FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Darkraid : Delilah]

Wow, getting some great retro shooter vibes from this one! Dunno what this one is doing buried underneath everything else as for the most part it hits all of the important pillars for a good shooter to me: nice gore and feedback for shooting, nice enemy variety, good combat telegraphs, a great old-school shotgun, interesting levels with all sorts of enemy formations, secrets, and so on and so forth! Found myself easily getting addicted to blasting through the demons!

If I had to point out some parts I feel could be worked on:

Jump felt really bad: not only is it incredibly short, it also screws up if you try to jump too close to a stair, making you awkwardly have to step back to jump.

Weird that you don't carry over anything between levels: yes, some games do allow you to start fresh upon death, but usually that's only if you die in the level and restart instead of load, not if you just got into the level from a previous one, no?

No way to restart after dying apart from going to the menu and selecting restart level? I know that makes some sense, but that extra step feels unnecessary: feels like you should be able to just click fire and have you restart the level right there.

No save/load feature? I don't mind it so much as I always try to beat levels without save scumming, but still, I'd like to be able to save my progress in general if I want to take a break.

Picking up items is kind of lackluster and uninformative due to the same sound effects being used for everything: maybe use different sounds and flashes of color to signify what you're picking up?

And the big one: while I think it's great overall and that the aesthetic is kind of unique, it is perhaps lacking a unique hook (or gameplay that feels so good that it doesn't need a hook). There's just so many boomer shooters out nowadays that I can easily see this one getting shunted to the bottom of the pile despite being good: just feels like another Doom conversion mod. Dunno exactly what the best approach would be: maybe more wacky weapons akin to something like Blood or Heretic instead of the more standard shotgun and rifles? I did feel like the initial slow-orb-fire pistol and melee combo was pretty neat, only for it to get overshadowed. Maybe play up the story angle more with dialogue and objectives and events? It did feel like apart from quips at the start of the level, everything was quiet and directionless. Maybe some sort of unique combat ability like glory kills that adds some spice and strategy to the combat? Up to you in the end.

Borington responds:

Thank you so much for the detailed review! I 100% agree with the list of your issues, and these features will be added for the desktop version (though some might be added as a quick update to this version as well). As for the hook, that's exactly the problem I've been struggling with, but I hope the story I'm working on can make the continuation something special.

[Eat Bean: Another Plane]

...surprised I made it to 100 beans. How'd that happen? I guess that's a compliment? Can't see myself making it much farther than that though, haha: I can only be amused by funny words for so long (and again, gotta admit it was amusing for longer than I expected, so good work on the funny words).

Warning! Do not walk next to a wall, face it, and hold down the lick button. The sounds...

tscoct responds:

Saliva asmr was too much i guess lol, still, thanks for checking it out!

[A Halloween Cat-Tastrophe]

Not too shabby! Certainly a cute little puzzler that's got a rather unique concept and art/presentation, but man, I really went back and forth on this game.

Tutorial didn't make the greatest impression as I felt like it took waaaaaay too long to explain something that, in the end, is very simple to grasp once you get into actual gameplay: pictures would be worth a thousand words in this case! It just wasn't really effective: I actually didn't even know you could rotate the pieces for a bunch of levels because of this, though I'll say that the rotation is very wacky in that its more like its shifting the order of pieces around while keeping the shape the same.

Once I got going with the game, it felt alright for the most part, but it felt like it was really feast or famine: if you got lucky with your pieces, you could end up sometimes clearing the stages in like 1 or 2 moves (which unfortunately despite winning felt unsatisfying) however if you got unlucky with your pieces, then you can spend so long trying to dig through the clutter to get to the objective, only for it to be covered up once again. Just so punishing and difficult to recover! Because of this, I was always really tense and prone to feeling hopeless if things didn't go right: the last level was an absolute nightmare where I almost beat it but then from a few unlucky moves felt like it was unsalvageable.

Its a cute game, and perhaps I'm just bad at puzzlers, but the whole feeling of everything being up to luck and the lack of control or recovery hurt it for me. I'm probably not gonna beat it, but hey, I had a nice time while it lasted: I'll leave the last level to the real puzzle lords, haha!

KittyhawkMontrose responds:

Hey! Thanks so much for taking the time to play and review our game! I see what you mean about the intro/tutorial, and we're thinking of tweaking that in the next game. But I'm glad you got the general concept quick! It's definitely a different way of playing. Sometimes luck does play into it, like you can get a bad run of pieces, but for the most part, each puzzle does have a "simple" solution, if not obvious sometimes. We are definitely going to be working on the difficulty curve and the role of randomness on our next game.

Glad you like the theming! And thanks so much for the feedback. It's got us thinking about things for the future. :D

[Minimum Mage Effort]

Wow, this one really surprised me! Glad I came across it as I'm surprised it didn't get into Best of the Month - thank god for the Halloween tag!

It definitely had a bit of a rough start for me. While the game definitely does sport some adorable art and charm, the tutorial is an ugly, overly verbose wall of text that takes way too long to explain what is essentially a very simple game: could definitely stand for more pictures or maybe a guided day one. Next, the game is pretty tough! Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge, but some of the difficulty does come from some really unfair-feeling aspects like how you have to get right in a customer's grill to serve them (heaven forbid you try to serve them across the table) and it's so easy to get bogged down on regular tables slowing you down, let alone the ghosts and rats that end up appearing later. It can feel really crushing as well when you make a single mistake: customers are so impatient, you have to get the order in the exact stack order, going to the bin to reset takes so much time that it feels pointless, argh, it all adds up and makes it difficult to recover!

But again, despite that whole screed of negatives up there, once I got going with the game, I ended up getting really addicted to it! The tutorial being an issue didn't last long due in part to the game having intuitive design with clear visual signals/symbols and logical feedback: I practically didn't pay attention to any of the tutorial text and still found everything easy to pick up. While I did have a rough time and those missed customers or occasional dropped orders did hurt, I found that as long as I put the pedal to the metal, I was clearing even the last days without much issue, and it felt oh so satisfying! And again, the game was just so cute and charming with great feedback and goofy sounds.

This game is a real toughie, no doubt, and some of that challenge I think could be more forgiving or elegantly designed, but I was glad I was able to rise to the challenge and get to the end: well done with this one!

Just-a-ng-dummy responds:

Wow didn't expect ya to cover this game haha! I think the reason why this didn't get into Best of the Month was due to it didn't get frontpaged in October

For the tutorial, I overcomplicated it because I was afraid someone was gonna not know a crucial mechanic, fail horrendously, and quit the game with a sulky impression, I will try to make a simplified tutorial soon though

"Order in the exact stack order"
Ack! That's the problem!! You don't! The bottom part of your serving must match at least one of the customer's orders! Hopefully I can explain it clearly in a simplified tutorial!

The bin has been a concern for me, maybe I'll give a positive to outway the difficult recovery time like faster movement speed

Thanks a lot for complimenting the visual feedback for the game! I will try to decrease some of the difficulty sooner or later, thx for playing Futurecop!

[Coca & Their Shotgun]

Don't get me wrong, I love me some bullet hells, I love me some boss-fight centered games, I love shotguns, and I love it when games put you right in the action quickly. But, uh, maybe I should be careful what I wish for, haha!

The game definitely has a lot going for it. I enjoyed that the boss has multiple phases, each with tons of patterns which were very beautiful in their choreography, and the general presentation is charming in its goofiness. However, this game does kinda just throw you in at the deep end, and as much as I like a challenge, I ended up just quitting after a few attempts.

There's just so much stacked against you. The arena is so cramped and claustrophobic, the additional enemies so annoying and spongy, and the patterns so chaotic that it just became difficult to parse anything. The bullet hitboxes were super whack: when you practice dodging at the beginning you can get hit by bullets that don't intersect your shadow at all, meaning that all you can rely on is spamming the dodge which just didn't feel satisfying or elegant. Finally, the nail in the coffin was the fact that the game doesn't allow you to hold down the fire button to keep firing, instead forcing you to click each time: my old man joints just can't handle this type of control scheme no more, argh!

I still kinda like the game in all its wackiness and jankiness, but I need to put some ice on my hand before I give it another go.

Just-a-ng-dummy responds:

Thx for playing Futurecop! This isn't my best game and more of a dumb shitpost so I didn't really expect much of this. You made some good points and I wanna try and use em for reference later on if I make other bullet hell games. Although I should make a small update for this game just in case haha!

Hope you'll have fun reviewing the other games last October!

[Culpa]

Hmm, I think the game shows a lot of potential as it has some cool moments and nice graphics and sound design for the most part, but in the end the game just stumbled so much that it felt rather silly to me than scary, unfortunately.

There were just so many awkward and subtle elements missing that kind of piled on and killed my immersion. There was strange phrasing and dialogue that sounds like it might've been badly translated from another language. There was a lack of sound variety for important events like the footsteps outside not changing to be muddy plops instead of wooden taps and the tentacle event being incredibly muted (and again, lacking watery sounds for sludging through the water). Most events were just very telegraphed like the part where you obviously can't outrun the light monster, or silly like dropping your gun and it just hardcrashing back to the start instead of showing a proper ending sequence. Pacing constantly gets destroyed by moments where you just need to mindlessly rummage around until something finally happens. Finally, the story is just overall too short for it to really build up dread and weight.

Again, I think it was a good attempt, especially for a game jam game, and certainly could've been great with some more time to polish up its execution.

Meiallu responds:

English isn't my main language.
But yeah, I probably would have made a better story if I had the time. Thank you for the review!

[Portaboy+]

Hmmm, a bit mixed on this one, which is unfortunate since I think it shows a great first impression and has a lot of great work put into it!

For the most part, I do think the concept is really cool: multitask juggling between playing these warioware-esque minigames and fending off monsters all while you need to manage your resources and react to various random glitches leads to some rather interesting gameplay. The game is pretty crazy in terms of graphical and audio quality as well, both just in general and with all the ways the game glitches out. Certainly intrigued me and made me want to keep trying to understand the systems and get better to unlock more portions of the gallery mode, which seemed to be providing plot points.

Unfortunately, while it was cool to experience the twist the very first time where the monsters are introduced, it is just a pain to have to deal with it on subsequent tries: it takes so bloody long to get back to the good stuff (ie the twist) and the game is really boring and one-note until then, due in part to the absolutely low difficulty and lackluster variety in minigames (both in the types of minigames possible and the way the minigames vary their obstacles within). It also just seemed really confusing to deal with resources: ammo costs so much that you have to play so many minigames to get them, but you can only play them so fast and is also up to RNG and meanwhile monsters are spawning at incredibly fast rates that it just seems impossible. Maybe I was missing something, but it just frustrated me.

I still think the game is quite impressive in terms of production, but I don't quite agree with its execution. For me, it's a clear case of style over substance, unfortunately.

Enchae responds:

I agree with part about the first phase. It's paced well for a first playthrough but not the 10th. There is a skip arrow you can shoot but no one finds it. That might be something that's still worth changing.

[Last Christmas (Game Jam Version)]

Hey, a pretty nice point-n-click adventure game!

For the most part, I feel like it had all of the right fundamentals: nice, charming art and a big ol' area to explore, chockful of items to pick-up or interact with that provide all sorts of amusing flavor text/dialogue. The game does start a bit slow with both an odd puzzle (why not have the key under the rock to pick up, rather than examining the rock to get the key? does the rock open up? was it taped underneath?) and maybe a bit too many items to pick up, but nevertheless it felt good and I was getting addicted and fired up to solve the list puzzles.

There were some parts that I felt the game were lacking a bit, though:

For one, there were a lot of times where you interact with a container like a cupboard or a bin, and you just have the character tell you that they picked up an item. It felt so unsatisfying and confusing: I would much prefer if you can see the cupboard changed to be opened up and see the actual item within, and then hover over the item and pick it up yourself. You do this for some interactions like getting the soap bottle behind the curtain: dunno why you skimped out for so many others.

Another aspect was a lack of animations and feedback: felt really unsatisfying to, for example, unlock the door but not even see the character put his arm out and use the key or at least play a unlock sound effect. I guess I should be careful what I wish for, though, because while you did animate the character chopping down the tree, the animation was simply dreadful and absolutely nonsensical, haha.

Definitely a pretty decent point-n-click game overall that has a solid foundation: it was just a bit lacking in terms of satisfying touches like animations, sound, and other effects. I suppose I should be forgiving because of the short time frame it was made in, but take it as a compliment that you raised the bar so high that it seemed so lonely without those special flairs!

Polytelygames responds:

Thank you for playing and thank you for your comments, it is very helpful feedback that can help me shape my next game.
Two weeks to create a a game from scratch, isn't a long time, my priority was to have a working game at the end and i succeeded in that goal at the same time being place 3rd in the rankings out of the 97 submitted games.
I would like to revisit this game, with an expanded story(which i have) and new art and animations, but I'm struggling to find anyone who want to work on the project. maybe one day, in the mean time, If i could ask a favour, as Last Christmas has been selected for the "best indie game" and "best game jam game" category in the Game Development World Championship can you please show your support and give us a like on our page and if you would like to share it that would be great to.
https://thegdwc.com/games/last-christmas

Edit - Just wanted to let you know that it is nominated at The Game Development World Championship. If you have a moment to help a new indie game dev out, please follow the link and click the vote button https://thegdwc.com/games/last-christmas

[Leslie & Brianne's Galactic Rampage]

Charming little adventure! Enjoyed the intergalactic romp, platforming through some simple but decent puzzles, punching the heck outta some aliens, and interacting with all manner of stuff. The humor can sometimes get a bit too meme-y and reference-y for me, but most of the time it was delightfully crass. It's not exactly the most difficult game, and it can be a bit janky, but the game did a good job at being creative with its low-fi art and big variety of events and levels to keep me hooked to see what would happen next.

I gotta say though, the controls did get a bit frustrating at times. There were plenty of times where I tried to jump but ended up interacting with something that I thought was far away enough, or the jump bumped into something I thought I was clear of. Later on it does a gag calling this out literally (the pogo supply room), which is funny, but at the end of the day, in the words of Yahtzee: "if you know its bad, why are you doing it!?" Furthermore, I was disappointed that the game didn't have a save/load feature: it ended up being a lot more lengthier than I expected but I had to take a break, and now unfortunately I dunno if I can make it all the way back there a second time: it's a nice game but it's not that nice as it is, at the end of the day, a bit too guided and linear and without challenge to make replaying it fun, haha.

TmsT responds:

Oh man that's disappointing - I really thought this time I put all the flavour text under low ceilings or far from anything that would give you a reason to jump (except for two places where it was supposed to prevent you from accessing something). I didn't know it was bad, Yahtzee! Honest!