FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bullet Hellween]

Hmm, decent and cute little bullet hell shooter! For a game jam game, I was quite impressed at the general level of polish and craftsmanship, what with the cute and animated presentation and especially with the great amount of enemy variety with all sorts of unique attack patterns to look out for! The boss was a great cherry on top as well, what with his very extensive attack patterns and telegraph animations for each.

While I do feel like the game is pretty neat, there were plenty of aspects that dragged it down for me unfortunately:

The enemies felt like they were incredibly spongy and became such unsatisfying slogs to defeat when you've gotta pepper each of them with so much gun fire (er, wand fire). I understand that, near the beginning where enemy density is low, high health for the skulls can be necessary to ensure they live long enough to get some attacks off, but when the game ups the enemy density, that sponginess becomes incredibly frustrating.

Speaking of enemy density, it does get rather overwhelming in the later levels and becomes a real unfair nuisance due to the way that enemies will stack on top of each other and not only become a spongy mess, but with the way that they will hide each other, making it impossible to see bats charge up their tackle attack, among other things.

Another subtle aspect of the feeling of sponginess present in the enemies is the lackluster sound design and feedback for kills: the game overall feels very quiet, muted and bereft of exciting notes which really dulls the satisfaction of combat. Screenshake is also very repetitive and just reduces the screen into a vague mush of confusion.

Powerups were ok, but rather unexciting and basic. But even more so than that, they felt silly and unfair: you'd think adding bullets onto your wand would be an additive powerup, but no, 2-shot or 3-shot are separate powerups that don't stack and override each other. Similarly, the powerup to transform your shots into larger shots can show up despite you already picking it up, yet if you pick it up again, nothing will change.

Checkpoints were a mixed blessing, or rather a curse: if you make a bad powerup choice or end a round with very little health, you could now be stuck in a very bad situation with no way out for recovery. I'd much prefer if the game were to just restart completely upon death to allow for the player to make better choices and get to where they were with more health, especially since it is already short enough.

Finally, as much as I am getting this game some considerable stick, it was a rather short game and it did make me want more! If this game wasn't a game jam game and got to have some more time in the oven, I could see it being incredible: while it isn't balanced in this iteration, I can't overstate how impressed I was with the sheer creativity and diversity in your enemy design! Would love to see more games in the future.

Meiallu responds:

Me and Nagasaki may do a bigger version of this game, if this actually turn to be true, I'll 100% fix everything you just said. Thanks!

[POKO LOCO]

Hrmm, this is a rough one for me! I really want to like this game as it does have a decent level of polish and juice to its craftsmanship and presentation, but I found myself very bored in no time as the core gameplay is incredibly shallow, repetitive, and one-note: it takes no time at all to see everything the game has to offer and there is no significant evolution as it goes on. It feels more like a rough draft or a prototype that hasn't yet found a core gameplay loop or unique concept yet.

As said, the game is quite lively and juicy, yet simultaneously very bland as well. Apart from some nice special effects for timed bounces and the psychedelic animated background, the game has a very bland, empty and almost clinically sterile look and feel to it when it comes to elements like the paddle and the unchanging world as you proceed forward in levels.

Compared to the lively title screen, I was really disappointed at the bland wall of text that is the tutorial. I'll grant you that it is at least categorized properly and tries to space out the sentences to help with reading comprehension, but I would much prefer if there were pictures or animations to help. Also the tutorial keeps repeating the same instructions over and over for some reason: if you can't even proofread the tutorial properly it doesn't give me much faith in the rest of the game. And to top it all off, the game says I can use WASD in the tutorial, yet it doesn't work and instead I had to use the arrow keys.

Bump timing for powerful bounces could be a fun mechanic, but it just felt incredibly frustrating and awkward to get used to it: it felt like you need to time the bump way too early when I expected it to be right when the ball hits the paddle, and even taking this into account I was constantly having my bumps not bounce the ball, leading to tedious gameplay in an already very repetitive game.

As said, the game feels like a step back from tons of other games that have come before it. Compared to more exciting powerups like being able to shoot bullets, summon multiballs, slow-mo, catching the ball, and so on, this game's powerups that just adjust paddle width and speed feel dire and don't excite. The bonus level doesn't even feel like a bonus level since it doesn't have its own music track or exciting scoring system. And as already said, every level just feels the same with no interesting layouts or new exciting mechanics: a couple bouncers being added here and there doesn't thrill me and keep me engaged. It just feels like a big waste of effort and is so incredibly outdated: I'd rather play something like Arkanoid on the NES which, for being decades old, has many times the amount of content and variety than seen here.

I want to like this game and think you've got a potentially great team here that can get stuff done, but there's just absolutely nothing exciting or fun about this game in its current state: it is the most bland student project paddle game, a bland scoop of vanilla ice cream with no sprinkles or whipped cream and definitely not a cherry on top. Make sure there is a focus on fun and addictive core gameplay in your next project before anything else.

KageKMB responds:

I fundamentally disagree with a lot of these criticisms. This game is a culmination of what I learn doing these leader-board focused browser titles. A key thing I honed in on, was what clicked with NG players, and what didn't.

To use Masahiro Sakurai's definition of game essence - your main criticisms can be summarized as "this game lacks game essence." However, things that increases game essence decreases broad appeal. There's a threshold with your target audience that if you cross it - they get frustrated at the challenge rather than entertained by it. Part of being a successful game designer is knowing how to be a people pleaser.

I personally play games with a lot of game essence. I also have to remember, one of Friday Night Funkin's common criticisms can be summarized as " too little game essence" - but it's also like the biggest game to come out of the NG community in a decade. If I dropped a game that fundamentally required you to do fighting game quarter circles and dragon punch motions, I'd be more to my taste, but I also don't see it getting past 3 stars.

Poko Loco was made with this site's general player-base in mind, (the itch.io uploads of the games never get hits lol)- and looking at the majority of feedback, I think I've demonstrated I'm honing in on understanding what works for this group. I'm not saying this with the intent of having an ego - but to illustrate that I had an intention, and got result in the ballpark I intended.

_________________
regarding some things like the WASD issue - that was a minor over-site and i've been wanting to do a minor adjustment patch sooner than later - but need to find the time.

[Spider Collab]

Cute art collab!

While it is a bit disappointing that it is just a slideshow which is what I consider very basic and minimal effort (c'mon, you couldn't do something a tiny bit more creative, like arrange all the pieces in a spiderweb-esque gallery view? it took me seconds to think of that, I'm sure you'd think of something way cooler) it does nevertheless have some nice presentation to it with its animated background and cool music, and I was pleased to see that it does have the critical convenience functionality of allowing you to click on the artist's name to go to their respective Newgrounds page (though I almost thought it didn't since it doesn't look like a button due to not reacting on mousing over).

Would also love if there was some ability to zoom in to the art pieces as some of them, like Anonymous's-Frog piece, can be difficult to see all the intricate details at the scale it is currently presented in.

Anyway, at the end of the day it's always nice to see a community event like this, and ever since I brokered a deal with the spiders in my closet to let them live since they kill other bugs for me, its great to see them respected here.

Thetageist responds:

Yo, that'd be cool! If there's another Spider Collab, that should totally be how it's presented!

[Coglab]

Cute little art collab! It's just one screen and there's not much to it, but it's still nice to look at and pretty creative with its very animated layout and presentation: certainly a breath of fresh air compared to the typical 'slideshow' art collab presentation. Not too shabby: only major complaints I can think of is that it would be nice to have direct links to the author's Newgrounds page if you click on their name when viewing their cog, and that something about this concept really makes me wish it was even more crazy, like being able to drag the cogs around and make your own connections, or even making a whole cog-based puzzle game where you use these pieces within them, but maybe that's asking a bit much, haha.

Questtrek responds:

Those are excellent ideas. Thank you for the feedback (:

[LAUNDRY DETERGENT QUEST]

In the context of a game that was made live for the Summer Fest, this is quite impressive in many respects, and therefore I'll try to be nicer than usual, haha.

Yes, it is pretty much a shitpost game, but it actually has a lot of quality behind its goofy facade. Good enemy variety and escalation that keeps things interesting as you proceed, juicy explosive feedback for blowing up enemies along with the amusing spectacle of gun upgrades, general smooth and lively movement and animations, and an...interesting choice of music. There's even some interesting strategy to the game where, especially due to the suicide enemies, you can choose to try and play it slow and cautiously, or just blow them up all fast enough to clear the bullets from the screen before they hit you (and be rewarded with cash for doing so). All in all it delivers a decent short and sweet adventure that doesn't outstay its welcome!

I play a lot of shooters on this here website, and to see something like this, while certainly lacking in long-term appeal, get so many things right in terms of juicy core feel that other more developed games lack, and to teach those aspects to people in a timely manner, is pretty inspirational, and makes me hope that more people step up and create their own juicy games.

However, even if I am being nice, there are plenty of rough aspects to the game:

*Collecting money was quite annoying, both in part to how you have to stand directly on top of it to pick it up (lacking the generous magnetic attraction that games of this ilk typically have) and that the level up screen can end up blocking visibility of the money (which just so happens to be the time that you want to collect the money!)

*No idea what the difficulty unlock on the level up screen was about: I'm assuming that it is a risk/reward element that increases the amount of enemies which in turn allows you to score more points, but I couldn't really tell.

*Certain elements like the recoil from shooting felt a bit frustrating to handle: didn't feel like it added enough to the game to justify the annoyance.

*The music is...uh...g-great!

LeviRamirez responds:

I made this for the summer fest in a day and a half, but I'll probably use this as the groundwork for another sizeable project, either commercial or not

thanks for the feedback, this will affect a future game! :) <3

[Resident Evil Ebola 5]

Bit mixed on this one!

If you view the game as a throwback to old-school Newgrounds games, it can be fun to laugh at all of its oddities, like the mismatched sprite rips from all sorts of games, the corny voice acting with variable sound quality, the overly dramatic story, the overall janky feel to the controls, and just that nostalgic aesthetic that's so synonymous with early flash games.

However, in that same respect, a lot of the game is just really sloppily put together and feels incredibly low effort and confusing: I can accept corny voice acting and such since that adds to the charm, but a lot of the errors and confusion I experienced were just plain bad.

A few examples of the rough spots which I feel could've been ironed out:

*The game was very inconsistent with its interactables. Sometimes the game would highlight them, such as having the lever have a sparkle on it, or having the back of the plane glow green: this was great as it let me know I could interact with them. However, for other aspects like the hole in the wall, or the bridge controls, and so on, there was nothing to let you know you could interact with it, leading to confusion. There were also weird times where, despite usually being able to just walk to the edge of a screen to go to the next zone, suddenly it'd want you to interact to move to the next zone. If the game was better with popping up a button to let you know you can interact or highlighting things, it'd be much clearer.

*Merchant behavior was very odd with how buying handgun bullets from him says you get 15 bullets, but end up getting 10 bullets actually. I believe there were other cases of similar miscounting when picking up bullets from the ground.

*All sorts of strange layering and clipping issues, like how some text when I picked up bullets popped up behind an object in the foreground which made it difficult to read, or how the green highlight for the airplane could still be seen when you open up the inventory. Just looks really bad.

*Despite the game saying you can open up your inventory wherever you want, there were plenty of screens where suddenly you couldn't: no idea why not.

*A lot of time when I'm shooting the enemy, it'll be like every other bullet will not hurt the enemy as there will be no blood splash or other feedback. Dunno if this is intentional as some sort of random chance to miss, or whether the bullet is actually hitting but just not triggering the blood feedback for some reason, or if the bullet is just straight-up glitching out and not hitting for no good reason.

*Player damage was really confusing: I'd be miles away from an enemy but still end up flashing red outta nowhere, getting hurt but no good reason I could tell. I'd even get hurt by leftover corpses of enemies: not sure if this was some intentional design like acid blood leftovers, but there was no way to avoid it if that's the case, so it's bad either way. On the flip side, however, there would be enemies sometimes that would come right up to me and not hurt me at all: they'd just latch onto me and jitter around!

I could go on and on, but you get the gist. So yeah, it was a fun trip, but in a way, I do wish it was put together way better: I'd prefer to be laughing with the game instead of laughing at it, if you know what I mean! There must be a way to get that old-school look without making it feel so outdated and clunky to play.

MetaMike responds:

Many thanks to you for taking the time to type this. It's greatly appreciated. many of these things you pointed out are small technical issues that I could've easily ironed out. I guess I skipped over some of them in the end, but I'll definitely be making some adjustments and fixing them.
The Merchant actually rips you off, that wasn't a glitch...(jk lol) the ammo count is one I definitely didn't notice. Some of the coding from the merchant was carried over from previous chapters and the values obviously weren't the same. I'll be making various fixes rn, thanks to your feedback.

EDIT - I fixed just about everything you mentioned.

[Bullet Bunny]

Wow, quite enjoyed myself with this one! I wasn't all that impressed at first glance as the survivor genre is overpacked with competition, but I was surprised at how this ended up addicting me with its pretty fun gameplay, so kudos in that respect!

The vibes reminded me a lot of 20 Minutes Till Dawn, especially when it comes to the build variety with different focuses on summons, traps, elements, damage, projectiles, reload, and so on: wouldn't be surprised if it was a direct inspiration or straight-up lifting from its playbook, haha! I thought at first that the summon build would be the only fun build, but color me surprised when I liked laying down traps or having light-based radial slowdown/fire or having chain explosions and so on. No matter what the cards dealt it felt like you could get something cool going in lots of different ways!

For the most part, the game was pretty well put-together. As said, I quite like the build variety and the power progression as the game goes along, especially when combined with the enemy escalation with all sorts of different types of enemies that go beyond just simple statistical increases, but actual different patterns that make you change up your strategies. Game also offered a lot of interesting weapons and heroes, and I liked that you can try them out before actually having to buy them (though I was disappointed that there was no way to try out hero super moves).

That being said, while the game is fun, I'm not quite sure about the long-term appeal. The fact that it's just a single map (or rather a single screen) with no special events or quests or modifiers that can really shake up the experience from run to run, can make it feel a bit repetitive and pointless. Furthermore, the game doesn't really have a unique selling point to it: as much as I have fun with it, it is, as I mentioned, just like 20 Minutes Till Dawn, so there's nothing this really gives me that that game doesn't already, so why would I buy this? Not sure if the game is going to develop some sort of story, or multiple levels, or other interesting aspects and content to keep people playing. It doesn't necessarily need to, but without some sort of larger purpose or sense of greater progression beyond just goofing around with different guns and maybe cranking the difficulty, I feel like I wouldn't be compelled to stick with it for long, let alone spend money on it.

In addition to that, there were a few confusing aspects here and there:

*For example, I found it frustrating that you can get cards like +50% poison damage when you don't even have a poison weapon: because you can still get these despite that, players (like me) can be fooled into thinking the card will give you poison damage, only to find that it doesn't.

*I found it a bit odd that killing enemies will sometimes have that explode in a satisfying manner, whereas other times they will just poof away in an awkward manner: thought it was overkill damage at first, but that didn't seem to be the case, so I don't know why there is an inconsistency.

*It was strange that the game doesn't offer a way to manually reload as a strategic decision to make. I also thought the reload bar was a bit odd: I expected it to stretch all across the player, but it ends like half-way.

*Would've liked if there were some HUD elements right next to the player, such as an ammo and health count: it's difficult to keep track of those considering they are crammed in the corner of the screen which is hard to peek at during combat.

*Would also love if the number of damage you took as a player would pop up as it was really confusing to determine how badly I got hurt: maybe it'd be nice if you just normalize damage with hearts instead of numbers? So weird to take '18' damage as a normal thing instead of a basic round number like 10 or 5 (i know, i know, it's because of all the percentage defense stuff you can get).

*Finally, it was really awkward that the visual effect for the knockback that comes with levelling up happens immediately when you level up, but disappears before you're done with the level up screen and then the knockback happens afterwards, making them feel disjointed: feel like you should freeze/delay the visual effect until you're done with the level up screen so that both visual effect and actual knockback happen in sync.

I'd say you have a really solid and fun core gameplay here that I'd love to see iterated upon: best of luck for the eventual full release!

penusbmic responds:

Hey Futurecop! Thanks for the feedback, so valuable :)

A lot of what you feel is exactly how I feel! Number of damage you take is a great idea that has slipped by my mind. Also HUD stats by the player, I think I may add this as an option.

I grouped Poison/Dodge together since early on in playtesting they were both kind of weak/lame to pick. I've thought about exactly what you said, but don't want to remove dodge at the moment, perhaps an overhaul to both is the right move!

Reloading was also in the early build ultimately decided to remove it as "Reload Bomb" was the only build testers wanted and it did a fix amount of damage. Perhaps I can revisit this now that there's a ton of different/viable build options.

As for you main point about long term appeal. I have tested out a few different kind of game modes, 1 in particular is fun but a tad hardcore. I'd love to somehow incorporate some sort of story/lore kind of in a subtle way, but as a solo dev that keeps getting push down the list :(

anyways, again thank you for you valuable feedback, greatly appreciated! :)
Pen

[Acro-bot]

Wow, was really impressed with this game! Feels like you were going for 2D Mario 64 and, as strangely backwards as that sounds, it felt like you pulled it off pretty dang well!

It certainly took a bit to get used to the controls since there are so many movement options in place which can be quite overwhelming (especially since some of them double-up, like the long jump and the dive) but once I did, thanks in part to your great tutorial zone, I was having so much fun just playing around by itself, let alone making it through these great gauntlets you've setup that make you use everything in your arsenal in fantastic chains! It just never got old or stopped being fun since you kept shaking things up with tons of secrets and new mechanics and tricks, and the controls felt very smooth with just the right amount of subtle air control influence to allow a bit of wiggle-room for adjustments. And even a cool boss fight for the ending (which I wish had maybe one more phase)!

It did have some rough spots here and there. For one, as much as the simple graphics did help with visual clarity, and you weren't a slouch with the expressive animation for the player, the game did nevertheless have a rather dry, sterile, and crude look to it overall that got a bit repetitive, especially since it doesn't change up significantly the entire playthrough. There were some physics glitches here and there as well, such as how jumping from a platform moving down will have you awkwardly feel like gravity is pulling down heavily due to you retaining momentum from the platform (it's ok for upwards, but downwards is weird feeling). Also, I'm not quite sure of the necessity of this whole 'don't stop moving' mechanic or the stamina meter: kind of felt unnecessary and even annoying, especially since some spots, like for patrolling guards, can have you want to stand in place to wait a bit. There are also some obstacles that feel like annoying 'gotchas' that you just have to trial-and-error your way through.

Really though, any negatives I can say about the game are mostly trivial nitpicks compared to how the fun the movement was in this, especially with the great obstacle courses you setup. I'd say this should be put this right beside other cool movement platformers like Gappy's Playground, Fancy Pants Adventures, Pseudoregalia, and so on!

Sikowny responds:

What a fantastic review!! Your critique is noted and highly appreciated! Thanks for playing, for the kind words, and for tips on improvements. I hope you play again in 1.1 :D

[Leap Hero]

Developer, you really need to take a good, long hard look at yourself because I fear that you might be insane.

Why in the world did you hide an excellent Celeste-esque challenging precision platformer with smooth feeling physics and a unique tongue grapple mechanic behind not only one of the most boring bog-standard platformer segments, but then try to actually dissuade the player from continuing? I mean, do you want people to hate your game and miss out? Part of me admires the courage, but as said before, another part of me questions your sanity. Seriously, 9 times out of 10 I would've quit at around the second or third level of the starting sequence because it bored the hell out of me and I would feel fully within my right to assume the rest of the game would be just as boring.

So yeah, as said, the game is definitely pretty neato in many respects (at least eventually), but it does have some rough patches (yes, other than the fact that it starts terribly).

*For one, I found the most satisfying aspect of the game was jumping on enemies, but not only is this discouraged by the sword, but enemies are inconsistent in what you can jump on: for example, why can you not jump on bees when they would be the most exciting to be able to jump on for air travel? I can understand not being able to jump on porcupines, sure, they are spiky, but a bee's stinger isn't on its head! I'm hopefully that jumping on enemies becomes the main attack as the game goes on because it is infinitely more interesting and satisfying than the sword.

*During the platforming, I would have a lot of times where the spikes would screw me over by having hitboxes that were a bit too large. For example, I would tongue grapple so as to fly through a narrow gap that has spikes on the ceiling and floor, yet I would scratch a spike as I go through and die: if my tongue was able to go through without hitting spikes, so should I! There were also times where the spikes were just placed in very annoying spots that you wouldn't be able to see ahead of time, turning it into an unfair bit of trial-and-error until you memorize everything, and even then it's annoying to make jumps to platforms you can't see.

*The boss fight was pretty neat, but it was a bit tiresome with how much it forces you to wait: would like if it was a bit sped-up and not idle around as long as it does.

Again, I can appreciate that the game 'gets good' after a bit, but I would much prefer if the game just started good in the first place! You do you if you want to be a crazy auteur performance artist who isn't afraid of getting an unfair impression from impatient people (who have every right to be impatient), I guess! At least I made it far enough this time, haha!

tkab-games responds:

OMG thank you so much for the review, all I can say is.... YES WE ARE CRAZY xD the purpose of this demo is to really test how much we could hide the game selling point.

From what I've seen so far, most people get to the plot twist, but even so the final game will have a shorter "prologue". Thanks a lot :D

[Jimathon Goes To Business]

Quite the funny little game! Reminds me of other similarly goofy games like Kukkiyomi or Warioware or this one puzzle game I forget the name of where you control where the eyes look in social situations.

For the most part I found the game quite fun, being these varied puzzles and interactions to go through that are solved by clicking and dragging in inventive ways, like chucking cars in your way to get through a traffic jam, or more delicately shoveling cereal into your mouth. There were also a lot of fun fourth-wall tricks like clicking and dragging the very tutorial prompt and credits around.

However, I was a bit let-down by how short it was: felt like it was just starting to get good and then bam, it's over. To add insult to injury, it ends with a downer ending of failure that made me really disappointed. It was only by luck that I noticed there is a 'promotion' music credit that made me realize there might be multiple endings: otherwise I wouldn't have thought it would be the case because it wasn't clear whether there was some sort of grading system and how it works.

While I was a bit unsatisfied, take that as a compliment that I got really hooked, and would love to see a more expanded version of this or other similar goofy stories!

As a side note, I did have a bit of a rough time with the controls. For example, I expected that as long as I just pick up the clock and let go, it would crash to the floor with gravity, and then even when I tried to swipe and let go to throw it, sometimes it wouldn't happen. I got used to it, but it was a bit wonky, though luckily getting used to them works as part of what makes it feel like an adventure, I suppose.

jessejayjones responds:

Thank you for the thoughtful review! I'm glad you found it funny and enjoyable! :)
This was done for a game jam by me and my friends over a weekend, so that's why it's so short. There was even an extra mini-game idea we cut for time, and because it didn't fit the control-scheme, where you would mash your keyboard to write business reports, lol!
But I appreciate the feedback, and I'll keep all those thoughts in mind if we ever make another game like this. Cheers!!