FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dino Time]

This one was really rough for me. On the face of it, this game is pretty much "baby's first game project" in that it is just an incredibly simple arcade experience where you jump up, collect points, and avoid falling to your death from the ever upwards scrolling death zone. Nothing really exciting or memorable about the experience: just a very bog-standard experience that attempts to elevate it by using goofy art and sounds.

If that was it, that'd be fine: every game dev needs to start somewhere and this could be ok for a few minute(s) of fun. However, the game was plagued by absolutely terrible controls which felt incredibly unintuitive and awkward. Trying to move had a weird delay on start-up and some very slippery momentum that didn't seem to have any natural reason to it: you go from not moving at all to slip-n-sliding to your death.

The strangest thing was that, I tried playing the game with a controller, and was able to control the character just fine with the analog stick: no awkward delay or slipperiness or anything! However, that didn't help in the long run because then I noticed the busted jump controls, which, despite using the same power for the button press each time, would randomly change the maximum height that my jump would reach, sometimes making me unable to proceed upwards and getting an unfair death.

If I was to be charitable, I'd say that the controls were part of some intended challenge, and perhaps some of the slipperiness is to make you utilize wall bounces, or something of that nature. But while I've played a lot of rage games which utilize difficult, tricky controls, the difference is that they all managed to elicit fun out of the process, whereas this absolutely did not, coming off as just badly programmed, if not straight-up broken.

NattoSumi responds:

Smh some gamers just aren't ready for momentum based movement. Btw the jump takes ~1 second to charge up all the way after landing. Hope that helps!

[Dungeon Deli]

Jeez, I hate to say this, but I had a really rough time with this game and found it very difficult to stick with it, eventually having to quit to preserve my sanity.

At its core, the game is quite the interesting experiment. Similar to games like Necrodancer, it is attempting to change up the typical dungeon formula with a mechanical twist, being not only rotating directional attacks, but also constantly shifting modes that affect the field. It changes typically straightforward combat and navigation into a improvizational puzzler that keeps you on your toes and has you dance around in a bizarre, but intriguing way. It's definitely unique and it piqued my interest!

However, while the mechanics are interesting in theory and ideally should make a fun puzzle dungeon, the more I played, the more I got aggravated with the huge side-effect of tedium that the mechanics wrought:

*It's just so damn annoying that each step you take has to shoot out a bullet, and you need to wait for that bullet to go and hit a wall (which can be very far away at times) before you can take another step. Over and over and over, it adds so much time and turns movement into such a chore, especially if the room is already clear of enemies: why wouldn't you make it so that the player has to decide when to shoot, or at least turn off the auto-shooting when the room is clear? I'd also turn off the modes when a room is clear too: it's all such pointless tedium!

*I also didn't find the whole rotating bullet aspect to be that fun. Ideally, I'd like it to be that you'd be dancing around an enemy to try and always keep your gun pointed at them, but there's just no way to do that, meaning that all you can do is just try to keep them on one side of you and stall until your gun rotates all the way back around. With that, it's just turned into basic kiting but with more steps: not that exciting at all.

*To add to all of this, the game is rather dry in terms of pizazz and juice. For example, killing enemies just has them instantly poof away instead of giving some sort of satisfying feedback. I understand it's a dungeon crawler so I'm not expecting big explosions and fireworks, but something would be better than nothing.

*There were also a couple of bugs here and there, like how an enemy moved during my shooting when they aren't typically allowed to do that.

As said, I appreciate the experiment as I think the idea behind this has merit, but the current execution of said idea is not my cup of tea.

EvanMMO responds:

Thanks for playing. Looking forward to the vid!

[Planet Invasion BETA]

Hmm, bit mixed on this one, unfortunately.

Game definitely had a pretty good first impression with the very humorous and animated opening cutscene. The concept of protecting your planet from incoming planets with a unique planet-clashing mechanic was quite novel, considering you could've easily opted for the more traditional turret shooting mechanic instead. Also, there was certainly an attempt at keeping things interesting by always upping the ante with bosses and larger planets to contend with. There's certainly a lot of potential here!

However, I just overall found the gameplay to be rather unsatisfying and dry, despite the attempts made. Few points to consider:

*The core mechanic of crashing planets into other planets by dragging them just didn't feel that great: there was no sort of fun feedback or physicality to be had, both due to the simplicity of such an action and the lackluster special effects. Would've loved a more interesting and challenging core mechanic, such as maybe being able to fling or flick planets into each other, either directly or perhaps indirectly by spawning gravity wells that change their trajectory.

*The game was confusing from lacking feedback for elements like your current experience points and how far you are from your next upgrade, as well as the cooldown timers for your laser/missiles/etc and where they are being pointed.

*It felt like so many times I would run out of ammo through no fault of mine and be unable to contend with a boss or a planet about to crash into me. It was also weird that we aren't able to grab the tiny space debris, considering we are able to grab small planets that are bigger than it: I guess I can understand why you did it to compel you to play differently, but it still feels illogical.

*Powerups were confusing at times: for example there is a bigger cursor powerup which I thought might've let me be able to grab the next biggest tier of planets, but no luck. Would've really helped with the above issue as well if it were the case.

veeh1ve responds:

Thanks a lot for the feedback! I've already started rewriting and tweaking some things, but you did bring up some things I haven't considered. I'll certainly look into them.

[Y.O.F.F.]

Oh man, this is a rough one. The concept that you're going for is solid and there are glimpses of greatness in here, but the execution felt incredibly ham-handed and unfinished.

As said, this has the makings of a great speedrunner game in the likes of Mirrors Edge, Neon White, and so on. When the game is firing on all cylinders, it can be a load of fun as the courses turn into very exciting rollercoaster rides where you're dashing and jumping with style through all sorts of clever designs. I quite enjoyed trying to clear some of the more challenging aspects, like this part where you need to triangle jump upwards between two platforms!

But overall, the game felt incredibly janky and awkward to play:

*Not being able to strafe is a strange design choice, and movement in general felt way too slippery and strange, especially as there's a weird sideways adjustment you make upon stopping that I see no reason for.

*I didn't like how your gauge is instantly killed if you let go of forward for even a nano-second, as it made it so overly delicate and didn't let you do stuff like drifting.

*There's no coyote time so I was constantly having my jump inputs ignored when jumping from the edge of platforms.

*There were loads of missing sounds and feedback, such as when you get a feather: without feedback, I had no idea whether I got it or missed it.

*The game doesn't even get simple things right, like how it doesn't even update your facing upon death or level transition.

As said, there's definitely potential here, and I really, really want to love this: it just needed more time in the oven!

Kunishiro responds:

Thank you for the review!

[Gates of Hades]

Huh, I hate to say this, but this felt, well, pretty bog-standard and boring, like some sort of unfinished 'my first game' student project or something. I could barely stand to play past a minute based on the terrible first impression.

There's so many aspects that feel like they are placeholders, such as the menus and UI, and the gameplay is just so uninspired, being an arena shooter with no unique concept or powerups or interesting combat design. Shooting enemies just wasn't satisfying, the levels drag on, and the controls also felt incredibly awkward, especially with the jumps which are momentum-based and don't allow any air control.

It's strange because there are so many elements that are technically good on their own: sprites and artwork are nice, music is cool, the arenas change up as you go, enemy variety is good, there's some decent special effects like the gun casings spilling out, and so on. But for some reason, the game feels way less than the sum of its parts.

There's certainly potential here: as said, you've got some good assets, and the skeleton for an arena shooter is present. There just needs to be more pizazz, some sort of juicy hook or concept, some spark of joy to make the gameplay interesting!

Paytonio responds:

I appreciate the criticism. It's fair to say there's a lack of a hook in the game. The design philosophy was inspired off of Sonic 2 where the final batch of levels are brutal to encourage you to run through the easier levels as practice. The intention is to make the run where everything finally comes together as satisfying as possible. I see how that isn't a very intuitive philosophy, though, and unfortunately very few players will experience this rewarding feeling from the game. Luckily, I will be able to create my next project with this in mind and I will be sure to make my vision clear from the very first level.

[SUPRA DREAM BEAN GARDEN DRIFT]

I tried my best to figure this out, but despite my best efforts, I have no idea what this game is or what the appeal is, and am left baffled and confused, unfortunately. I just really couldn't tell whether this game was some sort of experimental outsider art, or just busted!

In some ways, the game has a lot of potential in its weirdness. The graphics have a certain level of charm and craftsmanship to them, and the level design is rather surreal with its flower design and void-like structure. There's a feeling that there is so much going on with all sorts of alerts and alien mechanics, and it's an adventure to try and learn how everything works. I felt like the strange way the car reverses on a dime is reminiscent of games like Big Rigs. There's some satisfying juicy hitfreeze when hitting objects, and the way the car drifts is also neat.

But on the other hand, I was completely lost. Controls and goals weren't explained and even when they were explained they could be contrary to how they operate. The game's performance would constantly dip into single digit FPS on certain sections of the map. I wasn't sure if aspects like glitchy void, the powerful car reverse, were intentional or just shoddy/unfinished. Despite my best efforts, I felt like I was making zero progress.

It was certainly...something!

tscoct responds:

Ye, sorry, this is my first time ever writing on Tic-80, so the performance was the only unintentional thing, everything else was more or less fitted to work in conjuction with each other

[Hit Harder]

Oh man, I think there is a really cool stylish beat-em-up in here that has a Sifu-esque progression system and tons of cuh-razy combos and spectacle...but it's kind of hard to play and review it when the game is not sized appropriately and it cuts off part of the screen! Sure, even with the screen being clipped, from what I can tell it's pretty neato even if it is a bit mashy and confusing in terms of learning the controls for moves and understanding how stun/armor works, but yeah, hard to tell! Would love to revisit it if it gets fixed!

EDIT: Hey, you updated the game! I'm glad I was able to reach you: revisiting it now and being able to play it properly is awesome. Great beat-em-up you got here!

YollieDevving responds:

Thanks for notifying me about this game through twitter! I forgot I even made a newsgrounds account and didn't realize one of my games got frontpaged.... anyways, the screen issues are fixed now, to everyone, SORRY!

[Steel Surge: Revolution]

Wow, this is quite the cool SHMUP! Overall it feels very well-done in all respects: great enemy and boss design with lots of variety, well-paced wave structure, juicy explosive graphics, a nice bonus overclocked mode, and to top it off, a novel strategy of deploying your drone for focus fire. It's not exactly the most innovative SHMUP as it is pretty bog-standard in terms of mechanics with not much new, but it hits all the right notes for a good experience nonetheless: looking forward to seeing this built upon!

If I were to have any feedback, it would be that I did find the respawn mechanic a bit disorientating in how fast you recover, but it was nice in its own way. Rather, the part I want to focus on is the 'style' system, which I feel is neat since it pushes you to play in risky interesting ways, but feels bad that it is just relegated to points which can be easily ignored by players. Instead, it might be nice if doing stylish things actually gives you a tangible benefit, such as powering you up or giving you a bomb move if you keep it up. Even if you don't want to do that, at the very least, it'd be nice if you gain lives if you get points, meaning being stylish can get you lives quicker. Such things would increase player engagement and make the experience more unique and memorable, I think.

LokiStrikerDev responds:

Thank you for the lengthy feedback! Regarding scoring/style: It is definitely part of my focus to introduce extends/lives as part of scoring with the aim of making "scoring" a viable method for survival as well. The style system was introduced on the last 1/4 of development as it was more of a feedback to already existing systems. The idea it to keep developing this mechanic more and more throughout the stages, introducing both alternative score methods and also new ones. Beyond lives, I'm unsure if I want to introduce another reward method, but Ill leave that door open for seeing if something can go there.

I'm trying to stick closer to a ChoRenSha-type experience, so I'm trying to innovate in little ways while still holding true to a shmup experience with a fresh/evocative style. Once the game is closer to release, Ill be posting an additional demo, to see if I'm hitting all the right notes with the direction I'm taking. Thank you for the comment!

[Golf Adventures! 2]

Pretty good mini golf game here! Overall it feels very smooth and well-presented, its got loads of content and variety, nice subtle touches like the sound quality, and has a surprising amount of quality-of-life options! Well done all-around!

While I am overall positive on the experience, I did encounter a few bumps along the road that I'd give as feedback:

*I don't know if it's just me being stupid, but I kept second-guessing myself and getting confused as to whether I was supposed to drag my mouse in front or behind the ball to power up the swing. For some reason, when I see that power bar stretch out from the ball, I see that as the club back-swing, not the intended path of the ball? Again, maybe it's just me, but I wonder if something about the visuals could be changed to make it more obvious.

*I did find it annoying that you don't have enough camera control to see the entire course at once, which makes it feel very unfair as you can't plan out your strategy. Sure you can zoom out the camera, but 1) I feel like it should be zoomed out by default and not make me do it everytime 2) zooming isn't enough to get a full picture as I need panning too and 3) using the mousewheel to zoom makes the browser window scroll because you didn't lock the cursor to the game.

*I felt like it was a bit tricky starting out? It's not that bad, but some of the early courses required some crazy level of precision (going up those hills and having to land in that tiny flat spot inbetween was terrible) that I felt should've been left for later courses once you've warmed up to the game.

*I'm not sure what the continue option is? Why is the next level, the obvious and most-used button you're going to select to continue with your adventure, not put at the top of the list for easy access?

Aleksander-Sats responds:

Thank you so much for really well detailed feedback! I really appreciate it! :D
So here is my response to all that! :)

"and has a surprising amount of quality-of-life options!" We are going to very soon actually release update v2.1.0 which is primarily a Quality of Life update, we are adding a bunch of nice improvements as well as fixing many bugs.

*I see. I didn't think people could get confused but Thanks for the feedback! I will try to make it more obvious which way you are shooting in 2.1.0! :)

*We are adding Freecam in 2.1.0 which you can access in the pause menu, it works great so far! 1) Personally we find the default zoom fine. it's how it is in the prequel so I guess the main reason is due to that. 2) We read into that issue where using the scroll-wheel causes the whole page to scroll. The last time we checked, it's an issue with the webpage and not our game and there isn't much we can do about it apparently. I did however find something else so perhaps it's fixable, well see. In any case if it isn't fixable, we already added a camera zoom slider so you don't have to go to settings for that due to this scrolling issue. 3)

*A bit tricky? Hmmm well we've done more than at least 10 full playthrough's to bug test everything and I don't find it tricky. That being said I am skilled versus a novice thanks to that so I can't really well tell sometimes. The main strategy is using walls and doing 45 degree angles. We have significantly improve the balance on the difficulties of levels compared to the prequel. Seriously the prequel is quite difficult (*cough* Ice 20 & Mech 30).. Anyway back to topic. Perhaps we can switch around the level order to smoothen the difficulty.

*The continue buttons main purpose is really to unpause. That being said you do have a fair point as there are many ways to unpause including pressing the same button you pause with. (Now that I am thinking about it, it is rather pointless.) I guess we will remove it.

[Rocket to the Top]

Oh, man, this is a rough one for me! I actually do quite like the challenge that this game brings and found myself getting a bit addicted to mastering the controls. But lord have mercy, the first impression was absolutely brutal, and 9 times out of 10 I probably would've noped out of this pronto! It's probably a testament to how good and polished the general presentation and feel of the game is that somehow compelled me to give it the benefit of the doubt and keep trying until I grew attached.

As said, the controls of this game are so hard to acclimate to: not only are they highly unorthodox, everything is just so fast and unwieldly, requiring such precise and light tippity-taps of the keys, culminating in a hopeless unrecoverable feeling if you stray even slightly. It cramps up my hands with how bloody delicate you need to be! Would love if everything was just slowed/powered down a bit overall to make controlling and adjustments easier.

In a way, while the game is quite challenging, it is forgiving, but I feel it does so in an awkward unsatisfying way. Typically a game like this would require you to clear the board of coins all in a single trip, with any crashes resetting the board. However, this game instead makes it so that only rubies are reset upon death, meaning that you could, as long as its within the time limit, make a bunch of separate suicidal runs to collect all the coins and then exit.

It's generous in a way, but death and frustration are much more so in this game with the method it chose, I think. I dunno about others, but I would prefer a game where I need to collect everything in a single run but the controls are much slower and smoother, than this game with unwieldly controls but you have as many runs as you want in a time limit. I know it's silly since the two methods kind of equal out, but it just feels better one way!

In terms of some quality of life, I wish there was a way to restart the level if you're in a 'dead man walking' state, aka you can see that you don't have enough time left to collect everything and make it to the exit. Also, would like a way to immediately retry/go back to a level you just beat: sometimes when I was trying to finish collecting everything I brushed past the exit and ended prematurely.

This one is definitely for the hardcore masochists!

platformalist responds:

Hi FutureCopLGF! Thanks so much for the thoughtful review <3

I agree that this game has appealed more to people on the hardcore side of things, and I'd be lying if I said that your response didn't mirror a few of my playtesters. Once I'd realized how tough the game was for folks unaccustomed to the controls, the game design was done and it didn't make a ton of sense to revisit and make the core of it easier (which would have required a full rework of ... well ... everything!). So it was like - polish this thing for the masochists to enjoy, get it out the door and make my next game easier!

Again, really appreciate your detailed, thoughtful review. :)