FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dear Edmund]

Hmm, quite the promising management game with tricky balancing of many aspects, including morality! Reminds me a lot of games like Yes Your Grace, Papers Please, Frostpunk and the like. For the most part it has a pretty solid presentation and cool concept, and I was intrigued to play.

At the same time, however, it had a lot of rough aspects that I felt could use some ironing out:

My biggest problem with the game is that it feels rather toothless and unsubtle. Yes, you need to make decisions to try and keep both parties happy lest you run into a game over, so you might need to make some choices you don't like here and there, but the whole crux of this game should be that it's hard to be good and easier to fall into corruption and I just wasn't feeling that. For example, whenever a choice came up where I can earn some coin by being evil, it was incredibly easy to say no, because what the hell do I need money for? I'm a superhuman who doesn't need food to survive, modifications to my house don't provide me any tangible benefits, and I have no attachment to my wife just because the game says I should! Games like Pathologic and Vampyr have strong motivations within gameplay to tempt you towards evil through selfish survival or even the greater good: this doesn't except in very shallow ways. It's so blatantly and cartoonishly black and white instead of having some interesting grey areas.

Dunno what the whole point of the contracts spilling to the ground and needing to be picked up is? Even though you put them on the shelf, they get erased on a save file being loaded, so they don't seem to have any sort of actual importance. I was also disappointed that despite me picking them up beforehand, the guy berated me for not picking them up when he should've recognized that I already had.

The 'accept/refuse' system is a bit awkward at times in how it is handled: for example, when the guy with your wage appears at the end of the shift, it gives you an option to accept or refuse, but either way results in the same thing of you getting your wage, when you'd think refusing would be spitting in their face and not wanting the wage.

Found the money system rather confusing in that you have street budget and personal funds as separate things: don't know why it can't just be one thing and I was confused about how each of them work. For example, I thought, based on the instructions, I was supposed to be not collecting the money in the safe so it goes towards the budget instead of my pockets, but every time I was forced to collect.

Would be nice if there were some quality of life changes, like being able to speed-up or click to complete text being written out. Speaking of text being written out, it seemed silly that it starts to write out the program code for specifying text color before it suddenly transforms back into regular writing. Some of the menu navigation was a bit awkward as well, like I couldn't find the way to go back in the shop menu to the root, being stuck at the end of one of the branches.

Some aspects of the menu and UI were way too tiny, especially when it came to text: could stand to make some things bigger for better readability.

Best of luck in further development!

MindTheGrease responds:

Thank you for the feedback! It’s still in beta so there are many things that need ironing out such as accepting the wage etc. The main mechanics are in place and through feedback I plan on adjusting everything to a release standard.
Cheers mate

[Dave the Game]

Ehh, this was a really weird one for me, as it's a bit of a beautiful mess, in a way!

I actually found it pretty novel that it seemed to lean heavily into some unorthodox controls and physics to create some absolutely bizarre jumping puzzles: in a way, it was rather unique and mindbending to wildly walljump and rocket around! However, the more I played, the more it felt like the game was not properly coded and was just an absolute mess, and any intentionally I assumed previously was either a mistake or an excuse: bad either way.

It's just so bloody unintuitive, janky, and lacking so much quality-of-life or refinement that I gave up. It didn't help either that the game is so tiny and doesn't explain anything effectively, along with having a very boring and grey world. It's a shame since I thought the boss fight was promising at the end, along with some of the level design and little charming bits here and there, but yeah, overall I felt like this needed way more time in the oven. I understand it's a game jam game so you were limited and did what you could, but it is what it is: it's at least neat enough that I'd like to see another attempt from you in future!

TheLoFiBoi responds:

This review was so honest and constructive all i can say is thank you for the insight and for playing the game, and you already know our next projects shall be even better!

[Primo Richards: Case 1]

Hmm, not too shabby of a detective game! Feels like it's doing a decent job recreating that 'ace attorney' visual novel style, and its got some fancy and appealing presentation to it: pretty promising stuff!

In terms of feedback:

I know it's a demo so it's still under development, but the game was pretty rough in some aspects, especially the audio department which had tons of overused sound effects (like the droplet sound) and the music cutting in and out haphazardly. It looks pretty good in most respects, though, so I'm hoping it all gets polished in future!

It can get a bit overly verbose at times. I don't know why, for example, the chief was giving me this whole history lesson and opinion piece on the victim's backstory: not only is it too much front-loaded exposition, it feels like that should be stuff I should be picking up during the case if it is relevant, while the chief, as the hard-ass he is, should just be giving me the bare minimum starting details and let me hit the street pronto!

Maybe it's just me, but I found the rhythm of the character emotes to be a bit strange? The way they emote was just a bit awkward at times, like maybe they return to neutral too quickly instead of staying with their pose, or the explosive effects are a bit too fast and confusing, or how some side characters are frozen and lacking any sort of unique poses compared to main characters, etc.

Nothing major, but there were a few typos and grammar mistakes here and there: nothing enough to hurt comprehension so it's ok, but definitively give it a once-over when you have some time.

I do also wish that there was some more quality-of-life designs, like an easy way to fast-forward text on replays: right now, it always forces you to wait for each line to load and for the characters to do their emotes, and it's a bit awkward to have to hit the arrow on the right instead of just being able to click the text box, or the whole screen, as other visual novels typically do. I also don't know why you made it that interactables like the body in the apartment don't react on mouse-over: I feel like they should act just like the other buttons do where they get highlighted.

arrogancy responds:

Excellent feedback and constructive criticism, thank you!

[Questern]

Huh, quite the interesting little game! Reminds me a lot of those goofy web comics, forum collab works or CYOA stories like Homestuck, or games like the Loathing series. It's a bit of a bummer that I'm not making any choices and am just reading a story, so I somewhat struggle to call it a game, per se, but nevertheless it is a rather charming story with very goofy and amusing art and prose.

I am a bit torn though: as much as I do like the experimental process of audience participation and all that jazz, it's only the lucky ones that come in when it is still being written and not only suggest options, but have their suggestions integrated into the book, that have the most fun. For everyone else, they're just reading a book that isn't finished yet and so have to wait unsatisfied, or feeling bad that their suggestion didn't get selected, or, someday eventually, just reading a completed book, which as funny as it is, has no interactivity to it. Not saying you shouldn't keep what doing what you're doing: shine on you crazy diamond! It's just that I am one of those unlucky ones that is feeling a bit unsatisfied, as much as I do think it is a charming story.

NickJam responds:

Not the creator but I helped with the UI. The story is still ongoing! The description has the link to Laken's suggestions thread. I'd recommend reading up to the latest page before posting there, but the story is still fairly early on and there's plenty of opportunity to jump in and give suggestions on where it goes next :)

[worDefense]

Cute little game! I like the combination of tower defense with word/typing mechanics: that alone is already nice enough to keep my interest, but when you combine it with special abilities and diverse enemy variety and so on, it gets really complex in an interesting way! It's like, the game could've just been about always typing the biggest words, but when you factor in innocent chickens that you want to avoid, or maybe enemies that split, there's actually a lot of strategy involved in what is truly optimal beyond just the biggest words (but then you also need to factor in the bonus for using all letters: maybe its worth sacrificing a chicken for that!) Game is also just very juicy and charming with its general presentation too: well done!

I will admit, though, that parts of the game had me really confused. For example, there were plenty of times where the game allowed me to fire when the word I typed was seemingly gibberish. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that they were technically real words that I was typing, just unbeknownst to me, but still, weird stuff.

There's also the fact that I found it quite weird that there is no time limit: instead of the enemies coming down over time, they freeze in place until you make your move. Call me an armchair developer if you like, but I feel like this compromises the scoring system, since without any pressure, it just becomes a game of patience where anyone could take all the time in the world to make the most optimal choices, instead of being a game about skill, reactivity and improvisation. Maybe it was an intentional choice to make a more relaxed game, I guess (though if that were the case, you'd think that hurting chickens would only deprive you of an opporunity to get health, not immediately hurt you as well).

amidos2006 responds:

Thanks a lot, there is two modes, normal and hardcore. In hardcore, there is time limit, I wanted to also give people relaxed experience.

[Looping Larceny]

Neat little game! It's like a cute combination between a Metroid game and something like Minit's speedrunning time loop structure. Overall I felt like this was a nice short and sweet experience, where I kept delving down different routes, collecting power-ups, opening up shortcuts, and eventually finding the diamond, whereupon I had to plot out a route to get in and out quick enough like some sort of heist, haha!

While it was all good, I did find the design a bit confusing. It just felt a bit odd that, due to the way the world is constructed, you only find the diamond when you've pretty much collected all of the upgrades necessary to get it out: before then, you don't even know what the goal is and why you're collecting all this stuff in the first place, so it's somewhat aimless. And why does the time loop structure happen before you've even collected the diamond? You'd think it only needs to happen then, like some sort of alarm. Basically, I almost feel like the diamond should be introduced in some manner earlier to setup the premise: like maybe you have easy access to the diamond, but getting it out is impossible without upgrades, so you make the decision to leave it for now and instead go into another part of the cave and get upgrades and set stuff up first. Eh, it worked out in the end, I suppose, but still, food for thought!

Oh yeah, as a side note, the jump physics felt really wonky and difficult to control: eventually got used to them, but yeah, wish they were a bit more intuitive.

bluswimmer responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

[Energy Quest]

Hmm, bit of a mixed impression on this one!

On one hand, the game certainly has a charming presentation quality to it, and while the gameplay starts out quite simple, it escalates with each level introducing something new, be it faster speed, more intricate and tricky patterns to handle like jumping on moving traffic, and more manuevers like double-jumping and stomping, creating a nice addictive sense of progression. In theory, it should be a decent game!

On the other hand, though, the game feels quite dry, bland and generic, my initial impression being that it was some 'my first endless runner' game that someone made in a game jam or as a student project: just didn't feel that good or impressive to play. It certainly lacked the unique memorability of your previous games like 'The Reboot.' While it does keep escalating as the levels go on, it felt not be paced quickly enough as I was getting close to quitting from boredom around level 2-3 or so, and the 'story' wasn't really doing anything to intrigue me.

There are also just some clunky aspects to it, like how awkward getting damaged feels with the way it warps you back, sometimes unfairly putting you in a position that you can't react to or locks you on a dead-end track. Was also really annoyed when I took a break for a bit and, upon coming back, realized it didn't save my progress. C'mon, no continue option? Why the heck not? Speaking of, it didn't look like there was a way to replay older levels either to get a better score: I kept trying to go back to them but it never seemed to work.

I still think it's a pretty decent game, but something about it just felt a bit lacking and made me want a lot more from it: like a strange disconnect between how good it looks it should feel compared to how it actually does feel.

Also I still can't stand these robo dudes: it's a bit better with this guy, but their nose still really looks like kissy-lips and it throws me off!

MartinJacob responds:

Thank you for your feedback, as always very insightful. We did go for something more classical and approachable this time.

About the saving system, my old way of doing this went obsolete some short while ago and I am still figuring out how to save games again... Sorry for this inconvenience, we did try to make it saveable. There are some codes you can enter to unlock previous levels, and you can use their associated buttons in the menu to replay them.

Thank you for your other technical feedback which we will take into account in making further versions of this.

Cheers!

[Dungeon of Numeromancy]

Pretty cool game! Overall the game felt pretty well put-together and looked good, and the combat revolving around solving math questions was quite novel. I liked that it had some cool depth to the systems, like where solving questions quickly makes for more damaging blows, meaning that there is a strong impetus to get better and take risks. As a fan of edutainment games, this is a great example that I was pleased to see!

I will admit that the game did feel a tad bit unsatisfying though:

While the dungeon gives you the impression of bigger scale exploration and loot collection and route choices and building your character and so on, the game just feels exceedingly linear and one-note, basically a series of unavoidable combat scenarios with no way to strategize or influence your run. It's like the whole dungeon exploration might as well not exist for all the good it's doing here, and it should just give us the combat directly one-after-another in a gauntlet. Maybe that's just me getting the wrong impression, but I really wish this game was a bigger roguelike experience akin to something like Dungeons of Dredmor.

It didn't help that the game kept droning the same bland music for the entire gameplay, including the final boss and victory screen: made it feel like I didn't make any progress or achieve anything!

The combat was also a bit confusing to parse. I understood the general systems well-enough, but I found it difficult to see how much damage I was doing or if I was being attacked or whatever, because not only is my attention on the bottom of the screen doing math, therefore making it difficult to see the upper HUD and battle screen, but the background is filled with numbers which easily obscure the damage number pop-ups when I attack. Feedback also felt quite unsatisfying and I wish I got more if I made strong attacks, as a reward for being skilled as a math wizard: without that, the impetus to play well wasn't as strong.

I also encountered a funny bug: I beat the final boss with mere seconds to spare, but as I sat back and was celebrating, my victory screen suddenly changed to a defeat screen. I guess time kept ticking away when it should've stopped!

It's definitely still a neato game and I like it, but I couldn't help feeling like it was a bit of a rough draft for a bigger math-based roguelike experience: would love if you end up iterating upon this!

voidgazerBon responds:

Thank you for detailed and valuable feedback. I really appreciate it!

[Office Spaced]

Hmm, I really like where this is going, and I feel like it has all of the engine components necessary to create a good beat-em-up, but unfortunately the execution is very lacking and the game just felt very bland to me. Yes, it makes sense considering it is just a game jam game, and in a way you can consider this a victory already since it does show promise for future development, but what can I say: beat-me-ups are my favorite genre so I'm a real stickler when it comes to them!

The big problem I have right now is that the player moveset is very boring as the enemies don't provide enough variety to facilitate any sort of strategy. For example, right now there's no reason to use the dodge roll as its too easy to just walk around bullets or kill enemies before they can fire, and there's no reason to use the keyboard smack over the mouse whip since it's just so much safer for a slight decrease in damage/knockback.

Therefore, what I'd love is more cooler moves and more diverse enemies that force you to use those moves strategically. For example, perhaps the mouse whip doesn't do any damage, but is more like a Zelda boomerang in that it stuns enemies: that way it serves an alternate crowd control purpose, and you could also gussy it up by perhaps making them take more damage or drop resources when you keyboard smack them while they're stunned. Another idea is maybe you could have enemies with shields that require you to get close and use a keyboard smack to knock them away as the mouse whip isn't powerful enough to open them up. Stuff like this would add a lot more flavor!

I notice a lot of people also talking about how you can smack the chair into people and it's very fun: that's a good sign for something else that should be building upon, as lord knows I know a game with a cool telekenesis mechanic like Half-Life 2 or Dead Space!

Again, right now I'm not that impressed with the execution, but I am impressed with the skeleton you've constructed: you've got all of the nouns and verbs that could be used to make a great beat-em-up where you rampage through an office, first wrecking weak employees, then defeating strong bosses, then facing off against security detail and finally defeating the CEO in his penthouse...I'd love to see it!

R083RT responds:

Thank you so much for the detailed review! I also watched your youtube video and I appreciate the honest feedback. I liked a lot of your ideas and your criticisms were very fair. I'm working on some new projects so I don't have any *current* plans to expand upon this game atm, but this is still super useful feedback :)

[The Terror of Mongolia]

Pretty cool game! I really liked the high-energy vibes that this game was putting down: leaving that first tent with it now being on fire, the music coming in with the title drop, boy that was a great intro and I immediately started tearing shit up Genghis Khan-style!

Overall the gameplay was quite enjoyable: it's simple, but the slight strategy of only being able to shoot in two directions ala STD and your horse having slightly unwieldly controls and being on a timer make it an energetic experience. Found it amusing that the game was a series of 'your princess is in another castle' moments with you burning down each as you go as I best Mario wish he could've done. Loved getting more and more powerful while the enemies get more and more dense and difficult. Also surprised at some of the hidden controls, like being able to hold down the fire button and use that to move in a different direction than where you are firing (initially I just kept tap-firing).

If I were to have any complaints, it might be that I do wish the timer was a bit more apparent and front-and-center: I actually kind of forgot I was on a timer since it's stuffed all the way in the corner. Also it was a bit awkward that your initial horse control is so bad, seemingly for the express purpose of selling an upgrade to make it as good as it should've been at the start: just seems a bit scummy, but maybe I'm reading into it too much. Also the game seemed a bit buggy: I came back to this to play again and for some reason I got a game over screen when I tried to enter the tent despite the cutscene also playing at the same time.

History was always my worst subject in school, but now I feel like I've learned a lot. Thanks!

jacklehamster responds:

I probably should've spent time thinking more about the initial control. I was actual aware that the horse didn't play very smoothly on first play, and it's the main reason I offer the first choice between "speed" and "bow and arrow". By choosing "speed", you sacrifice initial profit but zoom to the next hut much faster. You should try that out ;-)