I am sure you know this by now, I am not the right player for this kind of game. With that said, I managed to finish the hard tutorial mission on the first try.
I also tried the mission with wizard and mimics. I am actually happy how far I got. I did not like how half of my team died because they were standing in the way of a slowly approaching magic orb. It looked like the teammates AI was not aware the wizard fired at them from far away. I know there is the “move quickly” action, but I sort of felt like they should have dodged that.
I love the humour in your game. Bonus points for female goblins with long noses.
The UI looks much better now. I wonder if you plan to add artworks for different missions.
I TRIED to play around in the editor, but I couldn’t even figure out how to have two coloured floor tiles. An attempt was made.
I am sorry I cannot give you more critical feedback. I am simply not good enough at your game to comment on balance, and try to find exploits. I still feel like I am lost half the time, so I cannot even see if some interactions are buggy or not. As far as I know, the game is good. It’s the kind of game I would enjoy watching a skilled player play, rather than play it myself.
Thanks for playing! No worries about not being good at the game, FantaSWAT is not very balanced and can be confusing even for veterans of tactical games.
It looked like the teammates AI was not aware the wizard fired at them from far away
This is true, no NPC in the game has code to dodge projectiles because all of them are fast enough that it doesn't matter. The wizard's void bolt is the exception, I should have implemented some sort of dodge logic but I didn't really have time to test it.
I TRIED to play around in the editor
It's unintuitive for sure, it's mostly meant for me since it's what I used to make the various levels. It's pretty simple once you know how the wings system works but I assumed almost nobody would ever seriously try to make maps for my game so I didn't really bother making it slick or more intuitive. If I come back to this game I will add some tutorials with pictures and hopefully that'd be clear enough if anyone really wants to learn. Cool pixelart gobbo btw
Thanks for giving my game a shot! Feedback is always welcome. For now I'm taking a pause from this game to start a new project, hopefully it'll be way less confusing.
I heard you're planning to stop working on this, so I guess now's my last chance to play it after eyeing it for so long.
Played it for like two-three hours? Had a lot of fun going through the missions with Diversity Squad trying to beat everything with no officers down until I got to the Cleansing the Rot campaign and got bodied hard for an hour by the combination of teleporting insta-respawning instakill liches and stunlocking mimics in tight quarters.
My verdict: This is a fantastic game in concept, and a really good game in execution except it's way too hard.
Like sure, it's got some issues with the friendly AI and the quirks of using doors and items and some notable missing options like a way to see through doors, but the only reason those are aggravating instead of just a minor annoyance is that you're up against hordes of fearless aimbot murder machines whose only hobby is holing up in a room and pointing a gun at the only entrance while sipping coffee to keep their reflexes sharp.
Like, for comparison, SWAT 4 starts you out with like 3 armed suspects spread out in a two-story diner. Here, you're up against ten gunmen in cover with no alternate entrance before you've even finished the tutorial!
I really think all you need is to tone down the difficulty and you'll have a classic on your hands.
I hope you figure out a way to finish it in a way that satisfies you so you can publish it.
Thanks for playing, you're totally right the game is not balanced at all. It's a hard thing to get right: if you abuse heals, spam C2, stun every corner, let your squadmates soak damage and aggro enemies from outside their rooms it can get too easy, but playing "normally" can end up being frustrating.
Thanks for sticking with it even though it was aggravating, I am not exactly happy with how it plays either so maybe I will eventually try to fix it, but to be completely honest I'm sick of working on it so I'll take a pause to start a new project that I've had in the back of my mind for a while.
stunlocking mimics
Yeah I wanted them to be spooky but I overdid it lmao
The UI is looking super slick now! Great job. I jumped straight into the Cleanse the Rot campaign to get started. The first mission kicked my ass. Took me a good 25 minutes to clear it. It's super intense in a good way, and figuring out an equipment loadout and strategy that worked for me was really fun. The way every run is a bit different (or extremely different sometimes) keeps it from feeling like a puzzle game. The new classes are great, but the wizard's definitely my favourite. Speaking of wizards, the briefing about T-Wiz the wizfluencer was hilarious. All the little references and stuff are cute. The Dreams of Joy Departed level is fugging awesome, and I'm beyond honored by the CoD level. The gnome lines had me in tears... "I'm not a gnoblin!" is really funny in the context of FantaSWAT's universe/lore.
The new (I think they're new anyway) tunes are excellent. The difficulty curve seems to be shaping up nicely. The old campaigns feel a bit easier now, which I think is for the best since some of these newer levels are really tough. The controls still take me some time to adjust to whenever I boot the game up, but once you get into the groove it's not too cumbersome. I play it a bit like an RTS when I can, trying to micro my squads as much as possible to squeeze the most out of them (and I fail miserably 100% of the time).
All in all, it's still a blast, and it's really coming together to feel like a complete, polished package. I might be biased since I'm a huge fan of the game, though. Are you planning to plant this on Steam once it's done?
My pleasure, the CoD enemies worked really well and were fun to animate.
Are you planning to plant this on Steam once it's done?
I don't think it would make back the initial investment it takes to put a game on steam, that's one of the reasons I'm actually putting FantaSWAT on hold for now. I don't hate it how it turned out so far, but objectively it's not the most appealing of games and the design is confused, it plays more like a mediocre action game than a tactical top-down shooter.
There's a lot of stuff I'd have to rework to make the game good but at this point I've worked on it for too long. I do want to add more content down the line, but for now I need to start working on something new.
Oh yeah, got plans for days. I don't want to say anything yet just in case I change my mind at the last second, but hopefully I'll have something ready for next DD
i had fun playing. it's complicated but it gets more manageable with each DD. i read that you might drop the project, which is very saddening - it feels as if you're one update away from making it smooth.
The time has come, will be playing through the new missions, writing down thoughts as I play.
New wizard and cleric class, also read through the class writeups properly this time. The lore is good, quite like the overall implications about society and different races in this world. A storymode campaign might be good at some point with some characters, but that depends on how big you want to make this.
Still playing like a maniac building killteams and not thinking that much about score...
First team is all dwarves, extra armor + 1 cleric and 1 wizard. Focusing on damage output.
Hostage campaign was really fun, my setup worked well. Not many arrests got done, but civilians did get saved.
Wizfluencers turning lich, now we are talking.
Oof, the new song is fucking heavy. The mimics did give me a scare. A lot of good men were lost fighting the barricaded wizard.
Damaskustime, new banger song here too. This level is really fucking fun, shows of the potential of your game well. Big ups for including the lines of the characters. Mission was a complete massacre. Including these fantasy elements for crooks really ups the fun, more strange enemies will only improve this game.
Grinding hole lore was appropriate and made me laugh. Design of the level and the music reflects my stupid game well. It even has nonsensical collision.
On another note, kind of love it when the whole crew starts reloading. Did not expect a boss sequence, the entire level was great. I loved it.
Glad you liked the dojd level, I tried making it oneiric and weird by adding those invisible walls and pitch black tiles.
but that depends on how big you want to make this.
This is gonna be it, at least for now. I'm proud of it but it's definitely not a looker of a game and the design is confused, after more than a year of working for it I yearn to start something new, simpler and more fun. It could really use more content but it's not getting any better in the core gameplay.
Again, very happy you liked it, especially the music since I like your stuff so much.
it's a bit difficult to micro the squads since it can be hard to tell who you have selected and what their action will be due to small and mixed contexts (open, c4, kick, slow open, breach, etc) however it's still fun to go serpico on some goblins. didn't seem to lose any points for not arresting enemies, which is good because arresting these guys is impossible when the rest of their team is shooting at you (and who will also switch back to shooting seemingly randomly). it could be my fault, I may not have understood the mechanic correctly. I lost pretty much all my squad mates every mission, rest in peace brothers
Yeah it turned out more action-focused and less tactical than I originally indented.
Having played a bunch of SWAT 4 and its clones I know how frustrating it is to get punished for unlawful kills, so I made it much easier to tell what's a fair target. You get a higher score for arresting suspects but going guns blazing is perfectly viable as long as you don't kill surrendered enemies.
Good gameplay. Deep tactical controls. Only issue is the camera, it kinda made me motionsick. Also I do wish the commands system was a little more simplified
I couldn't arrest bob for some reason so I kicked him to death. Now the boss took both my guns! But seriously I couldn't figure out how to arrest. You should add the mouse needs to be over the suspect.
After I got past that the game was very fun. I got the basic squad controls down, but struggled with controlling individual squads. I think a better method would be tie each squad to a number key (1-9) then you need to hold that number while you select on the wheel. Just an idea. The wheel was a bit jittery or buggy to control, but I did see the option for it and didn't mess with it.
Spells were cool and fun, but could definitely use more. Scry, grease, fireball etc. I did enjoy dropping anvils on people though. Really I wanted more ways to approach the problem of closed door then "drop some anvils in, maybe throw a stun grenade, clear and hope for the best".
Overall love the concept, enjoyed the gameplay, and liked the humor/vibe.
The menus mix too many different fonts. Camera movement feels jittery, could use some smoothing. I don't understand the point of "limit camera offset". I got stuck for a while in the C4 tutorial because pressing 4 does nothing unless you are right by the door (it needs visual feedback). I don't understand why two keys are wasted on zooming in/out, since camera zoom is something that should already be optimized by the developer. Since grenade bounce is meant to be predictable, it should be included in the throw line preview. The squad command menu is one of the most confusing things I've ever seen. There's no way normal people can use this. The music is really repetitive and gets your nerves after a while. Overall, the game is too complicated and not fun. You have so many options with such obtuse controls that it leads to choice paralysis. Other SWAT games use FPSs as a base, which are a familiar and fun genre. I'm guessing this is meant to use Hotline Miami as a base, but aside from the camera perspective it has very little in common with it.
Comments
I am sure you know this by now, I am not the right player for this kind of game. With that said, I managed to finish the hard tutorial mission on the first try.
I also tried the mission with wizard and mimics. I am actually happy how far I got. I did not like how half of my team died because they were standing in the way of a slowly approaching magic orb. It looked like the teammates AI was not aware the wizard fired at them from far away. I know there is the “move quickly” action, but I sort of felt like they should have dodged that.
I love the humour in your game. Bonus points for female goblins with long noses.
The UI looks much better now. I wonder if you plan to add artworks for different missions.
I TRIED to play around in the editor, but I couldn’t even figure out how to have two coloured floor tiles. An attempt was made.
I am sorry I cannot give you more critical feedback. I am simply not good enough at your game to comment on balance, and try to find exploits. I still feel like I am lost half the time, so I cannot even see if some interactions are buggy or not. As far as I know, the game is good. It’s the kind of game I would enjoy watching a skilled player play, rather than play it myself.
Thanks for playing!
No worries about not being good at the game, FantaSWAT is not very balanced and can be confusing even for veterans of tactical games.
This is true, no NPC in the game has code to dodge projectiles because all of them are fast enough that it doesn't matter.
The wizard's void bolt is the exception, I should have implemented some sort of dodge logic but I didn't really have time to test it.
It's unintuitive for sure, it's mostly meant for me since it's what I used to make the various levels.
It's pretty simple once you know how the wings system works but I assumed almost nobody would ever seriously try to make maps for my game so I didn't really bother making it slick or more intuitive.
If I come back to this game I will add some tutorials with pictures and hopefully that'd be clear enough if anyone really wants to learn.
Cool pixelart gobbo btw
Thanks for giving my game a shot! Feedback is always welcome.
For now I'm taking a pause from this game to start a new project, hopefully it'll be way less confusing.
You're a cool dev. I look forward to your future project.
I heard you're planning to stop working on this, so I guess now's my last chance to play it after eyeing it for so long.
Played it for like two-three hours? Had a lot of fun going through the missions with Diversity Squad trying to beat everything with no officers down until I got to the Cleansing the Rot campaign and got bodied hard for an hour by the combination of teleporting insta-respawning instakill liches and stunlocking mimics in tight quarters.
My verdict: This is a fantastic game in concept, and a really good game in execution except it's way too hard.
Like sure, it's got some issues with the friendly AI and the quirks of using doors and items and some notable missing options like a way to see through doors, but the only reason those are aggravating instead of just a minor annoyance is that you're up against hordes of fearless aimbot murder machines whose only hobby is holing up in a room and pointing a gun at the only entrance while sipping coffee to keep their reflexes sharp.
Like, for comparison, SWAT 4 starts you out with like 3 armed suspects spread out in a two-story diner. Here, you're up against ten gunmen in cover with no alternate entrance before you've even finished the tutorial!
I really think all you need is to tone down the difficulty and you'll have a classic on your hands.
I hope you figure out a way to finish it in a way that satisfies you so you can publish it.
Thanks for playing, you're totally right the game is not balanced at all.
It's a hard thing to get right: if you abuse heals, spam C2, stun every corner, let your squadmates soak damage and aggro enemies from outside their rooms it can get too easy, but playing "normally" can end up being frustrating.
Thanks for sticking with it even though it was aggravating, I am not exactly happy with how it plays either so maybe I will eventually try to fix it, but to be completely honest I'm sick of working on it so I'll take a pause to start a new project that I've had in the back of my mind for a while.
Yeah I wanted them to be spooky but I overdid it lmao
Thanks for the feedback!
The UI is looking super slick now! Great job. I jumped straight into the Cleanse the Rot campaign to get started. The first mission kicked my ass. Took me a good 25 minutes to clear it. It's super intense in a good way, and figuring out an equipment loadout and strategy that worked for me was really fun. The way every run is a bit different (or extremely different sometimes) keeps it from feeling like a puzzle game. The new classes are great, but the wizard's definitely my favourite. Speaking of wizards, the briefing about T-Wiz the wizfluencer was hilarious. All the little references and stuff are cute. The Dreams of Joy Departed level is fugging awesome, and I'm beyond honored by the CoD level. The gnome lines had me in tears... "I'm not a gnoblin!" is really funny in the context of FantaSWAT's universe/lore.
The new (I think they're new anyway) tunes are excellent. The difficulty curve seems to be shaping up nicely. The old campaigns feel a bit easier now, which I think is for the best since some of these newer levels are really tough. The controls still take me some time to adjust to whenever I boot the game up, but once you get into the groove it's not too cumbersome. I play it a bit like an RTS when I can, trying to micro my squads as much as possible to squeeze the most out of them (and I fail miserably 100% of the time).
All in all, it's still a blast, and it's really coming together to feel like a complete, polished package. I might be biased since I'm a huge fan of the game, though. Are you planning to plant this on Steam once it's done?
My pleasure, the CoD enemies worked really well and were fun to animate.
I don't think it would make back the initial investment it takes to put a game on steam, that's one of the reasons I'm actually putting FantaSWAT on hold for now.
I don't hate it how it turned out so far, but objectively it's not the most appealing of games and the design is confused, it plays more like a mediocre action game than a tactical top-down shooter.
There's a lot of stuff I'd have to rework to make the game good but at this point I've worked on it for too long.
I do want to add more content down the line, but for now I need to start working on something new.
That's understandable. Do you have any plans for what you're going to work on next? I'll be looking forward to it either way. Good luck
Oh yeah, got plans for days.
I don't want to say anything yet just in case I change my mind at the last second, but hopefully I'll have something ready for next DD
You too man, can't wait to play more damaskus
i streamed it for about 40mins
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2025899729
begins at around 49mins in
i had fun playing. it's complicated but it gets more manageable with each DD. i read that you might drop the project, which is very saddening - it feels as if you're one update away from making it smooth.
the menu text, art and puns are 10/10
The time has come, will be playing through the new missions, writing down thoughts as I play.
New wizard and cleric class, also read through the class writeups properly this time. The lore is good, quite like the overall implications about society and different races in this world. A storymode campaign might be good at some point with some characters, but that depends on how big you want to make this.
Still playing like a maniac building killteams and not thinking that much about score...
First team is all dwarves, extra armor + 1 cleric and 1 wizard. Focusing on damage output.
Hostage campaign was really fun, my setup worked well. Not many arrests got done, but civilians did get saved.
Wizfluencers turning lich, now we are talking.
Oof, the new song is fucking heavy. The mimics did give me a scare. A lot of good men were lost fighting the barricaded wizard.
Damaskustime, new banger song here too. This level is really fucking fun, shows of the potential of your game well. Big ups for including the lines of the characters. Mission was a complete massacre. Including these fantasy elements for crooks really ups the fun, more strange enemies will only improve this game.
Grinding hole lore was appropriate and made me laugh. Design of the level and the music reflects my stupid game well. It even has nonsensical collision.
On another note, kind of love it when the whole crew starts reloading. Did not expect a boss sequence, the entire level was great. I loved it.
Glad you liked the dojd level, I tried making it oneiric and weird by adding those invisible walls and pitch black tiles.
This is gonna be it, at least for now.
I'm proud of it but it's definitely not a looker of a game and the design is confused, after more than a year of working for it I yearn to start something new, simpler and more fun.
It could really use more content but it's not getting any better in the core gameplay.
Again, very happy you liked it, especially the music since I like your stuff so much.
This saddens me, I have really enjoyed my time with fantaswat, but then again I am excited to see what you do next.
really fun game. kind of a cop version of games like hotline miami
pretty hard too, which is good imho
didn't really see any bugs
it's a bit difficult to micro the squads since it can be hard to tell who you have selected and what their action will be due to small and mixed contexts (open, c4, kick, slow open, breach, etc) however it's still fun to go serpico on some goblins. didn't seem to lose any points for not arresting enemies, which is good because arresting these guys is impossible when the rest of their team is shooting at you (and who will also switch back to shooting seemingly randomly). it could be my fault, I may not have understood the mechanic correctly. I lost pretty much all my squad mates every mission, rest in peace brothers
Yeah it turned out more action-focused and less tactical than I originally indented.
Having played a bunch of SWAT 4 and its clones I know how frustrating it is to get punished for unlawful kills, so I made it much easier to tell what's a fair target. You get a higher score for arresting suspects but going guns blazing is perfectly viable as long as you don't kill surrendered enemies.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback
Placing c2 was hard, please explain about mouse cursor
And I think squad controls need to be a bit more comfortable
Overall nice game, I enjoyed it
Good gameplay. Deep tactical controls. Only issue is the camera, it kinda made me motionsick. Also I do wish the commands system was a little more simplified
I couldn't arrest bob for some reason so I kicked him to death. Now the boss took both my guns!
But seriously I couldn't figure out how to arrest. You should add the mouse needs to be over the suspect.
After I got past that the game was very fun. I got the basic squad controls down, but struggled with controlling individual squads. I think a better method would be tie each squad to a number key (1-9) then you need to hold that number while you select on the wheel. Just an idea. The wheel was a bit jittery or buggy to control, but I did see the option for it and didn't mess with it.
Spells were cool and fun, but could definitely use more. Scry, grease, fireball etc. I did enjoy dropping anvils on people though. Really I wanted more ways to approach the problem of closed door then "drop some anvils in, maybe throw a stun grenade, clear and hope for the best".
Overall love the concept, enjoyed the gameplay, and liked the humor/vibe.
Thanks for playing and I'm glad you liked the game overall.
It definitely could have used a simpler way to control your squads, you're right.
For now I'm putting it on hold so I'm not going to redo the command system, but maybe I'll add more content in the future.
Ah man, that's a bummer to hear. I've gotten through 2/3 of the campaign levels now. I'd wishlist it for sure if it was on steam.
The menus mix too many different fonts. Camera movement feels jittery, could use some smoothing. I don't understand the point of "limit camera offset". I got stuck for a while in the C4 tutorial because pressing 4 does nothing unless you are right by the door (it needs visual feedback). I don't understand why two keys are wasted on zooming in/out, since camera zoom is something that should already be optimized by the developer. Since grenade bounce is meant to be predictable, it should be included in the throw line preview. The squad command menu is one of the most confusing things I've ever seen. There's no way normal people can use this. The music is really repetitive and gets your nerves after a while. Overall, the game is too complicated and not fun. You have so many options with such obtuse controls that it leads to choice paralysis. Other SWAT games use FPSs as a base, which are a familiar and fun genre. I'm guessing this is meant to use Hotline Miami as a base, but aside from the camera perspective it has very little in common with it.