FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

Quest 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!!

[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.