FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Codeine Cowboys [v2]]

Hmm, my initial impression of this game wasn't that great at the start. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept and everything and I think the gameplay is good once you get going. But it took me a long time to get used to it at first. The graphics are so gaudy and loud and you move so fast it's very difficult to tell what the hell is going on: I couldn't tell if I was invincible or being hit or where bullets were or where guns were on the floor because everything just got lost in this sea of glitchy graphics. Once my eyes adjusted to it as much as they could, I started having fun running and gunning, but it was still a bit frustrating as one slip and I could lose track of what's happening. If the graphics could just be cleaned up a bit more so things could be more readable, this game would be an absolute slam dunk for me!

MoeAnguish responds:

That's very fair. thanks for the review!

[Santa's Silent Night]

Pretty cool game! Has a lot of heart to it, the concept is neat and everything has a nice level of polish to it, especially with the escalation of challenges for each day. There are some frustrating aspects to it however. Throwing presents was very difficult because of the way it doesn't just drop it, but chucks it up firstly, adding a lot of unnatural time to the throw. That's fine, once you learn to roll with that, then you need to deal with your movement directing the angle of the throw. I can understand the logic behind making this a mechanic, since you think that it could help players direct shots a bit better, but I found it to be more of an annoyance than a help. In the later levels, where you need to move a lot to dodge things, I found myself constantly having my presents go off mark because they were being influenced by my movement. In the end, I wish the present throw was just consistent (but I can understand if this was done to make it more challenging, perhaps). Also, I found the laugh mechanic just a bit weird since it is so delayed from pressing the button: like a full second delay. Anyway, I still had a lot of fun despite my difficultes, so nice work.

KJScott responds:

That's good feedback, thank you. I had considered adding an option to enable/disable that mechanic. I'll add it to the drawing board again for a future update.

[FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN']

Pretty funky game! Certainly fun to play and very impressive with the stylish graphics and the way everything bops to the beat. Love all the countless little touches to the game, like the cool menu and the way the characters get frightened by lightning and such.

As a long time rhythm game player, however, there are some frustrations. I really want to see how well I'm hitting the notes and what my current combo is, but they are only shown for a moment on the girl in the background instead of the center of my note chart, so they are difficult to read (also the 1 looks like a 7 so the combo counter is odd to read in general as well). There's no results screen at the end either with any sort of grading or scoring so it's not easy to tell how to improve or how you're ranking: for example, how many misses, goods and sicks you got.

In general, as well, the note charts felt...very loosey goosey at times. It's difficult to explain but, this felt like a game where I unfortunately had to rely on my eyes instead of my ears, because the notes weren't directly correlated with the music consistently: sometimes they were, but other times not. With tons of songs in other games, I can close my eyes and still hit the notes because the arrows are aligned with the music. With this, however, if I were to close my eyes, I'd end up not hitting Sicks or straight up missing notes since they are misaligned. I dunno, maybe there's something else at play, and I understand that maybe I'm being unfair comparing it to things like Stepmania and DDR, but take it as a compliment that the game is cool enough that I want to.

EDIT: Weeks later and just wanted to note that in general, I'm loving a lot of the changes that have been made! Still feels a little tiny bit clunky in some respects, but overall I feel much more confident with the note charting and general play, and I love all of the new options and touches like the lore cutscenes for Senpai and Tankman and such (though they are so cool it does just make me wish we had them retroactively for everything else, haha, tough crowd I am huh). I definitely do think this game has a lot of heart, style and infectious fun to be had that easily overcomes my minor gripes from comparing it too more polished existing rhythm games. Well done once again and best of luck with future development!

also if it hasn't already been said, the music kicks major ass

ninjamuffin99 responds:

lov u futurecop

[The Flower Arrangement]

Had a lot of problems getting this game to run unfortunately. For some reason, if you let the text run to complete a page, and then go to the next page, the text won't appear for the page. What I had to do is hit a button to skip/make the text fill out the page, and then if I went to the next page, it would appear. It added a lot of stress to the run, especially since some pages are actually blank and I thought they just weren't loading, haha. Also, it was a bit clunky at times in other ways: for example, I tried to go back on a choice page and I got stuck on previous pages which the choice still being up for me to click, but not being able to go forward. Once I got used to the clunkiness, though, the story itself was quite charming and funny, especially since it had a lot of interesting interpretations of this kind type of theme and how spooky it can be, despite hunkiness. Art style was a bit odd at times with how it fluctuated between styles constantly (one second it's very beautiful, then suddenly it's a comic, then suddenly it's anime, then it goes back to beautiful art, haha), but eh, overall it was nice and got across what it needed.

waffrus responds:

Man. After I adding in looping music, it DID get a lot clunkier. I'm sorry it was such a pain to read. I added in the link to the game on my itch.io account bc it seems to work better there. I did notice that after running through the scenes once, they loaded better the 2nd time but... that's a real pain to have to do. I'll try tinkering around again, but I'm trying to mostly move on to the next project lol.

Thank you for your thoughtful review! I'm glad the story itself was enjoyable even if the shifting art style was a bit of a hit or miss. Tbh, I did consider keeping it all in the sort of painterly style... but then this would have taken even longer to release and I wasn't sure if some of more comedic scenes would have even worked with that style. Oh well, live and learn haha. Thanks again!

[International PixelArt Gallery 2020]

Very neat gallery; great to see many different artists all over the world. I felt like the navigation was a bit clunky however. There's always a bar at the bottom which can obscure some of the art: would prefer if the bar hides itself and pops up when you mouse close to it. Similarly, I wish I could get the artist to pop up if I would hover my mouse at the top. Hitting back/next at the bottom is a bit clunky and awkward: would prefer if you could just click on the screen anywhere to move to the next picture, or maybe click the sides of the screen to go back or forward (sometimes I think it does this but then doesn't for others?). Wish the res marker in the upper left would go away so I could just view the pieces without outside interference. There was also some clunky overlapping text and graphics in some locations, just giving it a bit of an unprofessional design, taking away from the ease of viewing the art. Still, hearts in the right place!

JamesChapp responds:

Thank you very much for the feedback.
All these suggestions I will take into account for the next update of the gallery.

Thank you very much for taking the time to share your suggestions.

P.S. don't forget to follow your favorite pixelart artists on your social media.
Greetings.

['Curse of the Sock']

Pretty cute game, but it was a bit choppy and weird for me so I hope I can give it some good feedback since it's a demo. Climbing on ladders was very frustrating at times: if you just hold up on the very first ladder in the game, you'll just fall right back down, as you need to kinda force yourself onto the platform with other movement. The standing melee attack is a bit annoying in how it forces you to stand still, makes you want to constantly use the air attack instead which feels better. You can mash the jump button to keep playing the jump sound even though you are already mid-air. The scythe ghost enemies felt really annoying to fight since they can get right into you and you force you into taking damage if you try to attack them since you can't knock them back with an attack effectively. Animations seemed a bit wonky at times: would have attacks be cancelled or have enemies I've killed since look like they're getting their attacks out and such. Controls flash away too fast in the beginning: I didn't even realize I had a duck because I didn't have time to read it all. There are some nice things already in the thing like how it seems like the hit box for the player attack does take into the account the arc of the swing, not just the final position of the sword. Hopefully this gets polished up for a full release as I think it could be cool!

Butzbo responds:

Always appreciate the more technical reviews, and you make some pretty good points!
>It's weird how long I wasn't aware of the 1st ladder issue, its kind of critical being the very first thing you do so I just updated it now.
>The 'standing attack' endlag was something I made a bit more intentionally at first for a slower pace of gameplay, but it hasn't been so well recieved so I'd have to look more into that.
>Usually with animations I'm used to fixing the ones that interrupt eachother (mostly with death triggers), but I had so many of them that eventually one of them slips away lol.
>Glad you mentioned that detail on arc hitbox! I hadn't done these kind of melee attacks in games before so it's great to hear that some parts are on a good direction.

Thanks Futurecop!

[Vampi 3D]

Pretty neat game, but a little clunky! Made it all the way thru and saved my cute goth gf. Game was generally quite fun to get through, and I liked using the bat powers to scout out areas and collect hard-to-reach items and such. Had a few stumbles along the way though that kinda hurt my experience. First, the game was way too dark: you eventually get a torch, sure, but for a long portion I needed to turn the lights off in my room and even then it was difficult for me to tell how to get around. Speaking of the torch, I was lost for a long time because I had no idea that the torch was a pickupable item: might've helped to make it more obvious. I also don't think the 3d graphics use the cool clay graphics you guys used to the fullest effect: just felt very drab and generic for the most part, with the only charming parts being the characters you rarely get to see. 3d graphics were very glitchy as well: prison bars would clip through my hands weirdly and the lighting was very glitchy and made navigation confusing. Hopefully you guys can nail it outta the park next time with this just being a 3d experiment for now as I usually love your style!

Guy-Unger responds:

fair points. On my monitor it's not a problem at all but a lot of people have issues with it, it just needs a brightness slider.
The levels could definitely be a lot more interesting, right now it's more of a blockout with a couple of props. But like you say, it's kind of a first test for us to work in 3D. Thanks for the review!

[The Faces of the Forest]

Pretty awesome game! Really sweet and interesting story that both endears you to the characters in the world and gets you pumped to smash the system! Thought the game did a nice job at portraying the peaceful nature of the story in its gameplay mechanics, by, for example, only being able to stun bugs instead of killing them. Loved the whole mask system and the way you can slow down time to draw the sigils and the way it changes the music: felt so cool to get better and better at drawing them quickly and gave me a real Trauma Center/Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow vibe. Some parts of it were a little bit of a nuisance: if you jump on a bug and a bug is right next to them, you'll get hit by that bug despite the fact that you shouldn't have ever been in danger, the world is huge and locations can get a little samey without any significant landmarks to guide you, and I also felt like sometimes the game just went overboard a bit as I couldn't take two steps without being forced into drawing another sigil, haha, maybe a few more normal platforming parts could be needed.

DavidMarchand responds:

Thanks! Fair points all around. I saw you play this the other day! https://youtu.be/NNLQIwDowlg?t=17710 The whole team was really happy to see that. I'll eventually get around to fixing the typos you pointed out and maybe adding a blinking effect for when enemies are about to recover, since all of those are pretty easy changes.

[Curly's Chase]

Hmm, between two minds on this game! On one hand, it's a very cute game, and it is kinda fun and challenging to puzzle out the ideal route since you need to compensate for your turns in advance. But on the other hand, the controls were quite difficult any annoying to get used to at times: there were a lot of turns where I was just stuck and I wasn't sure if it was the games fault or if I was just confused on what the heck to do. While most of the time the turns were smooth and nice, other times the turns just felt clunky, and also the teleport was unreliable on how far it'd send you back, and sometimes it'd spawn me inside a cloud block for some reason! Feels like the teleport was maybe just a cheat, an easy way out of not fully designing the movement properly: for example, the turning might've benefited from other aspects being redone to compensate, like zooming out the camera to give you more room to compensate, or being able to shift half-way to do an s-curve and such. Basically, a mixed bag, but a very interesting experiment!

aeveis responds:

Thanks for the feedback, some good observations there!