FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[SQUID ON ROAD]

Hmmm, bit of a weird love/hate relationship with this game! Ultimately I do think I very much enjoy this game, but boy do I feel like I have a lot of complaints about it, haha!

First, it was quite annoying that, despite using a mouse and keyboard, the game kept insisting I use touch controls and only showcased them in the tutorial. Eventually I discovered that I could hold the A and D to move left and right, and thank god for that because boy lemme tell you it was annoying to keep clicking left and right spots on the screen at first. Can't the game just detect my control scheme and display an appropriate tutorial?

While the boost mechanic in great and satisfying in theory, there were a lot of little things that made it much less so. First, even though the game says that killing enemies fills up the boost bar, I found that it felt like the boost bar filled up at the same agonizingly slow pace whether I killed enemies or not, making me feel silly for pushing myself to play aggressively since I wasn't being rewarded for it. Second, I hated that, no matter how many damage upgrades you get, the collateral damage from a boost always seemed to do 7 damage, which is 1 damage point away from the amount needed to get a kill: this made boosting very unsatisfying since no matter how much I tried to aim to ram as many people as possible and scatter them to the winds, the only target that would die is the main target and everyone else would immediately come back and shoot at me while I wait for the aforementioned slow boost charge.

A lot of the time it felt like dodging bullets felt completely up to luck. Yes, enemies do have telegraphs and the bullets move slow so it is possible to dodge them. But in execution, each enemy is moving to the beat of their own drum, so even if I try to time my attack after one enemy telegraph to avoid their attack, I can't track all of the others in the big crowd and one of them will plug me unavoidably when I'm dashing in. Additionally, even if I try to pull off a great attack move that will weave through bullets, sometimes the curving road will make enemies shift over which changes my trajectory into a bullet I wasn't going to hit at first. Argh, so annoying!

Despite all my gripes, though, I still found myself playing the game over and over: it's just a really fun and goofy concept with juicy, satisfying gameplay at its core. I'm not sure about the long term appeal since it was getting kind of repetitive going through the same events every replay, and the upgrades were a bit boring and samey, and I wasn't sure if there was a goal or ending to strive for, but for the most part, I'd say well done!

jefvel responds:

Thanks!! Great review as always!
I’m currently reworking a bunch of stuff in the game. In my previous games I could determine whether or not it was played using touch when first clicking the screen, but that info isn’t exposed by gamemaker sadly. I’m going to add a setting for it on first launch.

Also rethinking and working the way enemies and attack values work. Once I get in more enemy variation I’ll also make damage numbers go up significantly. Also yeah gotta do something about how bullets and the road curvature works. A goal is to make it work well using touch/keyboard+mouse/controller, which is a bit of a challenge!

Hopefully I’ll have these things figured out in a future version, I’ll do my best! Thanks again 🙂

[Franco Fox in Fairyland DEMO]

It ain't bad but...it's not that great either? Basically, the game reminds me very much of those memes where they're like "that game sure was a game" or something akin to that, haha.

Again, it's not a bad game, heck, I'd even say it's a good game. Certainly does make a good impression with its cute intro, and overall the game has a solid sense of craft to it in all respects: graphics, sound, music and retro aesthetic. Couldn't see any major complaints with the movement or anything either, other than it was a little confusing that the bounce you get from an enemy goes higher than the bounce from a box (maybe you shouldn't even bounce that much from a box in the first place, if at all). So yeah, all in all, it was good.

But in general, while it was "good," I just found the game to be very plain and bog-standard, and therefore not very fun. It pretty much just felt like a basic platformer or Mario clone without any unique mechanics or ideas of its own, leading me to questioning why I should even bother playing it. Not only did it not seem to have a hook or anything like that, the game was also in general very unchallenging and thus not very engaging, and any bonuses to strive for that might've engaged such as those big stars were both very simple to get and ultimately pointless as I was unsure what their purpose was.

There are also some slight bugs like how you can fire the weapons as fast as you can press the button: feel like that should be limited to a locked fire rate, otherwise it is an unfair advantage for people with faster fingers to cheese certain parts of the game by absolutely blasting them away.

Might just be a case of the game being a slow burn: the bonus level does showcase some more challenging late game levels that we might see in a full release, but even then the overly simple movement and lack of juicy effects or some sort of unique style made it still feel less than impressive. Furthermore, even if the game is a slow burn, I'd still argue that the game should step up the pace and hook us with something early to keep us interested and all that, but despite my complaints, I am looking forward to seeing the final version of this eventually since it is promising and shows effort, so best of luck!

LuckyDingoStudios responds:

Thank you for your thorough review! I wanted this game to be relatively simple and basic so it would be easy for anyone to pick up and play, but I can see how it being too standard would make it feel like it's nothing special. I don't think I will be changing the core mechanics to be more complex at this point, but I will try to add more unique elements that will hopefully help the game form more of its own identity and to be more engaging to play.

The unlimited fire rate on the weapons was intentional because I thought it would be fun to spam it, but most players seem to think it was an oversight or makes things too easy, so I most likely will limit the fire rate in the full game based on the feedback I have gotten.

[Gappy's Playground]

Alright, you know the deal, it's a really cool game and in general it feels great and I'm looking forward to seeing more, very impressive, yadda yadda yadda. Let's get right to business and give proper feedback since you're looking for opinions on the movement, which I've listed in severity:

Dragon Tier Level Issues-

*I find it incredibly unintuitive that wall jumps put you into a committed uncontrollable jump arc, like something out of NES Castlevania. Feels very inconsistent and confusing since in general the rest of your jumps have very generous mid-air control, and indeed if you use a double-jump after a wall-jump you get control back, so why is the wall jump so rigid? I don't mind if wall-jumps give you a powerful directional impulse that you can only slightly adjust against, but being completely rigidly stuck in an arc without being able to influence with directions at all feels awful.

*Had a few times where I swear I jumped right at the edge of a platform, only for it to either eat my input entirely and I fell like a log, or for it to use my double-jump instead. Feel like some coyote-time input forgiveness might be in order.

*If you jump off a wall and hold back towards the wall and double-jump, you will as expected double-jump back towards the wall. However, if you jump off a wall and hold back towards the wall and dive, you will confusingly dive away from the wall, completely disrespecting your directional command.

Tiger Tier Level Issues-

*I found it confusing that I couldn't Mega Man X/Meat Boy jump up a wall by wall-jumping and holding towards the wall: instead I have to use a double-jump after the wall-jump to change my direction to go back towards the wall and proceed up. Not too bad since it felt kinda good to get skilled at remembering it, but still, very awkward and against common practice. If the more primary issue with wall-jumps above were fixed, I wouldn't mind if you still couldn't climb with just wall-jumps and you had to use double-jumps to gain height.

*Similar to wall-jumps committing you to an hard-coded arc, if felt a little bit bad that dives also hard-commit you into an arc without being able to influence it slightly. It doesn't feel as bad as wall-jumps and kinda makes more sense, but still, a bit of influence would feel nice (but I deem this a lower threat since it feels more acceptable).

Wolf Tier Level Issues-

*Felt like the wall stickiness was too much: I don't mind the stickiness since it allows people to more easily hold away from the wall and pressing jump to wall-jump without falling off of it too quickly and using their double-jump instead, but in general it felt hard to disengage from a wall when you're trying to rush through a level and accidently graze one, and also it felt like you just slide too slowly: perhaps you should slide down at a fixed rate instead of this awkward increasing speed.

*Wish when you're sticking to a wall it would have some puffs of smoke or a nice sliding sound effect: feels very bland and static compared to all of the other juicy effects for jumping and the like.

*Feels like the run doesn't do much, takes too long to start up, and might just be unnecessary? The basic movement already feels fast and fun enough. Maybe if running gave you a faster initial boost and a satisfying puff of smoke instead of slowly accelerating (like in Kirby, I think?): boosts are more fun than runs.

LeviRamirez responds:

Thank you for the feedback! I'm gonna try and tackle all of your teirs of concerns because a lot of work has already been done in the background on this project!

=Dragon Teir=
- Coyote timing has been tweaked & being able to dive in the direction you are holding on the fly either from a wall-jump or in general has been added! Those were just mistakes I didn't account for in time for the demo and those 2 have specifically been addressed! As for the jump arch from the wall-jump, this is something that I'll talk about in the next tier but I want to jump off the wall to feel "realistic" I guess. When kicking off the wall I want the player to be repeled entirely in the opposite direction of the wall, and the double jump is there for players to be able to some degree to do it with the double jump. This is a dumb hill to die on but I like this feature a lot. However, it has / will be continually tweaked as the project progresses. In this prototype you are able to repel forward or be idle and not move with no deceleration. Now, As of writing this response you can do the repel against the wall or hold back / no key control and be in a less strict arch (I.e Holding back lets you slowly come back towards the wall) I hope that makes sense, it's the best way I can describe it.

=Tiger Tier=
In this game I wanted my wall jumps to NOT be like the Mega Man X and Meat Boy wall jump style. I know it's popular and I know people like it but I don't want that to be in this game, I just don't. Also, the dive arch being in a committed arch is also important as it's a trade-off for the speed and extra air time on top of double jumping. (You can break out of a dive from a double jump if you haven't done one yet.)

=Wolf Tier=
One of the most common complaints was the wall stickiness, and that was fixed very quickly! It isn't in the demo but in the continual development, the walls are much less sticky! Also acceleration and movement will be tweaked in tandum with the game so by the final product hopefully, the game feels even better!

I'm glad you liked the game and took the time to write a very strong list of issues you had with the game! I would say 9/10 of the things you brought up have already been addressed!!!!

[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!