FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Immune Defense]

A pretty neat game, but very rough around the edges at the moment (obviously, since it's a demo, but still, more rougher than I would expect even considering that).

I definitely find the concept intriguing and find the two game modes to be nice, though I much prefer the 2nd game mode of protecting a huge cell bundle rather than just surviving. Always love me some educational entertainment! It took me a bit to get used to the controls and all, but I do feel like there is some interesting strategy gameplay in here. Unfortunately, as said before, it is still a bit rough around the edges:

Overall I found the gameplay quite frustrating, as it simultaneously required too much micromanagement and yet also felt too much out of my hands and up to luck. A great example that sums up a lot of the issues is the gatherer nodes: I found it tiresome how much I needed to babysit them, as they would constantly rush out like they're trying to commit suicide and I'd need to pull them back with E so as to get them to bring back the glucose they've gathered before they kill themselves. Constantly I'd fail at bringing them back because I'd either lose my attention on them for a split second or I'd just time it wrong since I don't have control on how deep they dive into a crowd of infection. You'd think that with a game that allows you to select a unit, there would be a way to tell them where to go or what to do more precisely like other strategy games do, but nothing like that was in this. Units like the sentries fared better since they would stay in place, but it was annoying that I couldn't, when switching them to mobile mode, tell them where to position next to redeploy in sentry mode: they'd just wander dumbly about. It's nice that the game tries to reduce stress by automating unit behaviors, but it doesn't help that the units can be so idiotic and you can't help that.

It didn't help that it was difficult to learn the game in the first place since it just gives you an awkwardly scaled/sized pamphlet to read, in that it was scaled/sized down so badly that it corrupted the tiny text and made it very difficult to read.

Furthermore, there was a lack of visual/audio effects to communicate gameplay mechanics in an intuitive and satisfying way. For example, there were no death animations for cells, they just poof out of existence: this made it difficult to keep track of what was going on and also made it feel empty and unsatisfying to kill the infection. Another example was the gatherer cells, which had no effect to signal the transmission of glucose to the control cell, making the process feel hollow and difficult to perceive how much glucose you got.

There were some pretty wonky bugs here and there, such as how if you, the control cell, dies, you get a game over, but if the cell bundle dies, you get a 'you win' screen, when that clearly should be a game over as well.

If I were to have a suggestion to improve the gameplay, it would be two methods:

1) Tranditional micromanagement (more control)

Introduce more traditional control into the game like you'd see in a game like Starcraft or Command and Conquer where you can select units and tell them where to go, what enemy to attack, set patrol routes, and so on. In this way you don't have to deal with your own units acting dumb: it's up to you as the player to order them wisely so as to make the most of them.

2) Spawn and forget (less control)

Focus on the cells automating themselves without player input: the player just needs to focus on spawning the right unit at the right place/time. Get rid of the Q/E modes altogether since it just makes annoying micromanagement. To address the loss of Q/E: split the #3 unit so as to make the #3 unit's chase mode be what the #2 unit is instead, and make the #3 unit as the sentry as default. Additionally, make the #1 gatherer unit go out to gather as much as it can until it dies: upon death, do not delete the cell, instead have it come back and deposit all it could get, and then delete it. You might think this would make gathering too easy, but you'd still need to spawn the gatherer smartly to get the most out of it, like spawning it to attack the sides of enemies that are busy attacking one of your beefier units.

ulsan responds:

Thanks for mentioning our game in the video, really appreciate it! We'll try our best to take this feedback into account for the next version.

[Interstice Academy: Love is Blind]

Cute and funny dating game! While there certainly are a lot of dating games around and this is yet another similar one on that pile, and the game is a bit short without much meat on it, I nevertheless found it very intriguing due to the concept and eligible partners, cute art and presentation, great descriptive writing, and was impressed at the level of choices and effects. It could be smoke and mirrors and the game doesn't have as much consequences to match the levels of choice given, but it certainly has me fooled so far, so well done on setting it all up!

I did have a big gripe with the game in that, with the first choice of date options, it sets a precedent where selecting an option lets you see a description of the date, and then asks for confirmation. Imagine my surprise, then, when I get a similar set of options for gifts and I select an option expecting to see a description of what it is, only for the game to take that as my final answer and proceed! I didn't want to pick that crazy eyeball, I just wanted to see what it was! You ruined my date with Formless Mass of Energy!

Other than that, there were some minor issues like buttons being inconsistent in whether they were highlighted or not to signal interactivity (I at least appreciate that the buttons consistently played a sound on hover to let you know they can be interacted with), gallery interactivity being buggy (before when I tried clicking on blank pictures in the gallery it did nothing, yet later it would boot me to the title screen), a bit disappointed at the range of emotions from characters (why didn't you animate the principal wagging when he says he is wagging) and lack of features like save/load and text speed. But overall, I still found the game very amusing to play and I plan on going back to check out the rest of the endings, good or bad!

immadametal responds:

Thanks for the input. As for most of the bugs, this was made for a project jam of sorts where we only had a single month to work on it. Some minor things have and still might be worked on getting fixed when it is feasible, but I hope that helps with understanding our limitations.

[Doors: Paradox Demo]

Wow, really impressive stuff on display here! Loved the game: the dioramas were very pretty and fun to investigate, scavenging around for clues to solve the various puzzles. In particular the controls felt great, especially for spinning the diorama around and doing various click, hold and drag actions for opening chests, flipping books, spinning wheels and so on: that incremental process of slowly opening something or whatnot felt so tactile and satisfying! Everything was just so fluid, smooth and had a professional air to its presentation: solid work all-around!

That being said, I did have a few issues to point out:

One was that I would occasionally click somewhere on the screen, and then the camera would suddenly spin the stage around to focus on something that was obscured from my sight. It was very confusing: basically even though an obstacle was in the way and blocking sight of the interactable, the game treated it as if the obstacle didn't exist and therefore didn't block my raycast of interaction.

Two was that I found the game very inconsistent with what it would want me to just click and what it would want me to click, hold and drag. Most of the time it was fine: click to pick up an item but drag to open a door or a book or what-not. But, there would be times where I would go to, for example, open the lid of a chest, expecting to click, hold and drag the lid open, but this time, for some reason, the game just wanted me to click once and the lid automatically pops open of its own accord. C'mon, the drag actions are the best part of the game and it didn't let me take part for some reason, haha! Just made it quite confusing and annoying to have a double-check what it wants constantly.

Three is a bit of a minor and silly issue: for some reason, I wanted the ability to, say, when flipping the page of a book or anything other drag action, to be able to go back and forth. I don't know why exactly but...I don't mind that once I flip the page completely that I can't flip it back, that's fine, but when I'm in the middle of the action I wanted that ability to go back and forth for some reason: it just felt unsatisfying that I couldn't play around, I guess.

Hoping maybe this feedback can help with the full release of the game, but even without it, I think you got something nice here already, so best of luck with your development and release!

Snapbreak responds:

A huge thank you for the feedback💪🏻✨ We'll discuss these moments with the team!

[360 Degrees]

Pretty rad game! Definitely quite the juicy game with tons of wild music, crazy animations, and all of it with a cool analog control scheme that is unique, intuitive and feels neat to get used to, much like learning how to skateboard. Going for the bonus objectives was a fun challenge as well and brought me back to those Tony Hawk days. All in all, very fun stuff: love the character's totally tubular animations, even as he smashes his balls for the hundredth time!

Now, with that good stuff out of the way, let's get into the problems I had, haha:

The control scheme is a bit frustrating to get used to. Don't get me wrong, I think it is very neat how analog it is, but I found myself many a time doing circles with my mouse, expecting it to do a kickflip, but all he'd do is wiggle the board slightly: it was only then that I noticed my mouse had trailed off to the side and, while it was making circles, it wasn't making them around the player character. I would much prefer if the controls made the mouse locked within a certain radius of the player so that you can't trail off. Or, at the very least, it'd help if I could maintain visibility of my mouse cursor, but I found that really hard without the game providing a virtual cursor. And that brings me to my point below:

I do feel like the game is a bit too loud (color-wise and sound-wise) and overly animated at times: it's juicy, but this is to the point where it is visual and audio chaos and it makes it difficult to parse what the heck is happening at times. A contrast is needed: if everything is loud, it just becomes the norm, a mush where nothing stands out. At the very least, I'd love it if the background was desaturated or blurred, or you only use bold outlines on characters and interactables: any of these changes would help make the critical elements pop and maintain visibility. I also like how you use the pitch shifting sounds and screenshake and other such techniques, but it is used in such over frequency with so many things that it loses any impact.

I didn't like how when you complete a combo, it just disappears instantly: I want the combo I made and the points I earned to stay on screen for a few seconds so I could see what I achieved. The combos disappearing so fast made it feel ultimately pointless: at least maybe have an animation showing the points swooping up to the total score or something.

The tutorial was decent, but I didn't like how I couldn't control the pace of the instructions it gave out: it moving at its own pace meant there were a lot of times where I just had to sit there waiting, or I was frustrated that it went by when I was still practicing.

There's a couple of other minor issues, like how you have an animation for charging up an ollie but it doesn't make any difference on the height you gain, and how some of the rails drop you too early before you'd think they'd end, but I won't harp on about it because at the end of the day it was still a fun game and my issues, such as the control schemes, were possible to get through with practice. Thanks for putting this together and it's cool to see the collab power on display with all the graffiti and such: ingenious!

Oh, by the way, there's a bit of a weird issue where, if you never click on the game to focus it in the first place even if it is already technically loaded, it will just be loading forever: hopefully everyone clicked but I'd hate if someone just left thinking it was taking too long to load, haha, it almost happened to me!

As another side note: this isn't an issue with the game, but rather an issue with me where I had a hard time going for combos in this because I was always against using manuals as a means of extending combos in games like Tony Hawk. I don't know why: something deep in me back in the day always felt it was a bit silly or cheating or inelegant or something to extend combos through manuals, and now I have a weird mental block against them. Wonder if anyone else suffers from this?

Jacob responds:

Excellent review! Can't personally address most of it, but there's an option which draws a line to your cursor's position.
I also struggled before turning it on.

[Bulb Boy]

Very nice game! Great concept, cute design, solid puzzles and sense of progression/difficulty, all in all this feels very well put-together in all aspects and I found myself getting addicted to making my way through.

Having said that, I did have a lot of issues with it. First, the game was a little wonky in some aspects. In terms of the controls I found myself initially wishing that I could click to pick up something and click to put it down, instead of holding and letting go. Not major and I got over that rather quickly, but speaking of plugs, interacting on a plug and seeing no reaction until you walk away to rip it out from it was a bit odd: I'd prefer if the plug got immediately ripped out when you interact. Plugs in general were wonky as well where I had plenty of times where I had difficulty keeping them plugged in: they'd pop out randomly for some reason, and this wasn't even a case where they were on a short tether or something like that.

Second, I found the game rather unclear on some of its aspects. I actually spent a long time thinking that my character charged up as long as I stood next to a light source, or more specifically a lightning bolt symbol: it was only until way later that I realized that I was recharging because I was standing on these charge-up floor things. I had no idea that was the case as the floor chargers seemed like they just blended into the environment: maybe make them pop more by coloring them differently or giving them some sort of effect. Secondly, I really wished that the direction and flow of power through circuits was a bit more obvious, in that I wish it would not only light up the lightning bolt at the end, but it'd be great if the whole wire would light up as well, maybe with a little flow animation for the power surging through: it'd be so much more intuitive to grasp and satisfying to see.

Third, I really don't agree with the design decision of having the main character run out of power when moving outside of charging areas. Yes, I get what you're going for and I think it works for some of the puzzles in the beginning, but once I got to the later puzzles which were very complex, I found myself dying constantly because I'd get so into solving the puzzle that I'd lose track of my power. It just felt like recharging myself was unnecessary, annoying busywork that got in the way of me having fun solving the puzzles: really ruined my flow. It was also annoying how some movements, like hanging from a cord and swinging drained energy even though I technically wasn't expending energy in a literal movement method, if that makes sense.

Now I know I just wrote a giant spiel of negative feedback, but still, I do like the game for the most part: I'm having fun and certainly plan on continuing the rest of the way through. Kudos on this!

STANNco responds:

It is very valid feedback, we'll try to think of if/when we continue on this

[Action Packed Adventure]

Hmm, a little bit torn on this one! On one hand, I find the game's concept really cool and strategic: being conservative with your moves to keep your heartrate down, while also balancing eating veggies and candy to help your heartrate and health pulling in opposite directions keeps you on your toes constantly. And all of this combines with the crazy levels filled with all manner of enemy types and obstacles to create a really crazy challenge! Trying to puzzle my way through the car level (while getting annoyed at the hidden "important tip") was frustrating, but an interesting challenge that will stay with me for some time, haha.

On the other hand, it did feel difficult to take the game seriously at times due to its wacky design: every time a challenge came up, I couldn't decide whether to take it seriously or just shrug and say "eh, just some shitpost troll game screwing with me" and turn it off. Additionally, the camera was so zoomed in and enemies/bullets were so fast at times that it felt impossible to react and control the situation in an intentional manner, making it feel like its all up to luck or just rushing through facetanking things to get to the end of the level before you die (which I did a few times). Still an intriguing game nonetheless that I want to revisit to see if I can beat it, so kudos on that.

Nomron responds:

Hey, thank you for the feedback! I honestly can't disagree with a lot of your points here lol, for most of the game I was just kind of messing around and doing whatever I found funny. It is absolutely not fair haha. Thank you again!

[Michaelsoft Binbows '97]

Nice, goofy little adventure! Was a bit disappointed that there wasn't any sort of underlying story or narrative to it all, at least from what I can find. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my time digging around and seeing all of the wacky stuff you setup (and goddamn was some of it wacky as hell, what the heck was that tinfoil OS), but seeing that log hidden in the documents really made me think there might be something deeper in there that we can search for, like playing the games and looking around in other programs might unlock more logs to lead up to some grand ending, ala Hypnospace Outlaw or TIS-100 or Randy Learns Science. Oh well, was still quite the adventure nonetheless!

AtreyuGilbert responds:

thank me for tinfoil os

[Scrawler]

Wow, really solid action puzzler here! Really felt like it had everything well put-together: unique and intriguing concept, great presentation with cool paper transitions and cute animations, intuitive controls, a nice steadily paced increase in complexity and mechanical variety through the levels to keep the player engaged through challenge, smooth and forgiving hitboxes/movement, and nice effects/little touches like how your character gets more tired as they run outta ink. I found myself easily getting addicted to going through all of the levels, so well done!

It did have a few annoyances here and there, like how the tutorial pop-ups could be placed overshadowing part of the play area where I'd travel as a player, making it impossible to see where I am: might've been better to allow the player to close the pop-ups, or just place them somewhere the player isn't going to travel in the level. Also some of the later levels got a bit more wonky on the difficulty curve, where they would actually be a bit easier than some of the levels that just went through. But for the most part, solid work!

nulledwine responds:

Thanks so much for all the feedback! I'm super glad that I ended up making something a bit better for once. I've definitely noted down the visibility issues and when I have time in the future I'll add a way to close the pop ups. As for the difficulty curve yeah, the way I designed and ordered the levels was a bit strange; I rushed that part a bit but I'll definitely note that down for similar projects in the future.
Thanks you so much for playing!

[Octillery VS Putin]

Haha, nice goofy little adventure here! I liked how it cut to the chase and went straight into combat and such, but I was a little disappointed that the combat didn't seem to have much strategy to it: seemed like it was all about just mashing the various moves to see the flashy effects, which is fine, but I thought the idea of playing an RPG with everything maxed out and winging it could be cool, but oh well. I'm probably being silly expecting more than that, but the ability descriptions fooled me for a bit into thinking there would be strategy with debuffs and such. It's fine that its shallow in the end since it's just being goofy, but if you did something I bit deeper I'd be for it. Anyway, I also liked the hidden little touches the game had, like insulting you if you attempt to Go To Title at the start, haha. A nice, short and sweet little jaunt.

Vidyabatter responds:

Thank you for the actual criticism.

[GUN SHIT DRIVE - Shoot Trip Die Demake]

Hey, nice stuff on display here! I love me a good demake and I felt like this did a great job at providing an atari-esque look at Shoot Trip Die: captured all of the mechanics faithfully like the combat, shooting pots for cash and then purchasing items, the final boss, and plenty of little touches like the game over animation and such. Always fun to see a game through another lens, but I also liked that the game did even more with it, like a new game plus mode and an extra survival mode!

If I had any complaints I'd say that it can get a little repetitive due to it being overly long. Don't get me wrong, I had fun and I liked all of the levels and was glad they were hand-crafted instead of randomly-generated, but I felt like the stretch between the store level and the final boss level was a bit long: could maybe have peppered in a few more stores or mini-bosses here and there, and extra stores would've made replaying more fun to see what different stuff you can buy. Oh, and I also wish that the final boss was more flashy in its death animation, like flashing the whole screen with colors and such ala Atari, but it was fine for what it was.

Taka responds:

Thanks futurecop! You make good points and I'll keep that in mind if I do something like this again! Can wait to watch you play it in a few days :D