FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dark Sword]

Pretty cool game that I quite enjoyed, but unfortunately feels quite unpolished in a lot of areas!

For the most part, I found the game very cool and reminiscent of something like Titan Souls or Shadow of the Colossus: a mysterious and dark world/story, tons of stylish bosses with sensational attack patterns to them, an interesting core combat mechanic of switching between melee and ranged, decent juicy effects, and so on. I also thought it had some great touches like how the gun puffs when you are out of ammo, and how you have black orbs swoosh over to you when you slash an enemy: really illustrates the mechanic to the player in a subtle way. I love me some boss fights and so I had a pretty darn good time here!

I will say that the game is pretty dang janky, though, which kinda holds it back. There were a lot of sloppy graphical effects like the boss bullets spawning at a different location than the spark effect for them being generated, you can take hits so fast with little invincibility time and insta-die, in general it can be difficult to tell when you get hit at times due to vague hitboxes, reflecting bullets with the sword is inconsistent as sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't for no reason I can tell (reflecting bullets also makes things a bit too easy), it feels silly that you can walk around when the game is still fake-loading and hasn't faded in yet after a level transition, and it seems like attacks aren't actually limited in fire-rate so technically people with better non-carpal-tunnel hands (or a macro) could have an unfair advantage, and so on and so forth.

While the game does have a lot of little things that hold it back, the broad strokes are still pretty cool and I enjoyed myself. Bit of a bummer that there is no save/load as I was near the end but just wanted to take a little break, only to see all my progress erased. I'll see if I can revisit it later on, maybe once the final boss area has been developed.

EDIT: I know I already said it before, but damn, some of the bosses in this game are just jank as all hell and don't feel good to fight. They look like they should be great to fight with all the fancy effects and attacks they have, but everything is just so untelegraphed and inelegant and confusing to parse. Eventually quit at the final boss: I kept trying but it was just so ugly as it seemed like the only way to win against him was to spam dodge like hell until he finally finishes his pattern and stands still for a nanosecond to let me get an attack in, and my arms/hands just can't keep up with that amount of button mashing or inelegant design. Again, neat game in concept though.

MrDoth responds:

Thank you very much for your review and for letting me know all these things, believe me I'm working since a few days ago to release an update that fixes most of these problems, thank you again that you have dedicated so much time to the game, and I had not thought about the save/load, I'll write it down to add some slots :D

[Fantasy Madness: Bloodbath]

Pretty neat vampire survivors-esque game! There's a lot of games like this, but I felt like this one did a pretty decent job at differentiating it slightly with its goofy themes and animal-based attacks. For the most part there's an alright level of polish put into the combat with explosive kills and blood being left behind and all that jazz. Had some good fun here!

It could just be because there are so many games like this out there, so competition is fierce, but overall I still had some feeling that this was lacking, despite it technically being quite decent. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I did have a slight feeling like I was never clearly feeling the feedback from my attacks: felt like everything easily got lost in this chaos and I couldn't tell what was doing anything, where other similar games have you feel like you can still pick out the individual attacks from all the different weapons you have despite it being so chaotic. For example, the game told me my butterflies did the most DPS out of all my weapons, but it never really felt like they were attacking: it felt like they were just flying around me not doing anything. I will say there was a rare exception to this, being the toucan bombers which felt really good whenever they announced their arrival and streaked in for big numbers (though it happens so rarely that it's a bit of a bummer).

Apart from that, there were also some weird bugs and odd design decisions, like how you can exploit the dumb pathfinding of enemies and the fact that they collide with geometry and other enemies to group them up behind a wall and keep them out of your hair practically forever. Also it feels like the color palette and general presentation is a bit too bright and saturated and cartoony, leading to everything kind of blending together and making visual clarity difficult (possibly another symptom of me not being able to see the attack feedback that well).

I also dunno if I agree with the whole equipment system and gold gain: I don't like the feel of sacrificing potentially fun equipment for your current run to use for a later run, just feels like an easy way for me to start optimizing the fun out of the day: "I'll just make this run terrible to make another run better!" Just let me have fun without worrying about all these logistics!

Again, the game certainly provides some good fun, but at the moment, I'd say it falls behind a lot of the other popular games in this genre: doesn't mean it's bad, but comparison is inevitable. Hope you continue to work on the feel of the game and other aspects as it is very promising!

NightSteed responds:

Big thanks for taking your time and sharing a complex and insightful feedback (including the video you made recently)! We also appreciate you including our game in your Top 10 of NG games :)

Regarding the gold/earning system, we recently updated the game and now you gain gold by playing, therefore, selling items should be just an extra (and optional) way of earning some gold and getting upgrades. The amount of gold reward depends on the game mode you play and your performance (how many elites you kill, how long you survive etc.). This is not final ofc, but should give demo players much more opportunities on testing the upgrades, without necessity of “sacrificing” items earned.

Without getting into details, we just wanted to let you know that we are seriously taking all your remarks into account and we will surely implement some improvements in regards to issues mentioned. Mostly in regards to visual and skill readability. We hope you will check on it and share your thoughts again once they are implemented!

[JOIN THE SQUAT demo]

Hmm, kind of a mixed impression on this one!

I certainly do find the overall aesthetic and story of the game to be quite mysterious and stylish, so it did compel me to keep playing. Furthermore, I do think the game has a lot of promising aspects like the very intense boss fight with a pretty neat pattern to it: always love me a good boss fight!

But overall I found the game very wonky and not very impressive:

*The beginning platforming section felt really boring and bog-standard with no unique mechanics or satisfying movement to show off.

*Climbing and swimming being just unlocks to your jump limiter without any new movement tech or physics or animations to them felt super lazy and bad.

*Speaking of swimming, it and other aspects felt really dry and lacking of nice effects: for example swimming should have splashes when you enter/exit, at the very least.

*The hitboxes for the boss were very wonky with tons of times where I'd jump on him and hit him, but the game would also say I got hit too at the same time, leading to an unfair feeling death.

*The game also lacked an auto-fire option which, when combined with the large health of blocks, made me click way too much and flare up my carpal tunnel.

*The fire button can technically keep firing at fast as you can press, so its possible to cheese the boss by mashing the fire button at an incredibly speed: I feel like it should be limited to a certain fire rate.

Just feels like it is in a rough state at the moment, which I suppose is to be expected for a demo, but still! Despite my rough time, I do still feel like the game has some promise, so hopefully you can continue work on it! I do appreciate that the game has saving so it continues where I left off instead of making me go through the start again!

omgmac responds:

Thank you for your detailed review FuturecopLGF, I like your suggestions :)

[Maple's Maid Service]

What a cute game! I typically love my games to have a lot of action and guns and challenge and all that jazz, but this game made me really enjoy just wandering around helping all these nice characters.

I was really impressed in general with the game's cute graphics, nice characters and their dialogues, and wholesome premise, but even more so I was impressed at all the little touches that go into making the game feel charming and alive, like being able to bump into trees to make them shake and make leaves fall, being able to kick balls around and even into the water, giving head pats, and just being able to plop down on a tree stump or bench for a little sit whenever you like! In general I love the almost overwhelming sugary-sweetness that this game has: even if you clean your room and go to bed immediately, the game still treats you nicely in the ending screen even though I felt like I didn't deserve it, haha!

The only complaints I can think of at the moment is that it can be a bit confusing getting used to mapping the town at first: I had so much trouble figuring out where the pizza deliveries were supposed to go since they give street address style directions but there are no street signs or house numbers to help (I did like how you can go back and ask for directions though!) It's actually probably because I stumbled upon the pizza quest too early before I could map out the village and there's no way to opt out. Also there are some weird graphical annoyances, like how the broom sweep graphic is kinda lazy and can be layered really awkwardly, like it goes behind a fence you're standing in front of and such. There are some weird audio annoyances as well where music will just cut out or not play and you need to hard reset it by transitioning areas to get it back on track. Oh, and I would've loved even more emotes and character portraits for various emotions!

Overall though it's a lovely little adventure and I look forward to getting a full heart run! Gotta admit though, I wish there was a save/load function since its a lot to do is just one sitting!

EDIT: I spent way too long literally pushing the sheep to the barn without realizing that they were already set to follow me once I pat them.

EDIT 2: Woo, I finished all the tasks! Finally, proof that I'm a good person.

Peti responds:

I've been anxiously waiting for this review to come out, as soon as monthly voting began every notification made me incredibly nervous lol bc I didn't know when you'd finally see this. To hear that you enjoyed the game and was impressed by it means the world to me. Thank you, I can finally rest easy now! 🐇💕

The only thing I can add is that music not looping/not always playing is intentional, so that the player can listen to the ambience sounds. Similar to Stardew Valley or Minecraft.

Congratulations on finishing all the tasks, and thank you sm for the great review service as always! You ARE a good person!! 🙌🐇💕

[Toe II Toe]

The game does certainly impress with its sprite work and animation and gives a good first impression, but I found it very lacking in content and gameplay.

Compared to other simple-yet-deep fighting games like Divekick or Footsies, I felt like this game was only simple, with no hidden depth to speak of. I wanted to employ tactics like ducks and blocks and such but it just never felt like they could lead into anything since attacks come so fast and with no telegraphs or openings being made by defense: for example you'd think a well-timed duck would make a big right hand from your opponent whiff and leave them open to a counter, but no, they recover in time and I gain no advanage by the time I stand up (or even worse, I get hit by an already thrown punch when I'm in the middle of standing up from a duck). I'd regularly feel like I had better luck winning a fight by just mashing rather than playing in any sort of smart way: felt like the equivalent of rock-em-sock-em robots or something like that.

I'll admit that I only played the single player, so maybe I'm missing out on the ideal two player experience. But still, I feel like this game just doesn't have enough content to it to make it worthy of dragging someone around to huddle around the keyboard and play for a bit. I like the idea of a simple fighting game, but I don't agree with the execution here.

plazatin responds:

Hey man, thank you for playing my game and the honest feedback, appreciate it. Block actually can be timed to block both jab and hook, and it opens up a lot of opportunities to counter once you get hang of it. This is further emphasized when playing against another player. For the duck, however, I must admit, feedback has been the same across even those who loved the game--it can be timed especially against a hook, but isn't worth using because it is too risky and prone to punishment. Admittedly, the game requires further tweaking. Luckily I am getting feedback from you and other people too, so thank you detailing your thoughts instead of saying game sux or leaving one star.

Also, the game was, in fact, meant to be a digitial equivalent of rockem sockem. The initial plan was to to see if a 20 second fighting game (for a game jam) was feasible. I honestly didn't think people would have complicated strategies for a 20 second match other than mash buttons.

Because of the positive feedback, people have opened my eyes to the potential and given me suggestions to improve the game. Some of them are (1) ability to choose time beyond 20 seconds, because people found it too short for player vs player where people are strategizing instead of just spamming buttons (2) tweak the duck and add a counter (3) more characters for an arcade experience, and some more changes. Hopefully after I've applied the improvements, you can give the game another shot.

P.S. although the game fell short, thank you for comparing it to footsies and dive kick!

[Blam and Protect]

Cute little game, but unfortunately so shallow that it loses its appeal after a minute or so.

In general the construction of the game is decent with nice graphics, music and feel/feedback: I like seeing the various Newgrounds characters running around, and the core concept of blamming bad entries as P-Bot protecting the portal is quite novel. Certainly could work...

However, the gameplay just consists of holding down the fire button and aiming at the bad guys. It's pretty braindead, and there isn't much variation in enemies to force you to have to tackle them dynamically, like having some teleporter enemies, enemies that attack you, or slow but tough ones and fast but weak ones, or anything. As said, you only need to play for less than a minute to see all the game has to offer you: no interesting events or escalation of difficulty happens.

I really feel like the game missed a trick here: when I started, I initially thought that you were going to be like a sniper, accurately lining up shots to ensure you only take out the bad guys hiding in the line while not hitting any of the good submissions with friendly fire. That would actually breathe some much needed challenge and strategy into the game, since you'd need to carefully adjust and time your shots.

Would love to see this game come back in an improved state with more meat on it since, as I said, the idea behind it isn't bad at all. However, as it is now, you know what I'd say (apparently haha): this is like if nickleback was a game!

factzmachine responds:

HE SAW IT! HE SAW THE GAME OVER SCREEN!! ITS LIKE IF NICKELBACK WAS A GAME CONFIRMED!!!!! Fr tho Ty for playing futurecop, Tysm bro!

[SQUID ON ROAD]

Hmmm, bit of a weird love/hate relationship with this game! Ultimately I do think I very much enjoy this game, but boy do I feel like I have a lot of complaints about it, haha!

First, it was quite annoying that, despite using a mouse and keyboard, the game kept insisting I use touch controls and only showcased them in the tutorial. Eventually I discovered that I could hold the A and D to move left and right, and thank god for that because boy lemme tell you it was annoying to keep clicking left and right spots on the screen at first. Can't the game just detect my control scheme and display an appropriate tutorial?

While the boost mechanic in great and satisfying in theory, there were a lot of little things that made it much less so. First, even though the game says that killing enemies fills up the boost bar, I found that it felt like the boost bar filled up at the same agonizingly slow pace whether I killed enemies or not, making me feel silly for pushing myself to play aggressively since I wasn't being rewarded for it. Second, I hated that, no matter how many damage upgrades you get, the collateral damage from a boost always seemed to do 7 damage, which is 1 damage point away from the amount needed to get a kill: this made boosting very unsatisfying since no matter how much I tried to aim to ram as many people as possible and scatter them to the winds, the only target that would die is the main target and everyone else would immediately come back and shoot at me while I wait for the aforementioned slow boost charge.

A lot of the time it felt like dodging bullets felt completely up to luck. Yes, enemies do have telegraphs and the bullets move slow so it is possible to dodge them. But in execution, each enemy is moving to the beat of their own drum, so even if I try to time my attack after one enemy telegraph to avoid their attack, I can't track all of the others in the big crowd and one of them will plug me unavoidably when I'm dashing in. Additionally, even if I try to pull off a great attack move that will weave through bullets, sometimes the curving road will make enemies shift over which changes my trajectory into a bullet I wasn't going to hit at first. Argh, so annoying!

Despite all my gripes, though, I still found myself playing the game over and over: it's just a really fun and goofy concept with juicy, satisfying gameplay at its core. I'm not sure about the long term appeal since it was getting kind of repetitive going through the same events every replay, and the upgrades were a bit boring and samey, and I wasn't sure if there was a goal or ending to strive for, but for the most part, I'd say well done!

jefvel responds:

Thanks!! Great review as always!
I’m currently reworking a bunch of stuff in the game. In my previous games I could determine whether or not it was played using touch when first clicking the screen, but that info isn’t exposed by gamemaker sadly. I’m going to add a setting for it on first launch.

Also rethinking and working the way enemies and attack values work. Once I get in more enemy variation I’ll also make damage numbers go up significantly. Also yeah gotta do something about how bullets and the road curvature works. A goal is to make it work well using touch/keyboard+mouse/controller, which is a bit of a challenge!

Hopefully I’ll have these things figured out in a future version, I’ll do my best! Thanks again 🙂

[Franco Fox in Fairyland DEMO]

It ain't bad but...it's not that great either? Basically, the game reminds me very much of those memes where they're like "that game sure was a game" or something akin to that, haha.

Again, it's not a bad game, heck, I'd even say it's a good game. Certainly does make a good impression with its cute intro, and overall the game has a solid sense of craft to it in all respects: graphics, sound, music and retro aesthetic. Couldn't see any major complaints with the movement or anything either, other than it was a little confusing that the bounce you get from an enemy goes higher than the bounce from a box (maybe you shouldn't even bounce that much from a box in the first place, if at all). So yeah, all in all, it was good.

But in general, while it was "good," I just found the game to be very plain and bog-standard, and therefore not very fun. It pretty much just felt like a basic platformer or Mario clone without any unique mechanics or ideas of its own, leading me to questioning why I should even bother playing it. Not only did it not seem to have a hook or anything like that, the game was also in general very unchallenging and thus not very engaging, and any bonuses to strive for that might've engaged such as those big stars were both very simple to get and ultimately pointless as I was unsure what their purpose was.

There are also some slight bugs like how you can fire the weapons as fast as you can press the button: feel like that should be limited to a locked fire rate, otherwise it is an unfair advantage for people with faster fingers to cheese certain parts of the game by absolutely blasting them away.

Might just be a case of the game being a slow burn: the bonus level does showcase some more challenging late game levels that we might see in a full release, but even then the overly simple movement and lack of juicy effects or some sort of unique style made it still feel less than impressive. Furthermore, even if the game is a slow burn, I'd still argue that the game should step up the pace and hook us with something early to keep us interested and all that, but despite my complaints, I am looking forward to seeing the final version of this eventually since it is promising and shows effort, so best of luck!

LuckyDingoStudios responds:

Thank you for your thorough review! I wanted this game to be relatively simple and basic so it would be easy for anyone to pick up and play, but I can see how it being too standard would make it feel like it's nothing special. I don't think I will be changing the core mechanics to be more complex at this point, but I will try to add more unique elements that will hopefully help the game form more of its own identity and to be more engaging to play.

The unlimited fire rate on the weapons was intentional because I thought it would be fun to spam it, but most players seem to think it was an oversight or makes things too easy, so I most likely will limit the fire rate in the full game based on the feedback I have gotten.

[Gappy's Playground]

Alright, you know the deal, it's a really cool game and in general it feels great and I'm looking forward to seeing more, very impressive, yadda yadda yadda. Let's get right to business and give proper feedback since you're looking for opinions on the movement, which I've listed in severity:

Dragon Tier Level Issues-

*I find it incredibly unintuitive that wall jumps put you into a committed uncontrollable jump arc, like something out of NES Castlevania. Feels very inconsistent and confusing since in general the rest of your jumps have very generous mid-air control, and indeed if you use a double-jump after a wall-jump you get control back, so why is the wall jump so rigid? I don't mind if wall-jumps give you a powerful directional impulse that you can only slightly adjust against, but being completely rigidly stuck in an arc without being able to influence with directions at all feels awful.

*Had a few times where I swear I jumped right at the edge of a platform, only for it to either eat my input entirely and I fell like a log, or for it to use my double-jump instead. Feel like some coyote-time input forgiveness might be in order.

*If you jump off a wall and hold back towards the wall and double-jump, you will as expected double-jump back towards the wall. However, if you jump off a wall and hold back towards the wall and dive, you will confusingly dive away from the wall, completely disrespecting your directional command.

Tiger Tier Level Issues-

*I found it confusing that I couldn't Mega Man X/Meat Boy jump up a wall by wall-jumping and holding towards the wall: instead I have to use a double-jump after the wall-jump to change my direction to go back towards the wall and proceed up. Not too bad since it felt kinda good to get skilled at remembering it, but still, very awkward and against common practice. If the more primary issue with wall-jumps above were fixed, I wouldn't mind if you still couldn't climb with just wall-jumps and you had to use double-jumps to gain height.

*Similar to wall-jumps committing you to an hard-coded arc, if felt a little bit bad that dives also hard-commit you into an arc without being able to influence it slightly. It doesn't feel as bad as wall-jumps and kinda makes more sense, but still, a bit of influence would feel nice (but I deem this a lower threat since it feels more acceptable).

Wolf Tier Level Issues-

*Felt like the wall stickiness was too much: I don't mind the stickiness since it allows people to more easily hold away from the wall and pressing jump to wall-jump without falling off of it too quickly and using their double-jump instead, but in general it felt hard to disengage from a wall when you're trying to rush through a level and accidently graze one, and also it felt like you just slide too slowly: perhaps you should slide down at a fixed rate instead of this awkward increasing speed.

*Wish when you're sticking to a wall it would have some puffs of smoke or a nice sliding sound effect: feels very bland and static compared to all of the other juicy effects for jumping and the like.

*Feels like the run doesn't do much, takes too long to start up, and might just be unnecessary? The basic movement already feels fast and fun enough. Maybe if running gave you a faster initial boost and a satisfying puff of smoke instead of slowly accelerating (like in Kirby, I think?): boosts are more fun than runs.

LeviRamirez responds:

Thank you for the feedback! I'm gonna try and tackle all of your teirs of concerns because a lot of work has already been done in the background on this project!

=Dragon Teir=
- Coyote timing has been tweaked & being able to dive in the direction you are holding on the fly either from a wall-jump or in general has been added! Those were just mistakes I didn't account for in time for the demo and those 2 have specifically been addressed! As for the jump arch from the wall-jump, this is something that I'll talk about in the next tier but I want to jump off the wall to feel "realistic" I guess. When kicking off the wall I want the player to be repeled entirely in the opposite direction of the wall, and the double jump is there for players to be able to some degree to do it with the double jump. This is a dumb hill to die on but I like this feature a lot. However, it has / will be continually tweaked as the project progresses. In this prototype you are able to repel forward or be idle and not move with no deceleration. Now, As of writing this response you can do the repel against the wall or hold back / no key control and be in a less strict arch (I.e Holding back lets you slowly come back towards the wall) I hope that makes sense, it's the best way I can describe it.

=Tiger Tier=
In this game I wanted my wall jumps to NOT be like the Mega Man X and Meat Boy wall jump style. I know it's popular and I know people like it but I don't want that to be in this game, I just don't. Also, the dive arch being in a committed arch is also important as it's a trade-off for the speed and extra air time on top of double jumping. (You can break out of a dive from a double jump if you haven't done one yet.)

=Wolf Tier=
One of the most common complaints was the wall stickiness, and that was fixed very quickly! It isn't in the demo but in the continual development, the walls are much less sticky! Also acceleration and movement will be tweaked in tandum with the game so by the final product hopefully, the game feels even better!

I'm glad you liked the game and took the time to write a very strong list of issues you had with the game! I would say 9/10 of the things you brought up have already been addressed!!!!

[Charles, the Bee [Beta]]

It's a cute little game, but it definitely felt pretty rough (which is understandable given its a game jam game, but still, rough is rough and this ain't the game jam site).

While I enjoyed the juxtaposition and sudden twist of going from a harvesting game to a dancing game (I imagine in my head that the bee is supposed to give the pollen to the hive but through cooking the books is able to hide it from auditors to use for his personal illegal dancing), doing the same thing over and over without any big changes to them started to turn stale, especially since the harvesting game felt like the weakest of the two and most repetitive since the amount gets larger and larger.

It's certainly impressive that we get two games for one, but in this case, I would prefer quality over quantity: one strong game rather than two weak games. The harvesting game was pretty generic and lacking any sort of unique elements to it, and the dancing game, while the most interesting, felt really lacking in several factors: the note charts didn't feel sequenced to the beat properly, the feedback from hitting or missing notes was missing and made it difficult to tell how you're doing, the opponent isn't involved in the dance-off during so it feels less thrilling, scoring was too lenient, and so on and so forth.

It's cute and could be an interesting adventure, but it felt so unpolished that it really made the journey less than ideal: would love to perhaps see a more finalized version of this if this is indeed version 0.1 and not version 1.0.

BluePinGames responds:

Wow! Thanks so much for taking the time to help us make the game better :D

Whether it's 0.1 or 1.0, we intend to make many, many changes. Your feedback will certainly help us get to a more fun place with this game. We are already working on improving both the harvesting and rhythm sections.

The latter is definitely easier to improve, but we're committed to making both experiences great. Again, thanks for the nuanced feedback!