FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fat Fish Aquarium]

I'm always a little wary of these Ant games as I'm never quite sure whether the low-effort presentation will actually cleverly hide a well-constructed game, or if it will play as bad as it looks. It's a gamble, and in the case of Fat Fish Aquarium, I really wanted to like this game as it made a very solid impression with its goofy yet well-made retro Windows aesthetic and nice little touches like being able to click on the fish on the main menu. Gameplay looked like it was similar to idlers like Insaniquarium which I enjoyed, so I thought I won the gamble and was experiencing one of the great Ant games: I was all set for fun!

As the gameplay went on, however, I found myself feeling once again that I had been tricked, duped, and bamboozled. Yes, the gameplay did seem to be somewhat similar to Insaniquarium at a glance with its money generation through feeding the fish, but it was lacking all of the interesting management and strategy, and worst of all, the progression was criminally slow, like even worse than the progression of trying to play a free mobile game without spending money. I spent 10 minutes with the game and in that time, I wasn't even able to acquire enough money to buy a single other fish: call me impatient, but I don't feel like I should've had to wait even 2 minutes for such a simple thing to happen! It was just ball-achingly boring to only be able to wait on my single fish to generate anything, even worse since all I could do as a player was feed it and listen to its one single om-nom-nom soundbite over and over.

If I were to try and be nice, I suppose there could be the argument that the slower pace makes this more like a true idler game: something you leave on your second monitor as you do something else and only check on it every now and then, similar to a real fish tank. Unfortunately I don't think it works in this manner either as the amount of atmosphere and ambiance and simulation that the aquarium provides is very shallow, what with its repetitive and minimal variance in sounds, braindead AI and lack of random events.

So yeah: nice first impression, but it was all style over substance as I felt like the game lacked any fun mechanics or depth, and to put insult to injury, it progressed at a speed where I would expect the heat death of the universe to happen before I would be able to get all of the achievements.

AtreyuGilbert responds:

Yeah, I feel like pacing could definitely be improved. I remembered my original prototype of the game I showed to Ant as reference was actually a little faster paced, and I hope he can actually fix the pacing eventually. Thanks for your review!

[Dead Horizon: Demo]

It didn't make the greatest first impression on me what with its overwhelming and confusing start where it just dumps you in the thick of it, along with its terrible controller controls (a game that just uses a controller as a virtual mouse feels really bad to me), but nevertheless this game really impressed me in the end and I look forward to seeing more of it!

I was really impressed at the amount of choices and reactivity that the game has. It was really cool how the bad guy not only has so many lines when reacting to things you say, but also reacts to events like staying idle, or drawing early, or drawing/undrawing when you're got him down, and so on: really made the characters feel so alive and made replaying fun to see all the ways things can go down in the end. Fighting was neat as well where you have so many ways to dispatch the bad guy: you can fight him straight up by countering his attacks, or you can use your clever examination of the environment to find objects you can shoot first to distract him and make him a sitting duck, similar to an immersive sim like Deus Ex where you can outwit a strong opponent instead of fighting them straight up.

That's not to say that I don't still think the game can be rather confusing. There are some silly aspects that the game didn't notice that I feel like it should, like the fact that the guy only reacts if you draw your pistol, but not if you start reloading it: shouldn't that feel like just as much of a threat? Furthermore combat felt very odd and inconsistent where sometimes I couldn't tell whether I was doing damage or not: it seems like the game intends for you to only be able to hit the target when you either distract them with an environmental object first or shoot them when they are about to attack (exclamation point) but there would be times I'd kill him with a shot despite not doing those conditions.

Alongside all the great reactivity, the game has a wonderful and charming presentation to it all, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this ends up in the full version!

Emptygoddess responds:

You're amazing. Thanks for the feedback.

[Octillery VS. Collection]

Hmm, bit of an odd egg and difficult to judge!

On one hand, I feel like the games are just absolute insanity with most of the humor just being non-sequitur and too personal/inside-jokey for me to understand. Just feels like I'm reading some kid's cringey/edgy diary or fanfic where they make fun of their bullies or weird discord friends and it's like, I don't even want to make fun of it, it's more like I feel like I shouldn't even be reading it in the first place and it's not my place to judge. Really feels like it is a game that should've just been shared with friends and family, not with the public: it's too personal and inscrutable.

It didn't help either that some of the combat seemed very confusing and overloaded. For example, I died in the very first fight in Jonathan's Adventure 2 and I was surprised to get kicked out all the way to the main menu: it was so overbearingly hard that I just figured it was one of those fights where you're destined to die (and with how confusing this game is, heck, maybe it is?)

I will say though, for as much as it looks like it is kinda low-effort weirdness, it actually did end up intriguing me and kept me hooked to see what the heck was going on. It's like there's some sort of charm and smart design behind its strange facade: almost like a lot of effort went into making it look like it was low-effort despite actually being high-effort, almost like Cruelty Squad or something akin to that. Outsider art, perhaps.

In a way, it was certainly more interesting and memorable of an experience than many other RPG Maker games that I've played, where they usually just bore with way too more generic exposition and grindy fights with no strategy: this at least gets right into the action and provides you with a lot of options! So I will give it that much at least!

Vidyabatter responds:

Thank you! This was genuinely helpful!

[SQUADADDLE]

Pretty neat game! For the most part, I had a lot of fun with this. I love the fast-paced, bite-sized platforming challenges, and I love how juicy and lively the game is: everything is just so animated and stylish that it really elevates the experience.

That being said, the game can be a bit frustrating at times:

The controls were a bit awkward to get used to: not only are you super tiny yet move so fast that it can be difficult to judge your movements, some rooms that would make you do really challenging maneuvers felt like a huge difficulty spike. Eventually I got decent at it, but I just wish it had walljumps instead of climbing as it might be a bit more intuitive, or maybe if it had controller support it'd work a bit better.

Sometimes I was questioning what the goal or rules of the game was. Scoring at the end of the levels isn't really explained and you never see how the numbers add up: couldn't tell whether time left was giving me more points or if it was a flat rate, and how much of a bonus the fruits were giving was difficult to tell as well. Wasn't sure whether the game has an ending to it either: the way everything is randomly generated makes me think it's endless, but it was rising in difficulty, so maybe it eventually ends? It was also a bummer that every run ends with a game over and a sad little dude: you'd think it would celebrate me getting a new high score or something, but if everything just ends in sadness, and the game just feels pointlessly endless, it really hurts motivation to retry.

Also there were some odd bugs like ice sometimes not doing anything to you whereas other times it would have that slow start-up slipperiness that you'd expect.

Again, though, while it was a bit rough starting out, I still find the game very addictive and fun, so well done!

kaiakairos responds:

i was awaiting your review!! i wanted to respond but I waited to watch your video first to get a full picture of your thoughts.
I was actually intending on adding something that told you how exactly the score counted up, but I gave myself a deadline of the 25th of february and wasn't able to get it in in time. The score is calculated +500 for level completion, + (time left * 100), + 2000 if the bonus was picked up.

The game is significantly easier to with a controller, and would have been the intended way to play, however I never got the support in because HTML5 controller support can be finicky, plus the only controller I own is a switch pro controller which can be VERY weird to set up properly. I'm now aware shift is odd for a lot of people, I found it fine, but if I had more time I'd add remappable controls.

The ice bug is caused because momentum is preserved on ice (if you walk from regular terrain onto ice, it won't slow you down) however if you spawn on ice, the code checks for your movement before checking if you're on ice, so the first frame of movement basically ignores the ice and lets you get up to about 40% of full speed immediately. Didn't realize the cause of this bug until watching your review, might have to go fix that one.

The sad face at the end was just added because I thought it was silly, I really didn't think about it much at all if i'm bein honest lol. It would have probably been nice to put a happy guy if you got a new high score or somethin.
The game does run infinitely, and there are about 150 levels to play through. Eventually the hardest levels do start repeating, but they are so extremely precise that I just wouldn't expect many to make it through a whole loop of them.

Overall though, I'm glad you liked the game! The visuals are usually my main focus, so I'm very glad you liked the juiciness, despite the obvious flaws overall. I'll be taking your feedback into consideration for my next project, whenever that will be :]

[The Time I Was Stranded in Some Planet]

Wow, this was a really great adventure: it's short but incredibly sweet in my book and surprised me quite considerably!

It's true that it is a little short especially in terms of exploration where all of the collectables are within like 10 feet of each other, it's a little janky with bullets not functioning sometimes and some events not resetting properly like how the alien talk prompt reappears on continue even though you've already gone past that point, it can be a bit annoying with the floating eyeball enemies showing up and the way they phase through walls to attack you with no way to defend, and it is a little simple in a lot of respects, but goddamn if I didn't have an absolute blast with this!

I absolutely love the Blaster Master-esque player/vehicle synergistic gameplay with various upgrades, and I found the story and dialogue so wonderfully goofy and charming: I just couldn't stop playing with the way the pace kept everything going. The end boss fight was a great cherry on this sundae that I was really impressed the game had, especially with the cool escape sequence at the end. Very well done!

streq responds:

Thank you so much for the feedback! I agree with all of the negatives you mentioned. Some of it is due to a bunch of "I'll fix them later"s that I straight up forgot or got used to. Regarding the flowers, they were originally a last minute addition (the game was a submission to a 9-day long game jam, it featured no boss fight, and ended after collecting the flowers), so some of the flower spots were chosen at random and never questioned again!
I'm very glad you enjoyed it, thank you for playing and taking the time to write this!

[Merged Gravity DEMO]

Hey, pretty cool precision platformer you got here! It's simple, but I found the gravity switching mechanic very fun to pull off, and I felt like the game did a great job at keeping me hooked with the well-paced increase of difficulty and introducing of new mechanics to contend with. I also liked how the game taught controls and concepts with intuitive design, like the gauge around the ball that signals your charges left, and the warning that pops up to remind you of the restart button when you're out of charges. All around pretty well done and fun!

In terms of feedback, I'd say that the order of levels felt very odd at times: not only did it feel odd that there were some suddenly super easy levels appearing after other levels were ramping up the difficulty, sometimes a new mechanic like the timed buttons or gravity gates would appear, then suddenly they'd vanish and not show up again several levels later. The game was also lacking pizazz and juice: would've loved if there were some additional effects to spice things up, like maybe a cool warping sound effect when you beat a level to act as a celebratory fanfare along with your cool visual warping effect. Another real bummer for me was the lack of a save/load or continue option: it may not be that long, but I can easily see this being a game that someone (such as me) would need a few sessions to go through, so it not having anyone feels super unreasonable. Heck, even if it was a short game, a level select or save/load wouldn't hurt, so why it is absent!

EDIT: Jesus Christ, those last two levels were ridiculously hard gauntlets to get through! A bit overkill as I think since it's such a crazy difficulty spike compared to the rest of the levels, but through perseverance and confidence in the game's controls/physics I was able to clear it: (though I wouldn't be surprised though if some people would just quit here and feel justified in doing so!)

ChimeraDev responds:

Hi! Thanks so much for playing and the review!

I want to clarify that the game doesn't have a save system due to time limitations; that's why I focused on making the game easier to play if you come back to it! Since the progression is made in such a way that the earlier levels feel like a breeze!

Now for the level order, it might feel odd, but it's to introduce "hidden mechanics" like gliding! This is all taken in mind for introducing different segments for a final level, and not to over-load the player with a new mechanic!

I'll take this feedback in mind for future updates/games very kindly! Thanks for taking your time to write and give proper feedback! It's always extremely appreciated!

[Hello User]

Pretty interesting little game! Definitely gives me Hypnospace Outlaw vibes with its fake OS and goofy old-school aesthetic.

My first playthrough was pretty good, but ended prematurely. I really enjoyed solving the crazy login puzzle and then had fun tinkering with the impressive OS you put together along with its various apps, but felt disappointed that I didn't really find any sort of secret story hook or anything like that: I just figured that the game was just a jokey experiment with nothing to it, so I left.

Luckily, I eventually came back and on my second playthrough I did discover the hidden catcha puzzles (again, I just initially though the catcha was a joke with no real solution, so it was quite the surprise) and the very tricky firewall minigame (great minds think alike, haha) and so on, and that did elevate the experience for me! I still felt like it started off strong and then, even with the secrets, just kinda petered out and didn't have a very satisfying ending or story beyond this assistant being some sort of weird boogeyman, but it was still an interesting puzzle experience.

CaperCube responds:

Thanks again for the review, dude!

For being a 72 hour jam game, I'm super happy with what we were able to make here, but the points you made here and in your video are totally valid takes I'll be thinking about in future work.

Cheers!

[Pixel Mania!]

This was a bit of an odd duck for me with a lot of ups and downs, making me a bit confused on how to feel about it!

On one hand, many kudos for hiding a game within a game, and done in such a secretive way that many people might not even realize there is a secret in the first place and might just write this game off as a bog-standard collectathon platformer that it appears to be at first glance: takes some balls to pull off a risky move like that! Even though the whole 'player rebels against the creator' angle has already been done many times before, it was still a neat twist and I enjoyed how the gameplay evolves in so many ways and had multiple endings and such as you get deeper.

On the other hand, I came very close to quitting this game two times and it was only through the grace of god that I got lucky enough to make it through. The first time was me boring myself on the initial boring collect coins gameplay loop: as I was just quitting the game, I happened to glance at the description and luckily see the hidden clue, for any other time I would've just quit and thought the game was dull as dishwater. The second time was in the big unfinished RPG world where I was starting to get really annoyed with how big the world was and how easy it was to lose so much progress from a flubbed jump or a dumb trap: I was just about to quit since it felt like I was making no progress, but again, luckily I happened to find the spaceship at the very last moment and then get a cool ending boss fight.

So yeah, it's a bit difficult to judge! While I enjoyed the secrets and subversions, I still found it a bit of a pain to play at times: even looking past the things I mentioned, there are also other silly things like bad feeling platforming physics and the annoying need to redo all the dialogue/cutscenes on a fail. It's like if parallel worlds exist, I think this is the only world where I got lucky enough to actually play and beat the game, whereas every other world I would've quit out of boredom or annoyance and I wouldn't blame them for doing so. I mean, I did get the ideal experience, but does that mean it's good, or that I got lucky, and how should I score it? Ok, now I'm getting silly, but anyway, it's a mixed bag I guess!

blit-blat responds:

Thanks for the review! On reflection I'm not happy with how well hidden the "real" game is. I knew I wanted all to be revealed on the end screen to make people go "wtf? Where were the gems? I best play again!", but it could probably have been signed posted a bit more in game. Throughout development I did worry that the base game wouldn't hold people's attention long enough for them to complete the game, and unfortunately this was borne out in the fact that people unlocked medals to about word 2-3 and then stopped. Does no one read the Author's Comments before playing anymore?! :P

Improving the base game was difficult for a few reasons, the first and main reason being time. I started developing the game on January 4th, giving me just under 3 weeks to build the game and release on Pixel Day. The second reason was variety. The obvious thing to add to the base game to spice things up would be enemies. However, I wanted to make the two games feel fairly different and if there were enemies in both I felt this would be a bit of a cop out.

I'm interested that you found the RPG world to be too big; in my view it felt far too small! My original plan was for it to be much bigger - the four zones (green, blue, yellow, orange) were all meant to be large separate areas. Ultimately time got the better of me and they were combined into one. Maybe it's because I know all the shortcuts and secrets, but combining them into one world made it feel very small and easy. Will seek more outside views next time.

In terms of losing progress, can you expand a little, please? All collectibles should be retained at death, you just start back at the entrance to Proto-World. If you meant during the initial Code Monster chase or the battle at the end, then yeah I meant to add different dialog in after replays and fails, but alas, again time got the best of me!

[Split-shot West]

Hmmmm, it's unfortunately very rough in its current state. Not only does it have some bugs and general jank to it, but I found the combat to be really crude: everything is just too chaotic with how fast bullets can fly and enemies shooting so erratically without telegraphs for it to feel like I can skillfully play and get that ideal cowboy tussle. Elements like the tables and such felt underused too.

I will say, however, that I find the concept very interesting and wish it would be built upon. I find it very reminiscent of much-loved Resi Evil 4's combat where you switch between movement and stand-your-ground precision aiming, and I could definitely see this working in a similar manner with better enemy and encounter design. So in that regard, I think this is a pretty cool prototype and a great example of a game jam result: despite it all, I find it having a lot of potential and I can't help thinking what it's final version would be like!

Oscura responds:

Thanks for trying it, I agree with a lot that you said and really wanted to do more with this concept when making it, however I struggled with time to get the results I wanted so I wasn't able to create the game I had exactly imagined. I had a lot of fun making it nonetheless and learnt a ton which I hope goes to improve the way I approach/make future games. Thanks for playing!

[The Reboot]

Pretty cool game! Definitely looks like it had a lot of effort put into it: the very fancy intro cinematic as well as the cool HUD with the robo-butler gave a solid first impression, and the way the grid shows where you can place things and the cards all snap into place and give previews and feedback and so on were all very intuitive and satisfying. Love the little touches like how every time you restart, a nuke goes off, giving a very diegetic/in-universe reason for the restart, haha!

I'll admit, I had a real rough time with the game initially: there was a part in the tutorial where you have three lower districts that look like they all need help to get balanced up otherwise you lose, yet you still have a quota for total to meet, so their just didn't seem like anyway to win. I was stuck for a long time there and the confusing lack of feedback it was giving me whenever I failed kept me in a loop until I solved it in a way I didn't think would work but it did??? Beyond that, I also had a tough time with the game as well where I didn't understand why I wasn't able to not build something where I thought I could, and it just felt like a lot of it was up to RNG and such (though maybe that's the point, just nuke it until it works out sometime, but still, this subtle feeling of futility was annoying, though I'll admit I might just be bad).

Overall had a lot of fun trying to get good at optimizing this city with all these crazy goals to meet: certainly an interesting balancing act to pull off!

(By the way, the robot-butler-whatever keeps throwing me off: they have these two lines right beyond their eyes that look like lips, so I feel like that's their mouth, but then they've got a mustache looking thing below that, so those two lines must be the nose and the tiny bit way below must be the mouth, but I just can't accept that and it disgusts me, haha)

MartinJacob responds:

Thank you so much for your detailed comment!

You are right about the tutorial part on balancing populations, which was quite hard to bring about (I am still not 100% satisfied with it) as it explains a mechanic that isn't intuitive at all...
About placing buildings, you can always only place them at the "end" of calculations (next to the building that has a number displayed on it), except for the "NEW" buildings which you can place next to any other building. I agree it's another part that would deserve more signaletics

About the RNG, yes it's meant that way, especially when reaching higher scores you sometimes have bad luck... But planning ahead and optimizing your strat will get you a long way

About the Butler, lmao I can't unsee it