FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Santa Clauminid (Demo)]

Hmm, not too shabby, but in its current state it is quite rough.

The game certainly did have some nice things about it: some of the more subtle special effects like how the sleigh and gun arm tilt based on direction was nice, and I liked the way the enemies exploded (especially the bosses). I also liked how it tried to do some interesting stuff like rewarding risky play (grazes) with MP to use for a special attack, being able to change powerups by shooting at them, and it looked like it had some sort of present dropping mechanic that could create an interesting multitasking challenge.

But the game also felt really janky in many ways. There's a few obvious ones like in how short it was and how the Santa boss was absolutely nothing, but in terms of other complaints:

*For example, I kinda hated how power-ups blocked bullets which would actually end up not only giving cover to enemies behind them but also make it too risky to pick up since you could get insta-shot by someone right behind them due to the lack of attack telegraphs.

*Doing grazes felt incredibly awkward because the actual hitbox of the character felt very vague and ill-defined, and it wasn't worth it anyway since you barely get anything out of them and the payoff special move is pretty lacklaster, being just a rapid-fire gun, similar to your regular gun, instead of a cool bomb or beam or some such.

*The present dropping mechanic felt really silly and not emphasized enough: it only comes into play briefly later on and it's not worth the risk to engage in it. Maybe if the present dropping gave you power-ups back it could be worth the risk to keep an eye out for houses, or maybe if it was an objective you have to accomplish to beat the level or keep an acceptable score similar to Paperboy it'd feel crucial. I definitely feel more importance should be given to this mechanic as it could be a clever and interesting Christmas themed twist on typical ground-bomb weapons seen in space shooters.

My biggest complaint though, as stated before, was that the game just felt really rough and unfinished: more of an alpha than a demo, I'd say. Not only was the game overall a bit rough and stiff with things like how static and unanimated enemies, space shooter games are kind of a dime-a-dozen and this didn't really bring anything interesting to the table to hook me in and want more, which should be what a demo does first and foremost.

I certainly think this game could be cool in a finished version, what with if the bosses and enemies become better, more mechanics like present dropping get expanded and so on, but it's hard to see that potential in its execution at the moment. Still, fingers crossed!

Chdonga responds:

Thanks for the long review LMAO.
I'm glad you see potential in this. I actually started working on it in '21 but stuff got in the way and it was even more rough than what I released this year. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it by winter '23!

[Aurora]

Wow, this game is amazing: can't believe this one got missed out on for the best of the month for November! Ok, that's a lie, I can easily see why people might've skipped this one as this is some Avengers Level Threat nerd shit that is niche as heck and might've been updated before I got my hands on it, but still!

This game heavily reminds me of some of my favorite Zachtronics games like TIS-100: very similar feel of messing around with building instructions for tiny systems that move inputs to outputs and reading manuals to figure out how everything works.

All-around I felt like the presentation and construction of the game was very professional and solid: loved how the game had a really cool story and theme to it with its cutscenes and style that made progressing more than just wanting to solve puzzles, and despite being a very complicated game, I felt like the HUD was very intuitive in how it was laid out and operated, especially due to the way you could hover over things to get tooltips which made me practically not even need the manual (that being said, I loved how the manual was in-universe crayon scribblings from Sasha: adds so much charm and immersion to the whole experience)! I ended up getting quite addicted to this and loved solving not only the puzzles but the puzzle of understanding how to be able to solve the puzzles in the first place!

While people rating the game low because of the complexity of the game could be taken as them just not being the target audience, I do think the game could have some slight room for improvement:

For example, I spent an incredibly long time stuck on the Dye Mixer program because I had no idea that moving a color onto another color would combine them: it seemed silly to expect that over a more logical overwrite/replacement of colors, and so I got stuck trying to get something done with add/subtract color and just got confused. I feel like I had a similar experience in TIS-100, but in that, I feel like there were more hints/example code in the manual that helped me learn these kinds of unobvious tricks, whereas in this there was nothing I could find.

Speaking of the manual, as charming as I think the it is, it might be a bit too obtuse and confusing to decipher its chicken scratchings: perhaps it could've been written a bit less busy or something to make it easier to read. I do appreciate the in-game manual which has both the crayon drawing and an attempt at deciphering it on the side.

It did feel like the game started to get to some complex stuff pretty early on, what with complicated jump commands and the like within the first four levels: as a programmer I appreciate it cutting to the chase and not babying me, but maybe for general public there could be some more tutorial-esque levels to let you learn concepts, maybe some programs that are finished but 'broken' where you fill in some missing lines, you know, simple stuff like you did for level 0, before letting them loose and writing their own stuff. I mean this is some college-level tough stuff that automatically assumes familiarity with binary numbering and assembly and so on: I like it but feel bad for everyone else!

Could also maybe make to have the manual have it's own dedicated shortcut button on the HUD instead of hidden away in the esc menu: I think that's an ok place to have it, but in my experience it took me awhile to find it so perhaps if it was more prominent people might have an easier time (instead I used the manual found in the description since I couldn't find it in-game).

Seriously can't believe something was made in a week: well done on this and hopefully you can take it as a compliment that it was missed out on as it's definitely niche stuff that isn't meant for mass appeal (though perhaps with some better tutorials and slower steps you could do it, but most likely at the cost of reducing its mystique).

EDIT: Getting a weird bug with Blue Green Separator: the program works, but it just keeps spinning its wheels after going through the first string of example inputs and never moving onto the next set. I've tried refactoring my code several times but it doesn't seem to have an effect: very strange!

EDIT EDIT: Bug with Blue Green Separator has been fixed woo~

crow-seeds responds:

Late reply, but thanks for going through and playing! This was super helpful, did not realize that color combining could trip people up haha, will probably make some edits to the manual.

The game was inspired by Zachtronics! I really found those games to be really fun because of the fun in trying to decipher how to operate the different mechanics in the game. Once you take the time to learn the mechanics, programming in it becomes a sort of flow. Like you code in this almost alien-like language almost natually, and then when you run the program and see all these complex dot sequences move up and down, you're like "Holy shit, I wrote this. I wrote this indecipherable block of code" and it just works! It's similar to when you first learn how to code, where it's painful to learn but really fucking rewarding. Wanted to make a game like that for programmers like me and you, but also able to be picked up by non-coders (Which it actually did! People who aren't in the field like JimmyCarlos and qwerty741 aren't programmers, and they actually beat all 11 levels in the main game!! Like holy shit, JimmyCarlos even beat it in a version without a text translation of Sasha's drawings!!!).

Maybe making it a free game on Newgrounds isn't the best target audience (though I want the game to be on a free platform, I would feel bad taking someone's money!). I don't really care about score or being front-paged nominated for best of the month (If I did, I would be making drastically different games, though views would be nice, especially on the multiplayer games!). I just thought it would be really funny to make a machine coding game, a completely alien and extremely different game from what you would typically see on this site, for Robot Day. The judges didn't really like it, but I didn't really expect them to!

Anyways I'm going on for way too long, Aurora is my favorite of all the games I've made by far, and I'm really glad there were people who genuinely enjoyed this nerdy programming game! I wanted to make a game that reflected the theme of a "robot day", and by making it about the true essence of making a robot (Like the low-level coding shit in real life, not the cool laser shooting stuff in pop-culture), it hopefully embodies what a "robot" themed game could be!

[『さかさま MOOD』]

Hmm, certainly a strong contender for 3 stars coming from the leader himself, but does it maybe do too much?

It's certainly got ups and downs...

It starts off strong, as the game certainly is rather shallow and insubstantial, being something like a single minigame from a Warioware collection, feeling like a paltry serving that begs more content.

However, just like a Warioware minigame, it has a rather charming and funny design to it in general and is filled with many variable interactions like not only hitting the bomb, cheese or Tom, but also kissing the forehead or, uh, nape, that are great to witness and belies the facade of shallowness.

Shikashi, the way you get those interactions is awkward and strange since not only is the hit detection kind of vague, the game is not robustly designed enough to always generate a scenario where you have a chance to kiss the lips for maximum points, forcing you to have to frustratingly accept a forehead or nape kiss.

Sarani, it sucks when you die and the game just skips whatever the event that caused your death and goes straight to a restart: feels very awkward and reduces what should be a strong point of the game.

Chinamini, there isn't a way to succeed at all, only death, so what point is this game?

Demo, as short and shallow as it was, it did make me have a memorable fun little time, while a 3 point game would probably not induce any emotions in me beyond boredom, so perhaps it deserves more credit? Hrm, tabun...ma ii ka!

panpikidaan responds:

FuturecopLGFさん、、、
Kiku is Big Fan..I look forward to your next YouTube video Upload(((o(*ﾟ∀ﾟ*)o)))

[Rushdown Rivals]

Hell yeah, I love me a good beat em' up and this delivers in spades!

All-around I feel like this game looks and feels wonderful and has a very professional level of polish and huge amounts of content. There's just so much to love, like the great variety of enemies and bosses to fight, all the referential humor, the combat with its fantastic feedback and subtle guiding auto-aim/stickiness and clear attack telegraphs, tons of characters to play with all sorts of distinct playstyles and unique hidden techniques like whacking back bullets with Pico's bat, the great menus and controller support and so on and so forth. I probably can't even list all of the positives about this game because they are innumerable and also subtle: so good you don't even necessarily notice it (but you sure as heck feel it from how fun this is)!

If I were to have any nitpicks, it would be:

*Would've loved to see character stats/bios being accessible on the character select screen instead of only in gameplay: can end up going back and forth if you end up picking someone that doesn't gel with you because you didn't have a chance to study beforehand (though I felt like I loved all the characters I tried).

*Sound was kind of weird if you wear headphones. If you walk to the right side of the screen, you'll end up hearing footsteps coming from the right side of your headphones as if someone is to the right, not realizing its your own footsteps. Basically, its kind of strange that the 'ears' are centered in the center of the screen instead of tracking on your character: would be much better for a more informative audio, I think, but maybe some people playing view themselves as an outside observer and not the character so it makes more sense to them, dunno. Maybe it's because it can be a 2P game?

*Was a little disappointed that there was no story or campaign after it seems to be building it up during the tutorial: instead you just play in separate arenas at your leisure that largely have the same enemies to fight, not much unique stage hazards or geography or variety in minibosses, and in general no major differences between them except the final boss. Because of this, unless you're a score/difficulty junkie, it can feel like it's lacking a sense of progression and being a bit repetitive, like once you've seen one level you've seen 'em all (except for the boss, of course).

*I do love how simple and mashable the combat system is, but I was a bit confused and unsure whether it had a deeper strategy to go for beyond just comboing to get powered up. Would love to learn some strategies like how to proc 'vunerable' status on enemies and any other neat tech, as so far I couldn't find anything definitive in my attempts to research it. Think it could create a whole new deeper level of strategy and intention in the combat if there were enemies with certain weakpoints that you need certain moves or timing to exploit and get 'vunerables' with: as it is you can kind of just mash through everything no matter what, even if they're a shield enemy which you think would need another approach (which is a positive in some respects).

*While most of the characters are awesome and unique, some seem rather imbalanced and confusing in design: for example, Pico has the ability to whack back bullets with his heavy attack bat, and Hank has the ability to parry bullets or attacks with his special, yet Cassette can only parry specifically melee attacks with a very tightly timed up attack (why so specifically only melee? just seems so limiting and hard to pull off when I feel it could've easily just reflected any damage like Hank, but I dunno, maybe she'd be OP if she could)

*Weird mouse bug: if you're using the controller on the menus but stop moving for a second, the selection will suddenly snap to what your mouse is pointing to when I'm not making any major mouse movements to make it think I switched control schemes.

*I do find that the characters move a bit too fast and snappy: they all remind me of Fox from Melee whereas I liked playing characters like Marth for more slow, controlled movements. This game, however, has enough auto-aim and subtle guidance that it's not an issue: just an initial personal preference thing that bothered me slightly.

*Difficulty can be a bit wonky and up to luck at times: sometimes you get a round that gives you a lot of health and assist trophies, other times you're on your own. Sometimes you get a wave of normal enemies, sometimes you keep getting Dad-bot popping in over and over who is seriously way too spongy and way too much of a mini-boss to be within those waves of normal mooks. Maybe there's some way to reduce RNG, like a way to guarantee health drops (for example, I liked how Pico gets a free psuedo-health point for getting his combo up) and hand-craft the enemy waves for each level?

*I could see some people complaining about the fact that the boss fights have random mooks popping up in them: usually this design is treated as the boss not being strongly designed enough to stand on its own, random mooks being a cheap way to artificially increase the boss difficulty. I don't really have a beef with it since I think it works with the chaotic nature of this game, but maybe something to think about.

*Not sure how assist trophies work? I pick them up and they happen after a weird delay of time, or sometimes they don't even happen at all? I would expect them to either be used immediately or go into my inventory and press a button to use: maybe I am using them and not realizing?

*Medals seem to sometimes work and sometimes not? I got some of the medals like the assist trophies and some minibosses, but none of my full clears as Pico, Cassette Girl, Hank, etc.

Christ, I know that's mucho texto up there, but again, the above are very much nitpicks that didn't really hurt my great experience with this game, I just wanted to point em out just in case. Sorry I dedicate so much text to that instead of the positives, but well, it's kinda what I do, haha. Well done on this game!

Spagato responds:

I appreciate the detailed criticism as it's the best way I improve. Your feedback last year really helped with the development of this one and I'm glad I delivered :^)

Thanks again for playing! Please keep doing what you're doing. It really helps me and probably others as well.

- I'll probably put a way for players to see the movelist on the character select in the future

- That's probably a bug since the game has a listener in the center of the camera. I'll see if I can adjust that so it's not so weird.

- Ah the story, I REALLY wanted to make one and put one in, but the work was HUGE for a free fan game lol. That might come in the future but I don't think for the web version as the loading times for this game is already crazy.

- The armor just gets destroyed by damage or specific moves that do more armor damage (usually on attack2)

- I wanted every character to have something unique for themselves so they won't overlap each other as much as possible. I was going to make her kick reflect but that might make Pico's bat look outdated so I made Cass the only character so far with a melee counter hit. I gave Hank the parry because it looked cool like his character and I wanted him to play as risky as possible so the reward had to be high.

- I think the dadbots are a little tanky, might nerf their health next patch. You do get a guaranteed hp from foamy if your health is low and he usually spawns more likely when you're low.

- I wanted the minions to change a person's strategy mid-fight and make them move around more. I haven't gotten a complain about that yet luckily, but I'll keep an eye on this one.

- The assist comes out when there are a lot of enemies on screen, but much faster if a boss is present. When I play-tested the game I noticed the assists kept being wasted alot so I tried to make it "take and let it do it's thing" as much as possible. I'll try to adjust the times, maybe that might be the better option.

- That's my bad :( . I'll try to fix the medals asap.

[K I S S I N G]

I know you most likely tried to make this too confusing and wacky to grasp in order to get the intended 3 stars, but I'm sorry, this game was just too interesting of an experience that I gotta rate it higher than that!

Something about the way the game presents itself had a certain charm or mystique to it behind it's low-effort facade that made me think this really had something to it, and I feel vindicated since what I found was a really fascinating and unique puzzle game. Don't get me wrong, it did take quite a few tries to figure out how the heck everything works and I can see how some would be frustrated, but for me the entire process was a great journey, like being an archeologist and figuring out what these hieroglyphs meant, and everything finally coming together and getting me a win gave me a real sense of accomplishment. I think you struck a pretty good balance where there were enough hints put in place (the arrows next to the rows of keys, the origin points on the character/number symbols) that people could figure out the logic without being too obvious so as to keep the mystique: reminds me of something like La-Mulana level puzzles.

Really fascinating stuff: like a piece of outsider art this was fascinating to delve into and figure out what makes it tick!

Emrox responds:

I will gladly accept the label of "outsider art." Glad you liked it! Maybe if they do this jam again I'll have to go even weirder.

[Palmer's E-Girl Adventure]

Hah, another grand entry into the 3 star jam! It certainly takes a lot of the right steps to earn that 3 star, what with its very bland and bog-standard shooting gameplay, incredibly short length, stiff and unanimated characters, lack of polish/special effects, nonexistant challenge, and the cherry on top: a score counter that doesn't even properly reset on replay. Certainly a strong contender!

However, I feel like the game does show a little bit too much effort in some areas with some rather fancy touches. First, of course, there is the obvious inclusion of a dab charge shot with its own comical animation which also does increase the depth of strategy in the game by a tad. Then, there are some nice touches like how enemies get increasing battle scars as they take damage, and the fact that the game does have a decent variety of enemies and puts them into handcrafted formations. Finally, the game does overall have a bit of charm to its cheapness what with the flailing e-girl and goofy compressed visuals and so on. I dunno, I think I gotta punish you by increasing the score a tad!

maxxjamez responds:

Thank you for this

[27 pages [DEMO]]

Hmm, it definitely didn't make the greatest impression on me. The game overall just has an incredible feeling of blandness due to the lackluster graphics and almost complete lack of sound: whereas other games make aspects like jumping and such satisfying through visual effects and sounds, this game had absolutely nothing and therefore felt dull. If the intention was that the game is currently in a prototype/demo state where the graphics are placeholders and the sounds will be added later, than I can understand: just want to point it out nonetheless. The game also felt a bit aimless without any sort of theming or story to prop it up on (though I don't hate games that just cut to the chase and focus on gameplay).

Even if we look past the graphics and sounds such and just focus on raw gameplay, though, I felt like it was compromised due to the wonky controls. While regular jumping and movement seemed alright, it never felt like I could have confidence in my wall jumps, as many of them would not work and give me a much shorter jump than I expected for no reason I could discern, other than the controls being not as forgiving as they should be. This is a critical issue for a challenging platformer as I feel the more challenge there is, the more the controls need to be perfect so to make everything feel fair.

Having said that all that negative stuff, when the game worked and you look past the lackluster graphics and lack of sounds and so on, the game did have some fun obstacle courses to go through that kept getting more and more complex. I easily found myself getting addicted despite it all, so I think there is a lot of promise in its core here: hope the game can get fixed up a bit for full release.

jonaspatrik responds:

Thanks for the honest review. This is the reason why i made this demo.

[Robo-butcher]

Hrmm, it very much feels like a 'my first arena shooter' game: promising and ticks all the boxes needed, but not really exciting or fun in its current state when compared to its contemporaries.

Overall the game just feels incredibly bog-standard: it's technically got everything needed for an arena shooter like enemies and powerups and abilities, but there's nothing special, unique or really satisfying about the gameplay to get me hooked. So much of gameplay is spent fighting these really boring, spongy enemies that pose no threat. The game also just has an overall lack of presentation with an incredibly boring HUD, weird graphics, and stock sound effects.

Don't get me wrong, the game does have some nice things like the very satisfying way enemies explode, and I do think the game gets good in the later stages by having a larger variety of enemies that pushes you to play much more focused. But the time it takes to get to the point where there is a large variety of enemies takes way too long, leaving you stuck in an overly simple and boring repetitive loop: I could easily see people dropping it before getting there or refusing to redo the boring start when they die, which is a shame.

Pitigamedev responds:

Thank you for your honest feedback. I hope to do better next time!

[Cross Strike]

Game definitely gives me some MegaMan X and Guardian Legend vibes, what with the cool slick shooting action and really unique jet transformation. For the most part, the game feels well put-together with some solid graphics, music, sound effects, etc and good juice/special effects to the various actions you can do (even something as simple as walking and jumping feels great due to the nice sounds and visual effects). Enemies are nice as well with a good variety and intuitive attack telegraphs. Felt like it had some good progression in getting more abilities that open up previous parts of the map as well as an anime-as-heck story.

Overall I feel like this game is pretty dang cool, but there are some nagging aspects that I felt really hold it back!

*I thought the whole transformation mode was pretty cool, but it felt so token, like something you can only do at certain zones clearly made for the jet and nowhere else. Would love if the jet mode was something you could integrate into combat more and such, like being able to use it to dodge or pierce certain enemy defenses, but it felt underutilized and the corridors too cramped to use it anywhere beyond the designated zones. I also just didn't like the jet mode because it felt too fast: felt like I was playing Sonic where you're moving too fast you can't react to things in time, so it's too scary to use.

*I hated that I couldn't hold down the fire button to autofire: I understand that it's because you have a charge move later on, but it's such a pain for carpal tunnel users. Firing is especially bad since there technically is no limit to fire rate: it goes as fast as you can press, so it feels open to being cheated by mashers.

*While it was cool that the level was big and all interconnected with gates being opened from later powers, the level just felt so maze-like and boring due to the bland, sterile graphics, and constant use of cramped boring corridors. Over and over you're walking down similar looking hallways, seeing the same save rooms, dealing with the same lock traps that pit you against two enemies: so repetitive! Everything just looks the same and not only really drags the game down but also makes it confusing to navigate: would love more varied graphics, room designs and landmarks to keep things fresh and let you build a mental map (could also maybe have a map screen on pause).

*Felt annoying to have to make so many leaps of faith or miss seeing things due to not being able to see high or low enough: would love if the game let you hold down/up to be able to peek ahead.

I gripe a lot, but that's just because this is definitely a promising game with some cool ideas and I want to really love it and its sequels: hope this feedback can help make it even better! Loved the cool boss fight and hope to see you continue this connected lumina cinematic universe you're making!

Yword responds:

Really sorry about those issues... But thank you so much for the valuable feedback, I will note them down!
And thanks again for playing too! :)

[Run, Billy, Run !]

Hmm, bit mixed on this one!

On one side of things, I think the game is quite fun! There certainly are an astounding variety of crazy obstacles to contend with that assemble in all sorts of fresh tracks, it feels good to move fast and be as efficient as possible, the music gets you amped up, and overall the game is quite charming with its little quips and style.

On the other hand, I felt like the game was super wonky, bordering on unfair at times.

*Jumping physics could be really bad when it comes to jumping off of moving platformers: jumping when a platform is moving up and you're sent to the moon while jumping when a platform is going down makes it so you practically don't jump at all. I get that sometimes games make you inherit some of the momentum from the platform you're standing on, but here is feels excessive and unintuitive.

*Physics for the 'slippery' floors was also weird: felt more like they were 'sticky' floors.

*It sucks that when you pop a balloon accidently it never respawns, so all you can do it wait for death since you need them to proceed.

*The distance tracker is completely bunk: you can have tracks that make you run to the left to progress and it decreases your tracker as if you were backtracking!

*The game also ended up getting a bit repetitive: if you have a long run going, you can end up seeing the same recycled traps over and over. This wouldn't be a problem if the traps would get more intense the longer you go or remix little things about them to keep you on your toes, like Warioware does, but for this its literally the same thing over and over, so it gets boring because once you've conquered it, there's no challenge to it.

Definitely a nice concept and a good attempt, but just felt like it needed some more time in the oven!

FFuriousDuck responds:

Hi !

Thanks for your review, i totally agree with you, i'll fix all this mess in the next update !

Take care !