FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Charles, the Bee [Beta]]

It's a cute little game, but it definitely felt pretty rough (which is understandable given its a game jam game, but still, rough is rough and this ain't the game jam site).

While I enjoyed the juxtaposition and sudden twist of going from a harvesting game to a dancing game (I imagine in my head that the bee is supposed to give the pollen to the hive but through cooking the books is able to hide it from auditors to use for his personal illegal dancing), doing the same thing over and over without any big changes to them started to turn stale, especially since the harvesting game felt like the weakest of the two and most repetitive since the amount gets larger and larger.

It's certainly impressive that we get two games for one, but in this case, I would prefer quality over quantity: one strong game rather than two weak games. The harvesting game was pretty generic and lacking any sort of unique elements to it, and the dancing game, while the most interesting, felt really lacking in several factors: the note charts didn't feel sequenced to the beat properly, the feedback from hitting or missing notes was missing and made it difficult to tell how you're doing, the opponent isn't involved in the dance-off during so it feels less thrilling, scoring was too lenient, and so on and so forth.

It's cute and could be an interesting adventure, but it felt so unpolished that it really made the journey less than ideal: would love to perhaps see a more finalized version of this if this is indeed version 0.1 and not version 1.0.

BluePinGames responds:

Wow! Thanks so much for taking the time to help us make the game better :D

Whether it's 0.1 or 1.0, we intend to make many, many changes. Your feedback will certainly help us get to a more fun place with this game. We are already working on improving both the harvesting and rhythm sections.

The latter is definitely easier to improve, but we're committed to making both experiences great. Again, thanks for the nuanced feedback!

[MS Paint Collab 2023]

Hey, pretty cool collab! I always appreciate when a collab goes above and beyond the typical slide show, and creating this whole virtual 3D art gallery with fun little gags and so on is great! Really turns it into a fun little adventure that I believe gets more people to check out all the art and spread the love, so the effort is much appreciated.

The only complaint I can think of is that there's no way to click on the artwork to see the art on Newgrounds (where you could vote on it) and no way to click on the artist name to go to their page and follow them: I know you can find 'em in the credits but convenience is key to get people the attention they deserve. Oh, and it's weird that the game doesn't just automatically lock your cursor in since it's necessary, but at least there is the option. Nice work all around, and man, it's amazing what people can do in MS Paint nowadays!

Frosty responds:

the reason why it doesn't auto-lock the cursor is that it doesn't work unless it's attached to a physical button, as far as I'm aware. I'm glad you liked the collab : P

also yes ms paint is a surprisingly strong software for what it's worth

[The Wizard Ran: Chapter 6]

Goddamn you Albatross! I was on track to collecting all of the orbs and you just had to go a-murderin' the two hunters and lock me into another ending I wasn't going for! Now I gotta do minesweeper all over again! Arrrghh!

Anyway, another fun chapter in this thrilling adventure! So far I've got three endings: murdering by Albatross (goddamn you Albatross, I'm trying to avoid killing those two since it plays the sad music), story ending with jumping into the tear (didn't expect the game to actually put important stuff into the main ending as a lot of it is contingent on doing additional endings from previous games, and you've had a pattern so far of the main ending being the ignorant 'run away' ending, so I'm interested to see where it goes as it was pretty epic) and the 3 orb ending (which, as silly and low-effort as that boss fight was, it was actually pretty intense haha). Had a blast getting all of these and will see how many others I can get.

(Little bug I found: if you go to the south wall of the research room you can peer into the blue dimension? Probably just some malfunctioning collision, but you never know with this game, haha)

adriendittrick responds:

thanks for playing :)
The blue dimension was indeed initially a bug but I've discovered it and put a bunch of respawn demons in it (the ones that appear when you press R) so now it's a feature :p

[Gutcorp]

This one was a real oddball for me: it looks like it should be cool, what with its flashy graphics and presentation, crazy shooting action with neat enemy telegraphs and effects, interesting body part management system, and so on, but I found it to be very bad to actually play.

The combat of the game just felt very limp and unsatisfying: despite there being some visual feedback for attacks like screenshake and the enemies flashing and sparking, it just felt incredibly lackluster, especially due to the lack of sound. Speaking of sound, the lack of music or some sort of background track was a real bummer as well: why do you have music for the equipment room but not actual combat? In general the audio was a huge let down with so many elements being completely silent, such as the aforementioned lack of a 'enemy hit' sound.

The game was also just very confusing with me having no idea what was going on and what the objective was. I know I had to fight, and eventually I figured out I had to stand in these circles for body parts to spawn, but so many elements were unclear. How does it determine what body part gets hurt, and can they get hurt from usage like durability wear-down? What is the energy bar, and why is it not filling up when I'm picking up energy? Why do I lose a body part I've swapped out in a previous round instead of putting in my inventory for later use?

There are also just so many little nitpicks that drag the game down, such as the fact you still make footprints when you jump, the screen wonks out every time there is a transition, and certain guns don't work as you would explain (like the knife not reflecting projectiles like it says).

It's very promising, and it's understandable from a game jam game, but it's definitely in a very rough state: feels like maybe the visuals of the game were put first and foremost without a smooth, core gameplay. At the very least, I'd love to see a finalized version of this game that is polished up and builds on the interesting body concept: there definitely are a lot of good things in there that I'd hate to see go to waste, but right now it's like a writhing mass of muscle and skin with no skeleton.

Frogrammer responds:

hey! thank you so much for the feedback i have now watched the video and can answer. i agree with literally everything you said, it's fairly a bad game with big potential and great work from the art team and the composer, unfortunately we couldn't fix the bug in the web but there is a main track for the game that has a chance of not playing, and it sucks cuz its a banger track. anw yeah the visuals were pretty much of a focus at first (the body getting procedurally animated), and then i had to recode a lot of stuff as we were changing the design of the game throughout the jam and with scope this big, that obviously affected the quality of everything so it turned out to be a very messy wrap. no tutorial, no clear telegraphing simply cuz we had no time. thank you so much for being this straightforward, i appreciate your honesty and time :)

[The Wizard Ran: Chapter 5]

Another interesting chapter in this adventure! My first playthrough had me go what I felt was the intended story route of making it to the southeast airship and skeedaddling (but getting in a big surprise fight on the way) while my second route had me trying to save up money to at first buy magrits but instead stumbling upon the power of fire and burning everything away instead. Both were pretty enjoyable in terms of discovering the mechanics of the game and exploring around, figuring out the best route while being shocked by some twists. I felt pretty intimidated by the scale at first but it wasn't anything compared to episode 3 with the maze: with the map and the hints supplied here, this was surprisingly no problem and I can see myself going in for more endings.

While I enjoyed it, this one did have a lot of weird oddities which made it a bit annoying. For example, I dunno how the heck the airship bullets worked and what was going on with their physics. It was so difficult to tell how to fight properly so I just spammed bullets and that unfortunately led to me spamming past whatever their last words were. For another example, the fact that attempting to move to face a wall when standing next to it facing 90 degrees away makes you walk around it instead of just facing it made certain interactions annoying as well, such as burning the trees. All in all, though, it wasn't anything major that impeded me and it was still a neat little adventure!

adriendittrick responds:

the confusing airship bullets are intended because they're a reference to the very first game I made, if you're interested you can try it here (you might need a second player):
https://adriendittrick.itch.io/i-remade-my-very-first-gm6-game-from-memory

[Dashosaur]

This game really sent me on a ride: lots of ups and downs, but mostly downs, unfortunately.

Definitely didn't start off with the best first impression, what with its misaligned text-input on the starting screen which made me unable to type in my name, lack of instructions on how to play, and the first few levels being incredibly unchallenging and boring, not helped by the dreadful 3 second music loop.

Once the meteors starting firing off and the music popped off as well, however, things were looking up! There were still some weirdness like how the meteors could collide with background elements like trees and grass instead of just the foreground floor tiles, but the game started to get challenging with the need for both jumps, dashes and jump-dashes to make it through the ever-changing landscape from meteor impacts deforming them. Felt compelled to go fast!

As it went on, however, the game plummeted into an absolute disaster for me: the meteors just became too heavy in number and being randomly-generated, leading to tons of unfair situations that made it impossible to progress from player skill, but luck only. Combine that with the dash being incredibly awkward to get to work when jumping and the game became too frustrating to continue for me.

It's not a bad idea, having meteors crash into the environment and deform it as it can lead to dynamic play and quick reactions from the player, but this game just went too overkill on it and made it too easy to get softlocked. Food for thought, I suppose!

SleepinPanda responds:

Thanks for the feedback! That's it. I mean, really, this game was made mostly to experiment an idea. And I tried to go as far as possible with that idea. Ship it like it is, and get players to test it. Love it or hate it. Whatever this was just an experimental prototype I tried to polish it as best as I can.
This meteor gameplay is going to be part of the main game I'm building, but I'll build it differently and avoid that much luck/randomness thing.
Thanks a lot for the constructive feedback! This really helps and you guys around here are awesome! <3

[Downhill to Infinity]

Hmm, bit mixed on this one! Certainly a pretty stylish and cool game, but at the end of the day I was left feeling a bit frustrated.

Overall the presentation of the game is nice: it starts off on a great foot with a cool title screen and menus, and continues with some smooth and slick animations and gamefeel during actual gameplay. Speaking of gameplay, that classic Tony Hawk skateboarding gameplay is here and while it isn't anything new, it is nevertheless fun and addictive to chain tricks together for big combos. I say it isn't anything new, but there are some interesting touches like being able to up+flip as a psuedo-double-jump, and I do like the stylish way you wipe out in the game (though sometimes the camera would glitch out for me).

Having said all that, though, the game did feel a bit frustrating:

There were times where I wasn't sure if I was in control: for example, I'd hold left or right to slow down/speed up, but since the change was so gradual and my character wouldn't change stance or anything, I wasn't ever sure if the game was even reading my inputs. Similarly, the physics of the game would be really wonky at times, as sometimes when I'd ollie I would barely leave the ground, sometimes I'd launch to the moon, and other times I wouldn't ollie at all and just fall straight down a pit: just never felt like I could get a handle on it.

The camera was definitely a pain in this as well and felt like it suffered from the classic Sonic problem: you're simply feeling too fast that you can't see far enough ahead of you to plan for anything. In this I would want to go fast so I could get big air and so I'd be stable enough to grind, but that would always lead to me not being able to see far enough ahead or below and plummeting into a pit or other hazardous situation.

Moving on from controls and camera, the game also just felt a bit pointless after awhile. There didn't seem to be any sort of goal or sense of progression: every run would just go through the same endless randomized level devoid of any checkpoints and always end with my death (mostly an unfair feeling death) and that'd be that. It never felt like I was improving or winning since every run ends in a "game over" and it never does anything like praise me for a new record: you're just stuck in this endless void.

I still think the game is pretty neat and well put-together, but the rough edges really stick out for me since it shows so much promise. Planning to revisit and see if I can do better!

cheesycoke responds:

Jesus, thank you so much for this incredibly detailed feedback!! Glad to hear overall about the core gameplay n the presentation and stuff, really appreciate that. (Can't actually take too much credit for the spin trick, got that idea from Kingdom Hearts 2)
All these issues are things I really wanna look into. The ollie thing, I do wanna mention that sorta like TPHS you "charge" it by holding the button, so small presses get you less air but I might need to fine tune how quickly it charges. And I especially need to figure out what's happening if some just aren't registering.
Really appreciate the feedback on camera, was definitely thinking that needed some kinda work. Was thinking about just minor positional tweaks on it but mayyybe something more dynamic will be a better choice? I dunno, I'll think on it, might not get anything out too soon but this is all helpful!! Really looking forward to the video, too, since that should be good for helping pinpoint where the issues might lie.
AND yeah that last part is totally understandable, making games that're more rewarding is def a big next step of mine. Thank you so much again, though, for the detailed write-up and the overall interest in the game!

[Flanders Killer 8]

Haha, I'm not really a fan of this game, but I gotta say it sure does have that old-school Newgrounds Flash feel to it, so well done on capturing that aesthetic!

While I'm down on the game, I will say it's not all that bad. Some of the levels have a lot of environmental destruction and shootable objects outside of just the Flanders family which can be quite fun to find and blow up: reminds me of those fun kids games where every object reacts to a click. Also, there are a ton of Simpsons references, mini-games and really amusingly bad impressions to see and hear!

Overall, however, the game just does feel very repetitive and amateurish, and I found myself quitting quite quickly. Also c'mon, how you gonna have a shooting game where you don't even have a crosshair cursor? It just ain't the same when you're mouse-clicking a hand icon over someone's head!

Aprime responds:

Yeah, I can't say it was hard to capture that asthetic when the first one was made over a decade ago :D

You're right, it needs the crosshairs, sorry :(

If you want to Beta test: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aprimegames.flanderskiller

If you love Flanders Killer - please become a fan http://aprime.newgrounds.com/follow :)

[ᴘᴏʟʏ ᴘᴏʟʏ ᴘᴏʟʏ]

Cute little game! I have to admit it's not really my cup of tea since its entire premise is my mortal enemy: slide puzzles (seriously, I almost quit playing Parasite Eve 2 since it had a mandatory slide puzzle for progression). But nevertheless, I think the game does have some good construction and charm to it overall.

The cute little title screen with its animated bouncy logo, talking helper who reacts when you hover over things, the overall slick graphics and satisfying click-clack when you slide tiles are all subtle touches that really elevate this game. I'd love if it had a little bit extra juice to it, such as some visual FX when you slide tiles, buttons that they themselves react on hover, and an animated background, and I also wish the text was more readable (sometimes it gets so tiny and I wish the text box was more darker to make the white text pop) but for the most part it's all quite good and I had a decent time making my way through the easy and medium difficulties.

It's not exactly going to set the world on fire or get me to love slide puzzles, but this is a very nice and well-constructed basic game: it's like a very good first-timer student project vibe I'm getting, so well done in that regard.

DuskyLW responds:

I really appreciate the review! I made this game for the very same reason, I was not good at these puzzles nor am I a puzzle kind of person, but I had the itch to figure them out. Luckily, making this game solved my inept-ness at them haha. I definitely wanted a lot more out of this game but got to a point where I really wanted not get stuck working on it indefinitely, so I eventually cut my losses and picked a deadline. Really wanted to move on from this project and keep growing with other projects. Glad you still had fun with it despite it not being your thing <3

[Fire]

Wow, I'm not much for idlers but this one really grabbed me!

Love the presentation and theming present with it: gives it a real mysterious aesthetic which elevates the experience and immerses you. The sense of progression was very fun and addictive: building up the light bit by bit, getting new structures and visitors, clearing dungeons, balancing your passive income rates, there's just so much to do and unlock that keeps you busy the whole time wanting more and more. Also felt it was quite an intuitive experience to manage thanks to all the helpful popups and tooltips.

It's certainly a little clunky in some respects. There are some weird glitches like a weird 'quest' button appearing in the journey section that is placed weird so as to overlap a bunch of other text, and interactions like clicking on birds on your farms was difficult to tell the effect of since it spawns a bunch of pop-ups that overlap each other. Progression also feels weird in some respects with you swimming in certain resources you feel would be rare while other resources pile up at a snails pace: made it a right absolute slog bottleneck in the later game at times. Similar experience with journey: first it starts out feeling like you gotta babysit them the whole time, stuffing food in their mouths to keep their health up, then just a few pieces of equipment later they effortlessly clear all the dungeons first try.

Furthermore I'm not even sure if it's winnable? I got far enough to complete all the dungeons and build a shrine but absolutely nada happened afterwards that I could tell. Still, it was an interesting adventure while it lasted! (Ah, visited this afterwards and figured out the weird sacrifice/portal mechanic: maybe I'll delve further?)

ErikSwahn responds:

Thank you! Yes some things need work and it is not balanced rn. Feel free to sacrifice a character and try the portal :)