FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[DEAD PETALS]

Pretty cool game! While it isn't necessarily anything incredibly unique, being somewhat of a basic twin-stick shooter with simple bomb-esque powers, it is nevertheless quite charming, eye-catching and satisfying to play with its psychedelic visual flair and bombastic juicy effects.

While I do think it is a rather basic shooter, that's not to say it doesn't make a bunch of smart decisions. The risk-reward management of the hyper bar and gem collection, the subtle de-saturated colors used on companion bullets to signify them not being dangerous, the clear and impactful damage feedback for both enemy and player, the sheer variety of enemies and bullet patterns, and so on all combine to create a beautiful chaotic battle you can get into a trance fighting through.

That being said, I think there is definitely some room for improvement that I would love to see:

*For health and hyper being so important to monitor and manage, I find it very strange to have them be so tiny and crammed in the corner where they are barely noticeable. Would love if they were made more prevalent, not just by increasing their scale, but also perhaps by using symbols or bars instead of boring and difficult-to-parse-during-battle numbers. Would love if the hyper bar was a big glowy bar that stretches across the whole screen so it feels great to fill it up, and I'd love if the amount of left-over health would temporarily appear dead-center when you get hit, for example.

*Would love if the tutorials were not just walls of text which are very difficult to parse and remember, but instead images, symbols and pictures. In addition, I'd prefer if power-ups used logical and iconic symbols as well, such as a plus sign for health, instead of having to memorize this bizarre and unintuitive color scheme you've got (which again, isn't explained with pictures or examples of the colors so it's difficult to recognize them in-game). With more intuitive symbols and such, you wouldn't even need a tutorial in the first place!

*The sense of progression felt quite lackluster, with the difficulty curve going up and down in strange ways. Some runs I'd encounter a super hard boss early on, other runs I'd keep encountering the same easy boss repeatedly. Yes, there were some changes that made me feel like I was getting somewhere, such as bosses spawning more and more along with minions, but still, it all just blended into a mush.

*I found it odd that, once you kill all of the enemies in a wave and enter the power-up selection phase, the game doesn't automatically clear the board of bullets (similarly, it was odd that killing the boss doesn't clear his minions away). Just felt a bit against standard conventions and confusing to remember.

*While the game is a visual treat, the same can't be said for the audio department, which has like two sound effects (one which drones on and on and just becomes static) and no music, which really dulls the experience and compounds on the sense of no progress being made (changing music can be a great way to make you feel like progress is being made, and music would also be great to get you into that combat trance).

Still very impressive for a jam game, and I would love to see a more enhanced version of this: maybe it could be the next Hyper Demon!

bandaloo responds:

thanks for playing! all the points you bring up are good. for a followup game, UI and difficulty curve are things i definitely want to work on.

and yeah, the fact that bullets don't clear on wave completion is kind of unconventional for sure. i don't know if i'll keep it for the next one. i think i could justify it if there was some bonus for clearing waves quickly, so there's a risk vs reward aspect for pushing forward and letting the screen fill with bullets. right now, it's just risk, lol.

as for the game progression, you fight five bosses, and then there's a "boss rush" segment. after which you'll fight the (fake) final boss. then some creepypasta bullshit will happen and the game will change a bit, and you'll be able to fight the true final boss on the next run.

[Tankmas ADVENTure 2022]

I do like the intention behind this event: collaborations are wonderful community events and it's great to see all this wonderful art and get people to interact and celebrate with each other. For that alone, I think it's very nice. But despite my best attempts to participate in the event throughout the month, I couldn't help but feel let-down: not only does it just feel not well-constructed, it even feels like a downgrade from previous iterations.

First and foremost, the game just felt really badly put-together. For example, I found it very difficult to interact with objects: you'd think you'd just be able to click on something and have your character walk over and interact, but tons of times I found that I needed to manually place my character below the object (and nowhere else, heaven forbid) and then click on a spot not even on the object to get the interact to work: incredibly awkward all-around. I also had multiple times where I'd just start walking into the sky or going into the black zones because of shoddy collision/boundaries. The game crashed on me whenever I tried to go into the bathroom in the cafe (I only ever got in there a single time, which at least proved it wasn't some weird intentional crash). I couldn't ever trust who was real and who was some sort of NPC or player who crashed and lost their session or something: there were tons of copies of characters just standing around: it made the world feel robotic, untrustworthy and lonely. Presentation also felt lacking with the links to profiles for artists just being really bland boring text with no hover-over reaction or framing. And so on.

As an example of it being a downgrade from previous years, I thought the introduction here was way worse and most indicative. The previous one had a nice little story to it: you pick up a note inviting you to a party, take a silent journey through a beautiful landscape, it starts all dark but gets brighter and brighter with anticipation building up, and arrive at the party where the music kicks in and you join the fun. Here, you start in a bland, boring field with a dull blank sky, walk to the right for a couple of seconds and enter the party with no fanfare, no music, no sparkly wonderment to be found at all (why in the world do you need to manually turn the music on?)

It also just felt so lonely due to the lack of any meaningful interaction between people. I can understand if you don't want a chat because you don't want spammers running rampant, but only having a single heart emote as means of interaction felt so pointless. I would've loved to ask questions if I was lost, chit-chat or click on people to get to know them, do some funny emotes with people and maybe setup a dance-off or some synchronized event, react together when watching a movie: you know, all the typical type of stuff you'd see in a chat room or twitch chat or MMORPG. All you can do in this is go and open your presents and play the arcade games (which are single-player instead of a fun multiplayer event with your avatars) and it made it so boring for me.

Again, I really wanted to enjoy this. I saw the ad for the Sketch collab and joined right on time and was looking forward to join in with everyone and have a good time watching and reacting. However, all that happened was confusion: I thought I arrived on time, but nothing happened while I waited in the theatre with a ton of people (who might not've even been real due to the many clones I saw). I tried leaving the theatre and going back in, hoping it would reset, but nada. I wanted to ask the BrandyBuizel clone at the sign what was going on, like if I got the time zone wrong or something, but oh wait, a) there's no chat b) there's no guide or system-wide message or billboard telling people what the event details are c) he probably isn't even real but just an NPC Brandy. I left disappointed. Even when I went back another day and successfully watched the Sketch collab, it just showed it full-screen instead of within the movie screen, which felt pointless: surely the point of watching it here should be so I can chat with other people as we watch and see their reactions pop-up above their heads in their seats? If it's just going to be full-screen, why don't I just watch it on the actual page?

Anyway, sorry for the long screed. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding what this is going for: perhaps all my complaints for it to foster more social experiences like a chat room/twitch chat or the Golden Saucer from FFXIV are unwarranted, in which case I apologize. Maybe you're suppose to use discord in conjunction with this? Anyway, I still think this has its heart in the right place, but can't help wanting more.

GeoKureli responds:

we never got the mouse interacting working the same after converting the game to HD (which messed up all the coordinates). Thruthfully, I wasn't available as much this year and the game suffered from it. Also I assumed most people use keyboard to move and interact, which was how it was generally tested, and no one really mentioned the finnicky mouse interation (Though, it was a known issue).

I'm really hoping someone else takes up the mantle on this next year because it just doesn't fit into my life, anymore, and the project suffered because of that, even though we had more contributors with higher talent, than ever.

Thanks for the review

[JARED]

Whenever it comes to games like this that look kinda crappy, I always hope that it is some sort of trick that hides a very impressive game past that veneer. I've been surprised a lot on Newgrounds with games like that, but unfortunately here it just seems to play it straight where yes, it is indeed that bad.

It got my hopes up with its amusing awkward narration and level design that seemed to have some sort of pathing to it with interesting leaps of faith, and I did have a couple of laughs at my deaths where you just stretched a spike very long to create a death zone. But the awkward narrator voice is already something I've seen a hundred times before and executed better, and the level didn't take long to get frustrating with its awkward collision and confusing pathing, not to mention the annoying controls with jumps that you can't control the strength of.

I know it's all for the 3 star jam so it was somewhat intentional, but I think you overdid it somewhat and fell below the standards of the jam. Maybe that's admirable in a way? Most other people couldn't help but make their games too good for the 3 star jam: at least you played it straight.

SoftwareDrinkware responds:

I did actually have other stuff I was going to make for this, and it came a lot worse than I wanted lol. I got confused with the dates when you needed to submit the games and ended up just cutting out everything I had planned for it in fear of missing the deadline and instead threw together this heap of work with what assets I had made. In the end though it sure is mid lmao. Nice in depth review though, I appreciate it <3.

[Peter the Ant Clicker]

Cute game with a pretty decent first impression, but didn't have the clicker appeal I'm looking for.

Everything was pretty ok when I started out: graphics were nice, I liked how buttons reacted when hovering over them, I thought it was cool that the score counter reacted on a digits basis instead of the entire number, I liked the strange little character in the corner that gives info, and above all it's Peter the freakin' ant, what could go wrong!?

Unfortunately the game didn't really have much to offer beyond that. What I really like about clicker games, and other similar upgrade-based games like Vampire Survivors or Risk of Rain, is seeing the absolute fireworks display that ends up happening over time as you build up and up. All of the upgrades in this game were practically invisible though: if you were to take a video of someone just starting out and someone in the endgame for this, they'd look practically the same, and I found that incredibly unsatisfying. C'mon, wheres an actual animation for bonking Peter with a hammer that actually changes to represent what hammer you have? Where's all my moles I've bought and why aren't they on the screen clicking away and helping me out (why's it only the glaggles that appear, and why are they so static and boring)? I want more excitement and a sense of progression! Also the game just goes by so bloody fast, it has no challenge or sense of pacing: despite not liking it so much, I ended up getting all of the achiveos in no time flat.

I appreciate that the game at least tries to have sound effects for all of the upgrades, but it felt very lazy and also descends into eardrum-destroying territory, making me almost not want to upgrade. With a little more elbow grease into the visuals, I'd say this could be fun, but at the moment, no go. Still, I understand I'm probably taking this too seriously, so jokes on me, haha!

Roza responds:

not reading all dat

[Cards with Personalities Classic]

Pretty neat game! I definitely took the hard way by not reading the instructions provided, but despite my initial bumpy first impression (which I suppose is my fault) I still felt like I got to terms with the game and ended up having a good time, which is quite the achievement!

I feel like the game is very well constructed: love the various animations for actions like having a card get highlighted and float when it is selected, and the effects that act out when you play a card, like how the icons zip up to the top part of the HUD and add to the counters. These elements, along with other subtle things like how the screen shakes and plays a bad sound if you attempt to do something you can't (instead of just giving no response), the way it warns you if you try and end a turn too early, and the contextual control instructions always displaying at the bottom so you know your options, not only make the game feel fun and juicy, actually make this complex game rather intuitive without even needing to consult the outside instructions. Despite my rough start, I felt like I was able to gather all the info I needed to be able to play within the game from trial and error.

It definitely could do a bit more to help, but I understand the Pico-8 template is limiting with the space it has available (I mostly mean screen space, but I imagine data space as well) For example, why does the game even bother starting without just forcing the first draw? I understand not forcing a draw later on since there can still be remaining choices, but I feel like that would help a player see how to start out and hit the ground running instead of starting blanky at these cards they can't do anything with. I felt like you did a pretty dang good job with the limited space already, though.

There were a few bugs I experienced here and there, like where my cursor would remain over an empty card slot and it'd give me options to use it as if it still existed, only for it to not respond to those options and for it to disappear once I move away from it. It was also sometimes tricky to navigate around, for example where sometimes when I go up it takes me to the graveyard instead of the boss which I expected. I also still am not sure I understand the destroy card option.

These card games aren't really my jam so I'm not the intended audience, but I gotta give big props to this game for hooking me in despite all that and the initial confusion: the juicy and reactive menus just gave the game such a good feel to it that I put faith in it and wanted to push on and learn!

Elastiskalinjen responds:

Thank you! Yeah, there is a reason there are very few card games in pico8, and I was fighting with the limitations both in screen space and in tokens the whole way. That's why I decided to revisit it and create a full version with a tutorial, better guidance in general and also tons more content!

[The Wizard Ran: Chapter 2]

Wow, this game is really going places! I feel bad for calling it the most 'sane' adriendittrick game I've experienced: I suppose it still makes some sense as it's probably the most potentially straightforward if you just mainline the first endings, but doing so would miss out on all the crazy interconnected elements that this game has!

Learning information like names and ages from this and going back to previous chapters to plug it in and see what happens, or knowing that information in future chapters might help with mysteries like the maze and so on is very fascinating! It's like a weird Virtue's Last Reward or Majora's Mask experience but spanned across multiple games, or perhaps like a Metroid map, where every time I play one of these games, new paths blossom forth on the mental map of the current and previous chapters to gain access to other endings and so on.

Of course, even discounting the mysteries that cross games, there were plenty of cool mysteries in this game as well. Learning how to exploit coyote time to get through the jumping puzzle, the amusing way the camera was used to hide spikes (look at the platforms above to figure out where they are) or to allow you to eavesdrop on conversations, those strange entities or upcoming traps, being able to race to grandma and get access to a boss fight that I have no idea how to beat: so much craft and care in the experience!

The game does still overall have a janky, clunky feel to it all with stiff movement and odd/inconsistant physics and collisions. Exploiting coyote time to get through the jumping puzzle was a bit of an odd stretch: typically I'd call it bad programming if a game is built like that, but for a weird game like this I guess I give it a pass. Luckily the game never demands any perfect play and it's quite generous with restarts and continues, so it's not necessarily an issue, but it can still have a subtle effect in making the game feel somewhat unprofessional to a player, diluting its appeal and potentially making a player less willing to stick with it despite its hidden charm and depth. Course, the clunkiness and low-effort look can also give it another layer of 'mystique' to certain players, so its a mixed bag.

Again, major props in creating this hidden depth through this series with its inter-connected mysteries: it's a ballsy move since I can't imagine everyone is going to experience everything on offer, with a vast majority most likely just getting the general first endings and that's it. Hell, I doubt even I will uncover all of the mysteries in this, and I'm a fan! I really admire the effort in crafting this.

Oh by the way it took me an embarrassing amount of time to get the pun: their name is Ran, as in, The Wizard Ran.

adriendittrick responds:

oh cool, you've played the second one :)
Yeah I'm glad this series is having a nice amount of success! (so far I have 4 chapters out and all 4 chapters were nominated for game of the month X) ) next one might be a bit more janky too :p

I will be experimenting a lot with this series though, so you should expect more rough edges here and there. But also specifically for those games I don't mind players being less willing to stick around, the TWR series isn't for everyone and that's normal. Add to that the fact that those games take about 2 days for me to make.

[The Wizard Ran: Chapter 1]

Certainly an intriguing game! It's one of the more 'sane' adriendittick games I've played as it is quite straightforward, which is a bit of a shame in some respects, but it still has plenty of weirdness and subtle craft and charm to it, what with all its hidden endings, lore and deep story, ambitious mechanics like guard AI and a sandbox that responds to various player behaviors, and so on. Had a good time figuring out my escape in the first run and then playing around and seeing what else was there, like changing responses based on gathered information and watching the characters react. Could certainly be considered as shallow if you just do it straight for the first ending, and the game is a bit janky with low-fi graphics which can give a bad impression, but again, the hidden and subtle elements to be found are impressive.

As said, it was pretty janky in some respects: my first run had the guard glitch out his pathing and act oddly, then suddenly start attacking me, eventually knocking me clean through some walls (which I didn't know I could phase through yet) and killing me. Subsequent plays had the guards pathing go awry many times as well. The stealth mechanics felt really unreliable as well: I got seen by someone who had his back turned to me (this might've actually been because they just started to walk upwards, but they don't have up/down sprites, only left/right sprites, so it treated them as walking upwards while looking left at me despite going right previously).

Looking forward to seeing the rest of the chapters!

adriendittrick responds:

thanks as usual for the great review :)

[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)))