FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bug Ball 3D]

Pretty cool game! Even before the game starts, I was already impressed at how lively and animated the presentation is with the title and menus, and I was glad to see that same energy carried over into the fast-paced gameplay! While I did have a bit of a rough start (I selected medium instead of easy which made me skip over the tutorial), it didn't take long for me to get addicted to trying to speed through these courses for higher ranks. Switching between bug and ball mode was pretty interesting and I liked trying to set up right-angle ricochets off of angled walls for maximum efficiency.

I will admit, though, that I'm a bit torn about the game:

*Speed is fun, but the sheer amount of speed you can generate is just too much and can easily lead to either chaos or being too scared and forgoing it to carefully putter around instead, made all the more annoying by the camera not allowing us to see far-enough ahead: maybe the top speed should be reduced, or the camera should zoom-out as you get faster? I know it's part of the challenge and you can get used to it, though, I suppose.

*As said, I really liked to try and bounce off of angled walls since the game's courses seem to be built around that being the most efficient route. The problem was that this requires the player to immediately switch direction when they bounce off of the wall, otherwise the angle gets screwed up and that throws off subsequent bounces and everything goes to hell. You could argue that there's a bit of skill the player needs to acquire in timing their inputs, I suppose, but it just feels really annoying to have to be so precise and delicate. It almost feels like the game should be a golf game instead, or adopt a more tank/car-esque control scheme where up is go forward/accelerate, instead of up being, well, go up, as those controls would allow for more precise angled bounces to be consistently achieved. Maybe the player could have a limited amount of slow-mo, or they can use slow-mo but it doesn't slow down the timer so eventually they wean off of it? I dunno, just spitballing.

*Also it's a small nitpick, but some of the graphics would irk me slightly with how awkward they'd look, like when you fall down a pit or into a hole, but your character keeps going and generating dust clouds as if they are still active and above the ground: basically the 3D is kind of fudged where I guess you're just shrinking the character instead of making them actually go downwards.

StaggerNight responds:

Big fan of the monthly game vids you do! Thanks for the review

[Trivial Trivia: The Newgrounds Collection]

Pretty neat quiz game! For the most part it seems pretty well-put-together, and I was impressed at the sheer volume and variety of questions: sometimes those questions would be a bit too hyper-specific for my liking, but I suppose I've always been terrible at dates, times and all that jazz, and I'm sure some people appreciate the challenge.

In terms of feedback:

My biggest complaint would be how dry the presentation is, which is weird because it actually starts off with a decent first impression: the game's title screen and menus are quite lively with animated buttons that react on hover, smooth transitions, and the music is cool (once you turn it on, dunno why it starts turned off). However, once you go into the actual gameplay, all of that is lost and everything is so static and lifeless! Would love if it just had a bit more pizazz to it: you know, a bit of fanfare and confetti when you're right, boos when you're wrong, get the animated buttons back, stuff like that! Right now the game is like taking a test at a government agency when I want something like Jackbox!

Another aspect of the game that I found a bit rough was that when you guess a trivia question wrong, it just says you're wrong and nothing more (and displays your answer in a button for some reason, as if you could select it again). I suppose I can understand that you don't wanna give the answer away and keep the pace of the game up, but I found it to be an awkward design decision. Ideally, I'd like it so that whether you guess right or wrong, it would show you the right answer afterwards, as well as maybe some fun bonus factoids to go along with it. I know you've got a menu where players can look up the question/answer sheet and it even has links for the player to learn the answers themself which is pretty cool, but it's just so weird that this information is so separated: this stuff should be integrated into the game itself!

Oh, and I was honored to be featured in one of the questions! Cheers for that!

ElRandomGMD responds:

Thanks for the Review :)

[Golf Escape]

Fantastic short and sweet adventure you got here! It's got all the hallmarks of a great game: a clever and intriguing gameplay hook, intuitive and responsive controls, an addictive escalation of difficulty, slick and smooth gamefeel, and all with a charming and juicy presentation! It's the complete package and I am gobsmacked that this wasn't winning prizes immediately right when it was submitted: truly buried treasure we got here!

Davbo37 responds:

Thank you so much for your kind words! Glad you enjoyed it and all those aspects came through 😄

[DECK FURY (Alpha)]

Wow, I was pretty impressed with this! It's got some rough edges here and there, sure, but as a fan of games like Mega Man Battle Network and One Step From Eden, I like the direction that it's going, and I really loved how smooth and intuitive the game felt, what with its excellent usage of tooltips, target previews, tutorials, icons/symbols, and other great UI/UX elements! Heck, for an alpha, it's already practically got the core loop settled and is a complete experience! Cool stuff and I feel like its got a lot of potential from this great first impression!

If I were to have some feedback, I'd say:

*I got really annoyed at how short the energy cooldown was: kept giving me whiplash with how much it keeps stopping the fight to reload the same cards over and over, and it made fights too easy with how much I could just spam cards with little to no consequence. In my opinion, I feel like cards should be a much more precious resource and you should really think of how best you use them, as if you blow them, you'll be stuck with just your puny blaster for a long time and not be able to handle a desperate situation, like getting cornered by drones with no push card. I found it much more entertaining when I pretended that my energy cooldown was much, much longer because of this: made it much more intense and strategic, and I loved scrambling and improvizing!

*Sometimes the aiming can be a bit odd and throw things off. It's like, if you're above an enemy and aiming downwards, but you're a little bit off, it can end up going to the side instead. It might be preferring certain angles? It feels like if you're aiming SW, it'll keep you pointed S properly, but if you are even slightly aiming SE a bit, it'll switch you to aiming full-on E and miss a shot.

Deltakai responds:

Hey appreciate the feedback and glad you've been liking the game so far!

Your two points of feedback are really interesting and they're both issues I've been grappling with since the game's inception.

Regarding the first point, I actually modeled the base energy cooldown off of MMBN's energy cooldown, which is 8 seconds. Now personally when I played the MMBN series I actually found this to be too slow and for me it actually created a bit of an awkward break in the gameplay where I use my cards too quickly and then have to sit around doing not much until my energy came back. The most fun part for me was when I was actually in the card selection, thinking about my next plan of attack and then trying to execute it while I have the cards loaded.

The main way I made this faster was adding the Amber Pearl starting item which refunded 10% energy every time you killed an enemy, as well as refreshing your energy each time a new wave was spawned. That being said, this is definitely a balance point of the game that I will have to keep an eye on, and a possible solution would be to make the base recharge time longer, but increase the benefit of Amber Pearl to reward players for killing enemies efficiently with their cards.


The second point I knew about as soon as I first built the aiming system - the issue becomes most apparent when you're close to the edge of the screen and trying to aim towards the edges of the screen where you can't move your mouse too far out and thus resulting in the aiming reticle to be a lot more sensitive to changes due to the close proximity of your mouse and character. I do however think this would be less of an issue if the game was fullscreen and you have more space to move your mouse about.

The way I tried to solve this was by adding the "Relative Aiming" option in the Gameplay settings which would instead clamp the cursor to the player character rather than moving independently. The feature is still a bit buggy but give it a try next time and see if it helps with the awkward aiming.

[Upbound]

Wow, this one really surprised me! It's a rather simple arcade game, but you did a fantastic job at giving the game so much style and soul, what with the cool astronaut-themed voicelines, the very bouncy and lively animation as you jump around, the way sounds pitch up as you combo, the satisfying feel of speed when you're comboing balloons/jetpacks and watching your power bar flare up, and so on! Great stuff and a fantastic example of the power of juice to elevate an experience!

yahhcheee responds:

wow.. we really appreciate your sharing. we really tried to go the extra mile on all things you mentioned and i'm so happy that it touched you. Thank you FutureCopLGF!

[Keep It In! 3]

Not too shabby! Certainly seems to be going for a simple-yet-fun arcade vibe, and the amount of game variations were rather intriguing. Had a decent bit of fun checking it all out.

However, I didn't have the best impression when playing this. At its core, the game just didn't really hook me with its concept, and despite having a lot of different types of games to play, it felt like a real quantity-over-quality situation as many of the games either felt superfluous and barely any different from classic (timed), or felt very unbalanced (multiball) or confusing (rhythm).

In addition to that, the game just had a very unflattering presentation to it, the music was way too loud and there was no option menu to turn it down, and it was missing quality-of-life features like being able to quit out of a game. Furthermore, I had a few of the games glitch out on me in weird, frustrating ways.

Also, and this might be a nitpicky personal thing that doesn't matter so much, but I really don't jive with the whole bouncecoin system where you're playing and logging in daily to purchase cosmetics and all that jazz: just feels really unnecessary and scummy. I know you're not trying to scam me or take money from me or anything like that, but it just rubs me the wrong way and makes me feel like you're trying to add this as a motivation to make up for the fact that the game can't motivate strongly enough by itself.

St4rryQueen responds:

Although it might not be the clearest, the BounceCoin icon doubles as a clickable icon that pops up with a pause menu, in which you can quit, or even change your background or style mid-game.

[Kill Laanie Race or Die]

I certainly think this has potential to be a nice racing game, but currently it feels rather underbaked and needs more time in the oven!

My main complaints are:

*While some of the visuals are pretty cool, you went way overboard with the filters like the monitor static/film grain/whatever and it just makes my eyes hurt and makes it difficult to read the screen. Get rid of that crap: your art looks good by itself and you don't need to hide it behind these dumb filters.

*Damage feedback is very lackluster: getting shot or shooting other cars isn't apparent as there is no sort of sound effect or hitspark to indicate contact. Also when you crash into a wall, the game starts draining your health and plays these loud, grating sounds.

*There's a lack of information given for the race. For example, what's my current position/place/rank in the race? How many cars remain? What's my speed? When I finish a lap, where's my current lap time and how does it compare to my previous laps?

*Unless you memorize the course, it's very difficult to determine where turns are, making it rather frustrating. Up to you how to handle this, but a few ways would be to zoom out the camera, add signals/signs onto the course, or to have a minimap/radar of the course in the corner.

*When all is said and done, the game isn't doing anything that innovative to create a fresh new experience, nor does it have core driving gameplay that is satisfying enough to make up for that as it feels rather basic in terms of functionality and slippery/awkward in terms of physics.

Hope this helps and that you continue to work on it!

GNOSTU responds:

Hi Mr FutureCopLGF

Thank you so much for your honest feedback. We are currently polishing Kill Laanie, we also want to state that this is a game jam entry for Gdevelops game jam 5 and we only had 9 days to make this hence the reason it seems underbaked.

Addressing your complaints

* The visuals effects we know does not appeal to everyone and we are aware of that. We are a retro revival indie game development studio that focuses on a sense of nostalgia to everything we do including art and music. We are sorry to hear that you have experienced pain in our visuals we are adding an options section to turn these effects off for players that do not like it.

* About the lack of visual information. Yes we understand that the industry standard is to know your position, speed and lap time. Again we simply did not have time for all the extra bells and whistles that go with racing games. However we are creating modes for players that want to have a normal racing experience.

* Regards to minimaps. Again not enough time to code we only had 9 days. We do not believe in hand holding when it comes to our games as many old games dropped you in the deep end with no help or info regarding things like minimaps and when corners need to be taken we were trying to go for a more realistic racing experience. Like I said we are working on modes where minimaps are an option to turn on or off. As for the zoom I do not think we are changing anything in that department as we are trying to keep the zoom like Konami's Road Fighter.

* Being fresh and new is not what we do at graphic nostalgia studios we focus on bringing life to old games from the arcade, sega and nintendo and adding things like physics and redrawn or modern styled additions like character select, color selections, PS1 and PS2 style 3d graphics and music. As for the awkward slippery physics the game jam theme was unstable so I think we delivered on that.

Conclusion.

We do not shy away from any criticism here at Graphic Nostalgia Studios and we try and cater to all gamers. Please keep in mind that we are a retro studio first and modern gamers 10th. We are a studio that still plays old games like pokemon blue, Rise of the Triad, Contra, Piko's School and SimGirl. We do play modern games like GTA V and Cyberpunk 2077 with innovation and new things to see and honestly as a retro studio we do not see much change in anything in the new games we didn't 15 years ago. We love how old games were simple and none instructive, we believe that this generation of gamers are too spoiled when it comes to help and instructions. We read all our comments and appreciate each one as well as yours. We will take what you have to heart and work on a better experience for gamers. Thanks again for the feed back and Stay Retro

[Pico Rubber 2024]

Hmm, not much of a fan of idle/clicker games in the first place, so feel free to take that into consideration, but I found this to be pretty subpar. Typically I feel the most important aspect of idle/clicker games is for it to, almost like a slot machine, dazzle the player with feedback that's so juicy and satisfying that it gets them addicted, and this has absolutely none of that (especially since it doesn't even default to having the sound on!)

Basically, it currently feels more like an alpha that's not ready for public consumption yet: it's functional, sure, but it doesn't have that special sauce to make it entertaining yet. As you mentioned in the description, ElRandomGMD's version of Pico Clicker has a bit more juice to it, but it's missing the innovative rubbing feature you have, as well as the other options: if only you could combine your powers to create a super version!

ElRandomGMD responds:

Sorry for your bad experience :(

[Power Solenoid Demo]

Whoa, this was quite the experience! Game has some immaculately trippy and weird vibes that pervade the entire experience that I think hit the right balance where, despite being a tad confusing, the game overall remains surprisingly intuitive and intriguing in a way that makes you want to delve deeper into the mystery. I certainly enjoyed my journey both through understanding what was going down and the various gameplay genres you've got, be it pinball, shmup, boss fights, and so on! Consider me hooked and looking forward for more!

In terms of feedback:

*The game can be a bit rough and glitchy at times. I got crushed by a block horizontally and upon respawning from death, I was nowhere on screen, yet the game kept going (think I was outside the boundaries?) I also phased through a barrier with an orbit smash that I don't think I should've been able to, especially since it didn't work on another similar barrier: probably just wonky collision physics at play.

*I found the orbit smash a bit frustrating, as I wasn't sure if I was understanding what its purpose was: is it simply a dash, or is there more to it? I mostly avoided using it because the charge-up time is unbearably long.

*Text can be very difficult to read due to its small size and whatever grainy filter or compression you've got. I don't mind a bit of visual flair, but readability should never be sacrificed.

By the way, the damage sound takes me right back to Marble Madness: was that an intentional homage?

jupitron responds:

Thank you so much for your time and video, was really helpful. I'm happy that you could see through all and still enjoy the game. Hope we meet again in the future.

[READY YOUR RUDDER]

Hey, this is a really fun and cool survival arcade experience! I really love the charming and lively vibes coming off of it, and I enjoy the core concept of every power-up you accrue coming with a new enemy being introduced, where sometimes that enemy is a direct counter to that power-up. It's a bit of a shame that whatever strategic value there would be to picking or not picking certain power-ups is inevitably lost once you get them all, but still, it's neat and I found myself getting addicted to weaving my way through the chaos and surviving as long as I could, especially since the game feels very fair and generous with its hitboxes.

Obviously I'd love if it had more meat on its bones because its got such a good core, whether it be new content or some sort of randomization to increase replayability, but for what it is, especially considering its a game jam game, it's solid.

I was a bit curious about the way the pirate keeps asking for gold, especially since we never seem to accrue any. Maybe some sort of cut content, like maybe it was planned that you needed to get gold that appears while dodging threats, but now they just assume that you come across a gold piece every wave despite it not being visible?

Was also curious about the crows nest and what its penalty is: I think it was doing something with the hitboxes, maybe increasing them in size a bit? Couldn't tell for sure.

FishDev responds:

Thank you for the compliments!! I'm thinking about expanding the game somehow, but in full honesty, I'm not totally sure where to take it. At a certain point, stuff would just get too chaotic, and more importantly, the upgrades that provide the controls -- which are the most important ones design-wise -- would get lost amongst any new upgrades I come up with that, most likely, wouldn't provide new controls. I'm honestly still chewing on it, well after release haha.

There's a few super minor QoL changes I have planned (e.g. making it so that the player can't accidentally skip the ending wanted poster if they happen to be pressing Z when they die) but I want to hold off on releasing any updates until the itch version gets its uploads unlocked, to keep the 2 pages in sync. One of the game jams this was submitted to is still having the judges look at the games, so I currently can't upload anything on the itch page.

The gold thing was sort of a mistake/oversight on my part. I wanted to give the character a lot of charm and thought "pirates love gold lol" without once thinking "I literally never give the player gold..." Maybe I could drop a gold coin on the player or something? Not sure yet lol

As for the crow's nest -- yup!! Sort of hard to telegraph though. Basically, every so often, a crow lands on it, and increases your hitbox by a pretty large margin (hence "bad luck"). The original plan was for there to be a few potential debuffs, like speed loss or increased spawn rates, and there'd be a bit of text going "Speed Down" or "Enemies Up" or something like that, but that ended up being too distracting amongst all the chaos on the screen so I cut it. For now, it's just the hitbox increase, I try getting the player's attention with a white flash on the hitbox when the crow lands, but admittedly I know that still isn't enough. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!!