason instead of just being front-and-center with the start button. Why in the world...well, if it's there, at the very least I can finish this game! Thank god it didn't erase my data when I started up again after missing it the first time.

That...was a pretty weird ending. I feel like it was trying to be real emotional, but it was such a last-minute exposition dump that it really didn't connect with me. I have no idea what moving the clouds was doing? How...odd.

ErikSwahn responds:

Glad you played it through! I will remember the feedback you gave. I agree with most except the coyote jump mechanic but I do not like it in other games either. It is very good to hear feedback about the story as I am new to that. There should have been more of a "build up" towards the end to make it feel less random and more impactful. I have learned that it is easier to judge than to create good work on your own. Thanks for your review :)

[Valentine's Day Art Collab '24]

Cute little art collab! Wonderful to see so much entries within this: couldn't believe the way it just kept going and going! Very well done on wrangling all of this together and getting some positivity out there.

Now I give you the loveliest gift I can think of, which is brutally honest feedback (the love nobody asks for, haha):

*The general interface is a bit of an eyesore where everything kind of blends together in bright colors, making certain features like the Previous/Next buttons difficult to read and not pop to the foreground as much as they should. Mayhaps a little bit of desaturation of the background, outlining of text, and other simple elements would help readability.

*I was a bit bummed that the collab chose a very basic slideshow presentation instead of opting for something really creative. I got a bit interested with the heart and candy box on the side as I thought that maybe they had some sort of interesting powers, like the heart being some sort of voting system or maybe sending a message to the artist, and the candy box being some sort of button to go to a random valentine or get commentary from the artist, but it seems like they're just kind of there for no important purpose. I think a more creative presentation would help viewer retention, as without some sort of interesting gimmick, I wouldn't blame a lot of people for getting bored halfway!

*There is some missing functionality that I feel should be present, such as a gallery view, zoom/pan functions for viewing the art, and being able to easily click on the artist's name to go to their NG profile for potential follows and seeing the art in its original NG page (if possible) for potential votes. I feel like more love gets spread this way when you make things easier to interface with!

*It's wonderful that you have so many entries for this, but because the list is so long and it is alphabetically sorted, I feel bad for whoever's username starts with letters like X, Y or Z as I think they're going to get absolutely shafted in that a lot of people probably won't have the patience to get to their entries at the end. Perhaps it would've been better if there were some sort of big thumbnail gallery view where you can see many at once and click on them for more details, or a search function, or maybe the list should be randomly sorted (perhaps you could even make a fun gimmick out of the randomness, like make a mailbox gacha machine that gives letters which you open up to see their cards).

Again, well done on this and your heart's in the right place, but yeah, I'm a big nitpicker and want art collabs to do more than just the bare minimum!

wamyremy responds:

omfg am i gonna be in a FutureCopLGF video.....

(actually probably not, my entry's like wayy too far on the other end LMAO)

but thank you for the feedback! <3

[Babel Adventure]

Huh, quite the interesting game you got here! I was really worried at first as it seemed a bit simplistic and a bit janky, but I was impressed at how addicted I got to scaling this tower! Something about how you have such a large and diverse cast of enemies and traps, each with their own unique patterns to contend and exploit, and combine that with trying to get coins and the mind-bending nature of using the screen edges to teleport: it creates a really cool puzzle adventure where I loved figuring out the appropriate route to make it through each screen! Not only does it keeps escalating in terms of gameplay mechanics, it does so as well with the weirdness of its story and cool music to create quite the memorable experience. Well done!

Having said that, though, the game is pretty rough and janky, as mentioned before. In terms of feedback:

*There was some jankiness and such in terms of hitboxes being a bit ill-defined and movements being a bit weird, but more so than that, it was so janky that I had a point where I got awkwardly shoved off the screen by some attacks and was stuck in limbo: unable to restart but unable to continue either, moving around in some void jail but unable to get back to the stage proper. Luckily I was still early in the game so it didn't hurt much to quit and full restart, but boy, it felt super unfair and if I was further along, that woulda been quits for me.

*Speaking of the above, it was a real bummer that this game has no save/continue option. It has checkpoints, yes, but if you close the game and come back to it, it puts you all the way back at the start, and while the game might not technically be that long, it just feels bizarre to not include such an option (especially since it would've saved me from that crash!)

*As much as I wanted to collect coins and get items and such, it just felt pointless and not worth the risk since 1) death is plentiful and resets your coins and 2) I couldn't tell what kind of item I was even buying due to a lack of information, and it was such a big risk to spend so much to try something out and get a whole heap of nothing, like that time I bought the red coin 2 pack and I still have no idea what they even did. I like the incentive to get coins as an extra challenge, but I dunno if having an item shop is necessary in this, with the way its been setup.

*While I generally liked all of the enemies and how diverse they were, there were still a couple that felt really bad, like the sudden rocks that would come from off-screen and explode: I get that its an increase in difficulty, but I dunno, it just felt unfair in how you need to memorize it and can't see any sort of telegraph for it so as to help keep it in mind, like how spikes will still have a minimal presence on the stage even when they are retracted.

DaShahRach00 responds:

Hey ! Thank you very much for this review, it is very useful !
mentioned the shop as poorly rewarding for getting parts, thank you for putting the word out there. I should have made sure to provide information on the items we are taking before purchasing them. (ps the red coin when used transforms all the coins visible on the screen into double coins)
And I note the need to have a game that saves for future games!
We will pay more attention to crash issues like this for future games! I'm glad that despite this you continued the game.
Thank you for playing it! And I'm glad you enjoyed the experience ^^

[Hive Jump 2: Survivors]

Hmm, this seems to have a lot of potential to be a fun little survivors arcade game where you blast a bunch of bugs using some nice graphics, but there were just a lot of confusing and annoying elements to it at the moment which got in my way.

For one, the UI and menus felt incredibly messy, overcrowded, and difficult to control and parse. Sometimes I could click on buttons with the mouse, while other times it required that I use the keyboard instead. Similarly, other times there would be buttons that would be faded to look like they were disabled, only for me to press them and find out they were active after all. I felt like you tried to make everything intuitive somewhat with lots of labels and prompts, but overall it was just really difficult to tell what my objective was, how to progress, what buttons do what, text was hard to read due to colors and overlaps, and so on.

Furthermore, the game loop felt really unsatisfying with the way the inventory fills to capacity almost immediately, making it incredibly risky and annoying to try and experiment with other items as I'd like to do: instead I would feel like I need to stick with what I have and just upgrade its stats in a very boring manner. Bizarre to see such a limitation in a series where they usually allow tons of weapons and equipment to create these dazzling fireworks displays of chaos. Despite me getting so many upgrades that constantly interrupted the gameplay every few seconds, it didn't feel like the game was changing significantly.

GraphiteLab responds:

Big changes to the UI in the recent update. Would love to have you play again and share your updated thoughts.