I clapped when dragula came on while I was collecting giant pixelated roasted chicken, top 10 zombie britain moment
I wish there was a key to speed up the job giver's dialogue instead of skipping all of it - It'd probably help to require key input to go from one page of dialogue to another.
The most fun part of this for me was trying to rack up large combos to speed up the money grind -- It's pretty hard to go past x10 even with upgrades due to RNG zombie placement though, I'd slow down a bit on the combo bar decay.
Reversing is a disaster due to inverted controls + broken camera, there were a few times where I was right next to the bloody fuel tank and couldn't reverse into it before the fuel gauge ran out
Dumping all your money into the gate/upgrades right before fuel runs out essentially negates the fuel system's entire purpose as it can't drain you of your cash when you respawn. I wonder if it wouldn't be more punishing to slow the car down to a crawl instead of making you respawn with halved money.
Also I'd probably take a cue from the Dead Rising games and stick a "total zombies killed" count somewhere in the UI.
Game is pretty sick and stylish. Car controls pretty well, I was expecting drifting or running into zombies to give me a speed boost of some kind to try and optimize the races, maybe those two actions will do something later on? I had a rendering issue where zombies and targets would be on a weird layer. When I chased the white guy his "neener neener" voice would loop endlessly after I had lost sight of him. I also wish the mission giver's text would go faster or could be completed by pressing continue.
I've been looking forward to trying this one. The drifting and turning seem OK. I like the billboards. The art style is pretty good overall. Colliding into walls and such makes the car just bounce off like it was rubber, I would expect more weight. The fuel mechanic runs out too quick and isn't really all that fun. I streamed this game, and had to mute it because of the licensed music, give me an option to turn it off or replace it with royalty free stuff.
Game looks interesting. I considered making a playtest video, but decided against it due to copyrighted music. It's also very hard for me to talk over lyrical music. And OBS doesn't like the game unfortunately. I'm not sure if that's a Construct thing. Crunchy graphics are very nostalgic.
Had a lot of fun with this one, could use some more info on the durability stat of the car, I saw the red overlay increasing but maybe something like the fuel bar would be neat. I'M NOT BUYING A GAMEPAD.
I feel like using classic musical tracks is cheating, but I liked it. Was simple and effective, car handling was pretty good and the aesthetics are nice. Looking forward to new maps and more functionality
* Somehow I couldn't access the options menu or select an upgrade as if any "ok/select this/accept" input wasn't there (Was there a specific key I had to press?).
* The DRINK ME poster was a nice sight.
* Not really into how the camera turns back when you drive backwards, because it feels kinda disorienting (I haven't played any racing/car game in a while).
Tried the Chunky version later:
* Did one of the jobs where I got 50 targets.
* I bought 2 values in the store but still don't really know how the store works, I guess.
This is well put together in every regard(besides UI being a bit iffy), but honestly it's too much and it makes me exhausted. Probably doesn't help that I've never played the games it's based on. Looking good, I'm sure plenty love it but it isn't for me.
It's a great proof of concept. The style is strong and running over zombies adds something to do while driving around. I can see it being successful.
There's very little fuel and sometimes it's hard to collect mission items if you miss the first time (it's hard to turn around so it's better to just drive away and try again because you ain't getting that thing otherwise). Upgrades do change quite a bit so that should remove those issues with time.
I really wish esc didn't quit the game outright lol
Great game! The car controls really smoothly and mowing down zombies to the music is a blast. In particular I love how you can bounce off walls and turn 180 degrees without losing momentum and how easily you can exit a drift while still being in control.
I did all missions and was grinding for the exit when I pressed esc by mistake. Oh well.
I'm curious to see how you'll replace the placeholder music, it just fits so well.
1(1) Race/Ring missions or all missions in general should have an arrow indicator on top of the car in world space.
1(2) Package missions should have a cardboard box UI probably SE of the screen on how much you have in the car.
2. Drifting
2(1). I never utilized it at all. Theres no incentive on doing it since i could just go straight/turn forever just hitting zombies. Probably add some kind of a nitro boost that gets filled whenever you do drifting? Add some good incentives on why the player should drift.
2(2). Isometric camera(?) or better camera responsiveness. This is what killed drifting for me mostly. Might be skill issue but being able to see 360 in where to drift would be cool.
3. Shop
3(1) The credit/value system kinda sucks. Each upgrade tier should be like 50$ -> 100$ and so on.
3(2) UI. Remove the lady(?) Add a low poly 3D 360 rotating of the car part that would be upgraded when X car part is selected.
4. Fuel
4(1)Having to constantly go back in the gas station is annoying. I couldnt upgrade the fuel tank easily because of the value system instead of an increment value upgrade system.
5.Controls.
5(1) going reverse is kinda shit. Theres some times that i need gas badly and i miss the icon and not being able to reverse fast is fucked.
6. Mission text should be faster + snappy. It feels slow.
7. Rule of cool.
The exploding fuels should have lessen slowdown or even make the car faster. The game should be about massacre. Slowdown is the last that i want to experience. Keep the dopamine going. There should not be any abrupt slowdowns. If you have to put curved streets/roads in the boundaries of the map instead of a flat sudden stop then do it.
Also needs more destructable objects. Would be fucking cool if you can collide with objects and that gets launched to kill more zombies.
Being able to go inside a building then getting launched or moving to a new location.
Artstyle is good. Reminds me of twisted metal.
Overall its a nice game to play for 30 minutes to an hour. I enjoyed my experience.
Also werks in my 10 year old laptop machine. Win 8.1, SSD You dont have to worry about system requirements.
Very solid start, had a lot of fun with the demo. The car handled well enough, the game in general looks great for it's style and the billboard jokes are classic. It definitely nails that early-millenial arcade-y feel, and the choice of music helps too. One bug that I've found is that during the package mission, the counter doesn't track how many packages you got and stays on 0. Running into a ghost also doesn't seem to affect anything. As said below, some indicator for the chasing mission would be nice - first time I've tried it he ran away outside of my field of vision and I've lost him in the crowd, couldn't find him and the timer ran out. The driving missions' timer is fairly lenient, I was able to finish the harder one even with running out of fuel mid-mission. The checkpoint indicators could be clearer, as it can be confusing of which direction to go to when you have more than one visible or when you don't have the next checkpoint immediately visible on your screen when running over the current one. Making the difference between active and inactive checkpoints bigger and also adding an arrow to the next current checkpoint would help a lot. Text scrolling for missions felt inconsistents, I think some are slower than others. Trying to make them pop with SPACE also skipped the whole conversation. It would be also nice for jobs to say on the list how much they'll pay. As said below, immediately quitting with ESC is pretty harsh. I've lost some progress trying to quit the shop menu with ESC by reflex. Not really a fan with the fuel mechanics if I'm honest, evne with some capacity upgrade it ended up feeling like busywork. I'd rather have something like a damage/repair system if you want periodic maintenance as it'd be tied to player performance rather than just time, and also would give me an incentive to drive better instead of bouncing around everywhere. Speaking of, crashing into things felt a little too bouncy even for an arcade game to me. The upgrade system is nice and works well, but considering how expensive it is to unlock the next stage (or would be next stage rather) by the midle of the game it felt like a waste of money that I should've used on unlocking the gate instead. The mission system is nice, but with the gate being unlocked with money it ended up as a way to grind money by the end. (Maybe have the gate open by doing X out of Y missions?)
Still, had a ton of fun playing through the demo, and definitely interested to see where this'll go.
Thank you for all of this. Have put it into a feedback doc I'll be reading through and considering as I go forward. Not gonna respond to most of your inidividual points because I'd probably put you to sleep with how tedious I'd get, other than:
This level will be level 1, which is why it's so easy.
The package mission especially is a garbage fire and will probably get entirely reworked, because it's basically just the chicken mission but worse.
excellent work, it really is a love letter to the PS1 era of Carma' and Twisted Metal, with a bit of Quarantine in there for good measure the music fits great too, i loved every second of playing. the twat chasing mission will give me nightmares - i lost sight of him as he ran through the church fence (that i couldnt drive through?) then he started teasing. an indicator (directional sound? arrow?) to where he is would help, but i eventually found him and splattered him. felt good. upgraded my car, did some missions, and about 30mins in I accidentally hit ESC while in the shop, which closes the game. bummer, i wanted to see it through to the end. i'll give it another go after some other demos, but you're really doing a fantastic job. my only bit of feedback is that it's hard to tell which terrain is traversable. next to the houses with the tall bushes there's a green dumpster, which i at first thought was another bush or something, and it stopped me dead in my tracks (pun intended). otherwise all is good. perhaps add some stunt ramps or something else to do outside of missions while you're just roaming about.
Sorry about the Esc thing! I put it in last minute because I realised keyboard controls didn't have a 'quit' option, forgetting that it's also the key I tied to exiting menus. My own fault for testing with a gamepad and the Back button exiting.
Fun game, was excited to finally play this! I played all missions, but couldn't complete the one with the speedometers. I didn't find any and for some reason the destroyed ones are still visible.
I like the upgrade system, but the value point thing was confusing at first. I put everything in speed and acceleration of course, but maybe I should have put it into fuel. Constantly ran out.
It would be interesting to see this in a larger world with quests from survivors.
As someone unfamiliar with this style of game, this was great. The floating rotisserie chickens are what really won me over, chasing the one zombie as well. The metal aesthetic is great, I think adding some guitar riff sound affects for like when you complete a mission will help unify the presentation. Doing missions is tons of fun but I would also love to see a main story later down the road, you seem to be a good writer and I think trying to do more in regard to world building is totally doable, want to see more characters who live in this world as well.
Thank you very much indeed. Will probably work in an 'overall story' but I'm conscious of going too hard with overscoping. But I do like writing, so I'll slip something in there somewhere, I think.
A cautionary tale against not regularly culling the homeless. Bravo!
Some thoughts:
Driving felt good, hitting those ordinary British people was also nice.
Give me a way to quickly go through the slow scrolling mission text without having to skip the text entirely.
Why do I get teleported to the start when I get out of the shop. This is especially annoying since you get teleported facing away from everything, and after shopping I normally want to refuel and take a mission.
Just let me spend cash in the shop instead of buying value to buy upgrades.
The fuel system is obnoxious. The fuel tank is rather small, and refueling is cheap. This makes it an annoying chore.
Runaway dude, seemed to just take straight turns and run faster than my car. Eventually got him since he ran into the car.
I don't get the mission with the roasted chicken. The count seemed to reset, and I had no idea where to find them, sometimes they seemed to spawn at the same location again.
Perfect feedback, thank you. Have actually done a quick fix on where you get teleported after exiting the shop already, so consider that one handled. Rest of it, I won't bore you with individual responses, I'd get really tedious. But they're all going into consideration in a big feedback doc.
TLDW: The art style is great, the core gameplay is fun. It will be interesting to see how you expand upon the game in the future. Not a fan of the fuel mechanic. Couldn't get the upgrade system to work either.
Comments
I clapped when dragula came on while I was collecting giant pixelated roasted chicken, top 10 zombie britain moment
I wish there was a key to speed up the job giver's dialogue instead of skipping all of it - It'd probably help to require key input to go from one page of dialogue to another.
The most fun part of this for me was trying to rack up large combos to speed up the money grind -- It's pretty hard to go past x10 even with upgrades due to RNG zombie placement though, I'd slow down a bit on the combo bar decay.
Reversing is a disaster due to inverted controls + broken camera, there were a few times where I was right next to the bloody fuel tank and couldn't reverse into it before the fuel gauge ran out
Dumping all your money into the gate/upgrades right before fuel runs out essentially negates the fuel system's entire purpose as it can't drain you of your cash when you respawn. I wonder if it wouldn't be more punishing to slow the car down to a crawl instead of making you respawn with halved money.
Also I'd probably take a cue from the Dead Rising games and stick a "total zombies killed" count somewhere in the UI.
Game is pretty sick and stylish. Car controls pretty well, I was expecting drifting or running into zombies to give me a speed boost of some kind to try and optimize the races, maybe those two actions will do something later on? I had a rendering issue where zombies and targets would be on a weird layer. When I chased the white guy his "neener neener" voice would loop endlessly after I had lost sight of him. I also wish the mission giver's text would go faster or could be completed by pressing continue.
Dead Engine is pretty fun so far. My only real complaint is the quest giver speaks too quickly for me to read it at times.
I've been looking forward to trying this one. The drifting and turning seem OK. I like the billboards. The art style is pretty good overall. Colliding into walls and such makes the car just bounce off like it was rubber, I would expect more weight. The fuel mechanic runs out too quick and isn't really all that fun. I streamed this game, and had to mute it because of the licensed music, give me an option to turn it off or replace it with royalty free stuff.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.
Game looks interesting. I considered making a playtest video, but decided against it due to copyrighted music. It's also very hard for me to talk over lyrical music. And OBS doesn't like the game unfortunately. I'm not sure if that's a Construct thing. Crunchy graphics are very nostalgic.
Had a lot of fun with this one, could use some more info on the durability stat of the car, I saw the red overlay increasing but maybe something like the fuel bar would be neat. I'M NOT BUYING A GAMEPAD.
I feel like using classic musical tracks is cheating, but I liked it. Was simple and effective, car handling was pretty good and the aesthetics are nice. Looking forward to new maps and more functionality
Tried the 64 bit version first.
* Somehow I couldn't access the options menu or select an upgrade as if any "ok/select this/accept" input wasn't there (Was there a specific key I had to press?).
* The DRINK ME poster was a nice sight.
* Not really into how the camera turns back when you drive backwards, because it feels kinda disorienting (I haven't played any racing/car game in a while).
Tried the Chunky version later:
* Did one of the jobs where I got 50 targets.
* I bought 2 values in the store but still don't really know how the store works, I guess.
Is cool, even if I sucked at it.
This is well put together in every regard(besides UI being a bit iffy), but honestly it's too much and it makes me exhausted. Probably doesn't help that I've never played the games it's based on. Looking good, I'm sure plenty love it but it isn't for me.
Virgin bus survivor vs chav dead engine
It's a great proof of concept. The style is strong and running over zombies adds something to do while driving around. I can see it being successful.
There's very little fuel and sometimes it's hard to collect mission items if you miss the first time (it's hard to turn around so it's better to just drive away and try again because you ain't getting that thing otherwise). Upgrades do change quite a bit so that should remove those issues with time.
I really wish esc didn't quit the game outright lol
Great game!
The car controls really smoothly and mowing down zombies to the music is a blast.
In particular I love how you can bounce off walls and turn 180 degrees without losing momentum and how easily you can exit a drift while still being in control.
I did all missions and was grinding for the exit when I pressed esc by mistake. Oh well.
I'm curious to see how you'll replace the placeholder music, it just fits so well.
Sorry about the esc thing! I put it in last minute because I didn't have a 'quit' option, and completely forgot that it closes menus too.
No idea how I'm going to resolve the music issue. Might go to /mu/, see if they have any bands who want some promotion or something. Dunno.
1. Missions
1(1) Race/Ring missions or all missions in general should have an arrow indicator on top of the car in world space.
1(2) Package missions should have a cardboard box UI probably SE of the screen on how much you have in the car.
2. Drifting
2(1). I never utilized it at all. Theres no incentive on doing it since i could just go straight/turn forever just hitting zombies. Probably add some kind of a nitro boost that gets filled whenever you do drifting? Add some good incentives on why the player should drift.
2(2). Isometric camera(?) or better camera responsiveness. This is what killed drifting for me mostly. Might be skill issue but being able to see 360 in where to drift would be cool.
3. Shop
3(1) The credit/value system kinda sucks. Each upgrade tier should be like 50$ -> 100$ and so on.
3(2) UI. Remove the lady(?) Add a low poly 3D 360 rotating of the car part that would be upgraded when X car part is selected.
4. Fuel
4(1)Having to constantly go back in the gas station is annoying. I couldnt upgrade the fuel tank easily because of the value system instead of an increment value upgrade system.
5.Controls.
5(1) going reverse is kinda shit. Theres some times that i need gas badly and i miss the icon and not being able to reverse fast is fucked.
6. Mission text should be faster + snappy. It feels slow.
7. Rule of cool.
The exploding fuels should have lessen slowdown or even make the car faster. The game should be about massacre. Slowdown is the last that i want to experience. Keep the dopamine going. There should not be any abrupt slowdowns. If you have to put curved streets/roads in the boundaries of the map instead of a flat sudden stop then do it.
Also needs more destructable objects. Would be fucking cool if you can collide with objects and that gets launched to kill more zombies.
Being able to go inside a building then getting launched or moving to a new location.
Artstyle is good. Reminds me of twisted metal.
Overall its a nice game to play for 30 minutes to an hour. I enjoyed my experience.
Also werks in my 10 year old laptop machine. Win 8.1, SSD You dont have to worry about system requirements.
Thank you for all of this. Have put it into a feedback doc I'll be reading through and considering as I go forward.
Thank you especially for the machine you tested it on, that's invaluable and I couldn't be more grateful.
Very solid start, had a lot of fun with the demo. The car handled well enough, the game in general looks great for it's style and the billboard jokes are classic. It definitely nails that early-millenial arcade-y feel, and the choice of music helps too.
One bug that I've found is that during the package mission, the counter doesn't track how many packages you got and stays on 0. Running into a ghost also doesn't seem to affect anything.
As said below, some indicator for the chasing mission would be nice - first time I've tried it he ran away outside of my field of vision and I've lost him in the crowd, couldn't find him and the timer ran out.
The driving missions' timer is fairly lenient, I was able to finish the harder one even with running out of fuel mid-mission. The checkpoint indicators could be clearer, as it can be confusing of which direction to go to when you have more than one visible or when you don't have the next checkpoint immediately visible on your screen when running over the current one. Making the difference between active and inactive checkpoints bigger and also adding an arrow to the next current checkpoint would help a lot.
Text scrolling for missions felt inconsistents, I think some are slower than others. Trying to make them pop with SPACE also skipped the whole conversation. It would be also nice for jobs to say on the list how much they'll pay.
As said below, immediately quitting with ESC is pretty harsh. I've lost some progress trying to quit the shop menu with ESC by reflex.
Not really a fan with the fuel mechanics if I'm honest, evne with some capacity upgrade it ended up feeling like busywork. I'd rather have something like a damage/repair system if you want periodic maintenance as it'd be tied to player performance rather than just time, and also would give me an incentive to drive better instead of bouncing around everywhere.
Speaking of, crashing into things felt a little too bouncy even for an arcade game to me.
The upgrade system is nice and works well, but considering how expensive it is to unlock the next stage (or would be next stage rather) by the midle of the game it felt like a waste of money that I should've used on unlocking the gate instead. The mission system is nice, but with the gate being unlocked with money it ended up as a way to grind money by the end. (Maybe have the gate open by doing X out of Y missions?)
Still, had a ton of fun playing through the demo, and definitely interested to see where this'll go.
Thank you for all of this. Have put it into a feedback doc I'll be reading through and considering as I go forward. Not gonna respond to most of your inidividual points because I'd probably put you to sleep with how tedious I'd get, other than:
This level will be level 1, which is why it's so easy.
The package mission especially is a garbage fire and will probably get entirely reworked, because it's basically just the chicken mission but worse.
excellent work, it really is a love letter to the PS1 era of Carma' and Twisted Metal, with a bit of Quarantine in there for good measure
the music fits great too, i loved every second of playing.
the twat chasing mission will give me nightmares - i lost sight of him as he ran through the church fence (that i couldnt drive through?) then he started teasing. an indicator (directional sound? arrow?) to where he is would help, but i eventually found him and splattered him. felt good.
upgraded my car, did some missions, and about 30mins in I accidentally hit ESC while in the shop, which closes the game. bummer, i wanted to see it through to the end. i'll give it another go after some other demos, but you're really doing a fantastic job.
my only bit of feedback is that it's hard to tell which terrain is traversable. next to the houses with the tall bushes there's a green dumpster, which i at first thought was another bush or something, and it stopped me dead in my tracks (pun intended). otherwise all is good. perhaps add some stunt ramps or something else to do outside of missions while you're just roaming about.
keep up the great work
Sorry about the Esc thing! I put it in last minute because I realised keyboard controls didn't have a 'quit' option, forgetting that it's also the key I tied to exiting menus. My own fault for testing with a gamepad and the Back button exiting.
Fun game, was excited to finally play this! I played all missions, but couldn't complete the one with the speedometers. I didn't find any and for some reason the destroyed ones are still visible.
I like the upgrade system, but the value point thing was confusing at first. I put everything in speed and acceleration of course, but maybe I should have put it into fuel. Constantly ran out.
It would be interesting to see this in a larger world with quests from survivors.
Thank you! Will pop your feedback on a doc I'm reviewing as I go forward, see what I end up adjusting. Much appreciated.
As someone unfamiliar with this style of game, this was great. The floating rotisserie chickens are what really won me over, chasing the one zombie as well. The metal aesthetic is great, I think adding some guitar riff sound affects for like when you complete a mission will help unify the presentation. Doing missions is tons of fun but I would also love to see a main story later down the road, you seem to be a good writer and I think trying to do more in regard to world building is totally doable, want to see more characters who live in this world as well.
Thank you very much indeed. Will probably work in an 'overall story' but I'm conscious of going too hard with overscoping. But I do like writing, so I'll slip something in there somewhere, I think.
A cautionary tale against not regularly culling the homeless. Bravo!
Some thoughts:
Perfect feedback, thank you. Have actually done a quick fix on where you get teleported after exiting the shop already, so consider that one handled. Rest of it, I won't bore you with individual responses, I'd get really tedious. But they're all going into consideration in a big feedback doc.
Video Feedback:
TLDW: The art style is great, the core gameplay is fun. It will be interesting to see how you expand upon the game in the future. Not a fan of the fuel mechanic. Couldn't get the upgrade system to work either.
Awesome, thank you. Will address a lot of that stuff, seem to have a few people having similar issues so it's going to need reconsidering.
Great fun, quite liked it! Some quick notes:
- you can bug yourself by driving along a wall.
- The level of British is top tier.
- Package mission felt completely impossible.
- This needs a "nitroboost" button.
Anyhow, once this is complete, I will actually buy this shit, so that is a good grade.
Will get to the bugs eventually. Probably. Hopefully.
Am incredibly British. Hate the package mission myself, so will be utterly redoing that one.
Turbo is PROBABLY coming.