FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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!

[Nearverse]

Not too shabby, but as it is, I'd call this more of a generative art showpiece instead of a game: fancy in function, but not necessarily fun or with long-lasting appeal.

Don't get me wrong, I had some good fun with it as the effects are nice and juicy and there are a decent amount of variations in enemy attacks to get through. But for a game that is procedural generated and has a big to-do about having so many galaxies of combinations, it feel like I was just playing the same game over and over. Yes, there were differences, but I felt like there were incredibly superficial changes, like how glowy my lasers are, or what new Rorschach ink blot test the enemies look like: at the end of the day, no matter what way the graphics changed, the attack patterns or enemy AI or what-have-you ever evolved to create a new experience like other games could do. And it doesn't help that it's a shooter game, which is already a dime-a-dozen in the 'my first game as an indie dev' box. I could see this being pretty neat, but I'd need to see some cooler and significant core gameplay changes come from the randomization that you can see other contemporaries do, particularly in the roguelike sphere.

Also that default glow is absolutely nuts, haha! Feels like a classic case where a dev wants to make their game flashy to juice it up, and overdoes it on the filters. Thank god there was the option to turn it down, but I tried to respect your vision and left it on high.

HealliesGames responds:

As I stated, I had a bigger vision of this like more weapons, more sub-type of enemies, AI and shoot patterns to create even more variety. Also a kind of link between your played matches, to unlock more stuff would be cool.
I ended up focusing a lot on the artistic aspect of the game and then opted for a classic shooter arcade formula which (at least for me) always work.
Still, I'm not excluding that I'll take my hand on this project again.
Thank you for review!

[PixelGrounds]

Very cute game! I'm not too familiar with Picross, but I easily found myself getting addicted to this game and going through puzzle after puzzle. I did find it a little silly how some of the puzzles would resolve (really, those two dots and a line is Pico? it could be anyone!) but it was all in good fun. And what a huge amount of content to go through! It's almost intimidating how much there is, haha!

My only major complaint would be that the controls can be a bit confusing. For example, I want to use the mouse because it's more intuitive to not only click squares, but click the big buttons on the right to change forms. However, using the mouse can be bad because it doesn't let you do tricks like being able to hold the button to paint in succession like keyboard allows: you need to click each time, and that doesn't help my carpal tunnel. So, I use the keyboard, but then I have no idea how to change forms because the shortcuts are difficult to remember: call me dumb if you like, but it'd be nice if maybe the keyboard shortcut letters could be right next to the form buttons as a reminder.

Other minor complaint would be that I feel like it could use a tad bit more juice: you know, make the title screen a bit more animated and so on, and that there were some typos here and there, but overall it feels good. Well done with this one!

EDIT: yayyy i finished my puzzle at Hard #44, thank you very much for that

Pomegranite responds:

you can pause anytime to be reminded of the controls

check out level 44 on hard--you might be like it ;)

edit: the original version was animated, but caused performance issues for weak hardware