The time has arrived to announce the winners of Flash Forward 2025!
This event celebrates the legacy of Flash while giving people cool new Flash games and interactive movies, playable in the browser thanks to Ruffle.
Thank you @jmtb02, @FutureCopLGF and @Dungeonation for judging assistance!
Top Five Games
đ1st - $1200
âBoMToons hardly needs an introduction for Flash Forward - and neither does Luis for that matter, a Portal Defenders teamâs Flash game is always a good time, regardless of its scope. Chess Force is just another wonderful entry of theirs, this time tackling the shootâemâup genre, and pretty well at that! Stages are offered to you Mega Man style, yet it still feels good to upgrade your artillery against a slight difficulty shift in some stages over others! (Mega Man-ifying a shootâemâupâŚBoMToons could make me interested in any game genre, as Iâve said before) The boss attacks felt pretty telegraph-able and the final boss had me grumblinâ for a slight bit before I finally took âim down. I played through on a Steam Deckâs web browser, but I definitely noticed performance slowed on later stages, and some stages crashing and refreshing the browser on a mobile device. I also found the mobile touch controls to be too floaty and turned me off to trying to play it initially on my phone. (Hey, Iâve been there, we all wanna believe our gameâll be a perfect experience on mobileâŚ) However, I can of course fully recommend this yearâs entry from this team, though youâll probably need something that can keep good enough game performance going throughout!
Ooh and also, Pyragmusâ chiptunes are a wonderful fit here! (Funny story, I listened to that unused Castle Crashing the Beard music BEFORE I played Chess Force, heard it being used in Chess Force, and was like âayyyy, thereâs that song again!â)â -Dungeonation
âWhat an awesome SHMUP experience! While I did have some gripes with the game since I'm a huge stickler for SHMUPs, and I did run into some bugs as well, the game's overwhelming charm, amusing concept, cool boss fights and sheer spectacle where you're blasting down gigantic ships while bullets fly and explosions go off made me easily push past its foibles and enjoy the crazy ride all the way through!â -FutureCopLGF
đ2nd - $700
âIt's the right balance of ambitious new dev and gameplay, it's just fun and stands out against the others. And there's multiple levels! It's what Newgrounds is all about, right? Emerging talent. It's great.â -jmtb02
âThis charming SHMUP really impressed me with how it never felt satisfied just spinning its wheels, delivering you the same wave of mooks over and over like so many beginner SHMUPs do: instead it just kept escalating the stakes every level with all new and very creative enemy types, waves, mini-bosses, special events and big bad bosses, and in doing so, it made an incredibly well-paced and spectacular experience!â -FutureCopLGF
âThereâs a game on Webkinz I was fond of growing up - Dex Dangerous - which controls similarly to this Flash, so when I pulled it up and started playing it I got very excited! This gameâs got some good challenge, and a bit of a control scheme learning curve with the power ups (reading the controls?? HAH, never heard of her), but itâs a fun little package regardless, and a pretty fresh take on this sort of game, with additions like boss fights! It's less arcade-y than games like it, and short considering, but that didn't detract from the good times I had with it.â -Dungeonation
đ3rd - $400
âJust incredibly accessible and charming. Just the right length, art and play is just great. This is peak for me.â -jmtb02
âStreamlined point nâ click goodness! Itâs simple: look for the candies scattered about the house, in order to save a vampire named Vampi from an ADORABLE spider who just dreams about encasing the moon in silk while napping, awww. How could ya vanquish such an adorable spindly thing like that? But you must. It feels like Guy-Unger has DONE a simple point nâ click Flash before in Flash Forwardsâ past, but nay - this appears to be the first! Itâs visually appealing in looks as well as how itâs animated, and it also feels great to just click around and on things, being decently responsive outside of some things that just display some response text on the screen briefly.â -Dungeonation
âWhat a cute little adventure game! I'll admit that it's rather simple and doesn't have much meat on its bones, but I nevertheless enjoyed all the quirky animations and amusing interactions in my short-but-sweet time with it!â -FutureCopLGF
đ4th - $150
âMaybe I'm biased because I'm rekindling my love for RTS recently, but this game really blew me away! I was seriously impressed at how smooth and intuitive the units were to control, and the way the game escalates in introducing new enemy types and formations while granting you all sorts of new guns and powers to play with made for a very addictive, challenging and strategic gameplay loop! The edgy humor as well takes me right back to tasting that old-school Newgrounds flavor, mm-mmm!â -FutureCopLGF
đ5th - $100
âI got MAD at this game for making me laugh, âcuz itâs DISARMING for a spooky game! Like, there are definitely games that blend humor and horror together, thatâs nothing new, but the way Fun Home does it makes you exhale with relief but then quickly go âWait, no, come onnnn, itâs not the time for this right now! Weâre in spookytime!â Itâs pretty effective and a wonderful treat overall with what we got so far of the game. Deathink is a dang funny guy and a very talented artist and pixel artist, the homages to NES graphics scattered throughout feel great, and you can really appreciate the work he took learning ActionScript 3 in order to make this! The keyboard control scheme is supposed to mimic a controller layout, but I wasnât a big fan of it, though that is a small criticism! My advice for more parts would be: keep it ridiculous, but juuust aggravatingly ridiculous enough!â -Dungeonation
âIt was over before I knew it so it was a tad bit unsatisfying, but that's only because as a proof-of-concept, it was so well-done it made me excited and hungry for the eventual second chapter of this very promising stalker horror game, so hungry I wish I could play it right now, now, now!â -FutureCopLGF
Honorable Mentions
Riddle School fans were eating good this year, with two fan games!
Keep reading below for the Movies with Interactive Elements winners!
