FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[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.