FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Newgrounds Burger Quest]

You know, for as low-effort and goofy as the game looks, there's actually a decent little adventure in here. I liked wandering around and picking up clues from the various denizens to figure out how to get all 5 dollars for whatever a Newgrounds burger is. I also liked all the little touches that the game had, such as the cool shooting animation (and ending animation, speaking of), the ability to blast everyone, the hidden fishing minigame, and of course the funny dialogue and sounds. So unlike how it looks, there is some intentional design and effort put into it here and there, and it is quite charming in that respect.

But at the end of the day, it definitely was a pretty janky and short game. Now some of the jank could be excused by it being true to the design and goofy aesthetic, but some of the annoyances like the vague hitboxes, delayed shooting animation, random spawns and so on could just be plain frustrating, leading to unfair deaths.

And I gotta say that you did commit a game design cardinal sin in my book. If you design a dialogue system with text that gets typed out, a player should always be able to hit a button to have the text immediately fill to the end (and not skip to the next line until another press). This game does not allow that, and for that, you will burn in heck for you have damned so many players to waste so many seconds waiting for the text to fill out: so many seconds!

plufmot responds:

Thanks! Also you can press and hold Z or M to speed up dialogue!

[Pee Man vs the Monkeys]

Well, putting aside the initial pee-remise and all of its strangeness, this game had some really solid, simple, fun arcade action! Love the whole retro arcade graphics, love how it gets to the action quickly, love the juicy (maybe bad word choice?) effects, love the exciting yet janky music that matches the tone, love the strategy of having to aim your shots as to not waste your pee and gather resources to get pee back, and love the secret hard mode! Certainly had a good time playing this game for most part: was surprised at some aspects like how short damage-invincibility lasts, but everything was mostly intuitively designed. Game can be a bit confusing at times where I couldn't tell whether levels ended when some invisible timer was over or when the enemies were killed (most likely both have a factor). I also got screwed over once when it froze projectiles on a level transition which caused me to run into it (I expected them to keep going). Would love if the game had a little bit more to it, but it had enough for a short and sweet adventure.

[NG STARS]

Hmmm, this one is a bit rough for me and unfortunately a case of style over substance in my opinion.

On initial impression, I think that the game is very cool and impressive. The game definitely has a professionally-constructed feel to it, what with the very animated and lively menus, title screen, and seems to have a lot to offer with its huge character roster. And indeed, I did have some good fun going through and seeing how each of the characters played and catching references and such: I could easily see some people having fun going through and building a tier list and other such things.

But at the end of the day, once the novelty of checking out the roster is gone, all you are left with is a game that is a shallow as a puddle. I found the characters to be terribly unbalanced, the combat to be overly simple and unsatisfying, and there were no unique systems or level terrain or strategy or any sort of hook to work with. Now, I'm not saying it needs to be some super complicated fighter with guard-breaks and astral finishers or whatever: games like Divekick and Footsies and Fantasy Strike are excellent games with very limited movesets. But those games, unlike this, have an actual deep system and strategy to their seemingly simple combat that acts as a hook. Or, if a complex system is not the way to go, at least the game should have some sort of wacky party elements like a Smash Bros or Mario Party game that shake things up.

The menus were also confusing and complicated at times: for example, had no idea why the game wants me to have to right-click to disable a character choice instead of just letting me left-click on a new character no problem, and why does it not automatically assume that 1P has already joined and instead make me have to join manually every time? And let's not even mention that it doesn't even teach you how to play (as funny as whatever the heck that video was...)

I definitely do love the idea behind this game and think a NG artist brawler could be great. If this was just to serve as a proof of concept for an upcoming version which has more content, online play, actual fighting systems, and so on and so forth, I would absolutely love that!

So far I feel like Peti might be the best fighter?

Stepford responds:

Fair enough! This game was more of a love letter to our friends in the community than anything else. Just a bit of fun! <3

[Porb Dressup]

Decent little dress-up game! Dunno what the heck a Porb is, but hey, it's got nice art, a unique setup, a good assortment of goofy clothes, expressions, backgrounds, music, and so on, and I'm not seeing any obvious bugs or anything, so I ain't got much to complain about! But then again, I'm not a big dress-up game kinda person, so maybe the real fans can deliver better feedback.

Only thing I thought was awkward was how when you click on an item, it will automatically move to center itself instead of just staying in place: not a bad thing, but different than I expected and can make it annoying if you're just trying to make slight adjustments to an already placed object. Oh, and I wish there was a way to wipe the HUD completely to take easier pictures (you can get rid of most of it, but the buttons still remain) and in addition to that, it would be cool if there was a built-in feature for saving screenshots of your personal Porb.

TappyWara responds:

HOLY SHIT...

[Pico Pizza Frenzy]

Not bad! It ain't the most complex game and it's over rather quickly, but what's there is some decent beat-em-up arcade fun! I think what really helps the game is how great and juicy the presentation is: love the feeling of shooting and whacking enemies, love the little dialogues that pop-up at the bottom, love the graphics and animations, love the goofy/frantic mood and music, and I just generally love how the game cuts to the chase and gets right into it! Easily found myself replaying it a few times just to beat up more losers and go for a higher score (though I dunno if it's even possible to get 25 pizzas, don't they spawn at a schedule I can't do anything to influence?).

Only major complaint I could think of is that, while the mortar robots do have an animation for launching a missile into the air that corresponds to the markers on the ground, it's not very noticiable and without an actual projectile, the two actions seem disjointed and not apparent of the connection.

Also there's sometimes a weird bug where I can't get the game to focus and hitting space just makes the web page scroll down: dunno why exactly.

Just-a-ng-dummy responds:

Thanks for the review Futurecop!
I'm really glad you enjoyed the short premise of the game! The pizzas spawn based on a timer and if you collected it, so if you collect a pizza, a timer starts and when it ends a new pizza spawns, then the cycle repeats. During the half way mark, the time decreases, so you just need to roll your way to pizza town!

I think the markers issue can be fixed by adjusting the z-index and a visual animation, which is quite easy to do, but I'm currently doing a lot of stuff rn.

Idk about the bug though, I think the game only focusses if you click on the game, so a "click to start" prompt would be more easy-going to the player.

Cheers on reviewing this month's games!

[ENA: Decimation Journey (Demo)]

Ok, this was a bit of a trip.

First and foremost, this is one of the difficult times I've had just trying to start a game. The amount of roadblocks it threw to try and stop me was ridiculous. I had the browser pop-up a message twice that it thought that the game was frozen and made me think it crashed and was unplayable: yes, I know you say it takes a long time to load in the description, but please, if there is some way you can help the load times or put a message in the game itself by the loading bar, it would help immensely. As a game developer, I understand the difficulty and you have my sympathies, but don't expect the general public to be sympathetic: they will just assume the game is busted and leave, and it would be completely justified. Even after the load times, however, I had no idea how to start the game on the main menu: I tried enter, space, the arrow keys, WASD, Z/X, ctrl, and all other common controls and nothing worked. Only later I realized that the game wanted Q to start the game: what other game in this world uses Q for confirmation!? If anything, E would've been slightly acceptable, but still, these are some crazy uncommon controls and again, it would be helpful if there was a prompt in the game to guide.

Ok, moving past that and starting up the game, the game is somewhat cool. Definitely gives me heavy Shin Megami vibes with its maze-like levels and use of the elemental press turn system (except it takes it a bit easier by only rewarding you for hitting weaknesses and not punishing you for hitting resists). I actually thought it was a horror game at first where someone is chasing you because of the warning meter, only later realizing it was a random encounter meter as seen in other games like Etrian Odyssey and such. Certainly an impressive game that seems to have a lot of potential.

Having said that, I easily found myself getting bored and dropping off. The maze was incredibly boring and repetitive with no notable landmarks and barely any fun interactions, and the map was useless because it was too zoomed in and I couldn't find any way to see the full map. Combat was just a rehash of Shin Megami combat as said before with nothing new to it, without any of the niceties that modern Persona combat has (such as previously hit weakness hints) and with barely any SP to allow you to engage in the elemental system without immediately running out. Definitely feels like there needs to be something cool and fresh in the game to serve as a hook, like a bit of story or characters or a more interesting world/maze to explore: I just felt lost and quit due to boredom and frustration quickly.

Again, it certainly does seem to have an impressive Shin Megami RPG-esque engine in place that could be used for great things: I'm hoping that this feedback, as rough as it is, can serve to help this game become something great and exciting in the future.

[Reel Deep]

Pretty cool game! Delivers some nice addictive arcadey fun and certainly has an interesting take on the fishing game with the inclusion of having to get your rewards all the way back up: usually all you need to worry is hooking good stuff in the first place. Adds a whole element of risk/reward to the process that I both loved and...hated, haha. While the game could be frustratingly difficult at times, the upgrade process and the fact that the game is so juicy (such as the great impact from hooking things) made it quite addictive and have a professional feel to it all. The only thing missing would be a bit more of a guide to the game: I had no idea there was a treasure chest as an end goal, for example (though I did feel naturally inclined to go deeper because of the record markers, though that might've led me to go too deep too early).

I gotta say though, that as much as I loved this game in theory, I found it incredibly frustrating and just plain annoying to play at times, especially at the beginning. As much as I think the whole reeling up sequence is interesting, the frustration from losing your already gathered loot was palpable and made me want to rage quit constantly. It was just so annoying how incredibly aggressive fish could be once they get the slightest whiff and how the only way to reel up faster is to put yourself at the edge of the screen where you easily get hit by enemies you can't react to in time (so what's the damn point). Eventually by sticking with it and getting upgrades it became a bit easier to deal with, but I could easily see me and maybe others not willing to put up with that initial annoyance.

Maybe something can be done to help bad first impressions like that from happening: for example, I felt compelled to try and go deep for better rewards, but maybe the game should to guide you away from that until you get upgraded somehow with like a story or missions or something. Also maybe the game shouldn't change the speed based on your position on the screen so you can feel free to use the whole real estate without screwing yourself. It was also a bit annoying that you could contend with obstacles that weren't in your way on the way down during your return trip (felt annoyed that I passed a coin on the way up that I didn't on the way down). You could also get rid of the whole aspect of having to take everything back up and potentially lose it, but I guess that would hurt the core identity of this game too much.

Frenchie14 responds:

Awesome review! I agree - this game turned out to be much more of a "rage game" than originally intended. I think you have some good suggestions on how to reduce the rage. Some other things I thought of were adding upgrades for an indicator for off screen enemies and a few slots of "permanent" inventory that wouldn't get knocked off. I never added them because I underestimated how frustrating the game could be and at this point I'm ready to just call the game done in spite of this one big flaw.

Thanks a lot for playing and reviewing!

[Realm Raiders: [DEMO] Ep. 1]

Pretty cool beat-em-up! Definitely feels like it's got a pretty solid start in the right direction: in general the combat felt quite nice and satisfyingly impactful, and the graphics and animations were smooth. Loved how the enemies had great telegraphs for their attacks. There was a bit of confusion at the start for me since usually 2.5D beat-em-ups like this are very horizontal-focused, but this game had so many vertical and diagonal attacks that typically aren't done in those games (are you sure you're not trying to make a top-down game instead? that type of camera might be more intuitive, but whatever) Anyway, here's what feedback I could offer:

1) While the game did seem to offer some amount of input buffering, it didn't feel sufficient and there were a lot of times where an attack or a roll wouldn't come out mid-combo despite me putting the input in for it (yes, you could say that I put it in too early, but still, really felt like the game was just dropping some inputs, so perhaps experiment with making it more forgiving)

2) For some reason, I couldn't attack to the lower-left: unlike any other direction, if I tried to attack while moving down-left, it wouldn't come out (which was unfortunate since so many enemies spawn that way!)

3) Tutorial is incorrectly in staying that A,A,W is a combo (only A,A,A,W is a combo)

4) Not sure of what the purpose of the W attack is: could use more explanation (maybe it has invincibility frames or something like a shoryuken?). Also game didn't even explain any of the other buttons like Q and S.

5) Didn't like how easily enemies could insta-switch directions: felt really unfair when I'd see the club goblins charge up their upper attack and I'd roll behind them, only for them to insta-turn around and smack me with their upper. Feels like they should have to commit to their initial direction more.

6) Similar to above, hated how fast the archer could nock an arrow and shoot at me: sometimes he'd be able to shoot an arrow at me when I'm hitting him mid-combo for crying out loud! Long-range units should be a bit slower in general, I feel.

7) Feels like, especially for a demo and a first level, the enemies are a bit overly fast, aggressive spammy and hard to lock-down. I feel like I'd only see this sort of behavior on a game's hard difficulty, heck, maybe mania difficulty: for now, I'd make it so that the fodder enemies are a bit more passive, pacing around, taunting and such, instead of beelining directly for the player.

8) Swear it feels like the 2nd hit of the basic combo misses so many times and enemies just get out for free: dunno if it's just got a bad hitbox or enemies have some weird recovery invincibility where they dodge it and get out for free or what. Definitely fix the hit box and maybe add a lot more stun on hits to make it easier to combo/stunlock.

Definitely a lot of good potential here: looking forward to seeing a great beat-em-up in future!

Tyler responds:

Thanks for such an in-depth review.

I agree completely with the 2nd combo attack comment completely.

As for the W (uppercut attack) button - it instantly knockbacks an enemy. However, contrasted with the A (light attack) button which only does damage. A,A,W,W can lead into uppercut mid-air downward lunge attack. Im not sure how many people actually realized there are mid-air attacks (A does a midair strike and W does a risky downward plunge that launches you on hit or gets stuck in the ground on miss) but we didnt explain that. Ep. 2 shows off a more aerial focused character so we’ll teach that better then

I also agree that the tutorial needs some work

Thanks again for the thoughtful input :)

[What Makes You a Man?]

Hmmm, bit of mixed feelings on this one. I feel like my initial impression wasn't that great:

While the climbing mechanics were intriguing and I liked the whole 'single player but coop' concept, I felt like the whole 'jump up then the person below jumps and you jump off them mid-jump' was unnecessarily awkward to have to utilize, the rope mechanic was really janky and mashy to deal with, and the game didn't really introduce any significantly new mechanics or level layouts as it went out, just minor differences.

The story also felt super lazy with tons of parts that could've been utilized to flesh out the characters or introduce some subtle hooks or just have some flavor/fun, were instead just replaced with filler like "talking on the way to the mountain" or "shows picture of sister" (why not actually show a picture?) until the game just last-minute dumps the moral on you at the end in a very cliche and almost comical way, like a cheesy after-school special or something. Heart's in the right place and maybe it's a good thing that it's so chill about it instead of being dramatic or whatever, but yeah, it was pretty cheesy.

The game was also lacking some critical elements like a quick restart or anything like that to get out of unwinnable stuck situations. The awkward way the game would squish when you get separated, while funny, was really glitchy and should've probably just caused a restart or something instead. Also what's the point of showing L/R below a character when it just gets lost in the graphics of the ground?

Having said all that, though, I did, for some reason, find myself going back to this to finish the game. Something about wanting to see what happens at the end and actually getting used to and having fun with the climbing controls after the initial awkwardness of it: not sure exactly what. So yeah, something about it hooked me in some way: not nearly as professionally as I think it could've done, but I came back and had some fun, so credit where it's due.

plufmot responds:

Cheers! I agree with most of this, I just wanted to try doing everything myself and the writing ended up being super difficult to do. I'm not used to writing more serious stuff like this. Although I strongly disagree about the "filler", I think it worked better to leave some stuff up to the player's imagination. All in all, we're on the same page though aha and I'm glad you liked it! Can't wait to watch you play it in your video ahaha.