FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Game and Watch: Madness]

Hmm, not bad, but not great either! The Game-and-Watch or Tiger Electronic aesthetic is pretty amusing to look at: I like that authentic look where you can see all the possible sprite positions at all times, though I was a little disappointed that there were so few, as usually these games will have their screen jam-packed with all sorts of sprites, like you could've had some for enemies getting smacked to the side, or for game over with the clown crying, or something. The gameplay was alright, but it got repetitive rather quickly and wasn't anything to write home about, being a simple timing game.

I do have to give you credit though: a lot of these 'game and watch' games seem to be quite lazy and just use the graphics/aesthetic to carry it, but for this one, I actually liked that there was a decent amount of challenge in the patterns and waves you gotta deal with. It still wasn't that deep or addicting in the long-term, but it was more than I thought was gonna get, so not too shabby.

Taka responds:

Thanks for the feedback :3

[Madness Roulette]

Not too shabby, but rather shallow in long-term appeal. I know it's silly to complain about it, but at the end of the day it is just a game of rock/paper/scissors and it doesn't really bring or add anything interesting to the formula. For example, it'd be kind of cool if we could customize our own character avatar like I thought we could (especially since it's online), but the rewards are only characters and you need to play for an inordinate amount of time to get anything, so there's no hook there. The game could've been enhanced with some interactivity, but I was really disappointed that we don't even have to click the trigger to make the shot ourselves as it just goes off automatically in a canned animation: I think having that extra click to actually pull would add so much more intensity and immersion to it. The menus and such are also very bland with stock text and minimal animations that could've added some pizazz, and finally, the death animations aren't gory at all: was really expecting some serious brain matter spilling out of cracked skulls: it's Madness after all!

However, that's not to say it's all bad. I do think the game is rather stylish and charming with a lot of nice touches to it. I like that the music gets more and more intense as the odds get more and more risky with empty chambers being depleted, and I like seeing the characters sweat (though I wish they would also increase in shakiness and sweatiness more as the game goes on as well). I also like that there are unique animations for each of the characters in how they take their turn. And of course, it is rather impressive that it has a whole online feature and lots of prizes to get, even if they do require way too much commitment to get since it's all based on luck after all.

spazgunk responds:

yo thank you so much for the insightful review!!! very much appreciated. 100% takin' this stuff into consideration for the next update :]

[Gardengage]

Really cool concept for a game that felt like a bit of a mixed bag for me!

On one hand, I do think that the concept and mechanics for the game were quite interesting: switching back and forth between side-scrolling and top-down mechanics to find the right path were really fun and mind-bendy at times, and then piling on other mechanics like removing breakable tiles by walking over them in top-down to create a staircase you can jump up in side-scroll mode made me feel really clever. I'm only through world 1 right now and I definitely want to continue onwards to see how it shakes out.

It does have a bit of jankiness to it, though, that kind of made it confusing/frustrating to play. To start, the graphics sometimes remind me of a NES game that is glitching out, or maybe a weird kaizo mario maker level or something: just really slapdash and kind of difficult to parse and look at sometimes. Second, the gameplay felt very awkward at times: my character would get stuck or glitch into platforms, I wasn't sure how to attack enemies in top-down mode, I felt like I was forced to make these really tight jumps that the game isn't flexible enough for, and it felt weird being hit by enemies that are in tiles below me that shouldn't be able to hit me (and even then, I feel like I should kill them because I'm above them even if I'm not jumping). And finally, I wish the map screen was a bit better: would love to move around in it like Super Mario World or something instead of just messing with the menus in the bottom corner.

It's definitely a neat game I think: for me, it just needs something like a polishing pass to make it feel more smooth and not so janky. But I suppose, given the kind of glitchy nature of the concept/theme, it kind of fits in a weird way, haha. I plan on trying to make it further in the game nonetheless!

[Surviving the Snowstorm]

A nice attempt and I think the heart is in the right place, but I'd say it unfortunately falls short of being a good fangame by missing some critical aspects.

For one, the great thing about Henry Stickman games I find is how animated and lively everything is, and that includes the buttons which would usually play out an animation or a sound when you hover over them: the buttons in this, unfortunately, were very lifeless and stiff with no such pizazz or life to them.

The scenarios that played out weren't that unique or inventive either, most just being a silly one-note gag that didn't really use the whole winter situation to enhance it or have the craziness and escalation that most Henry Stickman gags did. Heck, you had two jack-in-the-box scenarios that were practically identical, and then two phone scenarios that were literally identical as they were just copy-paste!

All this just made the game feel rather lazy: just felt like the list of options was bloated with a lot of fluff: I'd say the only ones I really liked were the the jacket, the load save, the teleporter, the go deeper, and maybe the cheese/bomb/radio. It's not all bad: like I said, there were some decent options in there and I liked the stickman animations and such as they looked very authentic, so I think the heart is in the right place: hopefully I don't sound like too much of a jerk, just want to point out some of the hidden aspects that really could help enhance the experience if you revisit.

BioPlant responds:

Thank you for the thoughtful review! I’m currently working on a remake of this game, so your review is much appreciated.

[An Ordinary Adventure]

Goofy little adventure! Part of me wish it had a bit more gameplay besides just walking around (and the one token puzzle) but for the most part, the dialogue and animations were quite charming and amusing and it kept me wanting to see what oddities happened next, so I'll let it slide, haha. What I might not let slide was the constant janky issues where my character would get stuck walking backwards and I'd need to reset it with a jump: I know you put a warning in the description and all that, but at the end of the day, there's gotta be a better way to actually solve the issue than just making an excuse and expecting everyone to roll with it. Anyway, it wasn't the worst issue to tangle with, so again, I'll let it slide, but just a warning for future since it did hurt the presentation and believe me, you cannot count on people reading the description.

midgetsausage responds:

Yeah, it's a pretty bitter pill to swallow that some people just don't read the description and that the bug... thing is hard to fix.
I wish I could go out of my way to fix em, but my Scratch skills are rudimentary at best, and I don't know if Zach can even fix them thanks to Scratch's limitations...

We're still genuinely happy you enjoy the game, really sorry for the constant sudden moonwalking every now and then. But we're glad (and relieved) that you love the bigger picture!
And yeah, the lack of gameplay was something we were real unsure players on Newgrounds would roll along with, but we were tremendously shocked that they did LMAO

[This is You]

Cute story! I'm not full-on deep into my Madness lore or anything so I dunno how canon or anything any of this is, but I found the world and concept very believable, the artwork very charming, the characters quite interesting with their own unique voices and the story very gripping! Was surprised how easily I got sucked into it: I was worried at first that the game would get too quippy, jokey or memey but it never did, and I admire the professionalism at sticking to keeping it real. Definitely coming back to get the rest of the endings later on: so far I've just got the one where I did nothing, but I'm quite intrigued to see the rest (though sometimes tells me there isn't exactly a happy ending no matter what I do...)

vhsdreamland responds:

oh my goodness thank you so much!!! this is such a nice review, thank you for your time!!

[Dominion Ex]

Nice shoot em up! Overall it felt like the game was very satisfying to play with a lot of cool special effects (especially the shockwaves), and I definitely loved the weapons and how they all had their strengths and weaknesses: you gotta be accurate with the rockets but they have great splash damage, the vulcan is decent all-around but you gotta get dangerously close to not suffer from the lack of accuracy, and the plasma is awesome at insta-deleting foes but it overheats so fast so it should only be a last resort. And then there's even the drive where it passively boosts your speed as long as you have it equipped. All these interesting pros and cons made fighting the great and various array of enemies (who are also weak or strong against certain weapons) super interesting as it keeps you active in searching for the best tool to use in the ever-changing situation: very thrilling stuff! Bosses were quite a cool spectacle as well. I felt like the whole ability to just warp out to homebase whenever you want was a bit confusing to come to terms with at first, but I suppose it allowed for some interesting convenience as some people might want to cash out immediately instead of more traditionally waiting for a level end. Well done!

Extar responds:

I'm glad you enjoyed the differences between the weapons, with the enemy immunities I wanted to make it so there's no one strategy that works all the way through, and so there's always at least one enemy who will give you problems regardless of which weapon you use.

Yeah, I let the players go to the hangar at any point so you can kind of upgrade as you're going, although you get more points if you save up more coins before visiting the hangar. Also, you can go back to the hangar to reset the screen if things are getting a bit too hectic :)

Thanks for the the detailed review!

[MADNESS CANVAS INTERACTIVE GALLERY]

I always appreciate these collabs as I think the heart is in the right place in terms of showing these artists some love and showcasing all these great talents, but I have to admit I did feel like this gallery was very lacking.

For one, it's very dry with no real pizazz to highlight or frame the art. It's as basic as it can get with just a simple back-and-forth between bland pages: It think it would be much cooler if the artworks were displayed in a big collage/gallery/poster like what's shown in the description, where you can hover or click parts of the art to see who worked on that part and so on: you know, just something a bit more fancy and interesting to get people to stay.

Furthermore, it felt like the gallery was lacking a lot of key features: for example, you can't click on an artist's name to see their profile, so unfortunately I think a lot of people aren't going to see and follow other artworks from them, which is a bummer because I think the point of a gallery and collab like this is to let people see art and then get to know and love the artist. By not putting an immediate link, you've made it for difficult for people to get connected and show love to the artist when they would want to.

Also, there's no table of contents or index or what-have-you to allow different ways to list, view or search for art that interests a user. By having the gallery be a simple list with only one way and one order, I feel like it unfairly emphasizes whatever you've chosen to be first in the list: everything near the end of the list probably won't be seen or remembered by the usual user as they would get bored or be tired by the time they've made it there, if they make it that far at all.

iamtheangrysons responds:

thank you for your feedback!

[Gyro Gear Tournament+]

Seems like it has some cool stuff going for it! I quite liked the unique style of combat with what seemed like multiple viable strategies, like go straight for clashes, fake them out, jump to hit them in the body or bounce on their head, knock them out of the ring, etc. I also liked that the stages mixed it up a bit with not only arena combat, but this kind of race combat as well.

Unfortunately, the game overall felt very rough and confusing to play. Don't get me wrong, I like when a game jumps into the action quickly, but this game overdid it by just immediately dumping me into combat without even teaching the controls, and even once I did learn the controls, I never felt like I could tell if I was playing correctly as it all felt so random and the potential feedback for seeing whether my hits were working wasn't visible or it was tucked in the corner where I wasn't able to look since I was fighting. It could definitely benefit from more explanation on fighting techniques and more feedback like damage numbers and maybe color sparks indicating whether an attack worked or failed or whatever (maybe it does this but I couldn't tell).

Not only that, but the AI seemed to be very subpar: eventually the AI seemed to get smart in the later stages and mixed their strategy up a bit, but a lot of the early fights just had the enemy come straight at you like a robot and just constantly clash over and over. I think there is a lot of potential in this game that maybe I'm missing out on just because I don't know the mechanics since the game never taught it effectively: very unfortunate.

rotcivsette responds:

Thanks for playing and for giving feedback! The game's nature is indeed very chaotic, so don't worry. It seems I didn't succeed in communicating the mechanics through gameplay overall very well, but I'll state here some information in case you're still curious: the sparks does indicate feedback (yellow: damage deflected; red: damage inflicted; orange: body hit). And there are words giving more feedback to you above your RPM bar. Thanks again and I'll try harder next time!

[ULTRA FORCE: OBLITERATION]

Really felt conflicted on this! On one hand, the game looks and feels very stylish and cool: the intro was really neat as were the slick door transitions between screens, the graphics were low-fi but had good icons and general presentation, and in terms of gameplay, the guns felt very punchy, the enemies were varied with interesting attacks, there were neat power-ups like the extra drone and the planes felt so smoothly animated and controlled.

But on the other hand, I felt like the intro went by way too fast for me to read and could benefit from some voice overs to punch it up, the door transitions were oddly muted and would benefit from a satisfying bzzz-ka-chunk-vrr sound to give it some extra oomph, the graphics were incredibly bland and boring at times with repeating the same background over and over and enemies being so sparse to not allow for the usual fireworks, the power-ups were unsatisfying as most of them were just stat increases that are barely noticeable or only noticeable if you luck into getting a certain gun, and most of the enemies felt boring and badly paced to fight as there were not put into interesting waves or formations to fight. In general, it felt like while the game has a good and slick core look and feel to it, it just felt like the gameplay overall was very boring, slap-dash and had no sense of progression to it, making it all feel meaningless in the end.

Looking at the constraints of the jam now I can understand that maybe it was unfortunately hamstrung by size limitations, but I just want to give my opinion coming in as someone who isn't aware of that. I'd love to see this or another shooter by you all come out that is more fleshed out since this does show a lot of promise!

Stepford responds:

Cheers, Futurecop! I do agree that the game is a bit slow at times and the upgrade system can be frustrating due to how niche they can be at times - but yeah. We wanted to add different backgrounds and level variety, but we ran out of time and filesize.

I appreciate you taking the time to play all these games. <3