FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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

[Egg Time Rewind]

Not too shabby! Decent little space shooter game with a cute little twist of previous lifes coming to help you out. The presentation is pretty charming, there's an alright amount of enemies and obstacles to contend with, the power-ups are nice, the charge-up shot added some strategy, and it was surprising how many control schemes it supported. It didn't really blow me away with anything unique or amazing, but I had fun playing.

I will say that I feel like, despite its interesting twist of previous lives coming back to help your future runs, I did find myself not being driven that hard to go for a high score or anything: while the game does intensify as it goes on, I did find it to nevertheless get quite repetitive and sometimes I'd just not have the willpower to go for yet another run through the same stuff once it came to my final life. I guess it's understandable given the small space you were going for since it reduces the space you have to vary things up, but still, it is what it is.

(The bonus game was pretty decent as well, being a little Outrun/Pole Position prototype thingy! To be honest, I might've actually liked that more than the main feature, especially if it was just polished up a bit more!)

KilledByAPixel responds:

Thanks for the review, good points!

[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 :)