FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bullet Dodger]

You know, I wasn't sure what to think about this at first since it seemed rather simplistic in terms of gameplay and presentation, but I'm glad I gave it a try because it's a pretty neat little arcade game! I was impressed at the escalation of difficulty as the game goes on and had a lot of fun trying to dodge the patterns however I could, even using wall-jumps and such, and the game has a neat sense of style and energy to it. Simple but fun!

However, while it is a rather promising game, I didn't stick with it for too long as I found it a bit janky and odd with some of its design decisions. In terms of feedback:

*I feel like the damage feedback is too muted as I could barely tell when I was taking damage. The only way to tell is to see your health bar go red, and that only lasts so long because when you're low on health it stays red all the time. I would very much like if a sound effect played when you took damage and maybe your character reacts by flashing red or blinking or whatever.

*I didn't like how when you're riding a platform, you don't ride along with it naturally, instead needing to keep shuffling to the side to stay on. It's especially frustrating and finicky to stay on the tiny platforms because of this, and my hands quickly got tired from this repetition.

*I felt like the shield was an unnecessary inclusion and hurts the game. The way the levels are built feels like a direct response to trying to work around your inclusion of the shield: the early levels are too easy where you can just stay in one place and use the shield to block everything, while the later levels bombard you with way too many bullets that you're forced into using the shield as it's impossible to dodge otherwise. I would much prefer if the game kept its purity by just having the player dodging the bullets: it's called 'bullet dodger' after all, not 'bullet absorber'!

errorerratum responds:

Thank you for your review!
1) The damage being too muted was a stylistic decision to not bother the player with too much information during the gameplay, but I realize now that with the health bar turning red at low health would be misleading for a player. I was worried that adding noise for every bullet strike would be too annoying for a player.
2) Not being able to ride with the platform seems to be a pretty common critique of this game. I did it because I felt that the player character moving with the platform made the game far too easy, but I can see why people don't like that feature.
3) Interesting view of the shield mechanic - everyone else seems to like the shield. Trying to make the early game reasonably easy and the end game hard was always a challenge, and I did want to make playing the game for a very long time to be very difficult. I felt that shield helped with balancing the game as much as I could while still making the late stages very difficult.

[DYNAMITEHEAD TNTSON (The Toxic Demo)]

Yowza, what a cool beat-em-up you got here! It's seriously impressive how absolutely bursting with style and energy this game is: love all the crazy animations, transitions, and juicy touches that this game has not only to the main gameplay, but to other elements like the menus and title screen! I'm a big fan of beat-em-ups and this game provided a nice bit of button-mashy punchy fun and demonstrated some pretty solid fundamentals to make the hits feel satisfying, vary the enemies, and have a cool boss fight to top it off. Solid work!

That being said, by being a huge fan of beat-em-ups, I am also very critical of them, so if you wouldn't mind, here is some potential feedback you can use (or not):

*It did feel like the play area could easily get overcrowded and cramped, leading to messy and confusing gameplay: perhaps you could stand to zoom-out the camera and increase the arena size to assist with this. I think it would also have a knock-on effect of allowing for more room to fight and maneuver, bringing more strategic designs from that.

*While the feedback of hitting opponents was pretty solid thanks to factors like screenshake and so on, I do think the game could stand to have a bit more to it, specifically some hitstop/freeze. I love it when your punches get that extra bit of slowness when hitting people to differentiate just swinging in the air!

*I found it really odd that you can't use the mash move when you have full TNT meter: you'd think that as long as you press instead of hold you could still use it instead of going for the explosion, but for some reason it is not allowed.

*Wish there was a bit more clarity on what the power-ups do: couldn't tell whether power-ups were giving me health, TNT meter, or both.

*While the moveset has a lot of moves to utilize such as an uppercut, slide, sweep, jump slam, and so on, they don't seem to have clearly defined purposes for any of them: they pretty much all are just some flavor of quick knockdown. Wish they each had something special to them to allow for more strategic play. For example, maybe the uppercut could juggle enemies and allow you to get bigger combos at the cost of higher commitment leaving you open to interruption, while the sweep can hit grounded enemies instead of having to wait for them to get back up, and maybe the slide can get under enemy blocks, and so on.

*As alluded to above, the game feels overly simplistic at the moment and feels like a brainless button-masher: while this can be fun in the short-term, it's lacking depth to allow for skillful and strategic play and this hurts long-term satisfaction. Not only was I really disappointed I couldn't juggle combo enemies launched from a uppercut or jump slam among other things, but also I felt like the enemies are too simplistic in their AI patterns, both in the way they attack and in the way they never attempt to surround the player or juke them out.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling: there's some serious potential in this and I look forward to seeing how it develops!

swackyGCF responds:

This is a REALLY good review. You've provided some great points here. Things like being able to mash through enemies at full blast and having a better moveset are considered! After all this is my first attempt at making a beat-em-up, like, ever. It'll get better in later demos!

[Newgrounds Wii Art Collab]

Hey, pretty cool art collab! Judging from the thumbnail and name, I expected an art gallery akin to the Wii menu, and I got what exactly that, so no complaints there! Indeed, the Wii menu vibes are recreated pretty immaculately and I found the interface not only contained everything you would want, such as links to the artists, but it was very charming as well, especially when the art really resembled an actual game preview, such as Moopers. Nice work!

If I were to have any feedback, it'd be that it might be nice to have side arrows so you can go straight to the next art piece instead of having to back out to the menu and then click on the next one. Also there were some weird performance issues with some of the animated art pieces for some reason. Finally, it would be nice if there was an options menu where you could perhaps change the music or turn it down or other features like that.

AlexToolStudio responds:

Told you it a huge improvement

[Cannibal Holocaust - The LCD Game]

Hmm, this is a bit of an odd one! I mean, on one hand, you've authentically recreated a Tiger Handheld Game experience, but on the other hand...you've authentically recreated a Tiger Handheld Game experience!

It's like, you know, it's impressive how legitimate it feels, so kudos for sticking to the theme and the rules that come with the system limitations, but at the end of the day, it's just a very simple game that gets very boring very fast. I wasn't a fan of Tiger games as a kid, let alone nowadays as an adult! The phrase polishing a turd comes to mind. Sorry!

In addition to being a Tiger game, this also feels very awkwardly designed. For example, I couldn't figure out the scoring at first, because it didn't make sense why you need to hit the side buttons an extra time after you've already moved to the side and the food's already in his mouth: maybe if they started with the arm down and hitting it an extra time raises the arm up to his mouth, it'd make sense. Scoring was also compromised by the fact that there is no fire-rate limiter, meaning you can score as fast as you can mash, cheesing it with an auto-clicked if you felt like it.

Deklaration responds:

Just like a proper Tiger Electronic LCD Game! Simple gameplay that are still difficult to understand. I had a Jurassic Park one that I spend like six months saving up for and I never once understood how to play it.

[scaling a mountain using the second amendment]

Pretty neat Happy Wheels/Getting Over It rage game you got here! I'm a fan of these kind of games and for the most part it felt pretty nice: the world had a challenging construction to it and a neat sense of progression with checkpoints and upgrades, the gun being your method of transport was cool, and it was fun to try and master the intricacies of the reload/reset mechanic since it does so when you just brush against the environment instead of necessarily landing.

I'm a bit torn though on whether this is a game I'm going to beat, though. As said, I'm a fan of these types of games, but the goofy non sequitur nature of this makes me afraid that I'm just bring jerked around: that the world and controls aren't as elegantly and fairly designed as its contemporaries and that it's not a game that can be won through skill, but rather random dumb luck. Since there is a volume control for the narrator that can be used to make them shut the hell up, though, maybe I'll keep trying: it's in the nature of these kind of games where they can seem random and impossible at first, after all.

A bit annoyed that the save feature doesn't seem to work: I made it all the way to the third checkpoint and wanted to take a break, only for it to start me all over with zero upgrades...what is the point of the save, then?

crow-seeds responds:

Hmmm, never had anyone have an issue with the save mechanic. Did you make sure to click the save game button in the pause menu? Saving isn’t automatic when you quit the game. Thanks for the review as always!

[Off the Grid - Summer 2024 Collab]

Cute art collab! Always neat to see other artists and their interpretations of each other's characters, and seeing all of this art in this intuitive grid layout with all the information you'd want, topped off with some chill vibes and neat special effects like the intro animation, is great stuff!

If I were to have any feedback, it's that I wish I could speed up the navigation at times, like being able to double-click to skip the sloooow transition and just snap to the next picture immediately. Either that or I wish we could actually free-form navigate as well, like dragging the grid around and zooming in with the mouse wheel as we please. It'd also be nice if there was some sort of credits and information window about the event, perhaps. I suppose I'd like if maybe it had a bit more razzle-dazzle as well: it's practically a sterile room with how white and clean it is, haha! But yeah, this is all small potatoes, as it's generally a nice gallery!

alsoknownas1 responds:

Thanks! As always your comments are super constructive. You're absolutely right that the balance here between minimalism and effects was a bit awkward. Not just because of you--of course--but we're definitely leaning towards the razzle dazzle (or at least novelty) in the next few projects. Would be very interested in your thoughts. Stay tuned!

[THE SUBSPACE EMISSARY COLLAB]

Pretty neato art collab! I was pleased to see that I got exactly what I expected looking at the title/thumbnail, being a very Smash-esque trophy/gallery view with all the neato bells-and-whistles I could want, from the authentic sounds and 3D rotating art, to various quality-of-life features like clickable artist profile/social links and the different categories for viewing. I can always wish for more, like being able to click on the art and be able to rotate it around as I like, or an actual subspace emissary game where you collect the art, but what is here is perfectly acceptable. Nice work, and nice art!

ElRandomGMD responds:

U are a legend :D

[Deep Snake]

Cool stuff! I feel like this is a perfect game jam result, in that, while it does have some rough aspects like a lack of music and some confusing design choices like the apple which doesn't change size, the overall concept is very memorable and the gameplay execution of it has resulted in an addictive and trippy arcade experience that I can't help but love and wish I had even more of!

Now excuse me while I chase this 31st apple: I swear I'll catch up to it at some point!

dietzribi responds:

the 31st apple is just very close to the loop point, if you see it disappear go back "away" from it and you'll get close to it again.
I'll leave it to you as homework to think why the apple doesn't change size ;)

[Goblins Revolt]

Pretty neat little mini RPG! It's a bit rough in a lot of aspects which made my first impression not the greatest, but it nevertheless had enough charm to its presentation that I couldn't help but stick with it and before I knew it, I had made it through with a full clear on medium! There are some pretty neat strategic concepts at play here, such as how you can't always use a bunch of turns for a full map clear or constant rests since that would allow the enemy to grow too strong, and how the intuition resource is not just used for map intel but battle intel as well. Another big aspect that I always appreciate is when an RPG makes it so that you can't just attack and heal over and over, but need to use buffs and debuffs in strategic ways, as well as a nice variety of enemies with strengths/weaknesses instead of just punching bags, and that was done here quite well!

As said, despite my enjoyment, I did have a bit of a rough time with it. In particular, the UI/UX wasn't the best: I'll grant you that the game does have some nice tooltips for the most part for stuff like attacks, but there were a lot of other places where I wish I could get tooltips or a log or more information, but I couldn't. For example, the text that pops up for enemy stat increases, as well as plenty of other text, can be very difficult to read due to how fast it can go by with no log to refer to, as well as the text not being outlined so it gets hard-to-read when it's overlapping something else. Some information was also just conveyed in a confusing manner: I don't understand the two totals for goblin assignment, some buttons react on hover to let you know you can use them whereas others don't, and so on. Finally, it's also missing some quality-of-life like an options menu, the ability to save/load, and so on. Still, as said before, it's not too shabby!

Drowsierstone responds:

THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEW :D

I agree with all the things you mentioned and I do plan on remaking the entire game from the ground up somewhere in the future as this was made to a be uni project ,where our deadline was getting closer. So many cool things had to be cut and also the code in this game...could be improved XD and I did want to add the quality of life features you mentioned but construct 3...has wierd way of doing things. But I will keep everything you said along with others as great critiques to keep in mind for the future :D Thank you!

[Beetle Battle]

Not bad for a boss rush prototype! Obviously it's a bit simplistic in terms of presentation and mechanics, and is lacking content, having only one boss in total, but the boss pattern is varied, fun and challenging to battle so you've got decent fundamentals. Looking on the bright side: while overall the package presented here is a bit paltry and only a prototype, all things considered, it did leave me hungry for more instead of outright dismissing it, so I'd say it shows promise and I'd love to see a future enhanced version of this!

litroj responds:

Thanks for playing and feedback! I will sure comeback to this game after I finish my other projects!