FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[MAGE-KESHIFT]

Wow, it could be my bias as a boss fight lover talking, but I found this to be surprisingly very promising and cool!

It's certainly rough around the edges and unfinished, but the bosses showed a lot of effort put into their unique attack patterns and suitable telegraph animations for them, and the general gameplay of catching the bosses attacks and throwing them right back into their face was very satisfying, especially when combined with the charging mechanic and the risk/reward it brings! In a way, the general gameplay reminds me of something like Titan Souls, but with combat more akin to some sort of weird fusion of Kirby and Sekiro, what with the general way you parry/suck&blow attacks from the boss.

While I did have a good time with this, it definitely was pretty confusing to start out with and there were a lot of weird quibbles that got in the way:

*I spent way too long trying to just smack the enemies with the orb before realizing we were supposed to throw objects at them and the orb was just a tool for that, haha! Maybe the starter room could teach this concept a bit more: I know it subtly tries to by making you throw the key at the door, but maybe it could be a bit more clear.

*Input registration was very unforgiving and a bit annoying. For example, if after an attack, but before you've recovered, you hold down the attack key, it will not start charging when you finish recovering: instead it requires that you wait until you've recovered and then press and hold the attack button anew.

*Collision detection was very odd: there would be times I would charge up and throw an object, but because my back is to the wall and the object was technically behind the wall, it would rebound off the wall and go out-of-bounds. Plenty of other strange bounces as well, and sometimes the feedback from a throw would be difficult to see as they'd just go way too fast to even be seen.

*Found it odd that you can't pick up objects if you walk over to them while already charging: it will only pick them up if you start charging while already next to them at the start. I understand it might be intentional as, in the context of intercepting fireballs thrown at you, it would be too easy if you didn't have to time your button press to nullify them parry-style, but in the context of a rock just being on the ground that you want to pick up, I think it would make sense to be able to scoop it up in such a way.

Definitely found this to be quite the promising prototype that I'd like to see more from!

FishDev responds:

Thank you for the feedback!! I plan on getting back to working on this again once I'm done with another game. Also, thank you so much for the compliments on the boss designs!! I put a lot of work into that, I was pretty inspired by Wizard of Legend. I definitely need to do some balancing though, as I've gotten a lot of complaints about the difficulty haha

- Yup, an actual bonafide tutorial is planned. This was made in just a month for a game jam so I wanted to spend more time on the actual game itself.

- I'm sorry but I'm not sure what you mean by this. Is there any way you could elaborate?

- Lol yeah I've seriously gotta make those walls one-way or something

- I try communicating that by having the range circle flash at the start, that doesn't continue as you charge, but I could use a more noticeable method, the flash is def pretty subtle.

[Calico]

Damn, this is quite the tricky one! Due to it trying to explain the rules as best as it can, as well as having a nice level of polish and presentation to it, I gave it the ol' college try and came out...somewhat understanding it and having fun? Maybe? Maybe not?

I appreciate the inclusion of a tutorial, especially since I feel like Pico-8 games usually cut them since space is at a premium, but unfortunately even with the tutorial, I still felt hopelessly lost as it just drowns you in a bunch of information without enough examples or guidance. Trying to figure out the rules through playing is also a bit tricky since there is no real feedback on a step-by-step basis to guide you: it's only when you complete a large goal that you receive a badge, and since you can't hover over the badges (or various other facets of the interface) to see a tooltip that explains them, that doesn't help much either.

Having said that, I still tried my best to play it. While I couldn't understand the top goals very well, I was able to (I think) successfully intuit a general beginner strategy, which is trying to surround the goal tiles with matching groups of colors or patterns as a primary focus, while at the same time trying to make connected matches of colors to earn badges as a secondary focus. The interplay of these two goals creates some interesting strategy of figuring out where to use colors or patterns and where to arrange them to maximize points, especially when you combine it with the outer tiles as well. I'm still lost on the larger goals to strive for and other rules, but I felt like I was able to at least get this much from the tutorial and have a decent time, so well done in that regard!

LouieChapm responds:

I really appreciate this writeup ! The tutorial I *REALLY* struggled with , trying to fit ~11 pages of board game manuals into a single pico8 cart was tough !

The top goals function more or less the exact same as the colour group badges , a "5+" indicates that you need to have 5 or more tiles of the same pattern in a single interconnected group , and then little shape icons indicate that you need to create that shape with tiles of the same pattern .

Not too complex on it's own , but fighting against all three scoring goals are what made me fall in love with the board game !

Hovering over the badges for a tooltip on how they were awarded is a really good idea ! I wish I had just a couple hundred more tokens xD


Thanks for playing mate ! The comment is appreciated <3

[CLox in Da Hood 6: Bin Laden Strikes Back]

This was actually quite the pleasant surprise, but I should've known from the start to not doubt Chdonga in the first place, creator of Ritz on a Roll!

Whenever I encounter a game like this that looks like a shitty low-effort hack job, but actually has some high-effort game feel and solid design to it, I'm always happy! Don't get me wrong as I'd still prefer something a bit better constructed than this, but if you look past the silly graphics, there are plenty of good facets like juicy explosive feedback, a decent variety of enemies, fun powerups, actual boss fights with interesting patterns, and a goofy story with all sorts of wacky scenes! I particularly liked a lot of the arcade-y touches, like the way bosses pulse red faster and faster as they get closer to death.

That being said, it is still quite the rough and janky game, intentional or not, so in terms of feedback:

*While I loved the boss fights, I only particularly liked the first one, with the second and third being pretty bad:

The first one was alright in how you need to take care of the minions before being able to take a shot at them: nothing crazy, but decent and you feel in-control.

The second one, however, is the exact opposite where all you can do is play the waiting game and shoot them when they finally decide to come down: felt very boring and was disappointed that they didn't have a more dramatic and cooler second phase besides speeding up, especially considering how important they are in the plot.

Third boss was a similar downer as it makes you wait a lot, and its attacks were very janky and glitchy and hard to work out how to avoid them. I enjoyed it shaking things up by giving you a melee weapon, but it was more an annoyance as you constantly take contact damage from getting too close and it's too difficult to tell whether you're actually hitting him with your swings.

*Found the boss arenas really confusing with the way you can walk past where it looks like you'd be limited to walk and go into the sky. I know, it's probably done that way intentionally as a funny joke, but still, really weird and unintuitive.

So yeah, bit of a mixed bag: I do appreciate that, despite trying to make it very shitpost-y to fit the clock crew theme, you still put some actual hidden effort in there to make a goofy actually-somewhat-enjoyable adventure. However, at the end of the day, it ain't no Cruelty Squad or anything like that unfortunately, as it is still unavoidably quite janky and shitpost-y. Had a better time than I thought I would, but I'd love to see an arcade game from you in the future where you just go all-out in designing it!

Chdonga responds:

Thanks for the review. Also thanks for mentioning the janky final boss. It played fine in Windows mode which is how I playtested the game 9 times outta 10. Sometimes a bug pops up in HTML5 mode that doesn't appear in Windows so I completely missed it.

[Clocks of the BBS 2023]

Hmm, a cute little collab, but felt really lackluster not only due to a lack of content, but also a very generic slideshow presentation which felt like the bare minimum you can get away with for these type of things. At least the author's name is delivered in this stylish diagonal layout, I suppose. Also lacks the typical functionality I want from collabs, such as being able to click on user names to go to their Newgrounds profile, as well as a gallery view and zoom function and so on.

Compared to the 2022 entry, and other more creative entries like the BBS Awards which had a unique presentation through a fake Windows OS, this felt like a severe downgrade in effort and creativity: really missing the usual creative layouts and easter eggs/achievos and such that I'd expect from a Little-Rena entry.

I suppose it might be intentional as it's clock crew and they're kind of synonymous with this low-effort schtick, but I dunno: even shitposts, while seemingly lacking effort, only float to the top because they have a hidden charming high-effort to their low-effort facade, if that makes sense.

PachkaNG responds:

Yknow I wish we could’ve gotten more people for this, but it seems the supporter forum is as dead as general so yeah

[GROBLIN SURVIVORS]

Jeez, I hate to say it, but I had an incredibly rough time with this game. Practically my entire playtime just felt like an absolute mess where I went from utter confusion to boring dissatisfaction. I'd like to think this has potential but it's quite difficult to see it in its current state.

As said, the initial impression was spent in confusion trying to learn the rules of the game and what the heck is going on. So many questions kept being asked:

Why is the only menu that is labeled the upgrade and exit: what do the other menu options do and why aren't they labeled? What is this tutorial trying to teach me? I like that it keeps things simple, but this is a case of being TOO simple! What is this menu that just popped up with a ballista button: is this a level up screen or something? Why do I keep getting goddamn interrupted every two seconds with this selection: I haven't even filled up the scrap gauge yet? Why when I chose a tower that time it wiped the entire map of enemies: you're not even gonna let me get the satisfaction of killing them myself? What's the damn point then? Why does only the starter ballista have this auto-target circle while the other similar ones don't? Am I even killing anything: it all just feels like a disconnected chaotic mess? Wait, why did the game just end with a goblin laughing: did I win? Did I lose? I don't think I got hit, so what happened?

And so on and so forth.

There's almost so much to point out that could be improved that it's difficult to decide what to say or where to start, but I'll try to limit it to a few key points for now:

1) Put more labeling and instructions and tooltips around to help guide players. Don't overdo it with walls of text or anything like that: less is more, but you want more than none, which is all you have currently. For example, put labels over the modes in the main menu, have the level up/upgrade screen be labeled at the top and put some instructions like 'pick a tower to add to your inventory'.

2) Have the level up/upgrade screen grey out the rest of the screen to make it more indicative that it has paused gameplay and is awaiting your selection. Also, have it appear with a bit more fanfare, like some sparkles or a literal fanfare sound effect, to make it feel like a nice event and separate the moment from regular gameplay.

3) Have more satisfying feedback for your towers damaging enemies: you know, sound effects and blood splats and stuff like that. In general the gameplay just felt so weird, like I wasn't feeling the satisfaction you're supposed to get from blasting enemies yourself. It's partly because its the towers killing them, but I think it's also because you can barely see your own bullets or hear/feel them hitting enemies, making it all feel so disconnected. I understand you're trying to make the screen less cluttered by muting your own bullets, but perhaps you could approach it differently, such as with colors/outlines to make things pop, especially since the game overall has a very dark palette.

4) Find a better way to introduce the whole aspect of only being able to aim certain towers in certain directions: the arrows do a pretty good job but it'd be nice if it could go a step further. It'd also be nice if this information was available in the tooltips in the level up/upgrade screen.

While I did have a really bad time, I don't think the concept is without merit: the twist of having to construct towers with certain powers and limitations could be cool as long as the game continues to get built up, I believe, so if you do continue, I'd like to see it in its final state.

FishDev responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I wasn't able to implement it all, but I've done some work and will be uploading a new build soon. From your feedback, I immediately added text to the menu options -- you were definitely right. More feedback on hitting was actually something I'd already been working on, more specifically damage text, though I like your ideas on adding things like bloodsplats and I'll see what I can do (without making the game run even worse on html lol).

As for the tutorial, I'm well aware it's bad and I'm actually working on improving it right now, though I don't think it'll be done for a little bit. I've never done an actual tutorial before so I wanna make sure it's actually, y'know. Good, lol. (EDIT: Done! The tutorial should be up-to-par, it still isn't very great but it should actually succeed at teaching players the ropes)

The fanfare's a good idea, in hindsight that's probably something I should have added even before release.

Your feedback was INCREDIBLY insightful, thank you so much!! Would it be alright if you added me on Discord so I could refer to you for future playtesting? If so, my Discord is @fartfish

[Hyperlight Survivor]

Despite its rather simple graphical fidelity and basic automated gameplay, this game does a lot to make everything feel exciting with tons of juice and nice touches! Alongside that, the game also did a decent job at having various enemy types each with their own AI patterns (instead of the usual boring survivors-style dummies that just chase you), lots of weapon upgrades, some events that pop up, and different arenas which make you improvise how best to survive. I think there's certainly a lot of potential here and overall the game feels fun.

However, one of my biggest issues with the game was its pacing. It just felt like it was really repetitive and took way too long to get to a decent level of difficulty to make me engaged. On my first playthrough, when it came to around 100 kills and I was still fighting the same boring mooks, I was seriously considering quitting and not looking back. Eventually yes, it does introduce more enemy types and events to makes things more exciting, but they felt like they were spaced out too far and kept recycling before moving on.

It didn't help either that the game felt a bit directionless and pointless. Yes, there is a ranking system and I'm getting points and such, but it just felt like it was doing the same ol' same ol' and didn't really entice me to play again, especially considering I've have to go through that slow start again. I feel like if it had more unique events like the bomb event happen more frequently, and perhaps if it forced you to go to new arenas on a timer instead of on pickup and they got progressively more intense instead of random, and if you faced mini or final bosses and they unlocked higher difficulty modes or checkpoints or whatever, I'd be more inclined to play since it would feel like I can gauge my progression and it would keep things spicy.

There were also some other slight annoyances like how the arenas just feel so bloody claustrophobic and the enemies get so dense that it just feels silly and doesn't allow for much movement or space for player expression. Also the Ultra takes so long to charge up that it makes me want to not use it, and considering how powerful it is, I'm surprised it doesn't treat it with more reverence like having a special gauge that goes all rainbowy when its fully charged or something: having it just be some boring numbers in the corner makes me forget I even have it.

In addition to all the gameplay-related stuff above, I did find it odd that, despite the game being played with the keyboard, the menu navigation is done with the mouse, which isn't use in game. I would expect to be able to do things like hit enter to start the game and use the arrow keys to select ships: feels weird to be forced to use a whole other control scheme and then switch back when the game starts.

I do think the game is pretty solidly put-together and juicy and has good potential, but it's rough because, well, you can't escape the fact that it is inevitably going against so many other Survivors games on the market like Holocure and Halls of Torment and even Picayune Dreams and so on, and this, while nice, just doesn't quite have the amount of variety in its content, addictive sense of progression, or any other special selling point like a story or whatever that those games have to set it apart. Still had a good time with it while it lasted, but I just can't see me sticking with it without a more powerful hook.

WittGames responds:

Hello! Thank you very much for the exhaustive review. I'm going to release very soon the last update for the web version of the game before the final release on Steam. The new update will include a new type of "starter" enemy to make the start of each run less tedious. It will also include a new Event and an entire Card System to upgrade power-ups and weapons. Also, the full version will have more Events, an Upgrade System for spaceships and much more to give the player a better sense of progression. However, thank you so much again for the feedback!

["Loss" Collab!]

Heh, interesting little art collab! Very amusing to see so many different takes on Loss: had a lot of fun going through and seeing how closely or how loosely the artists stuck with the theme.

While it's all very nice, I do wish the collab presentation was a bit more unique and had a bit more effort put into it, as what we have here is what I'd consider the boring 'default' slideshow presentation: considering it's based off of a webcomic, it'd be nice if the presentation was done in a more creative comic-esque format, at the very least. I'm sure you guys could think up something way more creative than that, and it'd be worth the effort as I think it would get a lot more people engaged and sticking around to see all the pieces.

Moving on from that, I do wish this gallery had a bit more features. For one, it'd be great to have some sort of zoom function as a lot of the pieces are very tiny, which makes it difficult to see some of the more intricate details. Also, I'd love it if you could click on a user's name to go to their page, as well as being able to click on the art piece to see it's page on Newgrounds: by doing this and making it so easy, more people would potentially follow or engage with artists they like, which I think should be the primary goal for these collabs in the first place.

Anyway, putting all that aside, your hearts in the right place, and it's always wonderful to see collabs like this!

B^U

RustiTank responds:

i aint reading allat

[Odd Verdure]

Wow, considering how often GB games feel so janky and stuttery to me, I was really surprised at how incredibly smooth and fluid this game felt! Not only did the game feel so nice, the gameplay was really cool as well: I'm always a sucker for grapple-based games, and this was a nice plant-based Bionic Commando that I really enjoyed getting more skilled at pulling off complex grapple manuevers!

It was a little awkward to get used to the game initially. At first I thought the game was similar to something like Dustforce or Mario 64 where you collect flies to open up doors to levels, but then it was a bit awkward to find that within those doors was just more of the same instead of something different. Furthermore, it was a bit frustrating with how easy it was for the plant to bump into things and then get stuck in this looooong stunned state where all you can do is fall: wish there was just a bit more wiggle-room to get close to things without being stunned.

I do like the game, but I had to admit that it was starting to feel quite repetitive and a bit draining. My favorite parts was when I was pulling off some really challenging grapple moves that required skill and timing to get flies, but those moments were very far and few between: most of the time flies were easy to get and just required plodding across the large map, and what flies were actually difficult could be skipped due to not needing to get them all. There was just so much backtracking or dead ends as well that exhausted me: I wish the game felt more like a classic linear level with obstacles and pits instead of this open world, because at least when I fall into a pit I'll just respawn in front of the obstacle, whereas here I have to awkwardly trudge my way back to try again. Basically I was looking for sprints but this game was cross-country: still ok but not quite what I wanted, and that's fine.

EDIT: Went back and enjoyed my playthrough with a bit more practice, and was really pleased to see the challenge rooms afterwards! Just what I wanted!

MondayHopscotch responds:

Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed review! In our own playtesting during dev, I think if you try to improve your completion time, you may find more situations that appeal to your enjoyment of challenging grapple moves. A lot of the most complicated movement options really show up when attempting to optimize speed runs. But I also understand that not everyone wants to come at it from a speedrun direction.

Bionic Commando was definitely an inspiration for this game :)

[Trust Issues]

Hmm, to me this really feels like a case of a great game concept, but executed in a rather unsatisfying, frustrating and confusing manner.

As said, I really like the idea of being in this awkward mexican standoff with a bunch of people who could or could not draw and start shooting at you at any moment. Moving around near yellows while trying to keep some cover between you and them, ready to fire off when they turn red, makes for some tense reactive scenarios. Reminds me a lot of things like various SWAT/police games where you need to make sure you only shoot if lethal force is warranted, or Watchdogs with its minigame where you have to time your superhero entrance to catch criminals in the act: not too early and not too late.

However, the gameplay was awkward on several levels. First, a lot of the game felt very clunky to control: shoot-outs with red guys almost always ended with my bullets going into walls that they shouldn't have collided with, or hitting two people standing nearby each other leading to unfair deductions, and/or with me taking unavoidable damage unless I tried to awkwardly snipe them from across the room. I can understand the game making the player slow and having to stand still to aim in a tactical sense, but it just felt so stifling and led to gunfights where it just feels up to luck: there needs to be a better way to intuit or react to reds, I feel.

Secondly, the rules/design of the game was confusing as well. You'd think that people would only turn yellow/red if they've got their eyes on you and are in close proximity, but no, they'll do it despite being on the opposite side of the level, making it just feel random and silly and prime for 'laming it out' by waiting out-of-sight to determine who is red and only popping out to snipe them safely. Taking this into account, you'd think that you could reasonably use the fact that someone has turned red once to treat them as red forever, even if they turn back to grey, similar to sussing out an impostor in Among Us, but no, if you try to shoot someone who was red but has gone grey again, they won't take damage for some reason, and if they're yellow, they could be treated as 'innocent' despite them being red before! I suppose you could argue that I'm misinterpreting the rules, that it's not good enough to shoot them based on their previous intentions, but only if you catch them red-handed in the moment, but it just felt really unintuitive. Are reds a pre-determined set of people within the crowd, or does anyone in the crowd have the potential to turn red? I just didn't know.

Would definitely like to see this concept revisited!

MoeAnguish responds:

Thanks for your feedback!
Like some other people have commented, the "Mexican standoff" thing can be pretty difficult especially in crowded levels, and to me personally it felt like an interesting concept, but i understand it isn't for everyone.

As for the reds turning grey again, i actually tried to keep them red. But the difficulty increased a lot to the point where it's almost unbeatable since you might have like 5 reds in one area preventing you from going to certain places or finding cover. And as for them turning yellow again, i thought it should be something that should keep you alert but you can't trust that it WILL mean they'll attack you, to make things a bit more tense.

At this point i might actually revise this game and make another installment of it with the feedback i got. But for now, i thank you and everyone else who offered constructive criticism and feedback on the game!

[twenty, in total]

Cute little adventure! Made me think of those time-loop-gather-info-till-final-speedrun games like Majora's Mask, Deathloop, or most precisely Minit, but in a much shorter form: perhaps it should be called Secint? After all, I'm not even sure what the title was referring to.

Overall the game was nice: decent bit of variety in the puzzles for each key, cute graphics, polished presentation/gamefeel, nice dev room reward, and so on. Only negative aspects I could think of was that the box-pushing puzzle could be unfairly hard because of the awkward physics, and that, as mentioned before, the game was incredibly short and couldn't help but feel unsatisfied and wish there were even more worlds and puzzles to do! If only the twenty in total was the amount of keys to collect!

BNTFryingPan responds:

The twenty refers to the starting time (17 seconds) plus the number of keys (3)