FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sub-Uber-Marine]

Cute, solid little game! Definitely a great take on Crazy Taxi: feels good to sub around and try and balance speed and smoothness to get bonuses, and I like that it includes all of the various different modes like the traditional mode where you get time for fares, or the fixed mode where you're just seeing how many you can get in a set time limit, and so on. Everything felt nice and it had a nice bit of polish and pizazz to it.

For the most part, I had a good time, so most of my complaints are just minor nitpicks. The first one was that, while the map isn't anything super maze-like and you can learn it quickly, it can be frustrating at first that the camera is so close and there is no map, meaning you could be following the sonar straightforwardly and not realize you had to go around something else first to path correctly and just get stuck in dead ends. Second, the apps felt a bit superfluous as well since they're already automatically displayed when you drop off a fare so why even bother giving them a button: felt like the app should've had a better use, like locating fares which can be frustrating to find blindly. And finally, for a sub game, I do think it would be cool if the game was a bit more physics-based with a lot of momentum and tank-turning and such that would make you feel like you're in water in a huge sub: instead the game has very simple cartoony straightforward physics which makes it a bit bland and too basic, nothing to really get skillful at manuevering.

Extar responds:

I initially wanted the app to be a lot more involved, like you say for locating fares or something like that, but as the game took shape it ended up going more in an arcade direction. So the app basically got relegated to an occasional extension of the HUD with fun little stats on rather than something that you interacted with.

The handling of the submarine is an interesting one, it started off with much more momentum and slower acceleration which made the handling of it more weighty and realistic I suppose. Gradually, every slight adjustment ended in the submarine being made faster and probably less submariney. I like the idea of heavier sub handling but yeah that wouldn't line up with the arcadeyness elsewhere in the game :)

I always look forward to hearing what you think, thanks for playing!

[Ringwaves]

Wow, this one really surprised me! It ain't winning any awards for beauty or anything like that, and the concept ain't exactly deep or unique, but something about the game was very addicting, satisfying and just plain ol' fun! A good example of solid level design and core game feel winning out in the end over pretty graphics (though it did still have some nice effects for death and the shockwaves, for example).

If there were any issues I had with the game, it's that I did feel like there was some confusion over how the shockwaves work. Because the shockwave graphic shows the shockwave fading away as it gets larger, a player could easily think that the shockwave loses strength over time. However, it seems like the shockwave, no matter when it hits during its expansion, will always hit the ball with the same initial strength. I didn't mind it when I realized this fact, and I liked the consistency, but there was some initial confusion where I thought I could tweak the power by distancing the shockwave.

If there was something I felt was missing from the game, it mighta been a score system like golf where you get more stars or something if you win a level with minimum strokes, or shockwaves in this case. But I had fun trying to go for minimal strokes on my own terms, haha.

Jordio94 responds:

Glad you had a satisfying experience! Yeah, the graphics certainly didn't get priority, but at least the gameplay kept you hooked.

I've got mixed feelings about having the shockwave lose strength over time. It would make it feel more natural, but it could also make it harder. The player would have to charge the shockwave for exactly the right amount of time AND have it at exactly the right distance. But as it is now, I agree having the shockwave fade is a bit misleading.

I very nearly did add stars, and I still might in the future. It'd definitely be a more rewarding experience for passing levels with minimum shockwaves.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Spiders in my Attic!]

Not too shabby for a short bit of fun. It's a solid little score attack game with a good amount of juice added to it: I liked the way health was represented by my player character getting more visually damaged, and I liked the various effects like blood splatters, spiders skittering about, and the trippy power-up. It ain't the greatest for long-term appeal or anything, but it's good for a couple of rounds. Looking forward to STD!

The music is definitely what I hear when I go up to my attic full of spiders every night. It captures the sense of panic, their skittering little legs.

LeviRamirez responds:

did you like cool song?

[The Last Dog]

An interesting game, but a bit too short for the emotional story to make any impact.

The standout aspect for me with this game was the combat: while pong gameplay was never my jam, I did appreciate the cleverness in designing such a gameplay system that was not only fun and challenging to get good at using, but subtly reinforces the story as well by showcasing the cooperative relationship between the boy/man and their dog. Bosses were fun and interesting to fight in an Undertale-esque way, and the final boss was brutal and standout as a setpiece.

Outside of the combat, however, the story felt very overly sappy and hackneyed, and wasn't presented very well: rather than making me emotional, it more made me laugh at how much it was trying to speedrun through the whole thing, which made it feel all the more flat. I felt way more attached to my dog through combat than any of the cookie-cutter dialogue and cutscenes.

Definitely a good attempt that could be great if it just had more meat on its bones, more time to get the emotional connection it is going for.

Stepford responds:

Thanks for taking the time to play and write out this review. And yeah, you are right! The story elements were a bit rushed for the sake of getting it done for school. I hope you had fun goin through it - stereotypical story clichés aside!!

[Pet the capdog!]

Cute game, and maybe I'm being silly for taking it too seriously, but I found the patting in this to be mediocre.

It certainly has a good foundation, being a game that allows you to pat a dog: that deserves a lot of praise straight up. Furthermore, I found the use of mouse controls very clever, as it allows you to fine-tune and customize your patting in a very analog, granular way: allows for a lot of tactile feedback, as it were, and it felt satisfying to see the dog squash and stretch to your hand.

But overall I found the game a bit unsatisfying. For one, I really disliked the way the hand was so sensitive, warping and glitching to absolutely nauseating proportions with the slightest movement. It's as if you heard that every indie game needs squash and stretch animations but went way overkill on it. Second, I was insulted that I could not do a side-to-side pat: what is up with this discrimination where only up-down pats are allowed? And what about chin scratches or belly rubs? Maybe you could argue that those don't count as pats, but even then, why are we not allowed to pat diagonally? Being stuck to the rigid dimensions of only straight up and straight down pats is so stifling and thwarts the sense of feedback. Basically, I want something like the Mario 64 face warping, except for dog patting.

If you're gonna make a patting simulator, I don't want you to be lazy and make something this overly simple, safe behind the shield of treating it like a gag: I want the best patting simulator, damn you, so put some effort into it! The world deserves it!

tscoct responds:

the game's open source, go ahead and add new types of petting if you want

[Nightmare Arena V:1.7.4]

Pretty impressive from a tech-demo perspective, but I found the game a bit dry and boring at the moment. Again, lord knows I couldn't make an online game like this with servers and all that hoo-hah, so kudos on getting that all setup. But looking past that and playing the game, I just found it to be quite boring.

Don't get me wrong, I did think there were some nice touches like the emote system, and there was an attempt to make some cool combat through various levels and an assortment of guns and power-ups. But in the end, combat always just felt like it came down to just shooting at each other in really simple, unexciting ways: there weren't really any fun abilities you could use to outskill your opponents in clever ways, no satisfying explosions or feedback for gunfire, and the levels didn't have any cool environmental hazards, setpieces or unique charm to them. Felt like the game was overall very janky as well, with weird staticy sound effects and such.

It does look like you are still updating it, however, so maybe it'll keep getting improved upon and I'm jumping the gun: best of luck!

GlarkerGames responds:

Thanks for the feedback! :D It helps a lot ill try and make the game more exciting and unique. Im working on new unique guns. I think my game needs a good revamp.

['Tower of the Missing Sock' - DEMO]

Cute game, but a little bit bland once you get past those cute graphics and play for awhile.

Don't get me wrong, I think the game is quite cute and endearing with the style and animations, and the game does have some really neat aspects like the boss fight at the end, which was a definite highlight for me.

But in the end, it felt like the game was merely decent, being a very simple zelda-esque game without any interesting gadgets or puzzles or setpieces: just incredibly basic combat against the same enemies over and over, and the combat was very frustrating at times due to the sluggish movement and attacks coupled with the enemies not being stunned from your attacks. Also, this is a nitpick, but I didn't like the lazy animation done for the door/stairs transitions: just looked unnatural, especially for the stairs in particular since it didn't have the shadows to try and hide it.

The goofy story and style was enough to hook me, and I'm glad since I got to fight that neat boss at the end, but it did feel like this could've used more meat on its bones, if you'll pardon the pun. As a side note, it is cool to see you experiment with all these different genres!

Butzbo responds:

That's a fair point, I took this one as a bit more of a challenge of making a game of this kind, so in terms of gameplay there's nothing I could consider particularly new. Still great to hear that other bits were fun including the boss fight, I'd like to keep going trying out other genres and hopefully adding something new next time ;) Thanks man!

[Grandpa's Minigun]

Fun little game! Loved the goofy story and concept to it, and had a blast mowing down enemies like I was mowing the lawn. All the little touches to the game were great: the feedback from blasting enemies and the corpses they left behind, the little speech bubbles, the way the music amped up when a wave transition happened: really cool stuff. I especially liked the element of having your attack slow you down significantly, as well as turning being very slow: really sold the weight of that minigun and added a cool strategic element of choosing when to attack and when to run. In that regard, I almost feel like you shouldn't have had the dodge roll since it ignores the weight of the gun, but eh, I'll allow it since it was fun, haha.

There were definitely some minor nitpicks to be had: for one, I have no idea what the heck that minigame all of a sudden was, two, it was a bit difficult to tell when I would be hit and when I wouldn't since the hitboxes could be a bit vague (is the minigun and the crown part of my hitbox? is it just one of the kids, and if so, which one? etc), three, it was a little annoying how difficult it was to pick up souls, and four, the game did get a little boring in that I found you could easily just get in a circling pattern to avoid attacks, slowing the action down. Also I was hoping for more gibbing variety: little disappointing that the enemies didn't have more variety in corpses and splatters and such, but as said, that's pretty minor.

jefvel responds:

Thanks for the thorough review! I agree that the dash might not fit in super well with the heaviness of the gun, but it was so fun so I left it in. I had planned to have it more like a drifting mechanic, so you could sort of swing the minigun, and the crown would act as a morning star club, but that might have made the controls a bit too difficult.

Yeah, the minigame comes in super quickly, it was tricky to balance between having a flow that matches the music and giving the user enough time to understand what's happening.

Exploding monsters with a ton of gibs was something I wanted to have too, but didn't have time for adding, maybe they'll be in a future game. And yeah, both siblings have a hitbox, a circle around their feet, it's not very clear at all, didn't think about that. The splatter system was written very haphazardly, which made adding variety to it pretty tricky, but it's something I might improve on in future games :)

[Crush the Industry Demo]

Wow, pretty impressive demo! You frontloaded by saying it wasn't gonna be polished or anything, but I felt like what was shown was already quite polished: animations and graphics were very lively and cute, combat system was deep with a lot of interesting strategy and characters to choose from, and so on and so forth. All around it just felt very well put-together, with the thing I liked the most about the game was how intuitive the interface was: while I felt like the initial tutorial was a bit too much to grasp at first since it just dumps everything on you at once and I feared I was gonna miss something, it was great at how helpful the game was in letting you hover your mouse over practically anything to get a tooltip to see what it was. There were some small things that could be fixed up here and there, such as how sometimes the effects from combat would happen too fast for me to realize the full effects that just occurred, but from seeing how it's already going I think you're on a good path. Looking forward to the full version!

As a silly side note, I hope you're having a good time developing and that the whole toxicity aspect is just for fun and not to be used as a shield against criticism or anything like that: it can be rough out there but I hope you're able to stay with a healthy outlook and sort out the good feedback from the bad. I just don't want this to be a "oh you didn't love my game? whatever, you're just a hater" thing instead of realizing what might seem likely overly critical feedback deep down is trying to be helpful...eh, I'm overthinking things.

CognogginGames responds:

Thank you! And I'm having fun with it. I wouldn't want a shield against constructive criticism -- it is essential to helping me improve the game. The character core skills update that just went live was something that I was motivated to do after reading feedback here.

[Cactu-Sama 2]

Nice to see a sequel to Cactu-Sama as I liked my time with that and also enjoyed my time with this! All-round it was a cute little game with some great challenges that mostly relied on a nice 'gotcha' system where you need to avoid taking what seems like the obvious route, as it is usually a trap.

If I were to have any complaints, there would just be a few minor nitpicks. For one, I found the game to be a bit more muted and less peppy that the previous one: movement felt a little more stiff, sound effects were more quiet, and events that used to have a bit more fanfare like completing a level were unfortunately silent now. I also felt like the story setup was a little weak: I mean, it is a little amusing to just see the balloon drift away and read "oh noes" but it did just kind of confuse me since we don't even see what cactu is doing: is it his balloon? Is he sad? Where is he? Is he even chasing after the balloon? You might say of course, it's obvious he's chasing after it, but every level just has us picking up puzzle pieces for some reason, so what the heck is he doing? Haha, anyway, still a cute game.

Diemorth responds:

I'm glad you liked this new version of the game! :D

You brought up a lot of relevant points, the game is actually a little quieter. I really tried to prepare the game for the story, but we ended up not developing it much, the story ends up looping and I think it can be a good start to have that defined in the case of a sequel. They are certainly points that we will pay attention to.

Thank you for the game compliments and for playing! :D