FutureCopLGF's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lightning Katana [Demo]]

Didn't expect to see a new demo for this so shortly after the last one, but the progress is nice to see!

Glad to see that some of my previous feedback has been rectified, such as the new foot animation for kicking, and the inclusion of a narrative and other cool effects like the way enemies get chopped in half is pretty cool.

Some of my previous feedback is still present, such as how I don't like these weird auras that deny weapon usage on enemies and would prefer a new enemy type be created instead for those purposes, but I assume either they will be addressed later on or you wish to keep them.

In addition to the above, here are some other feedback I can offer:

*The cooldown between slashes is obvious because of the way the arms go down and don't come back up until it's ready, but the same can't be said for parries: there is a cooldown phase where you can't slash or parry, but it's not obvious because your arms are still up. I'd like it if there was more consistency in this matter.

*Soundscape could be a bit better as apart from the initial alert sounds that enemies make, they are totally silent, which makes it so that they can easily seem to come from nowhere as they make no footsteps or attack sounds. Perhaps it's intended as part of the challenge that you need to be swooshing your camera around constantly to keep an eye on them, but I dunno: I'd like it if I could keep track of them through sounds as well.

*Menus are very inconsistent in terms of control: some of them can be used with the mouse to click the buttons, while others force you to use the keyboard. It's just really confusing and frustrating to figure out what each one wants.

*The new HUD is nice, but I wish it was more clear what power you are currently carrying. Yes, once you get good enough you can memorize the colors that represent each power and look at your arms, but it's very confusing when you're starting out as you can be picking up powers at a rapid pace before you even see what you pick up and have no idea what you're carrying. I'd say that the power icon should not only be somewhere on your HUD to reference, but the icon should also briefly flash in the center of the screen when you pick it up to help acknowledge it.

Keep up the good work as I'm looking forward to hacking and slashing in the full release!

FCPXAV responds:

Glad you enjoyed! I liked the idea of an entirely new enemy for enemies that are immune to weapons, but we don't have the resources right now to add that to the game :(

The flower that represents your health also flashes depending on whether or not you have a powerup/what powerup you have but I'm aiming to add more obvious feedback on picking up an ability in the full game!

I just finished working on/adding a big new level to the game with a fair amount of new mechanics that took up all my dev time for the past couple weeks as they required reworking a lot of the code, so things like some of the menus have fallen to the wayside but that's also on the fix list for the final game!

Thanks for the feedback and glad you enjoyed! (P.S. feel free to take a look at the new level/mechanics and let us know what you think of em :) )

[Stardust Journey - Artfight 2024 Mass Atack!]

Hmm, it certainly is quite the nice visual novel, what with its cute graphics and wholesome vibes. I was impressed at the inclusion of animations and numerous special CGs: certainly some effort was put in beyond the usual talking static poses that most visual novels default to. Overall it's ok, but I will say there were a lot of issues on closer examination:

The game is definitely lacking a lot of quality-of-life features. It does have a log feature which is nice, but without a skip/fast-forward or save/load, replays are an absolute chore to get through, which is important because the game is all about that! It does look like there is a 'skip intro' button that appears eventually, but not only does this only appear once you fully conquer someone (meaning if you mess up, you can't skip), it disappears if you close the game and come back to it later on.

Not all visual novels need to do this, but I felt a bit disappointed at the reactivity from choices the player can make. I like to pick the wrong choices to see what happens as they can be very interesting, but in this game a lot of them lead to just a quick and boring game over screen, upon which you need to start all over (which is annoying due to the reasons above). I wish there were more amusing conclusions like when you turn off the computer at the very start and it berates you, haha!

Finally, I will admit that I had no idea what was going on in this as I'm not familiar with these OC artfights or whatever. I was trying to pick stuff up from context clues and you can still enjoy yourself somewhat from the goofy vibes, but in the end I felt like I was an outsider reading someone's private journal that I'm not meant to read: really felt like this game was meant to just be shared with friends and not the general public. Nothing wrong with that, and I guess it's nice to learn about this world I'm unfamiliar with, but that awkward feeling is just something that can happen when you post it publicly instead of within the intended audience circle, I suppose.

Diadantist responds:

First of all, thank you for you extensive review on the game! I appreciate a lot these kind of comments. I'll answer you in order.

I'm aware of the lack of several QOL features, like the skip button and save states. The plugin I used for this game was Dialogic, which offers the possibility of adding it onto game projects, but not "directly" as the log feature, but with some extra configuration work behind. I was thinking about it throughout the entire development of the game, but due to lack of time and knowledge of how the plugin works, I ended up not adding it. Instead, I added the skip button once you reach the OC list, so at least you don't have to repeat the entire intro every time you want to do a new route. I'm working to eventually release a 2.0 version that includes both options, tho! I don't have as much time as I wished I had for this project (since I'm working on a big project that is unrelated to gamedev), but rest assured I'll add it sometime in the future.

About the wrong choices, you are totally right! Since I ran out of time, I didn't include many goofy scenes aside from a couple for some characters and the beginning. The turning off the computer thing is my favourite so far!

And about the context, it's totally true that if you aren't familiar with Artfight or how it works, it may be a little bit confusing. That's on me completely. Artfight is an annual art game that lasts 1 month and where you can fight each other "attacking" their OCs in goofy ways. The variety of attacks can vary from regular illustrations to videogames (like my attack!) so maybe that's why it felt a little bit awkward.

https://artfight.net/info/about / https://artfight.net/news/95.art-fight-2024-seafoam-vs-stardust-results

I was featured on this year's final post (where they feature art made on that year) on the videogame category, so I take it as a huge feat :) You should try the other featured games, there's one that uses other people OC's for a warioware-inspired game! https://alleesaur.itch.io/ocware-artfight-2024-edition

If you are curious about what the event is like or want to know more about it (and maybe even participate if you want!), I leave you the links here. I'm aware that one may feel unfamiliar with Stardust Journey if you don't know the full context the game was made on. I still wanted to post it to Newgrounds for archive reasons (along in itch.io too).

Anyways, sorry for the long rant! You'll be happy to know I'm working on a 2.0 version as I said earlier. Comments like yours help me not only improve the game, but notice details that I may have missed completely like the conversations. Hopefully this won't be my last time doing a visual novel, and for me it's a huge feat having finished this game just in time for this year's Artfight since I wasn't able to in 2023.

I would be very happy if you tried it again once I update it! Have a good day :)

[RPG MK. II]

Pretty neat action game! Reminds me of something like Hotline Miami or Broforce, what with its bite-size levels that blend fast-paced action with a slight puzzle/stealth element, alongside slowly unlocking an arsenal of weapons and gadgets that can influence your approaches even further. Game also has a pretty good sense of polish and presentation despite its simple graphics: in particular the intros and outros for levels were pretty slick. I had a good time with this, especially when I was trying to build optimal and speedy routes through the levels that would keep my combo up the whole way through.

That being said, I did feel like the gameplay left me a bit wanting. It's fun if you turn your brain off and enjoy the chaos, but the second you turn it back on, it's just simply too easy due to the myriad ways you can exploit the AI. I mean jeez, you can easily baffle the AI by hopping up and down between floors and whittling them down with pop shots.

I really felt like I wanted the game to challenge me more as it felt like I could handle every level with the same cheap tricks: maybe it would be better if the enemies would pursue you beyond their initial floor when they make contact with you, even sounding an alarm for the whole base if you don't kill them swiftly. Also it might help if there were more enemy types that counter certain tricks, and if the levels were constructed to limit your freedom more and funnel you towards dangerous hand-crafted situations.

As mentioned before, I had the most fun playing this game when I was trying to speed through the levels and keep up a full combo. However, I don't feel like the game does a good job at encouraging this, and that's a bit of a shame because then the player can just breeze through mindlessly. I'd love it if there were some sort of grading system for levels and, as an incentive, make it so that in order to get the weapon unlock, you need to get a high grade: this would encourage more engagement into the scoring system and offer higher replayability. Basically I want the neat quest system you have, but done on a wider scale.

In addition to the feedback above, there were also some minor issues with the gameplay, such as how incredibly awkward the melee system is where you're constantly phasing past the enemy and making follow-ups difficult. Also I'm agog and aghast at the fact that there is no save/load feature! I made quite some progress in this and was hoping to continue it after taking a break, only to find myself all the way back at the start: quite the bummer!

BlueEagle421 responds:

Thanks a lot for this review!
I’m taking a break from working on it, but I noted your feedback. I will definitely try to improve the melee and try to balance the difficulty. I also enjoy the game most while trying to get the highest combo ;) I was thinking of some scoring/ranks systems for the levels. Will see how it turns out
The save system broke unfortunately on the web version and because it’s an old project I need to rebuild a lot of stuff from ground up to get it working. I want to get it up and running asap, but it’s a technical issue. At least it works on desktop for now ;)
Cheers!

[The Planetologist DEMO]

Seems like a decent Survivors-esque twin-stick shooter! Certainly showcases some solid fundamentals, but I do have to admit that while the game isn't bad necessarily and provides some grindy shooty fun for a short time, in this world of millions of Survivors-esque games vying for attention, this really isn't exciting me or being memorable and I drop it rather quickly. You're free to make whatever you like, of course, and perhaps it's unfair of me to compare, but I feel like it's inevitable. There are some aspects on which it shows some potential to differentiate itself, such as the diverse cast of characters might allow for a lot of different playstyles, or maybe the story mode will be unique, but I don't have any proof of those yet in this small demo.

I'm spitballing here, but given that the game is named the Planetologist, I thought that there were going to be more planet or science-based mechanics, and that could be a nice way to make this game stand out in a unique way. For example, maybe the planet could have more hazardous weather conditions or natural disasters you need to deal with randomly to keep you on your toes or prepare beforehand. Maybe instead of just shooting hordes of mooks, your primary objective is to gather samples by searching for locations to setup drills you then need to defend, or hunting down unique boss enemies. You could also maybe have to build up turrets or defenses like an engineer.

Some other minor feedback would be that it'd be nice to have some sort of visual HUD element to see our roll cooldown (similar to the reload bar), and to see our EXP progress in a bigger way than tucked in the corner where it's barely visible. I also found it really weird that our gun doesn't fire a bullet but instead seems to be some sort of invisible laser: makes no sense why we get powerups about increasing bullet size or speed. More razzle-dazzle in general would be nice too.

JamesChapp responds:

Thank you so much for playing the game and leaving a review!

This feedback is fantastic because it gives us a lot to think about and work on. Guillermo and I aimed to get the demo out there to test the core mechanics of the game. It's still a work in progress, and we're receiving a ton of valuable feedback on the project.

Since it's published on Newgrounds, we're dealing with a very demanding audience that, at the same time, understands it's a project in development being carried out by just the two of us. =)

[Gods of the Arena Dungeon [DEMO]]

Pretty cool game! Reminds me a lot of games like Realm of the Mad God, or perhaps some competitive form of Risk of Rain. Certainly looks to be a rather charming game in terms of presentation and while it's already quite fun in its single-player state, I'd be very interested to see how the gameplay shifts when you need to deal with other players competing and sabotaging each other. Overall it looks incredibly promising and I'm sure loads of people are gonna love it.

Having said that, though...the game really didn't work for me personally. It's still good, but I felt rather underwhelmed despite what looks like a quality product. It's hard to nail down exactly what it is, but something about it just really didn't gel with me: both the micro minute-to-minute combat gameplay and the macro mechanics of levelling and looting just felt really awkward, confusing and unsatisfying. If it helps, I think it's most likely a personal preference thing, similar to how I don't like The Binding of Isaac that much, but can still see why many others would like it. If I were to offer some feedback, though, it'd be:

*This is a bit vague, but as said, there's something about the combat that just felt really off to me. Maybe it's the slow projectiles, maybe it's the hitboxes being placed or sized oddly, maybe its the way the enemies are placed in the world that doesn't match when viewed in a 3D perspective, maybe it's the hit/death feedback, maybe it's that projectiles can clash, there's just something about it within the nitty-gritty that just didn't work for me. I don't have anything specific, unfortunately, so it's up to y'all.

*I was constantly trying to use my RMB skill and being shocked that it wasn't ready yet. It's ok that abilities have long cooldowns if that's what you want for strategy purposes, but I'd like it if you try to use an ability before its ready, that it notifies the player, like having the cooldown remaining flash above the players head briefly, and their character makes a little noise or shakes about.

*I'd like it if loot on the floor has the little info pop-up when your character goes near/over the item, not just when the mouse hovers over it: would make it a lot more convenient to examine loot as typically I'm trying to fend off enemies and I don't have the luxury to mouse over loot during that.

*For a game that's all about racing to level up, levels come and go with the player barely noticing it. At the very least, I'd like it if there was some more fanfare when you level up to give a sense of gratification, but you could also make gaining exp a bit more exciting by turning it into crystals as they do in Survivors games: this could have the added benefit of making multiplayer a bit more exciting as players could plan to steal the crystals that scatter from another player's kill.

*I found it very confusing to grasp the whole class unlock system: why am I having to jump through all these weird hoops to have fun? I just leveled up, so let me pick whatever one of the two classes on offer I want instead of giving me no choice at all unless I do these quests that I don't even understand: the ones that take honor to unlock are self-explanatory, but I have no idea what the other requirements mean.

*I don't feel like the tutorial prepared me for the game properly. Sure, it goes over the basic controls, but I felt completely unprepared for the actual game as I had no idea I wouldn't be able to start as the fire mage immediately, I didn't know about collecting keys and ascending classes and searching for bosses and competing against other players and moving onto new zones and all of that jazz!

*Loot was a bit boring and devoid of anything really exciting besides minor statistical increases. I also don't know what some of the stats mean, like bullet HP.

*Bit frustrating that you can't pause and read tooltips and such at your leisure. I know it's because it will eventually be a multiplayer game, and eventually I'll learn everything and won't need to pause, but still, it was frustrating, especially since I'm playing it single-player at the moment.

Looking forward to seeing how this shapes up with its final release: as said, I think the multiplayer aspect could be very interesting!

gasgod responds:

Hey man
Just saw your video. I appreciate your feedback and this big review!
This game is essentially if you crossed a .io game (like diep.io) with, as you alluded to it in the video, Realm of the Mad God. It's supposed to be a relatively casual experience you can just kind of zone out to and frag your buddies with abbreviated leveling and RPG-light-light mechanics.
Might make more sense in that context

[Gravity Storm - First Mission (DEMO 2)]

Nice little retro game!

It's a little bit basic overall and feels like a 'my first action platformer' game from a first-timer dev, but I don't want to be too down on it because it actually does a lot of things very well in terms of design:

For one, it starts out strong by immediately getting the player into the action and introducing some cool mechanics like gravity switching.

Next, the game kept my interest by having each level add something fresh and distinct to the mix, be it a new mechanic, tileset, obstacles and so on, alongside mixing it all together with tricky combinations.

Finally, it all ends with a good ol' boss fight which has a decent attack pattern and an enrage phase!

So yeah, it's not necessarily anything groundbreaking or truly interesting, but it was a fun short romp and I think it displayed some good design fundamentals that a lot of other games in this ilk get wrong, particularly from first-timers! And yeah, it's nice to see more appreciation for Metal Storm: I was a latecomer to that game myself!

Jampley-Dev responds:

Thanks for the review and the video. Demo 2 is out here, and on Steam if you want to wishlist the full game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3482870/Gravity_Storm__First_Mission/

[the ancient little wizard]

Hah, quite the amusing little game! I quite like the goofy vibes to it and especially enjoy all of the interactions you can have with objects and people. Creating a whole stealth system for these stores was very interesting and livened up the experience above my expectations. There were also a lot of secrets like NPCs that sell special items, recruitments, and the ability to find a pointier hat that upgrades your height stat by 1 which I assume makes no actual difference in anything important, haha! All in all it seemed like a fun little adventure!

While I did enjoy it at the start, I'll admit that around the second trinket I was starting to fall out of love with it. The stealth system seemed buggy and I got seen plenty of times even though I was clearly hiding behind objects that should've blocked their sight. The combat system had no depth to it and could easily be solved by just spamming meteors and meditating with the occasional heal thrown in, turning it into just a hassle (maybe my fault for picking combat mode, but how was I supposed to know without trying?) And every store just felt like more of the same without any sense of progression or escalation, which alongside NPCs repeating lines just made the world lose its allure.

Having said that, morbid curiosity did make me go back and play a bit more, and for some reason I encountered the void walker and was able to go home with only 3 trinkets? Not sure if that was a glitch or maybe I get a better ending if I get all 5?

Would certainly love to see more goofy adventures like this: just needs a little bit more meat on its bones to keep the adventure novel and interesting the whole way through instead of stalling out like it did here!

ArlucGames responds:

Thanks for such an in depth review! It's nice to hear of someone trying to engage with the whole game, which does of course expose its flaws...
The stealth (like most games) was never fully padded out, as the game is so short anyway, but I understand how that can be frustrating.
Combat was also thrown in for variety but not fleshed out, again just wanting to keep the game simple.
You can actually reach Void Walker with just 1 trinket. This was intentional and reading the item descriptions will make it clear which one it is 😉
Did you get the secret ending? If you help out the skeletons, they'll point you in the right direction. Though the secret ending is also simple and more of a gag so you may not want to go through the effort 😅
Thanks so much for playing and hope you'll try out my other games in the future! Which I hope to be a bit more involved than this quick little project 😁

[Wallpaper 2.0 Collab]

Hmm, I don't want to be mean as I think the intention is good in making these collabs and there's a lot of great art here. But, for that very reason that there's a lot of great art and artists that deserve appreciation here, I want the presentation that this collab offers to make the art all the more appealing. When looking at this, all I could think of was Gordon Ramsey's famous words: "it's fucking RAW!"

Forget displaying the art in a very creative or interesting fashion that could garner attention, this presentation is the absolute bare minimum that could be done to present the art and nothing more. It is completely lacking any sort of quality-of-life features as well as any bells and whistles to make the experience appealing. Seriously, the official playlist you made for the art is miles above this: at least there you can easily access the artist profiles to see their other works or follow them, as well as being able to see the art itself in a larger view and download it, which makes sense for a wallpaper.

Again, the art is lovely and I love the sense of community and cooperation that comes from events like this: I just think that more effort needs to be put into the presentation to match the large effort that the artists put in when making their wonderful pieces. It's all out of balance right now! But hey, better luck in the future and I hope to see more cool projects like this.

ColorfulCeleste responds:

Honestly I absolutely agree. I really feel like it would've worked better if scratch was only used as a last resort to package it (it really isn't too difficult to build a gallery now and days). It was really an issue of not asking if anybody had an alternative to scratch tbh.

[Nefarius - The Last Wizard (Updated)]

Hmm, this one is a bit of a mixed bag for me!

It certainly started off very strong with a great first impression. Overall I feel like the graphical presentation of this game is exceptional and very impressive: even aspects that are typically overlooked like menus, death animations, and so on are high quality. Got some fantastic music as well!

Once we start to get into actual gameplay, though, it starts to fall apart, as while it is a somewhat serviceable Survivors-esque game, it feels very bland and dry which is in stark contrast to the beautiful assets used. There's barely any enemy variety and they are easily exploited by running circles around them to corral them together. The weapons/items on offer are tiny, unimaginative, and give no sense of variety between runs. The act of hitting enemies, collecting experience and leveling up is not exciting at all due to a lack of feedback and juice. Frankly, it's just pretty boring to me and feels more like an early alpha or a skeleton to work from: needs a lot more meat on its bones before its actually fun!

Other points of feedback:

*The volume balancing is terrible with the barely existing sound effects being so easily drowned out by the music. I needed to turn the music down to like 1% and the sound to 100% to make it so that it works better.

*Strange that the game teaches you how to dash from the very start, but it doesn't even start you off with a dash since you need to get boots first. By the same token, it's very strange that the laser power requires you to hit a button for it, but the game doesn't teach this at all: I kept waiting for it to activate since I thought it was a passive!

*Weird that the terrain, specifically objects like trees, bushes, and so on, doesn't block the player or the enemies from moving straight through it. I can understand the game allowing enemies to move straight through them, but allowing the player to move through seems weird as they should be obstacles that require the player to strategize and not get stuck: without that, the world feels unexciting and you can just run around without a care in the world.

*Laser is a bit of a death trap in that, while it looks all fancy, it freezes you in place and easily sets you up to be killed right afterwards as the enemies just swarm you. Maybe it needs to freeze time or something else?

*Main menu is inconsistent with control scheme: the main options require you to use the keyboard, but if you go into the options, suddenly the keyboard is unusable and you need to use the mouse instead? Even weirder is that if you try and use the keyboard while in options, it will still keep moving the main menu around.

*Finally, maybe the most important of all, is that even if everything is fixed up, there really isn't anything interesting or unique about the game that grabs me and makes me want to play it. The world is absolutely awash with Survivors-esque games that are competing for attention with all sorts of appealing attributes, and this needs something special to stand out: right now I'm not seeing that.

Hope this helps and you work on it to create a final version which plays as well as it looks!

Snow-Hex responds:

Thanks for your comment, I assure you that the programmer and I will take into account each of the points you mention, thanks again for your review, this kind of comments is really useful in every way. 🦖