FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Eggsolotl]

A bit of a rocky start, but a cool game! It was a bit frustrating to learn everything without a tutorial or anything: it's somewhat intuitive, but there were some aspects that I didn't realize for quite some time, like being able to run up columns, or being able to match on diagonals or by holding an orb without placing it down either, and I wish there were some sort of targetting icon to let you know what orb you're about to pick up since there were plenty of times where it picked up one I didn't expect it to (like picking the one next to me instead of the one below me). Once I got past all that, I felt like it was pretty solid! Has a lot of charm to it, especially with the cute transition animation. Only thing lacking for me was the progression: felt like it just gets a bit monotonous and takes way too long to start introducing significant differences, but it wasn't too bad as the gameplay was decent at its core to compensate.

AxolStudio responds:

Great feedback!
This was made in < a week. So many things were rushed.
We are in the process of developing this further, and have added some new game modes, and 'special' eggs, etc. Hopefully you'll come back and give the new version a play when we release it.
A 'target reticule' is a pretty good idea, actually... I hadn't thought about it...
One of the improvements we have already added (but not released yet) is that if you hold down you pickup the egg you are standing on, instead of one next to you.

Thanks!

[Xin's Commission Campaign]

Move over Breath of the Wild, we got a brand-new exploration game here! Found myself having a lot of fun exploring the map, finding all the treasures and chuckling at all the various dialogues that pop-up. The game can be a little monotonous at times as the landscape can be quite barren and overly bumpy making treasures tricky to find, but the NPCs made it up enough for me. Speaking of that, it is pretty inside-jokey so I dunno if it has mass appeal, but hey, it's Newgrounds and I recognize most of the people mentioned, so hey, it's all good for me! Also to note is that the game is a little wonky in some aspects, such as the water acting oddly, the bike being able to go straight up mountains Skyrim style, and the treasure chest spreading the gems so far you need to pick em all up one-by-one, but I felt like they didn't detract, but rather just add to the goofy nature of the game (for example picking up the gems is fun thanks to the pitch-shifted noises). There were a couple of weird bugs here and there: Corey's commission lines were doubled up in a strange way with a line being written twice despite it being said only once, for example, but nothing too bad. Anyway, cheers for this!

plufmot responds:

Ahaha I'm glad you enjoyed it! This is definitely a game for the culture! Also the Skyrim bike thing was intentional. Was too much fun just being able to drive up anything. Keep it real!

[Pandora's Egg]

Pretty neat game! Certainly makes a solid first impression with the great graphics used throughout, but particularly in title screen/intro bit. It's a simple game, but I like that it is quite challenging and has a lot of cool level arrangements and enemies to work with and figure out how to get around. It was definitely a bit frustrating and clunky at times though: hit boxes felt way more wide than necessary leading to a few deaths that felt a bit unfair as I thought I dodged them, and I didn't like the way the patrol patterns of the knights were random, leading to inconsistent patterns in this game which needs consistency for its puzzle-like nature (at least that's how I feel about it). It's a bit glitchy at times as well: had a case where I fell off the edge of a platform and immediately moved to the side, lodging me into the platform where I shouldn't be able to be, and also a level that I beat despite my character being dead, where he just died while still passing the finish line, haha. Also it's just a preference thing, but I wish gliding could be achieved from a jump just by holding space, instead of having to press it twice, one to jump and another to glide. Overall I felt like I had a good time with it, despite the little bit of jank here or there.

JJGamez64 responds:

Many of these issues are already fixed, including an extra control scheme for left handed players, but I'm not allowed to update this build with the fixes till the Game Jam judging has ended :(

Edit: Game just received a big update that addresses many of these points. Give it a second look and if you're happy with it, tell us with an extra half or full star ;)

[Lines On Sides]

This one was a tricky one for me to review: it really didn't make the best first impression as it started off slow. Really slow. Waaaaaay too slow. Seriously, a huge amount of levels are dedicated to brain-dead puzzles that practically solve themselves: while the levels keep increasing in size, the difficulty or mechanics involved do not, making it feel pointless. I was so close to just quitting the game thinking this wasn't my jam, but then finally the game actually started to introduce some cool mechanics: being able to move around tiles to different locations, having to ensure there are matches for tile to tile instead of just worrying about the edges, and so on. I ended up really having a lot of fun! I like the minimalist design where you figure stuff out not by 'how to play' controller instructions, but intuition and signals the game gives off, and I love the satisfying subtle sounds as everything clicks into place. It gave me a real sudoku feel where you gotta really think ahead, as while a tile might seem good in one location, it actually fits elsewhere better. So yeah, bit of an odd egg where it's good, but takes way too long to actually get good.

Mandigondo responds:

Thanks for the feedback. I wrote down your observations and I will use them in future projects. :)

[Chikiana Jones and the Golden Eggs]

Seems like a decent concept that was pretty fun, but a little clunky and confusing with its execution to me. I definitely did like getting past all of the various traps and obstacles and then running back through a more challenging version of them: pretty cool stuff. There was some minor jank here and there with hitbox confusion and such, but for the most part it was fun.

The weirdness came to me with the toolboxes and bridge implementation. On one hand, I feel like I understand the idea is that you can strategically choose what bridges you want to build in order to skip some challenging parts of the level. However, for the most part you are given so many toolboxes so easily that it becomes not a choice, but a foregone conclusion that you can just skip huge parts of the game. I'd prefer if the toolboxes were either scraped altogether so as to make people experience the whole game, or to be either severely limited so you need to make a strategic choice of what bridge to build and what bridge to neglect, letting you only skip one part of the level over another. Additionally, you could make it so that the only way to get toolboxes is from challenging branches of the level: then you'd need to decide if it's worth the risk to go through an optional challenge for a toolbox to make your escape easier, or if you just need to get better at the required parts of the level and not skip them. Just feels like the concept wasn't fully thought out and executed in a positive way, at least to me personally.

Steventus responds:

Hey thanks for your detailed review on the gameplay. I've had hunches on the loose ends on the gameplay but I could never pinpoint on exactly what so thank you for verifying them for me.

The strategic choice of toolbox/bridges mechanic was something I wanted to explore but I wasn't able to explore with my limited level design skills. It is a critical skill that I should focus on more if I were to do more big-picture strategic kind of games.

Appreciate your thoughts alot!

[Sunnyside vs. the Eggies]

Pretty good game! Certainly very impressive from a visual standpoint: the title screen, cinematics, feedback from shooting, all the characters, the HUD and so on and so forth just ooze charm and really create this wonderfully goofy world.

Gameplay was a bit of a mixed bag: on one hand, there were a lot of interesting enemies to fight and the escalation of difficulty definitely hooked me, and there were some cool techniques you could pull off like shooting down during a jump to hover. But on the other hand, it did feel like it was a toss-up on whether the fight was going to be fun or not for each room: some of the rooms actually allowed for a lot of fun verticality with platforms and such, and the enemies were arranged in an interesting formation, but most of the time the rooms were very boring, flat, and cramped rooms with enemies just bunched together in a messy mass: no strategy, just shoot and pray they go down. There was also some confusion with corpses: I actually thought the enemies were jumping at me some times, not realizing that they were already dead and it was just their corpse falling about randomly (maybe consider greying out corpses or having them always fly backwards from the shot).

All in all, its shortcomings to me were quite understandable given that it is a game jam game, and I still did have a lot of fun playing this stylish game!

Stepford responds:

Thanks, FutureCop!

I definitely agree with your feedback and I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to review all these games!

[Cracked Up]

Nice and chill little game! It's a rather simple and basic one with most of the puzzles being easy to figure out, but I liked moving my jiggly body around and solving the various puzzles that came up with all the berry powers, and I felt like it did pretty good at introducing new novel bits as it went on, like having to bounce berry shots off of an angle to make a ricochet shot. It's a little bit lacking in some respects: I didn't like the bland way you just disappear and have some text pop-up when you die, for example, but I suppose it's understandable for a game jam. In the end, you just gotta love the fat lil' chicken and fat lil' fox wigglin' around, haha!

Komix responds:

lol yeah I just yesterday realized that we release the game without a death sound.
Hope you stay tuned for the steam version, that will have much more polish. And later levels of the game will surely add more challenge.

[Fairyland Datura: Egg]

Pretty funny adventure! The dialogue was a bit rough and tricky to understand at times (likely due to the usage of google translate as stated in the description) but I felt like I got the gist of it and found it very entertaining and goofy. Despite most of the game being just dialogue, I was nevertheless hooked as I liked seeing the various antics the hero got up to and the crazy tangents and twists and turns the story went off on. I also liked the way the game would pull the rug out from under you with some surprises like the sword fight with the child: I knew I shouldn't have pressed the button, haha! Anyway, looking forward to seeing the conclusion in the future!

Vonka responds:

Thank you, I will fix everything in the future, I will add it, and there will be a good translation into English)

[Wizard, Archer and Egg]

Hah, nice little adventure! While the main character controls weren't anything that special, being just a very simple spammy shooter (cmon, how you gonna make a bow without the ability to charge a shot for more damage or piercing?), I liked the goofy and charming story progression, as well as the unique subversion of upgrading your egg instead of your character. With all that, the game did a great job of keeping me hooked, and boy did I love how it all kept escalating to a great ending! I was a little disappointed that the egg ends up with the same build no matter what due to the way the upgrades get capped: would've loved if maybe certain builds that players go for end up screwing them over in the end when the final boss gets those powers, but I understand that you probably wanted it balanced so everyone gets a fair fight. Cheers for this!

WanZai responds:

Very insightful. In the beginning, I really wanted to make a different but challenging boss battle. It needs a lot of tests. I finally chose to make it more steady and fluent this time.

[Hen in the Foxhouse (Jam Version)]

Huh, bit of an odd egg. On one hand, it's got some interesting mechanics what with the limited ammo that trails behind you, some satisfying feedback for hitting foxes and the various obstacles scattered around, and some potential depth with the armored foxes that take multiple hits. But as it stands, the game feels directionless: I had no idea what the controls were, and I had no idea what I was doing or if there was even anything to do! I was getting points of shooting foxes, sure, but with the limited ammo and no clear direction I wasn't sure what the point was. I ended up making an interesting game for myself where I held down the right button and tried to see how far I could get, all while dodging foxes, trying to only shoot when necessary to conserve ammo: it was kind of fun...but that was just a game I made up myself! I'd really like if the game had, well, something interesting to it, like rules or an objective, as right now it just feels like a weird alpha/prototype: for all I know, maybe there was some sort of objective, but I didn't have any confidence in the game to think there was.

VerilyFine responds:

- First and most importantly, this is a jam game made quickly for the July Jam. So any seemingly unfinished parts are actually unfinished. There are so many ways to improve this, so I appreciate your feedback. I want to update the game later.
-There actually isn't limited ammo. There originally was, but managing ammo ruined the feeling of the game, taking it from 'rampaging', to 'careful'. I made it so the eggs represent how much x2 Fire Rate you have left.
-The directionless feeling is because I made the sandbox I had built into a game only a couple hours before the jam ended. There were no points or respawning until then, and they were quickly slapped on. The game has barely any progression or objectives because of this.