FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Oddwood]

Wow, really fun game! For a game jam game, I'm really impressed at the professional-looking presentation: the graphics, animation, aesthetic, and feedback/juice are very nice and appealing. Couple that with the very chaotic and addictive gameplay from a great concept and I was having a blast trying to keep myself alive.

I definitely did have a bit of a confusing time at the start: I completely forgot that the jump button existed and just figured that the only way to avoid damage was to just be quick and decisive with whatever the dice grants you. It actually was kinda fun to play like that, though ultimately futile given the threats that come up, so I'm glad I eventually realized that there was another option for defense. Curious whether anyone else had that experience: I feel like it was natural to assume due to the focus on automated movement and random dice, but maybe I'm just dumb.

Some feedback more to do with the game rather that my foolishness were:

1) I found it very difficult to keep track of resources like health and such. For some reason, I thought I was being hit constantly and about to die, but I'd somehow make it out with higher health than I thought. I think what led to that confusion is that, while the screen shakes and plays a sound when you get hit, it also shakes and plays a similar 'bad' sound when it rolls the dice, which felt very unnecessary and sending confusing signals.

2) In regards to the upgrade system, I had no idea what the dice upgrades were. The muscle upgrades were very clear, but the dice updates...did they like add to your pool or something to make it have a higher chance to appear? I had no idea.

Would love to see this game get expanded upon as it feels like it has a greatly constructed core: some more enemy types/weapons/dice, a story/goal to progress on, and so on, it'd be great!

Frogrammer responds:

thank you so much for your feedback, really appreciate it and glad you enjoyed the game!
1) i just think the way GUI was put makes it very unclear, however the upcoming update which is going to have text pop outs will solve this problem hopefully.
2) ye picking a new ability will add it to the pool and adding the same ability twice will increase it's chance to appear

[All Right on the Knight]

What a bizarre game! I'm not quite sure what I think of it as it took me on quite a trip, with various ups and downs.

It definitely started out a bit rough, what with the weird entry zone where you've placed plaques on tops of pillars which, since the up button is used to both read and jump, make it impossible to jump off of the pillars except through awkwardly abusing coyote time (deliberately jumping way late). Definitely not a great first impression, but once that was settled, I moved on and the game started proper and was a decent gauntlet of obstacles.

Indeed, the game was a fun little challenge at first until I noticed that a lot of obstacles seemed to be built to flow a little too perfectly...a bit of an experiment later and suddenly the game had no challenge to it, since all you had to do was hold right and the game played itself! As clever as it was to realize the hidden meaning of the title and fun to watch the game beat itself like one of those auto Mario Maker levels, I felt cheated: I was hoping for a good challenge but the game was built to offer none! Why even bother continuing...

But then the game revealed a bit more to it. Yes, I could technically keep blasting through the levels by holding right, so there wasn't any challenge so to speak. But the game seemed to realize this fact and have fun with it, such as the level which can easily be beaten by turning left and walking a few steps, or by insisting to go right to go on a grand journey. Indeed, now the game was an amusing and comical story as you read the tablets of knights debating the honor of going right and so on and so forth, just like how I was debating what the game was all about. Not only that, but the game actually did have some challenge to it, but not in an obvious manner, but rather where you can stop holding right and attempt to reach hidden areas with bonus tablets to read for more amusement. What a mysterious game!

It wasn't quite what I wanted, and I don't fully agree with it on some levels, but it was a bizarre adventure and not something I'm going to easily forget, so kudos on this weird metagame!

TmsT responds:

Thanks for sharing your experience in such detail! Seeing you come to understand the layers of trickery in the game while demonstrating it for your video totally made my day. Not to mention provided valuable feedback I can learn from, sometimes confirming weaknesses I wasn't entirely sure about but didn't do anything to fix, other times enlightening me about other stuff I hadn't really considered. The whole game is basically a joke that I took too seriously, but in the end I'm happy you gave it an honest play - and that you found it bizarre!

[RUN FOR THE HILLS! YOUR FAVOURITE NEWGROUNDS USERS ARE COMING FOR YOU!!!]

To be honest, it's not really much of a game, but from what I understand this isn't meant for mass public consumption but rather meant to be an inside joke: just a fun little gag collab to celebrate being friends and colleagues with these wonderful Newgrounders. So considering that, I can relent on the more harsh criticism and just accept it for what it is: just a goofy game where it's fun to see the various ways you can get killed, and for that, it's almost like a cool interactive art gallery.

However, even considering that, there is still some minor criticism I'd like to point out at the game. While most of the Newgrounders have their names in their kill screens, some of them are absent, and that can make it difficult to follow and determine who is who. Sure, you can see their nametag for a brief moment before they kill you, but it's really not much time at all as they move very fast. Would love if there was more consistency in the kill screens, where they all have a good picture, the name of the killer, and their method of killing. And while we're on that, I think it would be great if there were a link to the user's profile on the kill screen as well: it'd be great if someone could get killed by someone, laugh at the killing and get curious at who they are and be able to immediately go to their profile. Just some food for thought!

LeviRamirez responds:

alright fine we will add you to the game

[GIMMIKO CLASSIC]

Wow, had a really good time with this! Definitely one of my favorite GMTK dice games I've come across: combat is really fun and juicy with all sorts of explosive chaos and satisfying feedback, there's a decent variety of enemies with different movement patterns to shake things up, loading the dice to spawn attacks from a throw is a really cool concept, there's a nice layer of strategy in both macro -building your ideal dice- and micro -having to manuever to retrieve your dice-, and all-around the game just has a really goofy and charming presentation!

Only complaints I can think of is:

1) I felt like the game was a bit difficult to figure out how it worked: don't get me wrong, it was quite the fun adventure to piece it together, but I really felt like the shop menu could've been a bit more intuitively designed in terms of placement of buttons and such (for example, the Go button almost looks like something you can buy; maybe it should be in the bottom right corner instead?) and for there to be some sort of mini tutorial or how-to-play present.

2) As much as the game was fun and keeping things interesting by introducing new enemies, I couldn't help but worry that it was just pointlessly looping and getting repetitive: would've really helped if there was some sort of story or goal to strive for that was pointed out at the start that would let me know what the objective was. Doesn't have to be anything big: just any sort of text blurb or little cutscene at the start would've been sufficient.

3) As much as it was fun to see all the chaos spawn from the dice and cause chain reactions with the enemies, it was really difficult to parse what was friendly and what was an enemy. There were a lot of times where I'd run from things like a miko stick or bees, not realizing they were my friends! In a similar but different vein, the Yuki-onna's wisps looked very similar to the dead ghosts of the wisps as well, so sometimes I'd be dodging the ghosts for no reason thinking they were still alive, haha. To sum it up, it would definitely help if there was a better way to identify friend from foe, like outlines or something.

Again, definitely super impressive for a game jam game: would love to see if you expand upon this, but it's already quite good for what it is if it's left as such!

Tombdude responds:

We're working on a pretty huge overhaul of the game!! : ]

[Five Nights at Fulp's]

Pretty neat game! I'm not really familiar with FNAF at all, only having glanced at it being played but never played myself, but if there ever was a time to it get into it, it was nice to see it in this Newgrounds version! It's a little clunky in some respects as it has some general smoothness problems and lack of graphical fidelity, and I think it forgoes that informative audiospace from the games in favor of either plain silence or goofy jokes (for example I was getting callouts from Tomar despite him not being a factor in the early levels, so why? unless I'm mistaken). But besides that, it's got the general gist of it enough to be fun and brings its own interesting ideas with some unique monsters like Pico. Also I do appreciate that you made the game over state just a goofy Tomar punch instead of a jumpscare shriek: it allows my delicate heart to stay at peace, haha.

Game does have some slight annoyances to it like how finicky the monitor can be (thankful that there was an option to just use spacebar instead of the mouse), and there were some weird bugs like an incessant meow (maybe an easter egg?) and also a weird bug where it'd play a fart noise every time I brought up the monitor (maybe an unintended feature?) Also, of course, as a newbie to FNAF, I was a bit lost at how the rules worked, but I suppose that's just part of the charm and I did have fun trying to figure it out, though it could be frustrating and unclear at times.

Again, well done on this: I'll try and push forward through the remaining nights as best as I can!

Frosty responds:

the meow occurs whenever you press on the stepford plate. ty for the review!! also regarding the fart noise, its a bug and i have no clue what causes it lol, i think on the scale of bugs that's one of the funnier things that could happen so i just kept it in lol.

[EMBER SKULL]

Wow, pretty solid arcade fun to be had here! All in all I feel like this is well put together and delivers quite well on all aspects: the combat is fun and fast-paced with great enemy variety that has unique AIs and attack telegraphs, there are a good amount of fun powerups and arena obstacles and great bosses to make runs feel different, graphics and animations are very juicy and the feedback from shots and blowing up enemies with huge chain reactions from items were so satisfying, and so on and so forth. Had a good time playing this a few times, getting good enough to loop over and over!

That being said, while I did have a good time, there are plenty of nitpicks I could make. For one, I was disappointed that the game doesn't have any sort of goal or story to it and instead starts looping as early as arena 4: as much as I did like how the enemy variety and such did keep improving on successive loops, it just started to feel repetitive and pointless, especially with how easy some of it could get without even needing items to cheese it. Also bummed out that there didn't seem to be any primary weapon upgrades, just subweapons, and that I would have to ditch old subweapons just to try new ones. Speaking of all that, I found it a bit confusing that I couldn't see what items I had already purchased and was unsure what would happen if I purchase duplicates: would they stack or just get ignored? There was also some confusion with visuals as, while most player bullets are yellow and enemy bullets are red, there were weird instances like items that would spawn 'friendly red' bullets that I thought I had to avoid in all the chaos.

Oh, and while this game does call itself a 'roguelite', I think that's a misnomer since that typically implies that some sort of progress or upgrade is carried over with each attempt, whereas this game just has you start from scratch each time. But whatever, it's all rogue this, rogue that, I think people just use those terms interchangeably nowadays, so I'm being needlessly pedantic.

Overall though, those nitpicks were small potatoes and again, I had a great time with this. Only reason I'm being so nitpicky was because I liked this so much and hope that you make even better games in the future!

CheeseBaron responds:

Duplicate items stack, some items are removed from the item pool if you have them though (primarily the panic device and the corrupt halo).
And i just hoped that since all the actually dangerous bullets are bright red (unless i forgot some somewhere) people wont be too confused by more dull projectiles that dont deal damage to you.

If i ever make some sort of super big improved version of this game ill likely add different primary weapons and an actual ending, but thats only in the far far future.

Thanks for playing!

[Maiden Cops]

Not too shabby of a beat-em-up! Definitely feels like its got a solid core to it with most of the essential mechanics present and the combat feeling decently satisfying. I could deduct some points for it being quite basic, essentially just a reskinned SoR without any unique mechanics to set it apart, but it still felt alright. Good on you for also having seamless controller inputs, even recognizing my PS controller instead of treating it like an XBox controller!

That said, if I come at this as a lover of beat-em-ups, this is pretty rough, especially if you're trying to make this big. Controls were a big issue for me and led to the game feeling really janky: for example, you can initiate a run by pressing forward and then backwards whereas you should have to press it twice in the same direction. I also kept having a special combo go off for seemingly no reason: I wasn't pressing any of the special combinations you listed out. Just really didn't feel like I had smooth, logical and responsive control of my character.

Couple that with other annoyances like enemies having a bit too much health (starter enemies should probably go down with just one combo, otherwise the game just drags a bit too much) and enemies being a bit too powerful with their AI: I'd have enemies punch me too suddenly from way too far away and have enemies just suddenly teleport me into their grab: they should have to get closer or perhaps telegraph their attacks better. Also some attacks just felt really wonky, like how the knee kicks from a grab would only damage once you're pulling your knee back: such a weird delay!

In general, while the core elements for a decent beat-em-up are there, the game felt a bit stiff, slow and repetitive in its current state. Hoping you can get some good feedback here and make it into a great finished product!

PippinGames responds:

The main references for Maiden Cops were Final Fight 3 and SoR.

The game supports, in addition to the keyboard, the three main joysticks (Switch, Xbox, Playstation).

Some bugs reported I'm already fixing, like running, for example.

I'm also making some additions that weren't present in the demo. Like the possibility of performing some combos, enemies bouncing on walls when thrown, and allowing a counterattack when being grabbed.

Complex input combinations to use skills didn't work so well. I think if you press one button is simpler.

As I complete these changes, I will announce them on social media and here on newground too.

Thanks for the feedback, it's helping us a lot.

[Sh*t Rainbows Piss Thunder]

Actually had some surprising ideas and variety to it to go along with the goofy premise, but was kind of let-down by general feel of low-effort and jankiness due to weird glitches, confusing design and lackluster graphics. There's some great stuff in here, just buried under some junk that could be buffed out.

While the game starts off rather slow, I definitely was surprised at the mechanics and design on display for the later levels. Gravity switching and stamina management were quite interesting, especially when combined with some of the more puzzle-or-chase-oriented levels where you really gotta focus to make it through. I'd love some more of those later chase levels where you need to keep running and react to obstacles that come up quickly: in fact, wonder if the game would work better if you don't even have a run button and just run automatically.

That being said, I found it difficult to get into the game at first glance because of the really lackluster graphics and boring intro levels, especially with things like out-of-focus fonts, lack of transition effects and so on and so forth. Yes it did have some nice juice to it with the funny voice callouts and fart effects, but even the fart particles were strange with how they would shift along with the body when you jump in a nonsensical way. But even moving on from that to the point where I started to get interested in the game during the later levels, a lot of weird bugs and glitches started to crop up, especially revolving around the gravity switching and collision detection.

Definitely feel like, with a bit of focus on the more interesting and complex levels and a lot of polish to spice up the general presentation and gameplay satisfaction, this could really be great!

TappyWara responds:

Thanks

[Temple of Kashteki]

Wow, really great little adventure here! Gives me Celeste vibes from the similar type of bubble mechanics and the professionally-made graphics, animation, and game feel (well, I did feel like the size of the orb hitboxes were a bit too small, but otherwise everything felt pretty smooth). Just moving the character around by itself was a delight, and once you add everything else, it was awesome. Definitely had a blast playing this: it started out a bit slow, but eventually really ramped up the challenge with some hard layouts and then ended it with a great boss/chase setpiece. My only real complaint is that I wish there was even more to it, as I felt it ended before the challenge could peak and get really crazy and creative, haha!

I did have a weird bug where my movement would freeze for a second at random times? But I think it was something on my end: seemed to resolve itself once I unplugged my controller? Since, maybe worth investigating to see if something weird is going on there. But otherwise, it's all good.

SECURAS responds:

Thanks and also thanks for making the video. The feedback is most appreciated. I apologize for the movement bug but I really could not replicate it. Unfortunately, browser games sometimes are more or less friendly depending on the browser so that may explain it. I really only tested using chrome. I would have liked to make more but I really had no time. This was made for a game jam and I only had a week to make it. So I just did the basics and, as usual in game jam games that are to be played for less than 10min, I made it very accessible.

I did enjoy that you quickly picked up on my "fake challenge" rooms that look like a complicated challenge but actually run almost automatically. Not everyone gets it so its clear you have an eye for level design. I needed to place these rooms to give confidence to the player. Then, when the real challenges come along, the player will have an extra boost of confidence. I also had zero effort rooms right after harder rooms for a similar effect... To calm down the player and avoid a death right after beating a challenge. You never want to kill someone's streak.

[Defend 'Till the End]

Solid arcade fun! It's a simple game to pick up and understand and it feels quite satisfying to blast asteroids away thanks to the juicy effects. It's also quite exciting to see your options and weapons build-up bit-by-bit. Was also really impressed at some of the effects such as how when an asteroid hits the planet, it models a crater on the earth at the exact point of impact: so cool to see that as it spins around, it's like Doom Eternal level of visible damage feedback. It's not the longest lasting game as it does start to get a little repetitive, but it's a solid and fun score-attack while it lasts.

Only major issues I had was that I feel like the ammo counter shouldn't be overlayed on top of the weapons: it just turns it into a graphical mess that is hard to parse (for example, it made it difficult to see how many bullets were being used for each weapon). And speaking of that, it was difficult to figure out the weapon system in the first place and keep track of unlocks since the pop-ups for them come and go so quickly. Oh, and I did have some confusion when the game would auto-switch back to the machine gun when I run out of missile ammo: I always expected to have to switch back manually so the automatic nature actually caught me off-guard.

KJScott responds:

Yeah, totally agree with the ammo counter (I wasn't happy with it myself). I tried multiple iterations and at the time I hadn't figured out a good way of resolving that as of yet. If I do an update I'll focus on that to try and fix that. Maybe a new ammo bar and fixed max ammo cap might help?

I messed about with the message speed and how long they last. I found adding an extra second or so obstructed view too much and I did have a feeling that the current level was too short. Again, if I update I will have another look at that. The main reason why it's too quick is that due to the ongoing "research" I would have had to added extra code to handle multiple messages at the same time. Looks like if I update I'll need to address this issue.

With the auto-switching back to the machine gun, I found during playtesting by myself if you had to manually switch back by the time you realise it's not firing you have pretty much lost the game as the half a second to second to realise and make the switch meant you were dead. So unsure about changing that.