FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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

[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!