FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[First Job: Mars Power Industries]

Very cool puzzler, and an interesting remix on the original Mars Power Industries game. I like the new mechanics of absorbing crystals into the homes and then having quotas to build certain tiers based on that. As usual, the levels had a great sense of pacing and design as it introduced all sorts of tutorials and new challenges intuitively, all wrapped in a wonderfully professional design. It was around maybe year 10-ish or so that it did get a little bit repetitive in terms of pacing: it was still doing alright and it was introducing some neat concepts like the land shifter devices, but I dunno, something about the game just screams for a bigger picture to get the player invested/hooked or something. I mean, the whole concept of building homes on Mars could make for an awesome narrative about pulling together and surviving for the sake of mankind so that we can start a new life. The move from the previous game's industrial buildings to now homes could really make it even more emotional since it's transitioning from the initial terraforming to now be about families coming to Mars: maybe each level shows you the names of families that move in and so on, just little quips and stories about them. Maybe it could even get a bit political or dramatic as the game goes on with housing planning mechanics fostering inequality in regards to the game quotas that allow some houses to get more crystals than others: maybe there are multiple ways to meet quota with a puzzle where the a harder more hidden solution satisfies families more than just coldly meeting quota, like a bonus objective to not wastefully upgrade a house to 4 when 3 will do, etc. I dunno, take it as a compliment that the real polished and slick design to the game as well as the chill atmosphere and music just makes me want even more in it to get players really invested; think something like Frostpunk, if you've played it. Anyway, I still had a great time, so keep up the great work!

Rarykos responds:

Thank you very much! Oh, these are very interesting thoughts! It would be really cool to make something like Frostpunk, thanks for the awesome tips. I'm a fan of these dramatic-strategy games, but I didn't think about Mars in that way. Yeah, very cool ideas! I'm really happy you enjoyed it, and that you cared to play it. It's nice to see you again, thanks!

[Picowars]

Pretty cool recreation of Advance Wars! It's not my favorite type of game (I never get far in these type of games when they start to turn way too challenging, haha) but it seemed fairly well put-together and impressive. However, I feel like the game is missing a lot of quality of life which is necessary for people who aren't familiar with Advance Wars (especially since it's not 100% guaranteed that the game will work exactly the same way even if you are familiar). I know it's a fan-game, so you could argue that people should expect to be familiar with the game and not need a tutorial, but even taking that into consideration, the game could really use a way to see a unit's info to figure out what are their properties and strengths, and its missing crucial HUD read-outs like range-targetting for artillery and projected damage for when you do an attack, and so on. It's probably difficult to put all that into a pico-8 game, but it's absolutely necessary for this to work. Still, it's a very good core game you got here nonetheless.

lambdanaut responds:

Thanks for the review! I agree it's missing some pieces, and a tutorial would really be ideal.
Range is there for ranged units though. Hold 'X' on them to see their range :)

[[BTNverse] Prep-school horrors]

This is a really, really, strange game, and I of course mean that in the best way, haha. Love the really weird environment, kooky battles, and mysterious nature that permeates it which shocks and disturbs you constantly. Who says that all horror games need to be these first-person low-light no-weapon run-away games? This does a great job at building an unsettling and mysterious atmosphere, while simultaneously also being action-packed and fun with its great soundtrack and weird combat. The obtuse mechanics can be a bit of a double-edged sword at times: while its fun to get lost in the bizarreness and try to piece together what the heck you're even doing, some of the weirdness can be frustrating to figure out. For example, the pathfinding of your allies can be really, really bad, making you back-track to try to keep them all together or to make them pick up weapons (thankfully though, it seems that the game assembles all of them for a fight no matter what, so why even have them wandering around and getting lost instead of just putting them in your pocket like other RPGs if it just confuses you in the end?) The combat can also fluctuate between challenging and fun, way too erratic and unpredictable to realistically fight, to just braindead if you have a bunch of allies that just annihilate the enemy before it can even show you its moves. Basically, the game is a really crazy game, which makes it very interesting as an experience, but it sometimes works against itself with how crazy it can be, haha! Made it to ending 1/8 (lost the engineering headmaster) and will try and see if I can go for the others!

adriendittrick responds:

Thanks a lot for this thoughtful review, and I'm glad you had fun in my little existential dread of a universe :)

[Cerbirds]

A cute goofy game from an art and presentation perspective, but kinda lacking in gameplay for me. The game just has a really janky feel to it, and I'm not talking about the cute way the birds bob up and down, which is adorable. Moving around was really odd and bumping into stuff was nauseating with the way it jerks the camera and player around: ramps cause all sorts of weird jank to happen where you'll be suddenly falling or sliding down. The hitboxes are all over the place as well: birds differ in size so sometimes switching in certain places gets you stuck and breaks the game. The powers didn't seem very creative either: most of the time you just switch to the bird that fixes the obstacle right in front of you and that's it. They do have some hidden powers, like gliding, but I was hoping the level to have more challenges that require you to use the birds in ways you might not think of immediately. I think there's a decent core here, and the idea of switching between birds for powers is novel, but the game needs a lot of smoothing to help reduce the glitchiness of it as well as some extra meat on its bones to become something great.

DantonSlip responds:

Thanks for that really complete feedback! It's always nice to have those ones!

This was my first gamejam game in solo and I was afraid to think too big and since I didn't knew my engine very well, I wanted to keep things simple at first, to have things working (which is, as you can see, more or less achieved but imagine if I had made a bigger game hahahaa) and have some basis to work on later. : ) I'm glad that I had such feedbacks, it helps me to point out things that weren't that well (even in a that small project) and seeing some people playing the game gave me lot of informations of how to make Cerbirds more comprehensible.

I'm currently working on a more complete version. First of all, I enhanced the colliders in order to not frustrate the player. I have some little enhancement to do in a core code side to clean up everything and solve some little hiccups that can be annoying. I also have multiple ideas to make those mechanics used in a better way (which will end up to some puzzles solving by using birds abilities) and a real level design.

Thanks again for your feedback, I really appreciate it!

[Lost In Dungeon]

Pretty cool game: deceptively simple with a little twist at the end! The story twist certainly elevates what would be a fairly basic game without much to it into something interesting, but just like how I think the game didn't have enough content to it, I don't think the twist had enough on it either. I actually think the torch throwing mechanic could be pretty cool at making some great dungeon crawling experiences, but you only ever really get to play with it for a very short time and nothing uses it very creatively: really most of the challenges can actually be solved by jumping with the torch and restarting when you die instead of throwing the torch. The best challenges are hidden behind the twist, like the spike fall, but even those aren't that hard or fun. It was kinda fun to figure out the trick behind the game, and there was some funny dialogue and such, but in the end I felt a bit empty: the game barely put up any resistance once you found the twist and it was over so short, surely the game didn't want you to escape so it should've been longer and harder to make it a fight. Just felt like there could be more, so take that as a compliment that you hooked me! I'm assuming it was a game jam game so apologies if I come off overly harsh: again, hopefully the fact that I said so much shows that you got something special that could be bigger and better. Also, I gotta give you credit for the courage to hide a significant part of your game behind a trick that many most likely won't find: takes guts to do that, and I do appreciate it!

OneThatEatYou responds:

It's late but thanks for the detailed review!

I did notice the fact that all platforms needs to be reached using the highest jump a little too late, so I did not change it. I will attempt to remove this linear-ness in my future games.

I can see that it also lacks variation because it was made during a 72 hour game jam.

The medal encouraged many players to try and find the hidden route and gives them an additional sense of accomplishment that I couldn't provide.

Thanks again for playing it and making a video of it, I really appreciate it.

[Welcome Rookie]

Nice little choose-your-own-adventure game with a neat comic book presentation to it! After the initial confusion of figuring out how the heck to make decisions (which could be explained a lot better in the game) I had fun going through and seeing the different outcomes. There were a few graphical issues at times, like typos (bowl instead of bowel) and fonts being way too tiny in some bubbles, etc, but nothing major: it was all pretty professional stuff. Some of the decisions were a bit annoying at times: I'm not a doctor so I have no idea what compazine, zofran, dre, and so on are, and no hints are provided, so when I'm yelled at for doing it it feels a bit cheap. Some decisions also were a bit vague when they're boiled down to one word: for example, choosing to "Lie" at the end could be interpreted many ways, and the way the game determined it was way different than I meant. However, at the end of the day, the game is fairly short and sweet, and that meant restarts were quick, so the problems I faced weren't much of an issue and it was fun to see the various bad ends which, after all, are the best part of choose-your-own-adventures, haha!

Also I totally knew she was pregnant the whole time: I've watched enough House M.D. to know these things!

amidos2006 responds:

Thanks for the feedback :) sorry about being a medical game, that won't be the case in our next big game "Law Blow" (https://cheesyholes.itch.io/law-blow)

[Graveyard Dates]

Very interesting, but also very frustrating! Feels like it is so close to being something great if it just had some more time in the oven. The whole story of two people working against each other but loving the other while doing so through text messages made for a cool story that I wanted to get through, and I liked the interesting multiple choices and endings. The gameplay, though, was overly hard with spongy, annoying enemies that knock you all over and deaths making you restart the whole level, killing the pace and charm as it just makes you listen to the dialogue over and over, cheapening it. The separate grades for combat and dating are interesting, but I would rather the combat and the dating be tied together better: they kinda as are sometimes knockback can push you too far forward, missing a text, but it's a bit weak. For example, instead of making a death make you restart the level, maybe a death revives you close to where you are, but the time it takes to revive means you waited too long to respond, making it awkward, or maybe it makes you send an involuntary angry message saying you're busy (trying not to get killed again). Basically, I think either the combat should either be easy so the focus is on the story (which kinda works because I think we assume these two are experts in their fields), or the combat should be kept hard but it has an impact on the dating instead of just forcing you to reset and kill the pacing.

EDIT: Being a bit more spammy helped with my subsequent runs, so even though I had difficulty with my first run, maybe others didn't have as much trouble if they were spammy to begin with. Other endings were interesting: cool use of 'not answering' in some of the last parts being a good potential answer. Wish the endings had a bit more fanfare to them with an epilogue or something, especially for the best ending, though seeing at least a little ending screen for each would be great!

adriendittrick responds:

Thanks a lot for the thoughtful review :)

[Junior Juggle]

Not too shabby! A decent game which definitely has a lot of nice polish to its presentation: love the way the title screen seamlessly transitions into the game and how intuitively the controls are introduced. Gameplay is solid too: I like the strategy involved in the assortment of light, medium, and heavy items you need to juggle. Only downsides I would say is that a lot of people probably can't stand baby sounds/death, and the game has limited lasting appeal as the difficulty peaks quite fast without options/skill to get farther/better, and there aren't any additional modes like protecting multiple babies or whatever. Still, it's short and sweet! Well, as sweet as watching a baby die can be...

Miltage responds:

Solid feedback, thanks a lot!

[Phantom Behind]

Was a bit glitchy and confusing for me, but it seems to be a decent core to work from for making a stealth game as most of the mechanics worked fairly well. Some of the mechanics were a bit confusing:

*Tutorial was pretty lacking: not apparent at all that walking into someone would kill them. Buttons were all over the place as well: why is it two different buttons to enter and leave a grate instead of the same button?

*Some doors seemed like they could only be opened by guards, so you need to follow them in. Cool, but this wasn't immediately apparent, and you can get yourself stuck in an unwinnable situation if you kill all the guards without realizing it. It'd be helpful if guards kept respawning so you don't get stuck, or if the game tells you you're stuck and resets.

*If you walk into a view cone it freezes you as it slowly fills up with red, but the view cone is already so short I don't know why the red part even exists (though I suppose it provides a bit of forgiveness, which is nice, but the view cones are already incredibly tiny).

*The sound circles worked very oddly for me. They weren't stopped by walls (this is ok, but maybe this could be changed), and they deployed way after the guard died or the whistle blew instead of immediately, creating a weird disconnect. Also, sometimes the circle could grow slowly, and other times it would just pop-up: weird graphical glitch.

*Sound is kinda lacking at the moment: gets annoying to constantly hear the negative errnt sound of guards seeing blood or odor or whatever.

*Unlocking abilities with exp I feel is something that shouldn't be in as it makes the design very weird, but if you do keep it in, it'd be helpful to see how much something costs before spending exp.

Looking forward to seeing where it goes from here!

bluemath responds:

Thanks @FuturecopLGF . Your detailed feedback is very helpful. Some of the issues you mentioned are on my bugfix list already. Stay tuned for future improvements.

[Winter Falling: Price of Life]

Very cool game! Once you get into it, the battles can be great strategic fun, and I love the professional design to the UI not only in the way it looks and feels, but the way it imparts information which really helps in coming to grasp all the various mechanics. I still feel like I was only able to make it far in this game because I had experience with playing the previous one: a game like this plays very differently than any other strategy game I've played (which, to be fair, I don't have much experience with, so I could be talking nonsense) and I feel like the tutorial is still a bit lacking and it just dumps you into the deep end. A bit refreshing not to be babied, but still, there are a lot of potentially unintuitive and frustrating elements that could throw players off: why do I need to rehire units, why does the terrain seem to make no difference except for trenches (rivers and such look to be ignored as if they were flat land), why does 'move' kill enemies (maybe it should be called something more intuitive like charge, but there is a move called charge already and sometimes you do just want to move units?) Still, despite all these issues, the game does have such a sense of confidence to it with the great music, art, and UI that you feel compelled to continue, and are glad when you do, since it can be such a blast to fight to the last, scrape together as much as you can with your little resources, and blast em with dragon fire! Would love if maybe there was a bit more of a story element to it: the game just screams for some little chit-chat with your royals/peasant/outlaw generals between missions to learn how you're doing and working towards.

Rarykos responds:

Oh thank you very much! These are very good points! It's hard not to agree. I'm glad you enjoyed the experience. I feel like the problems will be solved in the full version with some restructuring. Really nice to see you here, in reviews, again! I was wondering what you'd think.