FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sun Escapes Me]

An interesting little game! It's a bit shallow and short, but it doesn't overstay its welcome and keeps things interesting and novel by switching up the rules with each wave. There are some frustrating bits like how difficult it is to ricochet shots back at the sun since there's so little room to work with, but for the most part the game is exciting and fun thanks to the explosive feedback/effects and intuitive arcade gameplay.

That said, the design of the game was pretty questionable at times. I expected the rock wave to require you to shoot the rocks down quickly to prevent the sun from absorbing them and gain power: that way you're forced to play effectively and risky to keep all the rocks away. But no, you can just leisurely take your time and shoot the rocks at your own pace, killing any sort of excitement until you reach the required 100 points. It just made it a bit confusing because you'd think the game would always focus on you vs the sun, but when it comes to the rocks...why are you getting points for shooting them? The other waves made more sense since it involved you fighting back. Also, why does the game even have a high score system when getting points is required to reach certain wave progression at 100, 200 and 300: doesn't that just mean everyone who beats the game ends up with the high score in the end, unless perhaps the sun's final phase health bar has some wiggle room?

Overall though, it was quite the memorable experience due to the interesting wave progression that gets you to the final showdown: a nice, short and sweet story!

picochaz responds:

Thanks for providing such comprehensive feedback! You're totally right on all your points here, relying on score for progression was meant to be a temporary thing but I ended up getting distracted by other things in the game jam.

If I am able to prioritize revisiting this game, I'm going to use your comment as a blueprint to dramatically improve the points mentioned. Score should matter more beyond the final phase and things falling into the SUN should add to its gravity. This might even spur levels in the game itself... who knows?

It is most appreciated that you took the time to provide your thoughts like this.

[Little Fellas]

Hmm, seems like a decent concept, but at the moment it just didn't seem to have much to it.

Usually with these types of games it can be really fun to see how the little guys grow and evolve as it can change their behavior pattern so that they have all sorts of fun dynamic interactions and such on their own accord that are fun to watch, similar to a fish tank or a game of the Sims or Spore or whatever.

Unfortunately here, the little guys just seem like boring shells with no personality or autonomy: they just exist for you to directly make them breed or feed instead of it happening organically. Because of all of the guys being boring shells with no personality, I felt no reason to want to breed or grow them into evolved forms since it was purely cosmetic: what's the point?

Not only that, but the controls were frustrating as well: was never sure in what way or how long I needed to shake to get them randy, and a lot of times my shakes would end up chucking them into the wall for insta-death.

Again, I think it could be a good idea and it floats some interesting ideas around like how you have to sacrifice units to feed others, but in the end it just felt repetitive to grind out all the different forms and it just hurt my arm from all the shaking.

0chin responds:

Its a bit hard to animate all of that in two weeks of work with some of us working actual jobs on the side and only 2 animators. Maybe with an update we’ll add more 👍🏾

[Vizzy & The Lost Cat]

Fun little platformer you got here! Loved the manic and fast-paced platforming fun that the game had, the good amount of enemies/obstacles/layouts to the levels, the satisfying juicy effects for things like collecting loot, and the smooth controls. All in all felt well-constructed and fun: fun enough that despite not getting to the finish line on my initial playthrough, I have now already replayed it to get all the way to the top!

While I'm overall feeling good about this game, there were some nitpicks to be had:

*Enemies felt like there were a bit too spongy at times: I would prefer more of them to take less shots as this sponginess coupled with not being able to hold down to auto-fire really dud a number on my old man hands.

*I know it's probably part of the appeal and to add replayability, but it was quite frustrating to not have any way to backtrack: so many times I'd jump up only to realize that now I had missed a yarn ball and had no way to get it without restarting the entire game. Argh! This also extends to the doors: I'd prefer that you have to press up or something to enter as sometimes I would accidently go through by just passing by when I wasn't finished yet exploring.

*While the enemies do explode with loot in a satisfying way on death, I still found it a bit lacking that the enemies themselves did not explode with a graphic or sound or shake or any feedback: I know they overlap so some might say what was the difference, but it just bothered me slightly.

*Found death a bit overly punishing: I got practically all the way through the game, only for me to die once near the end and lose all of the money completely! You'd think it would just take a certain amount or just restart me back to the amount I had when I entered the level.

*While the levels do a good job at mixing things up, especially with the levels that had moving/rotating platforms, it still did feel slightly samey at times, especially due to the same graphics and music being used over and over. Maybe add a bit more variety or cut it shorter so that the time commitment matches more closely with the level of content. It's not that bad though: there are practically in sync already.

*Unsure if there is a bonus ending or anything for collecting all the yarn balls and a high score of cash? Kinda of felt pointless since it felt like it didn't make a difference at the end.

Nice work!

[Mini Musou]

Hmm, not too shabby! Like a Musou game, this does a decent job at making it feel satisfying to cleave through swarms of enemies: it's nothing super great, but it's satisfying enough feedback considering it is a jam game.

Unfortunately, while it is initially fun to run about and smack enemies, the novelty doesn't last that long. With only one enemy type, a simple combat system, and this very small map with no other objectives, it easily becomes very repetitive to just keep going up and down, cleaning out the bases over and over. To add insult to injury, the controls can be a bit janky: not too bad to do the normal combo attacks and movement, but I had a ton of difficulty trying to do the charge and dodge moves.

It's not bad as a prototype or skeleton for a musou game: as said, the cleaving through enemies is fun, so if the controls were ironed out and more content like new enemy types were introduced and maybe some sort of story/objectives or escalating difficulty to the game were added, I think it could be quite fun! To sum it up, if possible, please focus on making the mechanics more involved rather than thinking more booby costumes will be enough to keep me distracted, haha!

cheesycoke responds:

Thank you so much for the feedback!! Yeah enemy variety is something I wanted from the very beginning but unfortunately couldn't get realized in time. I def would like to expand on this eventually with more enemies, boss fights, etc but that story/objective idea is really interesting! Has a lotta potential I'll keep it in mind, seems fun to mess with.

Also oh god yeah I was fucking around with the controls until the very end. Lotta back and forth of trying to get certain functions working, really needs some polish there. Very unfortunate though, was hoping the booby costumes could distract from that (but for real appreciate the feedback!)

[Roxy's Windows]

Hmm, it's certainly an interesting idea very reminiscient of games like Hypnospace Outlaw and Gone Home and such, games were you piece together a story from scattered documents, but unfortunately, unlike those games, a lot of things kind of bogged it down for me and it never felt like it had a strong initial purpose so it made me lose interest rather quickly.

For one, the controls are quite wonky. It gets most of the controls right and intuitively follows most OS rules, but there were plenty of times where it would act in odd ways, such as selecting the wrong file when trying to click on a file next to another one. It actually took me a long time to even realize I needed to tap a document to make it create other lines: I thought they were just all one line documents at first, haha! The worst part for me was trying to read documents in a folder, as there was no back or next button: I'd read a document, close it, then have to open up the folder again to find the next document and click on it: sounds minor but when you have to do it constantly it really killed my motivation.

But more so than that, I just felt lost without some sort of guidance or goal or story. I mean, there was a story about these characters and dealing with normal angsty young people things, but I didn't really have any setup or much reason to care about the characters. Most of these other interactive UI games or investigative games provide some sort of impetus or quest or reason, but it was absent here. Most other games start small and build up some tidbits of knowledge to work from first as a basis, whereas this one just dumps it all on you at the start. Besides story, I'd also love if maybe there were some more puzzle elements or something, like having some documents locked away behind the cloud and you need to search for the wifi password and enter it to get access, instead of the wifi password just being a little joke. Basically, for me, this was just a haphazard array of documents that felt aimless, but that could just be me: some people might actually like the level of freedom that this provides to just wander about.

Bleak-Creep responds:

Always appreciate a detailed review. I think a lot of these thoughts are totally valid too. We had originally planned there to be more puzzle solving elements in there and we had even made up some locked folder icons, but we didn’t have enough time to work them into the game to meet the deadline. I’m not sure if that’s something we’ll add in later on, but I do think it’d help shape the narrative in a bit more linear sort of way, which could be a better way to experience the story.

Thanks for playing!

[Alien Hominid Art Collab [20th Birthday]]

Decent little art collab! It's nothing mindblowing, but its got a good assortment of art, some decent backgrounds and music, nice little sounds and feedback for buttons, and its nice to see links to the artists profiles below them. It's got some minor issues like how some of the text is difficult to read (could stand to have it be outlined or use a thicker font) and how the arrow buttons are difficult to click (should probably have the click area not be the arrow itself, but a bounding box for the arrow), but for the most part everything is functional.

That said, I do wish it was a bit more creative in its presentation: it's not bad or anything, but it's a very general slideshow-style presentation that has been seen a hundred times before. Considering it's Alien Hominid, it might've been cool if the game was presented in a more wacky way to fit with the game: perhaps you could make a side-scrolling level where you wander around as Alien Hominid and can either collect the artwork by getting points or just see it in the background of the city. But again, taking it for what it is, it's alright.

s-zenmode responds:

HI FUTURECOP!!!!!!!!!!!
sorry bounding boxes are hard as shih to do in scratch thats why i usually dont.
and i was actually going to do something like that wacky thing you mentioned but it was scrapped because I made the engine when I was a total newbie and was too lazy to actually rework.

thank you again our saviour FuturecopLGF

[Kill-BOI 9000]

Pretty neat game! An interesting twist on a survivors-esque bullet-heaven game where instead of empowering yourself, you play as the weak master empowering a powerful minion. Felt like it had all of the basics in place for a game of this genre and it was decent fun to blast away slimes and watch them split into smaller and smaller versions.

That said, while it wasn't bad or anything, I did find it a bit unsatisfying to play after awhile and didn't feel like replaying after I easily won my first run. While it was fun at first to get my bot equipped, it didn't take long for it to have all of its weapons and then for all of the upgrades to just be boring slight upgrades of the existing weapons, causing it to feel very repetitive. It also felt kind of odd to not be able to control the bot in any way: while I agree that the gameplay loop of being a weak scavenger risking going away from the bot to collect hearts to bring back was intriguing, it eventually just felt really frustrating to not have any combat feedback and not feel like any of the kills were from me: a weird sense of disconnection, I suppose. It didn't help that the game felt very muted with lackluster sounds and special effects: could stand to have some more juice in both gameplay and menus, like how I was disappointed that dying just immediately boots you unceremoniously back to the menu.

While the bot concept did end up alienating me, I still had a decent amount of fun and thought it was a cool experiment, so well done!

PlayWithFurcifer responds:

Have you checked out the hard mode? :)
Don't fear, more juice is coming. The game was made in a 3 day game jam, so there is a bit of work left!

[A missing shepherd]

Nice little puzzler! I felt like the mechanics were pretty clever and intuitively introduced through some solid tutorial levels and good tips. Didn't take long for me to get rather addicted at going through puzzle after puzzle, especially with the way the game kept ramping up the difficulty and complexity bit-by-bit, such as with stacking sheep into groups or adding water into the mix. All-around very good stuff.

Only complaint I would have is that maybe the game is a bit too chill for its own good: would love if it had a little more pep to it. For example, I'd love if maybe when you beat the level, the sheep lean down and start eating the grass, or bleat with happiness, or some such thing: you know, little touches like that which make me feel a sense of progression and accomplishment. Instead the game is just a constant drone of the same level graphics over and over with this really depressing music with random bleats: as much as I like the game mechanics, the lack of energy really kinda saps me out, haha!

Olivier-Guillaume responds:

Thank you for your detailled feedback!

I'm not 100% satisfied by the music myself, but I didn't find any better.

About the lack of variety and feedback, it's a 2.5 weeks solo project, so yeah it's pretty basic (and I'm not an artist).

[Dynacore]

Wow, really impressive game here! Feels like a lot of effort went into the presentation and construction of this game, as every single thing about the game explodes with life and energy, including elements that usually wouldn't get much attention like the menus. Seriously, without even getting into the gameplay, it's just a delight to click on buttons and watch the cool little animations and transitions as it positively crackles with energy. I felt like the game shined the most with the cool boss fights, especially if you get your hands on a neat gun, but I also loved the little special things you can do in the game, like picking up fired arrows to use as an impromptu weapon, or stealing from shopkeepers by exploiting invisibility potions.

But having said that, and it hurts me to say this...but I didn't find myself actually having that much fun. The game starts you off with a really limp and unsatisfying melee attack that doesn't give great feedback due to the lack of sounds, and that unsatisfaction was further compounded by all of the enemies feeling so spongy. Even once you finally get a gun, you can get screwed over and just get a really odd one that just feels awkward to use, and even if you get a good one, the combat still felt rather limp and lacking depending on RNG. While the game does seem to have a decent enemy variety and traps and other such things, it never felt like they had a chance to shine because all of the rooms just felt like they were slapped together randomly and thus has no cool obstacles or formations: it felt more like just clutter, and they were too cramped to allow for me to stretch and employ some movement. Traps just felt like an annoyance, like I was playing some sort of Indiana Jones game instead of the dopamine crazy experience that was promised. Game was also confusing to keep track of all the items and such you get: I had no idea what were inventory items I'd shoot/use or what were passive boosts and whether they stacked or whatever.

Could just be a bad first impression, perhaps: maybe it really picks up in the later levels, and I'm not saying it's a bad game, just that maybe right now it's a bit style over substance: it's not as fun as it looks like it should be, at least for me. I do plan on revisiting the game and giving it another chance: while I would typically drop a game that doesn't make a good impression, the sheer amount of effort put into the construction makes me want to play and hope for the better!

EDIT: Now that I've gotten further, I feel like I'm getting more in vibe with what the game is going for and am enjoying myself. There are certainly still some annoyances, like how dropping items and reading more detailed descriptions for items is very unintuitive, and generally I'm still not a super fan of some design choices and the RNG causing some runs to be super boring and painful due to lack of interesting items or health or level layouts while other runs give you an overabundance of crap, but still, having a better time overall.

Prox276 responds:

Hey, thanks for the thorough feedback! :)
It does take a long time to grow on a lot of people but most of them do enjoy it more once they overcome the initial difficulty spike. That isn't to say that the game isn't flawed but it does click for a certain audience.

[GreenWood Defense]

Not too shabby! Definitely didn't have the best first impression due to the bland asset-flip looking graphics and menus and the lack of juicy special effects: like c'mon, why when you kill the boss does he just stand there and then pop outta existence? There should be a big explosion and he should fly away and such to give you the satisfaction of completing a level! You already do it for the regular enemies when they die, so why not for the boss too!

Anyway, looking past that, the game was pretty fun and addictive to build up your army and deal with whatever formations the enemy is sending out each level. In particular I liked how the units have different movespeeds to them, which forces you to think of the logistics in depth: you might want to deploy a unit to reinforce your fighters, but you need to factor in whether they will get to the frontline fast enough, and so on. Very interesting stuff!

One big thing that really bothered me is when I upgraded a unit and suddenly the cost of deploying the unit was increased as well: I had no idea it would work like that and it really screwed me together since I had lost a strategically low-cost unit and now had to grind previous levels to try and get enough cash to buy a new unit that could fulfill that now lost role. Felt like this was really uninuitive: would love for the units to be redesigned so upgrades don't influence deploy cost, or to have the ability to undo upgrades.

Wombart responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

I have added the infos about the mana increase when upgrading unit and the boss has the classic death animation now.