FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cosmodrome Demo]

I got incredibly lost in my playthrough, unfortunately, so I can't say anything definite on the game in a deeper sense. I think it has potential and a lot going for it, and could just be a game not for people like me, but nevertheless, I think it absolutely needs a bit better of a tutorial experience, more intuitive design and a more uncluttered HUD.

The tutorial was way too overbearing and impossible to process. It just vomits pages and pages of textboxes at you, giving you no time to breathe or see the full results of certain mechanics before it speeds off to teaching you the next set of mechanics, so you just forget everything and stop listening. It doesn't help that the textboxes are overlapping constantly as well which makes it impossible to read or interact with anything.

Regarding the tutorial: For one, I'd say you can cut down on the amount of instructions you give: the game is already laid out pretty intuitively and provides a ton of info pop-ups to learn, so you don't need to explain every single thing. And secondly, I'd say you should have the tutorial be a bit more of a story where they introduce mechanics bit-by-bit: leave the complicated mechanics for later, let the player just learn about basic trading first for a few days or whatever, then slowly introduce more complex stuff like crew and factions wayyyy later on.

The game was absolutely chockful of typos. Luckily, they were never major enough that it hurt my understanding of the game, but I seriously don't think I went by a single textbox without something being misspelled. Bizarrely enough, there would be times where the same word would be spelled correctly and wrongly, all practically in the same sentence!

I didn't like how I was being rushed all the time (the game gives you so much text to read and so little time to make a decision, alarms going off with unclear meaning as to why they were going off since hovering over the alarm doesn't tell you with a pop-up, you can never pause full-stop, the game doesn't pause automatically when you go into menus, etc) and yet simultaneously I was also just waiting around all the time (felt like all I could do was just sit and wait for events to happen, hoping for something in my favor to randomly happen, ordering oxygen/food/water is so delayed and unintuitive, etc).

I can definitely understand the difficulty in teaching a game as complex as this to a player, so you have my sympathy, haha. Looking forward to seeing how this develops!

JamesChapp responds:

Thank you very much for taking the time to play cosmodrome!

I developed the game alone for 4 months and it's not finished yet.
It seemed important to me to share the game in the state it is in before leaving it archived on my hard drive.

Luckily it had a very good reception from the public and now I'm putting together a team to finish it.

To begin to understand cosmodrome you have to keep in mind that it is an experimental game. where I implement a lot of different mechanics in a playable experience.

One of the last parts of the game I developed was the tutorial and I had a lot of trouble explaining each of those mechanics.

Regarding the alarms. yellow alarm is when you are running low on oxygen, food and water. (Less than 30 units.) If that happens automatically the station will contact a ship of those primary resources and will buy that resource.

The red alert is when the station is attacked by pirates or there is a threat like asteroids.
There is a button with which you can mute the alarm.

There is also a button with which you can automatically sell fuel to the ships that come to the station. that makes not so many windows with text appear, interrupting the game.

Regarding the design of the UI... sorry... but each system has a different system... it's all part of the experimentation... but I am aware that the UI is a disaster. hahaha.
All that is going to be fixed with the team... yesterday I was meeting with the new ui designer (Naty) who is going to clean up the mess I made.

Regarding the spelling errors... the game was made at super speed without corrections. Missing the editing and correction part.

The game is a kind of multi task...
You have to survive first and take care that you don't run out of resources for life support. (oxygen, water, food)
Then it's a space trade. where you have to trade with different resources to earn credits.
Then you have a Tower Defense where you have threats that attack the station and you can buy and improve your defense system.
on top of that there is an experience system with skills.
and on top of that a system of factions where depending on the relationship you have with the factions, different events are enabled...
and on top of all those systems... like a cherry on a cake... there is a system of random events that happen all the time...
all those systems make each experience playing the game different... or at least that's what the game's design points to.

Thank you again for taking the time to play the game and record a video.

I think all the feedback you give me is consistent and I appreciate it a lot... it really helps a lot in the development of the game.

Greetings

[Abstract Dasher]

Decent little game! While it does have a very 'my first game' vibe to it due to the overly simplistic graphics, system default fonts/buttons and janky game feel (such as the collision glitches) to it all, I did feel like it was a good core concept where you need to play effectively in order to outrun the dark and that there were some cool touches to the game, especially the way the music would amp up as you get closer and closer to hitting your boost threshold until it finally starts blasting!

My main problem with it is that the speed is supposed to be the part of the game that you're supposed to get excited about and is required to win, but I absolutely hated it since it made the game way too bloody fast and the combination of the warped camera and obstacles that are colored the same as the ground made it way too annoying to dodge effectively. Controls felt very unresponsive as well considering the speed it wants you to react for dodges.

It's definitely kinda ho-hum and not anything too great as it is, but I feel like the little touches such as the dynamic music give me hope to see bigger and better future projects!

By the way, not that it's bad or anything, but might this have been made from just making the 'my first game in unity' tutorial game from Brackeys and just making some minor adjustments to it? Just curious: I made a simple game from that tutorial as well and its very similar to this.

Steventus responds:

Actually, this was coded from the bottom up.
It goes without saying that there was a lot of touch-ups absolutely neccesary from the design end.

Much of what I think the problem lies in, is that the controls are too slippery, and as you additionally mentioned: obstacles and things are too bloody fast.

I tried alleviating that by adding a large particle effect on object spawn but it goes without saying that there needs to be more work to be done.

I'm not continuing work on the project though, but this is something for me to take to other projects!

Big thanks for your words and it's great to have your feedback on this!

[OVERDOSE (0.38)]

Pretty cool game! It definitely tickles that Hotline Miami/Ruiner/Katana Zero/Madness/etc part of my brain where you can just get in a satisfying, haphazard yet efficient trance-like state of crazy violence. Love the insistence on speed from the bloodlust mechanic, love the cool and stylish techniques you can pull off like dashing, deflecting, grabbing guns and so on. Game also had a pretty neat gritty aesthetic and charm to it all for the most part.

Of course, while I did have fun, it wasn't all sunshine and gumdrops. Here is some feedback, categorized for major and minor:

Major---
*As fancy as the effects are, I felt like the game is currently overdoing it to the point of hurting visibility and making combat more difficult than it has to be. The constant overall blurriness, the camera being so zoomed out that everything is so damn tiny, the long flashbang effect that happens with every hit and blinds the player, the disorientating camera zoom-in when picking up weapons, it all makes it hard to keep track of everything and reduces critical information that the player needs in a twitchy game like this.
*Incredibly difficult to see enemies and gun pickups in the level both due to the environment/colors being too dark and the aforementioned constant flashbang effects and zoomed out camera.
*Lack of threat indicator as to where the closest enemy is to keep the chain up (technically I think the eye next to the player is this, but its so tiny and difficult to keep track of, would prefer to scale this up or instead use an arrow on the side of the screen or something more easily apparent). Also would like an arrow to where the exit is too.
*Character movement/physics was a little wonky: didn't like how it had this weird slow acceleration to it.

Minor---
*Would like if the game gives you a different death when you time out instead of dying from an enemy so its more clear.
*Would like ammo counters for weapons.
*Would like if the reflect was a bit more consistent in how it works: would prefer if I could better aim where the reflects go, or if the reflects would just go back in the opposite direction they came from.
*Would like if the dash effect was more prominent, like having a different animation or creating a line or afterimages for it, instead of just a puff of smoke where you were. Without a more prominent effect, sometimes I wasn't sure if I even dashed since it barely looks different.

Hope this feedback helps as I do find the game to be really cool in concept and I found myself getting addicted to it nonetheless despite my complaints, so I look forward to the final version!

EDIT: Already loving some of the changes that have been put into place since my first play!

POLYCEPHALY responds:

thanks! yea all the stuff u suggested makes alot of sense and im planning to implement alot of that, the game was tested in a fullscreen mode so when things are shrunk down on the newgrounds player things are way too small and unreadable, im going to increase the scale of everything to compensate. also gonna increase the acceleration alot too and downscale the strobe effects or make them more subtle. ammo counters, dash effects and a different death for timing out are also planned as well!

[Perpendicular Monkey]

Not too shabby: a decent puzzler! I felt like the game did a solid job at introducing the concept of moving around while the level rotates around, which was neat to experience and get good at working around. Game also had a good variety of mechanics to spice things up that were introduced at a good pace to keep engagement up. I also like the cute animations for the main character, especially the touches on the victory animation.

Having said that, it is a little bit bleh in some respects, some of them being minor (no keyboard shortcut for restarting a level, graphics a little bland) and some of them being major (symbols for trampolines are strange and look like buttons instead, confusing as to why trampolines you step on grow while all others shrink which seems to imply that they've changed somehow when they haven't, trampoline physics inconsistent in how far they push the player between levels, confusing as to why being pushed by something counts as a 'move', etc). Game can also get a bit monotonous at times with the levels eventually just being the same size and with the same assortment of obstacles pasted around: different, but looking very similar nonetheless. Basically it's just a bit wonky: understandable since it was a jam game, I suppose, but still, it is a bit of a bummer that it is holding back a pretty neat puzzler. All around solid job though!

Biebras responds:

That's a really good response and we really appreciate your feedback! Thank you for playing the game.

[SooZ]

Interesting little game! Bit tricky to figure out how everything worked at first: for example, I had a lot of confusion with health, where I didn't realize how I was recovering health, and I didn't even realize I was getting hurt when I ran into different colored blocks because the explosion seemed so 'positive' in its satisfying feedback, haha. But once I figured it out, I appreciated the whole strategy of trying to minimize your routes effect on the map so as not to block yourself out when you switch colors: try to not create too many new blocks, try to use the gray zone to eliminate blocks, if you have to take a hit try to take as many blocks out when you can, and so on, and in general just try to improvise all that when going for the randomly appearing goals. Can be a real brain-teaser!

Having said that, though, it's not quite got enough meat on its bones to keep my attention for very long: at the end of the day, it wasn't the most exciting game, and I felt like it was a cool concept, but maybe not iterated upon enough to find the best form of it. For example, maybe it would be best if it was a puzzler with definite solutions instead of the random nature it currently is. I'm wondering if it would be better if it had some sort of Tetris-style preview of where the objective will be in the following round so you can try to plan it out a bit better, since as much as I tried to plan things out, it always felt like there was only so much I can do and then it was just up to luck. Of course, that could just be me in general not having the patience for this type of game, haha. Solid for what it is and how fast it was made, though!

amidos2006 responds:

Thanks a lot :) sorry for the confusion, the game originally was designed for GGJ in 5 hours then I expanded it a little with some fixes for additional 5 or 8 hour of development.

I wrote the rules as description text which might not be read by everyone. The game have a perfect strategy for the easy mode that some people figured it and got scores in 400 still the hard mode maximum was 70 something. I agree with you that having more goals and building on top of the concept might be interesting but I think the game stands by itself as interesting brain-teaser where you need to think not only about the next seed but the overall structure of the board. I can see where it can feel a little random and your strategy is not sufficient this could be improved. Btw, didn't get the tetris style preview thing. I always show where the objective will be next but not longer than that because it becomes really complex to see anything in the level.

Thanks a lot for the feedback :) Glad you tried my game and left a constructive feedback :)

[BallFrog Demo]

Pretty fun game! Certainly a fun core movement concept that reminds me of foddian/fumblecore games where the whole fun is getting better at the exotic control scheme. The controls are a little wonky to get used to, especially since it doesn't seem to explain anything, but I found myself getting addicted to the gameplay, enjoying the process of getting more efficient with the controls and being able to tackle the more bizarre obstacles like chaining grapple points. Game also had a lot of nice goofy touches (beyond the obvious goofy frog) like skeleton bones in the background pointing the way.

If I were to have any complaints, and I know I'll sound shallow in saying this, it's that the general presentation is very bland. The game's graphics and style give off, if I were to sum it up, a very 'my first Unity game made with a bunch of free assets' to it. The levels are mostly boring rocks, The HUD is lackluster and layered weirdly where some elements overlap when others don't, the game lacks satisfying visual and sound effects for moving around, the tongue HUD remains even after you die, the death effect is a boring white circle (sphere?) and the death text is a bland system font, etc.

And it's not just the graphics either: the game was clunky in other respects, like how there is a weird and overly punishing pit in the first level that sends you all the way back, giving you the awkward choice of killing yourself to respawn where you were before you fell in or venturing all the way back unnecessarily. Also there was no real charming story or objective to the gameplay to keep me interested in progressing. All of these little things just added together to bring the game down a peg: make it seem unfortunately unprofessional. Again, though, the core gameplay is really fun, so if the other side of the game were to pull its weight a bit more, I think it'd be a match made in heaven!

rhys510 responds:

Thanks for playing and the critique. This is just a demo and some of these concerns have been fixed / updated in the main steam version and some are just artistic choice but we will improve on these in future games, thanks for the review! :)

[CFrogger!!: Arcade Mode]

This is a bit of an odd duck. I do like how authentically it recreates that arcade feel, what with the pixel graphics (except for the weird frog on the start, the titular 'carge' I suppose), attact mode, inserting of coins, and so on and so forth: very neat stuff. Gameplay was solid and recreated that classic Frogger feel as well, with nice touches like being forgiving on making the final step (you can kind of clash with the walls and it'll still count you as making it all the way successfully).

But at the end of the day...it was just Frogger. I was really confused, as I expected the game to change things up a bit with the gameplay, remix it or something, but it didn't. I mean, it's not bad or anything...but that's because it's literally Frogger, so...I dunno, I'm never quite sure how I'm supposed to feel about this situation. I mean, obviously it's impressive and nice that the game was recreated so accurately, with the minor twist of having a new character involved and maybe being a bit more difficult, but am I supposed to give points for doing nothing but just recreating the original? There's a subtle line between making a game in a similar genre or with similar mechanics and then there's this. I dunno, maybe I'm overthinking, haha. It's still good work.

AtreyuGilbert responds:

I wish I clarified, but carge has slightly different stats from Frogger himself. He just hops a bit faster. Also, this is a demo of what'll be the "Arcade Mode", and the final product will have a lot of neat shit. Arcade Mode kinda just compresses everything... Thanks for the feedback!

[Peter's Quest]

Oh man, this is seriously driving me crazy. I want to love this game so bad, but the way it starts off...oh jeez...

Ok, to start off, this game is incredibly well put-together. Much props to building such a solid and sleek interface: everything about it felt so smooth, be it scrolling around the map, dragging and dropping items, hovering over items or attacks to see their tooltips, all of which had very intuitive wording and imagery, and so on and so forth. Really professional-level stuff. The only issue I had with interacting with the game was not being able to exit a treasure chest by clicking on open air. Other than that, it made for some great adventures. I could argue that Darkest Dungeon did all the heavy lifting for you and you just copied their homework, but I won't be an ass about it, haha: it's great, and I think it's something to be proud about!

There are some minor nuisances here and there: for example, I don't like how fast the combat is, as the combination of enemies attacking so fast with such minor animations, along with the numbers quickly leaving the screen, would barely give me enough time to process what even happened. And speaking of that, I didn't like how lazy the animations were: c'mon, when I do finger guns as Pico, I wanna see finger guns, not just see him nudge the enemy with his idle stance! Hopefully you can take that as a compliment that I was surprised to not see that, considering how much effort and skill was put into the rest of the game.

But the biggest issue, the hugest problem I had, was the fact that the game only starts you with one character. Why, god, why? You've built an entire combat system where the best part about it is jockeying for positional advantages and building a great formation that can modify itself to meet the various challenges you face. But in the beginning, all you get is one character, which means all of that potential strategy goes out the window: all you can do is mash attack while the enemies mash attack right back at you. It's completely brainless and a waste of the system, regressing to the worst RPGs of yesteryear. Even worse, you start with Pico, who, while having no problem with attacking the front rows, has no interesting stuns or other abilities, and is completely at the mercy of back row enemies, as his only recourse is an attack which only hits 1/6 of the time: miserable. I mean, you got three slots, why don't you just start with Pico, Nene and Darnell, it would be a match made in heaven! Maybe you do get them eventually, I hope, but it just makes for such a bad first impression. I keep reloading the game hoping it just glitched out or something and it intended for me to get a full party, but to no avail.

I mean, I understand if I sound a little bit overbearing, but seriously, I would consider finding however had the idea to start with one character and accuse them of deliberate sabotage of this potentially great game. I want them tried in The Hague! It's a war crime that I don't like this as much as I should!

But yeah, cool game, hope it gets even better.

SlickRamen responds:

Thanks for the in-depth review!

[Bunbun's Delivery]

Bit of a mixed feeling on this game! Overall I'm very positive on it, but I was let down by some elements of it.

In general, I found it to be very solid and charming: the graphics, animations, sound and altogether general presentation were very cute and wonderful, giving off a really professional feel. Shooting was fun and had a little bit of strategy to it with switching between the two weapons (though I did find the second weapon to maybe be a bit too weak to make it useful), and there was a nice variety of enemies to fight all with memorable patterns.

The biggest issue I had with the game were the normal combat segments. Usually a SHMUP does their best job at making these parts like a cool interactive movie, where there are all sorts of cool waves and patterns of enemies and obstacles that form a series of standout events that all create a great flow, a story of combat. This game, unfortunately, didn't have any of that. Yes, it did have some interesting enemies with unique moves to them, but all the game did was constantly recycle the same waves, over and over, even after passing the checkpoint and transitioning to a new zone: just more and more of the same. It didn't take long for those parts to get incredibly repetitive, which was unfortunate.

The boss fights were a whole different story, however. This is where the game really shined, with a very cool boss fight with fun patterns to get good at dodging around. It wasn't all perfect: I didn't like how the boss constantly 'no-sell'-ed being shot, and would've preferred them to react a bit whenever they got hurt. And more importantly, I wanted more, more boss fights! I was so bummed out that the game ended after saying 'level over' since it made me believe that it implied there were gonna be more levels! Basically, I'd love to see more of this game.

...also as a side note, I think it's SHMUP, not SCHMUP. Unless maybe that's a new acronym? Haha, anyway, it's all good.

ShortCakeCafe responds:

Thanks for the solid criticism!
The level flow was done last minute as more of an afterthought since this game was made in a week and i barely got it done in time.
But if I do ever do more with this game, I agree that the level design should be optimized a lot or just cut entirely for a sort of boss rush type of game.

(also the schmup error is because i've never played a shmup in my life so i didnt know how it was spelled, gamer moment)

[Piece by Piece]

An interesting little experiment! I found the game to unfortunately be a bit shallow at it is: while building up the ship is very interesting in how customizable it is, and the game did have some great feedback for shooting enemies and a cool missile swarm special, it felt a bit hollow because the game never escalates or progresses in such a way to really require you to modify the ship in the first place. Yes, I still enjoyed building a ship for the sake of building a ship, but all I could do with it was live in this small fishbowl, fighting the same boring enemies over and over for a slow trickle of gold. The game was also a bit confusing at times with its feedback: the way enemies that crashed into my ship would burst into hearts made me almost think that they were dropping health for me, not that they were hurting me. For me, this seemed like not a good game, but a great proof of concept of this modular ship building and how satisfying it can be: would love to see a full game make use of it to create a grand adventure! I could easily see it being like a fish game, where you go to a universe, beat enough enemies to power up your ship to challenge a harder universe, and keep going onwards and onwards!

YaenGames responds:

Thank you for your detailed review & ideas. I always like to read about your perspective on things. I agree that it gets a bit dull after a while and there is too little content to back up the lengthy balancing. Hard to make much more in so little time ^^
More enemies and maybe even unlockable ship parts would certainly make things more exciting over the course of a run or maybe even multiple runs... This is essentially more of a prototype than a finished product as it stands, due to how it was made. But I agree that there's potential here!

Thanks again and have a great day!