FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[12 Vengeful Ghosts]

Hah, when I saw the title, I wasn't seriously expecting a 12 Angry Men reference, but lo and behold! It's quite the cute little SHMUP boss rush, and I enjoyed all the goofy dialogue and various attack patterns, so well done!

That being said, the bosses weren't exactly the most exciting or creative, pretty much encompassing what would be considered a basic starter pack of common bullet-hell patterns. It definitely feels like the story was doing the heavy lifting here as otherwise it would be considered rather simplistic, but then again, that's part of the magic behind game design, and it's not too shabby for being made in such a short time frame!

One little thing that stood out to me was the final boss. There's a part where he summons a blue ghost to help him, and considering the fact that the dialogue stated that there were two people who were blue, the player and the human, I thought it was a hostage situation and I was supposed to be careful and not shoot the blue ghost. Later on I realized that it wasn't the case: bit of a bummer because I actually thought that was a nice challenge and made me play very carefully with my shots to only hit the main boss!

DecadeDecaf responds:

totally agree with this description of "a basic starter pack of common bullet-hell patterns," and the game being more narrative-driven than gameplay-driven. i was definitely going for something more barebones and casual than your typical bullet hell, but hopefully that didn't alienate any diehard fans. thanks for trying out my game!

[The Toybox Collab]

Pretty neat art collab! I like the idea of using a crane game to snatch up all of the art pieces since it adds a little bit of fun interactive charm to otherwise flipping through a static gallery, and in general it feels like this is well-constructed with good presentation, menus, and some nice quality-of-life features like links to the artist profiles.

I'll admit, though, that I was a bit bummed out that the crane game is more like a gacha game, lacking any of the fun quirks and physicality you would typically get in a crane game like being able to see all of the toys packed in there, and the challenge of plucking out the one you want. Obviously I can understand that some concessions needed to be made in regards to how many art pieces are in the collab, mayhaps, but still!

As an addendum to the above, it can be quite monotonous and taxing to get all 200+ toys from the crane game when you need to slowly get them one-by-one. I wonder if some sort of cheat code could be allowed where you can just unlock the entire gallery immediately for your viewing pleasure, or maybe some other creative solution to speed up the process. Especially when it looks like it doesn't save progress when you leave: no way I can get them all in one go!

Creeperforce24 responds:

letsss goooo @Whimsical-wife we got a future cop! We might get famous!

[Slasher Click 2: The Tale of Magawa]

Hey, happy to see a sequel to Slasher Click! The game may not be a looker, but I enjoy the surprisingly deep combat strategy through clever use of terrain, range, debuffs and so on, as well as the addictive sense of progression where you're slowly building up not only your stats through leveling, but acquiring new pieces of gear and new moves to add to your arsenal.

I'm very happy with most of the changes that have been made in this. For example, having a visual indicator for the enemy attack cooldown, as well as other touches like the enemy circle turning red when you're in range, makes combat so much clearer to understand! Other small touches like enemies reacting when hit, new sounds, amusing dialogue, and so on, add some nice flair. Nice work!

It's solid stuff, but I still ran into some issues:

*There are some weird glitches, like how I lost to the griffin, but when I talked to the quest-giver, he treated it as if I had won and moved me onto the next quest. I would also have instances of enemy 'ghosts' that remain on your screen from zone to zone in the same position, but aren't really there.

*The way enemy respawns are treated is a bit odd. I'd expect them to only come back after resting or going to a totally different zone, but they seem to come back immediately upon any transition. This can lead to some cheese where you can walk back-and-forth on a transition until you get a combination of enemies you prefer, instead of having to deal with what you're given.

*Speaking of cheese above, as fun as the game is, it does feel like it's possible to cheese it by buying a ton of potions or grinding enough to overpower things. For some people this is fine, but I'd like it if the game was like a puzzle where you can't cheese it but need to figure out a strategy. Perhaps I'm wrong though and just haven't played it enough to get to the real hard stuff.

*The enemies shaking on hit can actually result in weird random instances where, if you're standing right outside their range, they shake into attack range briefly enough to suddenly get an attack off. Ideally, the shaking should purely be a cosmetic effect that doesn't actually affect their true position in the world.

*The notification bar overlaps with the menu button and leads to an annoying few seconds on every level up where you need to wait until it goes away for you to click on it.

*I didn't realize I could be moving with WASD this whole time! I kept using the mouse since I thought that was the only option.

*Maybe I'm just old, but I wish the font chosen for the game was a bit less 'fancy' to make it more readable.

Kwing responds:

Thanks!

I'm surprised you had the issue with the Griffin because I've died to a bunch of other bosses and never had this happen. If you poisoned it with Toxin it's possible you actually did kill it that way immediately before dying. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the issue is and no one else has had that happen.

EDIT: This has been fixed as of 2025.05.06a

The "ghost" enemy glitches and accidental respawns are an issue with Ruffle (as mentioned in the description.) Neither of these glitches happen in Flash Player and I've brought these bugs up to the Ruffle team to no avail.

Enemy respawn "cheese" is actually intentional, and this is actually encouraged in one of the cutscenes (if you talk to the NPC next to the ghost before killing the ghost, Magawa says you can leave an area and re-enter if an enemy is too hard - you can also do this to force rare enemy spawns for bestiary completion.)

Potions and grinding are an intentional way to bypass the difficulty in the game because I wanted people to finish the story (the tone becomes increasingly serious and introspective, especially once you reach the volcano.) I do like making games difficult and cheese-proof, but after years of making games that no one finishes, I decided a pity system was necessary for a game that was both long and had a story that I wanted people to experience in its entirety. Even after adding these features, medal metrics show only 36 of 799 users have beaten the game. As a judge you beat 0/5 bosses in the first game and 1/11 here, so from my perspective it's hardly beneficial to implement any change that makes completion of the main story more difficult.

I might consider some kind of achievement for completing the game with without potions or with some kind of stat cap, but as it stands I think I'm okay with this game being a bit more breakable than a game like Gloom: The Pyromancer (which has no qualms about annihilating you if you don't know every enemy inside and out.)

EDIT: As of May 12th, there are now difficulty settings in the main menu that make it increasingly difficult to brute force a completion of the game, in part by throttling the potion cap.

Noted on the enemy shaking; I made the shake effect apply to the actual enemy position instead of just the sprite as a matter of laziness and never bothered to fix it because the hitbox "glitch" seemed like too rare of an issue to bother with.

The notification bar can be dismissed by clicking on it, so you don't need to wait for it to disappear to click a button behind it.

[MMO Healing Simulator]

Hah, as a fan of MMO dungeons and raiding, especially from a tank or healer role, this is right up my alley! I always appreciate a game that gets right to the good stuff and cuts out all the needless grind: reminds me a lot of 'Fellowship' or 'Rabbit and Steel'.

Anyway, this was quite fun and rather challenging, capturing the plate-spinning improvisation that a healer has to go through to keep their party alive in an authentic manner. Loved the various mechanics that the bosses had to keep you on your toes, and the replayability and strategy that comes from deciding your own loadout. Also loved the little gags for never getting the loot you need through a multitude of reasons, haha!

If I were to have some feedback, it'd be:

*I wish the game had a bit more juice to not only make things more exciting, but also make it clear what is happening. For example, it'd be great if portraits would shake or turn red when they get hit and especially so when they get crit. Special effects for attacks would also be nice: you could even visualize the attacks as bullets so you can see who is getting hit more clearly. Having said that, perhaps you could argue the current vagueness and lack of effects is part of the intention, to recreate just staring at health bars and not at the actual fight, I suppose.

*There are some small control quirks that get in the way, like if you are casting a heal on someone and change targets mid-cast to prepare for casting on the other person, it'll cancel your current cast. That's not how it works in any MMO I've played! It also doesn't have a proper buffer system where you can hit a spell button near the end of a current cast and it should do the next one immediately once the current one ends: instead, it cancels it.

*I couldn't tell if the game had an aggro system or anything like that since it doesn't display a target icon. It seems like the second party member is the main tank as they get hit the most, and I couldn't tell whether other people getting hit is because it was random or they stole aggro, like can I steal aggro by overhealing?

*The game can be quite challenging, and sometimes in a rather unfair way. Sometimes I'll be healing someone as optimally as I can but they just die from unlucky crits or other random crap. Made it feel rather frustrating, especially because I couldn't change my loadout for the specific boss to work around its mechanics without starting all over for some reason. Some spells just don't feel balanced properly either, like I swear Greater Heal doesn't have enough of a benefit to make it worth it.

*I made it all the way through and was a bit disappointed that there wasn't a satisfying ending or anything, boo! I didn't even get the final piece of loot because I didn't have enough DKP! It's not my fault that Crashim was feared into the eggs and spawned too many whelps, c'mon!

mksfbirdup responds:

I appreciate all the detailed feedback, I think a lot of it is definitely spot on.

This was one of my first projects in Godot last year, so there is definitely a lot of stuff I would touch-up if I was rebuild it with my current skill set.

[One Pencil]

Pretty neat Undertale boss game! Feels pretty well constructed and polished on all fronts with a decent set of moves to dodge, different actions to take, lots of interesting reactions and routes, and topped off with a lot of personality through dialogue quips and other quirks. I was easily enraptured and enjoyed my time with it!

That said, I do feel a bit conflicted about it:

*The game does suffer from some less-than-ideal design decisions. For example, compared to the fun challenge of having to closely and quickly draw varied shapes for attacking, having to just mindlessly scribble for the vandalize option got boring and repetitive quickly. Of course, maybe this is done on purpose to make attacking more enticing? Even if that's the case, I dunno if I'd agree with it.

*I'm really not sure if I understand the story or the themes. Here's a little recap of my journey through the game:

Even though the duck seemed like a con artist who was trying to take my soul (pencil), I initially tried to resolve it peacefully by using actions instead of attacks. So, my order of elimination, I used the vandalize option until I was able to bid and get the contract for free.

However, that all seemed like a waste of time because I don't want the contract even for free because the duck is a con artist, and sure enough, the contract says that it takes your soul. So, I refused to sign it and switched to my only other option: attacking him. This continued until it got all dark and I dealt the final blow to him.

I just don't get it: why does it treat this as such a dark thing to do? The duck is clearly a charlatan trying to steal my soul, and to my knowledge, I didn't have any other options like being able to show mercy. Maybe there was an option I missed, but I can't go back and check because it saves your bad ending just like the genocide run does. Oh well!

Like, I get it, you're doing the genocide run thing where it's goes from goofy to dark and all that. But it just feels really misdirected, superficial, undercooked and dumb. Yeah, maybe the duck, as bad as he is, doesn't deserve death, but I really don't care because the game doesn't build it up appropriately. Fuck him!

kr0tyara responds:

it's mostly just a story about a doomed artist in the era of oversaturated media and their failed attempts to achieve at least some recognition. the duck is neither a good guy nor a bad guy, he is in the same pit as the protag. you could tell he's not doing very well either. both endings were designed to leave you unsatisfied: it may be disappointing, but that's what the protag gets for falling for fishy ads :D

[SymmetryCats DEMO]

This is pretty cool! It's exactly what I expected and wanted from the title and thumbnail, being a mind-bending puzzle game about a pair of cute cats in mirror dimensions. I feel like it does a great job at escalating the difficulty as it introduces more tricks and new mechanics to the levels, and it really kept me on my toes and wanting to see what's next. Very nice!

It's nice and I don't believe I encountered any major issues, but if I were to have any feedback:

*I took a break and was planning to come back to finish it, only to realize it didn't save my progress! Definitely feel like it needs to save progress and offer a level select.

*Wish the levels that have spike-flipping had some sort of signal to let you more easily track when they are going to flip, like a rhythmic sound effect, or maybe a shaky animation telegraph.

*The music is quite monotonous: wish it would change up as you progress and/or be more complex in general.

CleitonEldorn responds:

All of this is gonna be on the final version, the music, save and level selection were already on the plans, and I like the flip platforms feedback.

[Slimeslinger]

Fun little game! It's rather simplistic, doesn't have much meat on its bones and feels a bit dry due to the lack of music, but the feedback for combat is very juicy and explosive, which when combined with the wacky arsenal of weapons you get to use, creates some chaotic fun. I like the strategy of being careful not too blow up too many nests so as to not generate more enemies than you could handle, as well as chaining level ups to keep you in a powerful state. Not too shabby!

Unfortunately its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, being its chaotic combat. Getting good at chaining level ups to keep yourself equipped with powerful weapons is great, but it stinks when everything's exploding and you can barely tell what's going on anymore, and your weapons have turned into a crazy roulette from all the level-ups where you can get screwed over if you weapon suddenly changes into something else too quickly, like when you get the melee weapon and go in to attack and suddenly now you're carrying a heavy ranged weapon and boom, you're dead. It's part of the challenge, sure, but it nevertheless can feel frustrating.

KingStache responds:

thanks for the feedback!

[Balls, Dice & Stickers]

Huh, pretty interesting game! Reminds me a lot of games like Balatro, Luck Be A Landlord, Peggle and so on, as it's got a certain gambling appeal to it. Overall the game seems very promising: the presentation is polished and charming, the core loop is simple but addicting, there's some good informative feedback through effects like number pop-ups as well as the log, there's some cute affectations like being able to interact with the portraits, and there's a lot of strategic potential in aiming and equipping your dice. Very nice!

It's very promising for an alpha, so in the interest of helping, here's my feedback:

*I wish there was a tutorial because there was a lot of aspects that took me a long time to learn. For example, I had no idea what the aiming cone was or why aiming away from it gave a bonus, until I learned that the golden dead center seems to always be an optimal calculated shot. It's also so difficult to keep track of all the numbers popping up and the reasons behind them, like how once you hit all the dice it triggers all of them again (I think?). In general things happen so fast and it can make things unclear: I didn't even realize the dice were rolling since they stay still and instantly change without some sort of animation for it.

*It's a bummer that you can only read the last lines of the log. I wish I could scroll through the log to be able to review everything that's happened as it would really help me understand.

*Maybe it's part of the appeal or maybe I'm just not good enough to see the game at a deeper level yet, but it does feel like the game is so wacky and chaotic that it's practically all up to luck. I like it when there is some sort of strategy or improvisation skill I can get better at, and while this flirts at it with all the sticker effects and aiming, it feels ultimately uncontrollable, so should I really put in any effort beyond just randomly applying stickers and always aiming dead center and hoping for the best? At that rate, it just turns into a slot machine where I keep cranking it blindly, and that isn't my jam (but I can see the appeal, so it's up to you).

*In order to better grasp everything that's happening and feel rewarded when you get something special to happen, I'd suggest that the game pause or go into slow-mo at critical moments such as when you hit all the dice or trigger a synergistic sticker effect to highlight them. Obviously this comes at the risk of becoming tedious in later rounds when so much is happening and you're used to it already, so I'd suggest adding a 'fast-foward' function, and that the current gameplay should be this 'fast-forward' mode.

*The game is already pretty juicy and satisfying, but it nevertheless still has a rather dry feel to it due to the plain black background, lack of music, and lack of distinguishing/rewarding the act of pulling off rare events. Gambling is all about the jangling keys, so jangle them even harder with increasingly pitch-shifted sounds and all that jazz!

bilgetbd responds:

thank you so much for playing and detailed feedback!!

[Five Day Detective: Browser Version]

Not too shabby of an old-school adventure game! Reminds me of classics like Police Quest and Monkey Island and so on and so forth. I like that it portrays a less glamorous insider view of the police: gives the game a rather unique vibe to it.

For the most part I had a good time, but I'll admit that there were a lot of rough edges and points of confusion during my adventure that I feel could be fixed up:

*I hate it when I'm trying to examine an item in my inventory, but since I'm close to an interact point, it ends up trying to use it instead of examine it, and I have to walk around until I find a free space. The addition of an 'examine' action would be helpful.

*The movement system is a bit awkward and unresponsive: I'd be trying to turn around and sometimes my character would take an extra step before doing so.

*I feel like it needs to give better hints at times. For example, I was eventually able to figure out I needed to put the car sticker on my car, but it would've been better if the character would say something like "Before I go in, I should do something to avoid getting a ticket. I can't park anywhere else, so..." when he tries to go in instead of his little meta joke about it being a tutorial.

*It'd be nice if the journal would give more detailed information for your objectives and what you've accomplished so far as you can easily lose track of things that are only said once from people or certain halfway steps.

*Some better signposting would be nice. I wouldn't have known that I could go downstairs to the basement without people telling me because it looks like the stairs only go up. It would be helpful if you can see a bit of a railing going downwards to hint that you can go down, or maybe a 'basement' sign pointing down on the wall.

*I was disappointed with certain actions, like when I tried to examine the phone book and it immediately got the relevant information from it without me even realizing what I was supposed to do with it in the first place. I wish the action was more interactive with me actually having to flip through pages and find the appropriate ad, like, you know, a detective!

*Unfortunately when I say this reminds me of classics, that also includes the bizarre puzzle logic they used to have. Lighting trash bags to illuminate a basement? Cleaning up graffiti to distract someone to steal paper from them? In what world are you supposed to logically figure out these actions beyond just faffing about and rubbing every item against everything to see what it does?

KrunchyFriedGames responds:

Oh, wow- thanks for your thoughtful and detailed critique! I'll try and address your points one at a time:

Character movement- yeah, we're trying to think of ways to improve this. Your specific issue about turning is because it's a detailed character animation and Dermot needs to reach the end of his walk cycle otherwise it becomes really twitchy and awkward. Difficult to get around this.

Examination button- it's something we've been thinking about. The current idea is to keep the UI as simple as possible. Maybe we'll change this.

Hints/ signposting- this is a major issue in any point and click style game, and it's different for every player too. I've seen people on Twitch and Youtube shoot straight theough the difficult bits, and then struggle with things I didn't even consider to be puzzles! I certainly agree that the basement could be better signposted, and the notebook function improved.

I think there's something slightly off about the phone book ordering (people can assume this is a linear game- but it really isn't as I know from trying to make sure everything works and makes sense in whatever order you do it in). I Something's changed with the phone book from an earlier edit, so we'll try and work out what exactly, and fix it.

*spoiler* Puzzle logic is always very subjective. I did already add a hint for the basement light puzzle- because it was driving people insane (it was "I think there's something blocking the window" or similar). I maintain the the printer puzzle makes logical sense: the only time you see blank paper is in Madman's office, she's angry that the toilet mirror has penis graffiti on it, and there's a sponge item you haven't used but, yes, it is difficult.

Thanks for your comments!

[There's just something about u]

GooseStranger, don't take this the wrong way, but I want to throttle you like Homer does to Bart after playing this game.

Ok, that's a bit harsh. Let's take a step back and I'll try and explain my thoughts.

*Ahem*

Everything starts off great with this game! Really gorgeous and high-quality presentation, unorthodox story delivery through a fake Instant Messenger interface, a platforming minigame that slowly evolves as it turns the letters into obstacles, and a story that slowly devolves into drama, oh boy, drama! With so much promise, I was hooked and highly anticipating where this would go.

However, as things went on, I just got really bored, disappointed and miserable.

First off, the platforming:

Unfortunately, I felt like the platforming was just very tedious, unnecessary, and never really went anywhere. Despite all of the letters having all sorts of different mechanics in the way they move and act, it takes absolutely forever for them to be sloooooowly introduced one-by-one, and even when they are, 99% of the time you can just jump over them, completely ignoring them and negating their purpose. It's just so braindead and begs for more interesting puzzles to be made from them. For example, you could make it so that there is a big gap between the word 'wanted' and the next word, and what you need to do is intentionally make the d disappear so you can free the e and ride it across. Maybe there could be a level where the exit is far upwards and you need to jump up lines by using l's, and maybe as a bonus, by reading it in this new upwards order the text is parsed in an interesting new perspective that changes the meaning. So much wasted potential!

In addition to this, I rarely felt like the displacement of text was ever used in some sort of poetic way to enhance the emotional reading of the text. Sometimes it does, but a lot of other times the placement doesn't, so it just ends up feeling random and purposeless. Again, there are a lot of interesting tricks you could be doing here but nothing happens. Maybe the player needs to do something to a sentence in order to reach the exit like getting rid of letters that ends up changing the sentence to something bad and that makes them conflicted. I dunno, it's not my job to think this up, I already gave you some freebies!

Part of me really wishes I could just read the words in a text file...but maybe you could argue that the platforming serves some sort of subtle pacing purpose, like by dragging things out but not being too difficult it somehow makes you pay more attention to the words or really feel the turmoil which you could skip over if you were just reading a text file...but I dunno. I almost feel like it was put in to be the equivalent of jangling keys, something to try and keep people interested in the text, and I guess that works, but feels like such a waste.

But even if the platforming is bad, there's always the story to pick up the slack!

Indeed, I did find myself continuing in spite of it all because I wanted to see if the story would finally lead to something. It does it slowly (too slowly) but the game does intensify the relationship drama in a rather authentic youthful way, and because of how high-quality the game was presented initially, I had faith that it would lead up to something big, like a twist where it flips the script and suddenly the character you were rooting for is now the jerk or whatever.

And then I found myself groaning. Inadvertently. Not even realizing I was at first, but unable to help myself even after noticing. And then came the screams. End. End! END! END ALREADY! FOR GODS SAKE, FREE ME FROM THIS TORMENT!

Now to be fair, about 25% of those screams are what you would expect, being investment in the story: in that I want them to just goddamn put their foot down, end the toxic relationship already and move on. But the rest of those screams are from desperately hoping and praying for the game to end before I shoot myself from boredom due to the absolute mountain of text and aforementioned tedious unengaging platforming, from the sunk-cost of being in so deep and knowing in my heart that there is no save function so I can't stop now because what if it finally gets good and heaven forbid, I miss out and seem like such a fool?

In the end, through sheer force of will, I finally wrestled myself away from the game, leaving it uncompleted. Some would argue that I lost by giving up before the end, but I'd argue that not giving up would be the path of least resistance and I would be losing by doing so.

Now I will admit, part of me is conflicted. Part of me wants to be all like, oh, you pulled off the master plan, my emotional turmoil was exactly what you intended as it mirrors the turmoil of the decaying relationship! But another part of me is like yeah no, don't try to play this off, I was super disappointed and couldn't bring myself to finish the game not because it was good but because all this was just a bunch of style-over-substance will-they-won't-they blue-balling rage-baiting crap like a Rumiko Takahashi manga (does anyone get that reference?) I guess it's a bit of both. Such is art! Anyway, you win just by making something that made me write this essay: that's an emotional reaction no matter how you slice it, in a 'any news is good news' way. And I win by making you read this?

GooseStranger responds:

Woah, what a response!

Again, I am very thankful for you're huge amount of feedback. You're are absolutely right, I missed some really good puzzle opportunities. That "wanted" puzzle idea is genius!

Even if you didn't finish the game, or even liked the parts you played, I appreciate you playing and leaving a review! Thanks FutureCopLGF!