FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Claret]

Argh, I feel like I really like this one, but I admit I felt a bit conflicted! While it had a bit of a rough start where I didn't understand how the game worked, it didn't take too long for the game design to clue me in to the mechanics through the way the levels were designed. From there, the game whisked me away with its slick and smooth gameplay and I was having a blast! The graphics, while minimalist, I felt did a great job at adding a lot of punch and pizazz to the game with the way the character bends as they move and shakes as they get damaged, and the special effects for collecting objects and such. I definitely think the game concept and core is solid, but the execution felt a little messy to me. The kicker for me was the level design: while a lot of the levels felt well designed and fun to play, the difficulty curve was all over the place with tons of super hard spikes inbetween super easy levels. Plenty of the mechanics that got introduced, like the turrets, just felt super annoying to fight against. While I did get frustrated and stop halfway, I do feel like I want to revisit the game just because of how good it felt to play in general, so well done in that regard!

SlickRamen responds:

Thanks! Levels were a bit rushed because I just wanted to get the game out, so I'll admit I could've spent a bit more time refining the mechanics and stuff, but I'm glad you had fun.

[Highschool Bathroom Simulator]

Funny little game! While it doesn't really have any major challenge or interactivity to it beyond just moving forward and talking to people, I nevertheless found myself getting addicted to it due to the way it kept the novelty and pacing going with all sorts of events. Love all the various gags in the game, both the direct ones (such as through dialogue) and the more subtle ones, like the girl's bathroom door being all fancy-like.

Was happy to see that, while bathrooms have changed in some ways from my time with vaping and the like, some things never change, such as people thinking axe body spray is a replacement for hygiene. God, you'd think the bathroom had been raided by SWAT with the way kids would gas it up with axe body spray back in my day...anyway, thanks for the trip!

(btw it's principal not principle, but whatev, it's probably part of the humor)

BobbyBurt responds:

haha yeah, part of the humor...

[The Posh Show]

Cool little warioware-esque minigame! I thought that both the minigames and the concept/presentation had a lot of goofy charm to it, and I had a blast figuring out the mechanics to each of them, all while laughing at the various gags inbetween. Though having said that, it definitely had a few issues: for one, it felt like the quality was a bit uneven where some games had funny failure conditions (the monocle guy bugging out) while others just played a sound and went red with nothing special. I also felt like the hat tipping game became impossible to complete when the difficulty gets harder as you're not given enough time to tip for the third person, while the toasting game actually became easier the harder it got since you have more chances for the knife to pass the glass. But the only real complaint I had was that there just wasn't enough meat on this game's bones with a mere 4 minigames, but hopefully you can take that as a compliment that I just wanted more and more from this charming little game!

AndrewDavidJ responds:

Hey, thanks for the review!

I've been collecting a lot of great feedback since this game's initial release (I made this in two days for a game jam :P) and I plan on implementing some of those notes into the game's next update! The failure state thing hasn't been mentioned before, so thanks for that!

Hopefully I can get an update done soon with all these improvements as well as more mini-games!

[Cookin' Daddy]

This was a real odd duck for me. Initial impressions of the game were very strong: the presentation, UI, music and so on gave off a very professional, charming and polished feel, especially the very fancy title screen that zoomed around the 3d environment for every option you selected. It looked like so much effort was put into everything that made me really excited to see what the gameplay was like!

And then I played the game and I was like...was that it? I mean, it isn't bad or anything, the game is still alright, good even, and I liked the charming voice lines that came up and such, but it definitely was a bit underwhelming and short-lived. I was expecting some sort of level-based game like Cook Serve Delicious or Cooking Mama or something with a bunch of content and mechanics, but what I got was just a single score attack level for a very basic rhythm(?) game.

And to be fair, I would've been fine with that single level, except it doesn't have anything really exciting or compelling about it: where are the streak counters, the point multipliers, the satisfying sounds and explosions that increase in intensity as you rack up a big combo? What is the significance of the different foods that pop-up, as well as the different tiles? Where's the story or the multiple victory screens displaying the food we've cooked for our family, where it looks better based on how high our score was? What happens when I mess up: is there a combo point multiplier that I lose or is it just a time delay until I can continue? I got so confused at times where I felt like I did so much better than before, only to get a way worse score: perhaps this game does have some complex score mechanics, but it didn't do anything to communicate those.

Pardon the pun, but at the moment this felt a bit underbaked, or like a good-looking apple that's hollow inside: it felt like all the effort went into making everything surrounding the game look good, but nothing was done except the bare minimum to the game itself. I would love to see an updated version of this though since it seems liked you've got a good team going and this has a lot of potential that I'd hate to see go to waste!

ShycoticBunni responds:

Thank you for your very in depth comment! You brought up some very solid points here, and I vibe the most with your comments about the differing food tiles and the addition of extra juiciness via tile streaks and point multipliers! I'm gonna snap this comment up and present it with the team and see how they feel about this as well. :)
I'm glad you enjoyed Cooking Daddy nonetheless and thank you for your feedback, dude!

[Gal-Nin]

Hmm, for me I felt like the game has a pretty cool concept, but didn't quite get its execution off in a satisfying manner. Without a tutorial or anything, it took me awhile to even figure out what was going on. I started off by just utilizing melee attacks, which were surprisingly satisfying to use due to the cool hitfreeze on contact, but also a bit annoying since enemies were so spongy that it took forever to take them down.

Eventually I figured out what was happening: it looks like you've got this system where you throw your shuriken into an enemy and then shoot elemental balls at them, where you want to pick an opposing element to do bonus damage (and in between that you melee to build up a bar so you can keep at it). That's actually pretty cool in my opinion, but everything else about the game kind of compromised that design. Not only was it really hard to grasp the system at first, you aren't even allowed to experience it at its fullest until you pick up all the scrolls (and once you pick up the scrolls, you're technically done and can race to the ending, so what's the point?) Enemies felt way too spongy and way too crowded in number that honestly I wanted to avoid combat since it was such a drag and you could only shuriken one enemy at a time.

I definitely think this elemental concept could work and it could be fun, but the rest of the design needs to synergize with it. For me, the ideal would be to give us all the scrolls quickly so we can engage with the combat and weaknesses in full: then take us through some combat arenas that lock us in and make us engage against some cool enemy formations, where you try and tweak the number of enemies and their amount of health and so on to create more satisfyingly paced fights instead of the haphazard crowds that I just ran past in the game currently. Definitely a lot of potential here!

fxydev responds:

I've made some changes based on your feedback and updated the game. Putting the scrolls closer to the player's path could be interesting so I'll definitely revisit that in the future. I softened up all the enemies and put together a new level so hopefully you give it a shot sometime. Thanks for all that feedback.

[BLOOD MOON]

Hmm, it definitely had me at the start, but then lost me hard unfortunately. I liked the presentation and concept of the game, the combat was a bit brainless and mashy but satisfying nonetheless, the hovering inventory mechanic seemed interesting, and so on. Seemed good! But then...that was all it had. I tried going through several more levels after beating the first, but it never seemed to evolve beyond that initial first level: in fact, sometimes it seemed to devolve by requiring way less resources, so little in fact that I could finish a house before enemies could even spawn! It really weirded me out that it just kept looping without any sense of progression: I seriously thought the game was bugged out in some way and had me stuck in purgatory, haha.

Overall it definitely feels like the game has potential, but its design just felt so confused to me. Why do the levels keep looping with random up-and-down requirements instead of increasing in difficulty by requiring more materials and more structures and such? Why are the enemies so braindead and lacking in variety or escalation as the day goes on, since coupled with the fact that I can attack so fast without getting tired it makes it so easy to just form an impenetrable shield of slashes and never get hurt? Why does it wait so long for enemies to spawn when a level starts when the enemies are what makes it exciting? Why does it take so long for the inventory to burden the player in any significant way when it could be used to make some exciting risky plays (do I go back now or do I risk getting everything for a single trip)? Why isn't the orbiting inventory used in some interesting way, like maybe becoming a shield that can get knocked away, or becoming throwables to take out enemies, so you need to re-pick items up? And so on and so forth. For me, it felt like an ok prototype, but didn't flesh out the design well enough for what it's core conceit should be.

Stepford responds:

The game was a little school prototype between Plufmot and I that we decided to upload to Newgrounds. It wasn't meant to be anything special, but somebody decided it deserves frontpage. 😅

[Monitor Maze]

Maybe I'm being unfair, but I felt like this game's execution was a bit strange. With the game's theme centered around hacking and monitors, and with enemies with visibility mechanics, I really felt like it was going to be a stealth game where you try and avoid enemy contact. You know, you try and rearrange monitors in a way that you can either avoid or lure enemies away in clever ways, like trapping them into a monitor that you shove to a corner as you collect the keys. But with the melee slash, there's no need for any clever strategy: you can easily go through every level with the same strategy of mindlessly collecting keys, easily slashing any of the slow-moving non-threatening enemies. The levels might get bigger in terms of monitors on-screen, but they never advance in any meaningful way. I actually tried playing the game a few times pretending I didn't have the slash and had a good time! Well anyway, perhaps I'm being unfair judging the game on what I think it should've been. As much as I had gripes on how overly simplistic the game was, I still did think it had solid presentation and a good aesthetic, and still had a decently fun time making my way through.

(oh yeah and there is a slight bug where if you stand inside an enemy, an enemy can only hurt you once since it seems they are coded to only hurt on initial collision, but not if you remain within collision. i've also had some slight bugs where enemies ignore walls, mostly after a quick monitor switch)

kypello responds:

Thank you! Yeah I think you're right, it definitely is too straightforward with being able to kill enemies so easily.

I guess I was so focused on making the game that was in my head (which wasn't really a stealth game), that I didn't notice when the mechanics I had created would be more interesting for a stealth game. That and, I was worried it would be too challenging without the ability to attack, but that doesn't seem to be the case as you and a few others have said it works better that way.

Thank you for playing and for the feedback!

[Coming Back]

Decent horror game! Definitely had some solid spooks to it: I liked the way you cleverly used the special effects to blur crucial information from readability, and the chase scene and such were neat set pieces. I also appreciated the multiple endings as a nice hidden touch. Overall, though, I did feel like the game was a bit goofy which did kill the horror aspect: it was just so short and simplistic in both graphics and story it was difficult for me to take seriously and get immersed. The goofy way my character walks around, the speech bubbles with very plain text that doesn't even change to show other people talking, the cliche-ridden story, etc. I do like it when games are short and sweet, but I felt like I was speedrunning this game with how fast it went through all the plot elements so bluntly, haha! Could definitely be helped with some more polish to the presentation and maybe some more interesting story elements, but still, it's a good attempt!

Primajin responds:

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate you taking time to write your honest opinion!

To be entirely honest I just don't agree with some of it, it is super short no doubt but that was deliberate and the same goes for the very simple but stylised artwork, I really like how it looks and feels personally and love how the atmosphere turned out, the story is somewhat cliche I guess but it's also not as simple as "angry ghost chasing ex who murdered her" it was more meant to be about people feeling trapped in their own life, her for hanging on to a broken relationship because she's made a life with him and him for not accepting the guilt of what he did and blaming her instead, this is why he gets trapped forever in the alternate ending if he doesn't accept what he did.

Thanks though, I do appreciate good feedback!

[As one against our end]

Bit of a mixed bag for me! I like the whole concept of building up your party, strategizing an ideal formation, and dealing with the issues that the geometry brings in having to improvise new formations as you move through it all, among other things. Quite the goofy adventure with a lot of interesting characters to deal with!

But on the other hand, it felt like it was just really weird to play. I kept expecting to attack immediately when I cross my targets over something instead of having to wait an extra turn, and I keep losing track of everything as my targets flip-flop as I turn around and there's so much overlap. Considering the theme as well, I found it odd that you could totally leave behind party members as they go off-screen, and you only need one party member to reach the end gate instead of requiring to gather them all up. In general, the game felt strangely executed to me and unrealized, like it was just really haphazardly designed with the bare minimum, leaving it up to RNG to do all the heavy-lifting, instead of designing interesting levels with cool enemy formations and clever geometry obstacles to wiggle your party through. Part of me wants it to be more like a puzzle game, almost like a Sokoban game or something where your party members can be both helpers and obstacles to your progress, but maybe that's me wanting it to be something it's not.

I guess I was a little confused, and maybe I'm being unfair. It's like I was at odds with myself: part of me felt like it could work if I was just patient and took the time to keep rearranging my party into optimal formations by running into walls and such, but another part of me just felt like the game was too chaotic, difficult to parse, and annoying that I just gave up and went with a more reckless approach where I kept pushing forward and operating off instinct (which worked for awhile but eventually led to my death). Maybe it's just not my cup of tea at the end of the day. Still, quite the interesting one that I'll most likely go back to and give it another go, despite my gripes and confusion.

adriendittrick responds:

thanks for the well thought out review!
The RNG does do a lot of the heavy lifting and I really didn't design this as a puzzle game, more as a roguelike with a core movement premise.

I initially wanted this to be a game about interesting formations but really it became a game about levelling up and growing with various characters hhaving to micro manage them all!