FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gravity Shift]

It's a pretty unique, goofy and interesting game! It, uh, just might be a bit too zany for me, in both a bad way and a good way, haha!

On one hand, the game certainly has a lot of crazy mechanics going for it. Most games could make an entire game just out of the gravity mechanic alone, or just the dash mechanic, or just the grab/tether mechanic, and instead you've got a game using all of those mechanics to create some really crazy levels to go through. While I had a hard time at first even remembering all of the powers my character had, it did feel good to get more in-tune with all of them, choosing which abilities to use at which moment skillfully to beat the levels efficiently. And of course, the game is also wrapped in a very quirky aesthetic with all sorts of goofy props, sound effects, and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, I almost feel like the wealth of mechanics on display here kind of hurt the game for me, as I felt like they didn't all get enough attention and work together well. I'm a quality over quantity guy, and it felt like what we had here was a game that favored the exact opposite. The grab/tether mechanic was a source of constant frustration for me: sometimes things I would grab would drag along the ground, get stuck in walls, glitch out, get thrown oddly, not drop where I wanted, break too easily, or just not be present enough to give me ammo I need, and so on. Gravity switching was fun, but with the camera so claustrophobically close, it was a crap shoot whether I would end up falling safely onto a platform, or more commonly into some spikes I'd never see coming (unless I die and die and die until I memorize the entire level). I don't have many complaints about the dash mechanic, except I wasn't ever clear how many dashes I had or how fast they recharged and so on. With all the mechanics to maintain, levels felt very unfocused and directionless to me: even with the arrows pointing, sometimes the best path is to glitch and damage boost through some spikes to the ending instead or what-have-you: it felt like they were just a crazy scramble where anything goes (perhaps this could be seen as a positive though for freeform).

It's definitely charming and intriguing enough that I do want to revisit it and try and get further, but another part of me just felt like it was a bit too janky. Again, perhaps I just need to learn to work with that jankiness and my old man brain is just too stiff with age for something like this, haha.

gooberthed responds:

mucho texto

[Elizabeth SLAY!!]

Pretty interesting game! Gotta say, while I enjoyed my time with the wackiness of it all, it was a bit rough for me in some respects.

First off, my introduction to the game was a bit confused. My impression was that it seemed like the game had a big focus on combat and platforming, what with the cool introduction of your transformation powers, and I gotta say it felt satisfying to get that vampire combo off on the stompos what with the cool hitfreeze it had! Because of that, I didn't quite like just how many characters there were to talk to: felt like it just kept constantly stopping the pace of combat and platforming to talk to so many people and their goofball nonsense. I just wanted to get to the action! Don't get me wrong, I love the characters and all the charming quirky expressions and dialogue they bring: I just didn't realize that the game was actually all about talking to them for fun and hints and going on a scavenger hunt. Once I realized that, then I was on board and everything was quite the fun adventure! It's definitely partially my fault for making weird assumptions, but perhaps the game could also be directed in such a way at the intro to let you know what you're in for more accurately (heck, maybe combat isn't even necessary for a game like this?)

In terms of other feedback, I did feel like the movement of the character was a bit...I'm not sure, just felt a bit wonky: in particular I think the character felt overly heavy due to the lack of hangtime for their jumps, which made double jumping annoying to time. Also, for such a cheery game, I was surprised at how unbelievably punishing it could be: I spent so much time collecting practically everything only to die from an off-screen shot and have to start all over! It didn't exactly make me want to start it all over, but credit where its due, the game is charming and cute enough that I think I will get right back in there and find out what sort of characters are left to find and gab it up with!

Roksim responds:

Aw gosh, thanks so much for so much feedback!! I certainly understand what you mean, especially with the part where you get shot at - I actually thought it might be too easy, because it's just an enemy who shoots your face, but a lot of players did struggle, so I suppose it was a case of my tester friends just coincidentally all being platformer players already...

I did try to mitigate the backtracking by having a secret portal at the start, did you find the NPC who tells you about it? Like, once you activate the blue platforms, at the start there is a guy who tells you there is actually a secret shortcut in a pit all along that takes you all the way to the Record Player... Sort of a knowledge checkpoint! But I suppose it's a bit wonky as an idea!

And yaa, she is heavy, it's my own preference - I like to really hold that spacebar for full control, so I thought the best approach would be to just make my favorite controls and fun combat! The game might have shifted it's focus during the development from combat to silly NPCs, I still had a whole lot of fun smacking everyone around, so I went with both to have the scavenging hunt be a bit spicy, though now that I know how much the players struggle, I would probably make the Spotos less dangerous... I'll leave it as it is because so many people played it already and enjoyed it, I don't want to constantly shift the difficulty!

TLDR: thanks again for playing!! This is just some explaination for my thoughts as a developer, I really appreciate all the feedback you just gave me, all of it is really thoughtful!!!!

[ur a pixel]

It's a little bit clunky in respects: I didn't like how fiddly the movement mechanics were, like how there was no coyote time for jumps, and I didn't like how confusing it could be due to instruction tips disappearing so fast, power ups not being explained (I restarted the game the first time I got a power-up, thinking it was a double jump that I'd lost the chance to use since it didn't respawn), and controls being spread all over the keyboard. However, all of that confusion was worth it for the great rugpull moment of the game suddenly turning 3D and introducing all sorts of new mechanics. What a twist!

3p0ch responds:

Looking forward to seeing your face during the 3D reveal when you post the video :3

[Interdimensional Square Off]

It's a pretty decent shooter, fun and juicy, but without much long-lasting appeal or unique mechanics to keep a player's attention, I found. Probably the best part of the game was the juiciness of it all: screenshake, explosions, ragdolls and the like were in ample supply and made the relatively shallow game, which lacked in enemy variety, levels and cool moves, still feel rather exciting and fun to play. However, the juiciness was a double-edged sword, as I found the default level of shake to be nauseating, and the enemy ragdolls were confusing and obfuscated the enemies (I would prefer that the ragdolls be colored more darker to have them differentiate from the enemies, and that they last a shorter time to stop crowding the screen, though I suppose you could argue it adds to the challenge).

The game does try to help a bit with longevity with the inclusion of achievements and hats, but I didn't find those a big enough hook to keep playing (also was a bit disappointed that you couldn't combine hats and expressions, like combining cat ears and uwu, and that the title screen character doesn't update to reflect your hat choice).

I definitely feel like I would like the game more if it had some meat on its bones (some sort of progression, more enemy variety, more weapons, some sort of unique goal or mechanic, etc), but credit where credit is due, I did still feel it was more addicting and fun to play than I thought it would be judging from all my feedback, so you've got some mysterious 'it' factor going on here: just one of those mysterious parts of game design, I suppose!

Peti responds:

Yeeeea those are good points! I heard a lot of players having issue regarding the ragdoll. I didn't have a problem with it myself, but that just shows I'll have to ask people to playtest next time lol. I wanted to, but got shy......

The reason you can't combine outfits is due to potential conflict, but when you give that example perhaps the outfits could have been split into two categories, a face and hat? That thought never crossed my mind

My focus was defo on having the game "feel good", I found myself cutting features I was afraid would break the flow, such as bosses or more enemy types. While I'm glad I achieved my goal, I'll defo be taking ppl's feedback and wishes with me! I've gotten more comfortable after Pixel Day, so Ill try and get more of people's insight next time by playtesting!

Thanks for the review, Futurecop! Your words are always very insightful and im rly happy you got to take a look at this game, and have a bit of fun with it! pray emoji i dunno if ng will display it correctly ill try: 🙏

[PICO VS BEAR DX]

Wow, what a blast from the past! Overall I found it quite impressive and smooth to play: I loved the fresh coat of paint over everything that makes it more readable and pretty, and I loved the cool additions like new boss fights, new point-n-click puzzles, charming voice acting, remixes to boss mechanics, and so on!

I do have to say, though, that as much as I like it in general, there were some more questionable design decisions that make it a bit of a lesser game than the original for me.

For one, I found it really odd I couldn't hold down the trigger to keep firing the machine gun like you could in the original: having to tap fire each shot not only is illogical, but it really wears down my old man hands. Tap fire makes sense for the shotgun, sure (which I had no idea how to switch to manually), but for the machine gun, I wish I could hold it down.

While I do like a lot of the additional bosses and changes to some of their mechanics, some of them were worse overall for me. I didn't like how you couldn't skillfully shoot the grenades out of the air anymore like you could before in the first boss fight, I didn't like how the attack telegraphs for the grenade rolling down the stair were behind the player making them difficult to see, I didn't like the awkward spawning for the bear duo boss where sometimes the minion would instantly respawn giving you no time to shoot the main bear at all, and so on and so forth.

But the biggest one for me was the inclusion of the point-n-click adventure parts: don't get me wrong, I like me a point-n-click, but when you combine it with the hard difficulty boss fights and fact that death means starting all over, it can get really monotonous to redo those sections over and over again: the original was just a boss gauntlet so it didn't have this unnecessary busy work. Yes, you get a few lives to ease the pain, but really, I almost feel like the game should just have infinite lives instead of relying on this awkward half-measure.

Also the hint system was really silly and pointless: it gave me a hint on how to beat the shadow boss when I was already way past that, haha!

Again, I have to reiterate that as much as that is a big block of text right there complaining about everything, I still did overall have a ton of fun with this and, no matter how much I died, I never wanted to quit, I wanted to get right back in there to see what craziness happens next! Just, uh, let me rest my carpal tunnel for a sec...

Dungeonation responds:

The shadow hint must be a bug then - what enemy did you die on? :O
EDIT we talked and I’m lookin into it

[Tankmas ADVENTure 2021]

Quite the nice collaborative experience as usual! I was a bit unlucky in that I was following it at first but then lost track (due to sickness and work) and missed out the later days, including Christmas. So really, all I got to experience was the initial period where there wasn't much to do (though I did like the cool intro experience where you discover the village), and then the after period where I missed all of the potentially cool events! Sigh...well...maybe next year, haha!

Anyway, if I was to have some feedback, it would be:

*When opening presents, I found the text at the bottom (title, artist, link to page) to be both a) very difficult to read due to it being gray on gray (either outline the text or make the difference between text color and background color bigger to make the text pop) and b) not obvious that it's a clickable link due to the pointer not changing to a hand and the text not highlighting when hovered over. These mistakes just made it look a bit unprofessional, especially considering its the main selling point and surprising it was overlooked.

*I kept thinking I could click on things to interact with them and move around due to the presence of a mouse-pointer on screen, but I found you could only move with the keyboard and interact with space bar. Why even have a mouse pointer then? Though I swear when I started, I thought I could move and interact with the mouse, so what the heck is going on??? (Now the mouse is working again? Dunno why it stopped working for awhile...though even with it working, it can be difficult to figure out where to actually click on things to interact with them)

*For such a potentially social game where you get to walk around with other people opening presents and hanging out at cafes and such, I found the game to be incredibly anti-social: from what I could tell, the only method of communication was a heart emote and that was it, no other emotes, no chat, no coop mini-games or activities, nothing! I could understand not wanting to have a public chat that just gets spammed with racial epithets or what-not, but it still felt odd that, for the most part, you couldn't really communicate or play with each other. (Though of course, I got in late and never got to experience the theatre, so maybe there was something there and maybe the cafe as well)

*Are the cafe graphics glitched or something? All of the images for the drinks and food are exactly the same (it's kind of understandable for drinks, but all the food is just the same image of a plate of mish-mash). Perhaps it's an intentional joke and I'm not getting it, but it just seems odd.

*There were periods where I visited where there were tons of clone avatars lined up in odd formations, like a wall of Pico clones and what-not. Wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, like whether it was just a funny joke set up by the developers or people hacked the game or something: just made me confused on whether to laugh or be worried, if that makes sense.

Anyway, Merry Tankmas all!

SantaDrella responds:

Rest assured about the clones. It's festive tradition that we've been doing since the release of this game! Everyone can do that by opening more tabs so it's pretty much not hacked lol

[Pico VS Peter The Ant 3D]

Quite the funny experience, and an interesting take on alternate history! Certainly quite interesting to see Pico's School in 3D, but unfortunately it also made it feel even disappointing that certain things weren't brought back in 3D as well, such as the cool boss fights or exploration or just other easter eggs/references in general (I know its not the main focus, but still). Also where's my first person raising hand action in the intro: I really wanted that!

Moving aside from that and focusing on the Peter the Ant action: it was simple, but I enjoyed my time trying to crush the ants, and loved how you could hit the corpses (both the ants and other corpses) even after death to have them splat blood: that's some classic, old-school gibbing action I like to see. Though having said that, I did find it a bit disappointing that hitting the corpses, or indeed hitting the ant initially, didn't have a satisfying splat sound: instead it just plays the same bonk sound effect which wasn't as satisfying.

All in all, it was good for a few laughs. But for the love of god, please explain to me how you can code a trigger to fire an event that gives you an achievement saying you've killed Peter the Ant and beaten the game, but you can't use that same trigger to display a victory message in game! Not realizing I had already beaten the game, I got so lost that I ended up smashing all of the shit with a hammer to try and progress. That shit is on your hands, plufmot, your hands!

Happy Peter the Ant day!

plufmot responds:

I got lazy ahaha whoops. Happy Peter The Ant Day!

[Hen in the Foxhouse 2.1]

Wow, very cool stuff! Was absolutely blown away by the presentation and story in this game: loved the epic intro and loved all of the ways it delivered story like the news station and the chatter from enemies as the situation gets more and more intense: really helped make me get into my role as an avenger. Gameplay was solid as well: felt great to cause so much chaos due to the satisfying feedback, there was interesting systems in place of outrunning the police parade and standing still to reload that made the combat very engaging and intense, and I liked the amount of variation in enemies and the way the city slowly crumbles.

If I had any complaints about the game, it would be that it doesn't teach all of the controls and rules very well (for instance, I was lost on how to create more eggs initially), and that, despite having variation and escalation in enemy design, the game did get a bit repetitive nevertheless, especially in terms of objectives and scenery being recycled. Still, very impressive stuff, and what an improvement from the previous version!

VerilyFine responds:

Glad to hear you liked it! I'll have those things in mind for future updates, thanks for the feedback.

[Leap Peasant]

It's a decent attempt at a jumping ragequit platformer like Jump King, especially considering the short amount of time it was worked on, but it still felt very wonky unfortunately.

I think all of the basics are there and it works alright: there's a lot of clever jumps and setups you need to work through and while the world isn't terribly exciting as it doesn't offer any interesting hooks or environments to traverse, it still is somewhat fun to jump around.

What killed it for me for the most part was the lack of polish (which again, is understandable given the time).

For one, the charge bar is completely out-of-whack and an outright liar: after testing I noticed that you only have to fill it up to about half-way, maybe less, to already achieve the maximum a jump will allow, as filling it up beyond that to max will not change anything. This is not only confusing but also frustrating as it severely limits the amount of wiggle room you have to precisely tune your strength.

Next, I found that there were a lot of times where you had no recourse but to do a leap of faith, which sucks because other games like Jump King will at least allow you to jump straight up as a means of scouting ahead: in this all you can do is jump up into the other screen and fail and try all over again, which isn't fair.

Finally there were also just a lot of glitches, like times where I would charge up and jump while standing in the middle of a platform away from walls...only to not jump at all: only moving myself to the side a bit would fix this for some reason.

AnderssonKev responds:

Thank you for playing and taking your time to write this review. I appreciate the feedback and I agree with your points. The jump bar is strange though, it should work but I might have to look at it and see what's wrong with it.

I hope that you had fun!

[International PixelArt Gallery 2021]

As always with these type of collaboration galleries, I think the heart is in the right place, and I do think this gallery does a lot right in providing a very cool and informative look at some great art from some great artists.

But I'd be lying if I didn't find a lot of annoyances in terms of navigation and presentation with this gallery that really made the process more confusing than it should've been:

*The Back/Next buttons can be really weird because they don't respect history/context. Tons of times I would hit next, expecting to go to the next artist in the country I initially selected from the map, only to go to some completely different artist in a completely different country. Similarly, sometimes I would hit back to go back to an artist I viewed previously, only to end up on another artists page I've never seen. I believe this is because the buttons work off of the assumption that you're moving from the context of the artist list, not the world map or the user's history. Very confusing.

*I really wish there was a way to view the artist's name and info page more readily instead of having to page through all their artwork to get to it. Yes, you'll usually get to their profile eventually, but I don't know why their name flashes for a nano-second and disappears before I can even parse it: it'd be nice if their name was always in the corner (or appears if I hover near a part of the screen, similar to the bottom toolbar) and I could click on it to go to their info page immediately.

*I don't know why the artist buttons when you select a nation don't highlight when you hover over them: I wasn't even sure if I could select an artist specifically because of this.

*I don't know why, maybe it's on my end, but there were a lot of weird instances of flickering text and graphics.

*It's not a huge issue, but I wish it was more easily apparent which countries have content within them. Yes, they get 'pinged' by the rotating sonar animation every now and then, but why not have that alongside a natural highlighting of all of the countries with content? It can just make it frustrating to have to hunt and check every country manually one-by-one to find where everything is.

*What the heck is up with the ordering of the artist list? It seems to be pure random, making it difficult to find someone. Shouldn't it be organized in alphabetical order, or maybe grouped by country?

*Some of the buttons can be confusing: for example, I hit 'Credits' expecting to see the info of the artist I was viewing, only to have it take me to credits for the entire game. Similarly, I was just trying to go back to the world map to select something else by hitting 'Quit', only to have the entire game shut down. Yes, it seems obvious in hindsight, but I hope you can see the logic of how this can be misinterpreted.

JamesChapp responds:

Ths for the feedback. yo realy help me to improve the galery last year.

the artist list goes in the order in which they entered the gallery.
the back / next buttons follow that order.

I understand that the gallery is difficult to navigate ... somehow I think I do it unconsciously ... like having an art gallery and wanting visitors to get lost in it.

I think there are many things to improve the gallery. I really appreciate the time you took to give me all this valuable feedback.

I'm going to analyze it and see what things can be improved for next year.

For me, one of the biggest challenges of this project was that the gallery does not obscure, distract, draw attention, annoy the artists' drawings ... but at the same time ... it does highlight and help to find the artists.

Already this week I start working on the 2022 gallery.

I thank you again for the help!

Greetings