FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Life and Death of Boe]

Cute little game! Certainly a lot of fun animations and crazy deaths to go through: found myself getting addicted to see what new sequence (and new art style from another animator) would how up next.

The flow of the game is a little awkward though at times. I was kind of expecting it to be like, I dunno, Henry Stickman, where there's an overall sense of progression as you try to get to a goal, where you select the death responses until you get a good one and then proceed to the next set of choices, but here you just exhaust the choices which all end in death and then go to the next set for...some reason...to get to some unclear goal.

Speaking of, the animations can be really confusing and uneven at times: some of them make sense and have deaths involving the object in question and are short and sweet, but some of them are overly long and go on weird non-sensical tangents. But then again, some of those weird tangents were amusing in their strangeness, so it's not like it's all bad that it went weird places like that: certainly kept things interesting!

Phaox05 responds:

Maybe one of the no sense is mine, and I also noticed that the message didn't come up well, what I wanted to show is that you cannot brush your teeth and drink orange juice because of some chemicals mixing in your body but with exaggeration, doing that doesn't kill you irl

[Rampster!]

Not too shabby! Pretty cool busy game that, despite the simple graphics, does a pretty good job at intuitively teaching the mechanics through how it shades everything (while still having some cute animations for victory, haha). Apart from my brain always trying to get on stairs sideways and failing (I know, I know, that's my fault, but I couldn't help but keep trying) I got pretty addicted to this game and how challenging the puzzles could be. Felt like it wasn't afraid to ramp things up quite quickly and seriously, compared to most puzzlers nowadays which increase very slowly.

Speaking of that difficulty curve: it was a bit of a mixed blessing. I gotta say, while I like a challenge, I got really stumped at level 6 because I did not realize the game had the chops to simulate a box rolling down stairs by itself: most likely something about the simple graphics made my brain hesitant to ever believe it would have that level of physics simulated. In that way, figuring that out finally felt less like a "eureka" moment and more like a "wait, what? bullshit!" moment. Might've been nice if there was a level before that could've taught that in a more easier-to-see way, somehow: but I did figure it out eventually, so hey, it still works alright (but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people dropped off there)!

Pjorg responds:

Thank you for this thorough review! It seems like you really "got" what I was going for here so I appreciate you sharing that experience.

Level 6's fatal flaw is that in trying to make it fit to the strict scale of the level maps (9x9 tiles) the space is not used as efficiently as it could be. The earliest version of level 6 was only 5x5, and looked like this. (Pretend the hamster and the cheeses are elevated)

🟦🟦⏫🟦🟦
🧀🟦⬛⏫🟦
⬛📦📦⬛⬛
🐹⬛⬛⬛🧀
⏫🟦🟦🟦🟦

This compact and more clear design was ultimately sacrificed so I could make all the levels a consistent size. Why do I put such arbitrary constraints on my levels? I don't know. I guess I just kind of prefer the way they look and feel. Did you also notice that the hamster begins each level where the previous one ended? Similar story there, it's mainly my own aesthetic satisfaction. I suppose I could have boxed the original level 6 off in a more obvious cage or something and fill the remaining 9x9 with empty space, but I used something akin to that motif in level 5 and level 7 and I think I was worried about it getting stale. Were these the right trade-offs to make? All the reviews telling me "I got stuck on level 6" suggest it wasn't. Then again, there's no telling. Maybe making level 6 more clear would have just resulted in a dozen reviewers saying they got stuck on level 7! Ah well. It is what it is.

Oh- and to your earlier point about having to get your brain into the habit of reading the map correctly- the overhead perspective certainly takes a moment for everyone to wrap their heads around. I have been thinking about what sort of opportunities could be had if I had the option of using three dimensional art... I could have the hamster run under archways for example without being hidden. Perhaps a spiritual successor someday in the future?

[quest of for the epic!]

Cute little goofy adventure! Well, I should probably just keep it as that: it looks like it's a troll/joke game not meant to be taken seriously, so I don't think any super criticism is needed and I'm just supposed to be "it's ebic" and all that. Still, though, while it was a funny little game, I have to admit that I did find myself disappointed: I actually was hoping that the game was gonna be something big in the veins of Battle Kid, I Wanna Be The Guy, or other similar trial-and-error trap games, but other than a few little traps and some precise jumps, the game ended in two screens (not counting the cat screen, lol). What a shame: I always like to be surprised and appreciate a game that looks low-effort but hides an actual high-effort game within, but for this, unfortunately, it is what it is. Maybe if you feel like it, it would be cool to see a more fleshed-out version of this!

Though maybe I'm just missing something? I haven't found the 'yum apple' achievo...

SomeApe responds:

cool

[Buggy & Snuggy's BIG DIG]

Cute little game! Seems like it could make for some fun 2-player hijinks as you compete to harvest while other getting in the way of others: the multi-use of the tools to both grow/harvest while also building pitfall traps and such is quite interesting. The graphics were especially very cute and I liked the hidden emote/taunt feature: one of those nice little touches that might need be necessary, but adds a little spice to it all.

Unfortunately, I only have myself to play it with (sadge) and while the game does offer a 1-player mode, I almost wish it didn't because it doesn't serve a useful purpose: without at least an AI bot to compete against, it really puts a bad light on the game. I know maybe you were trying to be nice by including it for soloers like me, but if you don't go all the way in its implementation, I feel like it's better left-out as the game definitely seems intended for 2-player: a half-measure pleases no one, prefer you stand strong with the intention.

Moving beyond that, there were also some confusing aspects to it. For having such wonderful sprites, I was surprised that the interaction was limited to just shoveling: you'd think that when they water the plant, they'd use a watering can, and when they harvest they'd just grab with their hands or use a sickle. Not having these different sprites made the gameplay really confusing, especially considering how many clicks you need to get things done (why do you have to dig twice just to get things started? maybe if they dug first and then showed the sprite planting next, it'd make sense to have those extra steps). There were also some minor glitches like the score not resetting on a new game and the movement/interactions feeling stiff and unsatisfying.

[Prism Indigo]

Pretty decent shooter! It has a bit of a slow start and is a bit overall lowkey, but once you get to the boss fights and the later sections, it becomes a decent bullet-hell game with some fun patterns to contend with. I like how it has a whole story element to it which is even subtly introduced in the tutorial section as a way to hook you in. It's not gonna rock my world or anything as nothing really blows me away, but it's alright and I had a decent time for the most part.

Part of what really hurts it for me is that it is a little dry in terms of pizazz: it's not bad, per se, and the boss fights and interesting patterns do jazz it up considerably, but it is a little underwhelming in terms of special effects, and the bullet-sponge boss fights combined with sometimes too easy to dodge patterns and drab non-boss fight sections enhance the monotony unfortunately. There's also some awkward stuff like the magnetic attraction of pick-ups acts very oddly and causes them to fly past me sometimes instead of homing in properly. Finally, perhaps it may not be a long game, but I was really disappointed there was no continue option: I came back to finish it off after a break and saw I had to start all over: killed my motivation. That being said, I do still want to see if I can come back and finish this in order to see the end of the story!

F1Krazy responds:

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I always try to make sure that my games have that kind of story aspect to them, so I'm especially glad that that appealed to you.

I'm currently working on an update that should spice up some of the earlier levels and smooth out the difficulty of the bosses so that they aren't so easy to cheese. I'd like to address some of the other issues, like the lack of visual punch, but I'm yet to decide whether I'll do that in this game or save it for the sequel.

[The Ferryman]

Oh man, this is a really rough one for me.

The game absolutely started out fantastic for me: love the way it builds up a sense of dread and this dreary, gloomy atmosphere through its spooky soundscape, artistic graphics, light-based mechanics, and weird cast of characters. I was so looking forward to how the game escalates and introduces new horrors into this seemingly mundane job.

But then as early as the second level, it threw out everything it built up out the window: all the subtlety and intrigue, gone, as it just blasts you with a horde of never-ending ghouls that munch away at your boat non-stop. You'd think it would tease you with only a single ghoul, or maybe a few ghouls appearing at first, maybe so few that you're not even sure if it was your imagination, the light playing tricks on you, as you repair the holes left behind. I was so scared to carry coal and buckets around since I thought in doing so, the diminished light would open me up to attack from ghouls. But nope! My fears were unwarranted as the ghouls did nothing but constantly munch at the hull with no threat towards me: suddenly what was once scary becomes nothing more than a common pest, a roach I swish away with a broom as I dash madly around patching my boat and bailing out water. A spooky game no more, now just a weird task-juggling game.

Beyond just the annoyance at the spookiness being ruined, I also feel like the difficulty spikes way too hard as early as level two because of the sudden onslaught of ghouls. Although it could be just that the game doesn't communicate its mechanics well. While I can assume that the holes fill up the boat with water, I was never sure if that was the case because the holes did not drip water or anything like that. Likewise, I kept trying to empty the boat of water by picking up the water buckets below deck, carrying them topside and and throwing them overboard, but that never seemed to do anything (only once I ignored bailing water and just focused on patching holes did the water level seem to decrease, which didn't make any sense).

I'm still giving it a good score because despite my gripes, I do find the game's atmosphere, charm, and intrigue very appealing (not to mention you do have a save/load system). I'm hoping I can continue to play and maybe find something to change my mind for the better.

EDIT: Once I did get used to it and accept the game for what it was, I had a pretty good time! It was still a little frustrating and repetitive at times, and I do still feel it missed a trick, but overall, a very cool experience! And yes, it is impressive it was made in such minimal time, haha!

crelish responds:

....made in... 5 days.............

[Cursed Travels: Below the Factory]

Another solid entry in the Cursed Travels series! This is only my second entry played after Flame of the Banshee, but I find myself enjoying going through the puzzles and seeing all this lore being built up. Once again, I really love the kind of La-Mulana/Simon's Quest vibe it has to it that makes it fun to explore and solve the brain-teasers. Game really gets me addicted due to the rapid-fire introduction and bite-size nature of the various puzzles scattered about in close proximity: just paced so well that I find myself always wanting to move onto the next puzzle and the next, while other games would kill my flow by having too much travel time or unnecessary fluff. Couple that all together with a nice little graphical style, story hook at the beginning, and save/load system and you got a great adventure I'm gonna finish!

If I would have one nitpick about it, it would be the stairs: seriously, I gotta jump up each step? No Castlevania walk-up-stairs animation or nothing?

Ferociter responds:

Hey, thanks for playing! I've always disliked the slow stair-walking in Castlevania, but I'll see if and how to improve them in Sunken City.

As usual: looking forward to seeing you play this.

[Sores And Sorcery]

Bit of a hidden gem here! It certainly doesn't put its best foot forward: the title screen is very bland, you can't read the tutorial instructions in a safe space and they're super tiny, and overall while the game looks decent in terms of graphics with a unique sepia filter to it all, it is a little muted and dry, desperately needing an extra bit of juice like effects or music to reduce the constant drone of the wizard firing shots at you over and over.

But putting all that aside, the gameplay was pretty solid! Loved how fast-paced it was in getting me right into some challenging levels and constantly varying up the obstacles and layout in creative ways. The decent amount of moves/mechanics and the variety really kept me hooked and wanting to play more. There was a little wonkiness at times, such as the ledge hang sometimes putting me farther out from the wall than usual, causing me to get hit by a passing saw that wouldn't usually hit me, but overall controls felt pretty tight (which is good to make a hard game like this feel fair). I'm definitely coming back to finish this later on (many thanks for adding a continue feature for the levels!)

EDIT: Whoops, I already beat it! Aww, didn't realize I was already on the final level: with all that space left on the main menu, I thought there was gonna be even more levels! Oh well, had a nice finish where I got to have some sweet revenge: nice stuff!

HelperWesley responds:

I'm glad you got to finish it!

And those points are totally valid, I was thinking about re-doing the title and adding some music. But I hadn't thought about how the first time you see the tutorial text, the boss is already attacking you, so that's definitely something I could fix. 😅

The extra space is for the "speed run mode" button. Did the "type in your name" text not pop up when you beat the game? If you type your name in you'll get access to the speed run mode that has a timer, and your name will go on a leaderboard I've set up. I was wondering why so few names were getting there, despite the number of plays..... Maybe it's not showing up?

[Portal Defenders: Tower Defense]

Wow, really stellar job with this game! Overall just has an incredible feel of polish and professionalism to all elements, and the gameplay is very fun, intuitive, addictive and satisfying: I could spend all day talking about the little touches like all the amusing audio chatter and the cool risk/reward tactical choice to get money for blowing the whistle, but I don't want to bore you with my gushing, haha! I can barely even tell it's Flash: it looks like it is so much more than what would be possible!

That being said, I do have a few nitpicks with it:

*I didn't like how long it took money and other items to get picked up from the ground. Would love if it would happen a lot faster or if you could influence the speed by mousing over the money drops, or if you technically get the money immediately even if the graphical icon hasn't flown to your wallet yet. Because it took so long to get money after a kill, it led to tons of awkward moments where I technically should have the money since it is moving towards my wallet, but I don't have it yet to spend, which felt unfair since I needed it at a crucial moment.

*I finished a level with 5 stars to spend on upgrades but for some reason wasn't able to purchase an upgrade that costs 5 stars: it would only let me purchase an upgrade that costs 4 stars. Is this because I can't purchase the II upgrade without getting the I upgrade first? It's a bit unclear.

*Would love some information pop-ups to appear when going over stuff like the upgrades for towers. I'm assuming the radar icon means a range upgrade, the fist means power and the shoe means rate of fire, but it's unclear and I was never sure.

*Would like it if, when purchasing turrets, instead of showing all dotted-line range indicators for all options at once, it would only show the associated range indicator for the option you're currently hovering over; seeing all of those circles at once was confusing to parse.

BoMToons responds:

Thanks for the review!

We don't have hover effects cuz it was designed to work for mobile, which doesn't have hover detection. I've been considering whether we could put in coin collection via tapping/clicking though to collect early... so yeah, no "hovering" for coin collection, no "hovering" to show specific ranges, no "hovering" for descriptions of icons... sorry!

Yes, you must get tier 1 upgrades before you can get tier 2, and tier 1 + 2 before 3.

Thanks for playing!

[=KRUDSHOT CAFE=]

Pretty solid game! Had a very stylish presentation all-around and feels like it has a solid core for some fun shooting: everything felt quite smooth, intuitive and well-done. Definitely love all of the juicy effects that the game had, like the ouch effects and the bullets popping up one-by-one for a reload and such.

Nitpicks I have are:
*I think it overdoes it on the whole CRT filter wavy pulse distortion whatever thing. Feels really unnecessary: the game is perfectly cool looking without these flashy effects that just hurt my eyes and make it difficult to read things and ruin the great art assets you've got. I know I can turn it off in the menu, but it starts on by default, so I'm under the assumption that you feel that's the intended experience (and I disagree is all).

*In a similar vein to the above, sometimes I feel like it overdoes it on the juicy effects, especially the 'Ouch' text that pops out of enemies. If you hit them with a fast-firing gun, so much text pops up that it clouds the enemy from vision. Funny in a way, but annoying since it makes it difficult to confirm the enemies status.

*Sounds were a bit muted: would love some more powerful sounds and feedback for enemy kills and such to make it feel more satisfying, as the feedback for shooting enemies didn't feel too great.

*Bit annoying that you can't manually reload from what I can tell, which makes it really awkward where you're left with a few bullets after a fight and start the next fight in a bad spot, unless you shoot into the air inbetween fights to empty it enough to force a reload.

*The cursor isn't locked in game which can lead to clicking outside the game by accident during heated combat and losing focus (and then subsequently losing health).

*While the game was nice, it got rather repetitive for me quickly. The vast majority of the levels boiled down to playing clean-up by fighting the same types of unchallenging enemies over and over. Thank god for the boss fights which spiced up the experience, but they were few and far between. Could definitely use more something to add more variety, like more enemy variety, more objective/special event variety, more interesting weapons/items, etc (and if there are, the game should get to them faster because I was dropping off before I saw them).

To sum it up: I think it's very well put-together and impressive, but overall was very basic and lacking a standout element. The gameplay loop got quite repetitive rather quickly due to a lack of said unique hook, be it through story, gameplay mechanics, pacing, or whatever. Basically, it feels like a very juicy and promising prototype/proof of concept that I'd love to see amped up! The characters are pretty cool looking: something as simple as some extra story intro or narrative to flesh them out and give them an objective in gameplay would help more than you think, at least for me!

Just-a-ng-dummy responds:

Thx for the review as always Futurecop!
I understand the CRT filter isnt for everyone and it didn't really feel in place for a "cafe purgatory." I just ultimately thought it looked neat

I didn't know the sounds were a bit muted, I have a bit of trouble finding the right volume for the sound effects and such, I'll keep it in mind in the future.

A manual reload will probably suit the game as you can just mindlessly strap your finger on the left mouse button with duct tape and keep on shooting.

The repetitive nature is certain due to there only being 20 room in total and 4 for each level. Special event variety is one thing I want to add more: Stuff blocking the screen, I guess more bullet hell type events. The pacing is one of my biggest concerns due to the map size being large and the need to kill every goddamn enemy. I could either reduce the map size or just add more enemy variety.

There is a story going in place, but it's not actually stated in the game, but I do like an extra story or narrative put into a game, so I'll try to implement them like those simple "you are the protagonist do this" lines

Cheers on reviewing all of April's nominated games and the release of Family Tech Support!