Aight, so... It's an improvement from previous demo. A small one, but an improvement. It's not exactly unplayable, like the last time. It's just playable. Not on the controller though, but whatever.
So let's start with the positives. The shooter guy can actually shoot in the direction of the mouse click. That's nice. That's an improvement. And levels are no longer empty - they now have random junk scattered around. That's also nice. I figured out that you can destroy junk for cash and allies. That's great! Because with allies from the crates I no longer had to experience The Gameplay!
Why would I not want to experience The Gameplay? Well, for starters - you're still locked in the animation. It's great if you want to feel like a turret, but every single TF2 engineer knows that the moment you leave the turret unattended (aka - stop healing it) - it's gonna get wrecked. And that's exactly what happens here. AOE attacks that God knows who's doing from across the maps right at you don't help. Dash that recharges for god knows how long (aka "too long") is pointless and might as well not exist. Primary attack is fine, shotgun is good - the actual weapon I used to clear enemies.
Well, until I got a character with a yellow bar spawned in the first level and got killed. Now that's a lot of fun - having no way of dealing with them aside from kiting and pretending to be a turret while balancing on barely any health from one hit from him. Or better yet - getting one-tapped. Balance is still horrible.
Melee guy is worse. Non-cancellable animation, again. The only viable move (the whirlwind) hides behind an extremely long cooldown AND gets cancelled the moment you stop pressing shift. And that means - the only instance of move cancelling doesn't actually serve any purpose aside from making the experience more miserable.
Got killed a couple of times by a crate falling on me. Fun.
Allies use the same models as enemies - only distinguished by green circles which aren't that visible once the VFX start playing.
Levels are differentiated by the kind of enemies spawn in the beginning. While having random junk with goodies on the level is nice - it doesn't make the arena more interesting.
I did not have fun playing it. In fact - I kinda suffered through it. There were improvements from the last time, sure. There are less characters now, and you can shoot in the direction of the mouse. Though I feel like that should've been in the game from the very beginning.
I think you can salvage it, but I also feel like feedback is falling on deaf ears, cuz non-cancellable animations (especially on the melee guy, cuz they are VERY long and close range) were in the last demo, along with insanely long cooldowns and unbalanced enemies. I have no idea what your vision for this game is, but so far it's not the kinda game I would be willing to play voluntarily.
Thanks for the feedback and taking the time to play it. All animations are cancellable with other abilities and kicking. The axe guy's basic ability is meant to combo so you cant cancel it by clickicng left click again but you can cancel it by clicking another ability or kicking (kick has 0 CD). There is no proper move cancel like in fighting games though, maybe that should be a feature? The rest of the characters are in the paid version :(.
I tried rebalancing before, going to do some balance again. Some people are okay with the balance some are not, kinda weird.
Enemy attack clarity is good. But it can be a bit frustrating to avoid the attacks, with no dash or sprint option. It means when an enemy begins an attack, you have to move immediately or you will get hit. Especially the circular attacks. The clarity is not as helpful when you don't have an appropriate response.
This is especially frustrating when you are playing the axe guy. When you attack and the enemy attacks, you're just locked into taking that damage.
The attacks from the axe guy feel good. I personally don't mind that you stop moving, I think it gives it more weight.
The attacks from the ranged guy do such pathetic little damage I exited back to the main menu to go play the axe guy again.
Going back to the axe guy, it feels like he is pathetically weak now too. Exiting the game and starting again seemed to fix it.
I feel like the camera could be 20%-50% more zoomed out.
The player movement could have a little more play to it. Right now it feels a bit stiff, like a 1:1 translation of input to movement. If the input vector is fed into the acceleration instead of the velocity, and you have a high acceleration, it will feel smoother and more fun. As a trick, I reduce drag when input is active, and increase it when no input is active.
Once you have this, you can also rotate the player model to its movement vector, instead of snapping it instantly. This would help improve the feel of the game, I think.
The axe attacks could probably have more "nudge" to them. As in, an impulse to your velocity when you attack, in the direction of your attack. I found in Necrovale that this significantly improves the feeling of melee weapons.
The stamina/breaking system is good, I like how its displayed along with health. It feels pretty intuitive. There also seems to be a blocking system, where enemies can block your attacks. I wonder if it's a bit too much, as it can read as enemies just taking no damage. Especially if there is a crowd.
Axe guy M2 move feels good
Overall it is good. I think with a bit more work on the feel, it will help it sing.
About the impulse on attacking, I've heard people be positive and negative about it. With the negative being, that, when attacking a chunky enemy up close you kind of move to his left/right from that impulse because it pushes you into him. It's probably fixable if first you do a raycast and see if there is anything in front before applying the impulse.
Blocking enemies take normal damage from the back and also take more posture damage from the back as a way to counteract the large dmg decrease.
Played until the End of the Demo, altho after the first Boss it just turned into me standing there and shooting Enemies essentially.
I don't know why this is on Early Access, this is not Early Access ready.
You have Empty Levels, Empty UI and Menues, Music is way too loud, pretty much all Models are Placeholders still.
There are no Bugs, which is a Positive. No Idea why I can't walk during attacking, if you're afraid it'd make the Game to easy, up the speed, other Stats and Intelligence of the Enemies. Some of the Props you spawn in your otherwise empty and Flat Levels have Collision when they feel like they shouldn't, I got stuck on some Floor Panels I should be able to easily walk over.
Overall the Player Controls feel too slow and static compared to the Type of Game I think this wants to be.
Only some Enemies have Healthbars, Drones and similar don't have anything. Scrolling on the Level Select Screen is atrociously slow.
In every Menu you have a huge Amount of Screenspace just black, if this isn't designed for mobile first, consider a different Layout, or filling these Parts with something interesting.
Comments
Aight, so... It's an improvement from previous demo. A small one, but an improvement. It's not exactly unplayable, like the last time. It's just playable. Not on the controller though, but whatever.
So let's start with the positives. The shooter guy can actually shoot in the direction of the mouse click. That's nice. That's an improvement. And levels are no longer empty - they now have random junk scattered around. That's also nice. I figured out that you can destroy junk for cash and allies. That's great! Because with allies from the crates I no longer had to experience The Gameplay!
Why would I not want to experience The Gameplay? Well, for starters - you're still locked in the animation. It's great if you want to feel like a turret, but every single TF2 engineer knows that the moment you leave the turret unattended (aka - stop healing it) - it's gonna get wrecked. And that's exactly what happens here. AOE attacks that God knows who's doing from across the maps right at you don't help. Dash that recharges for god knows how long (aka "too long") is pointless and might as well not exist. Primary attack is fine, shotgun is good - the actual weapon I used to clear enemies.
Well, until I got a character with a yellow bar spawned in the first level and got killed. Now that's a lot of fun - having no way of dealing with them aside from kiting and pretending to be a turret while balancing on barely any health from one hit from him. Or better yet - getting one-tapped. Balance is still horrible.
Melee guy is worse. Non-cancellable animation, again. The only viable move (the whirlwind) hides behind an extremely long cooldown AND gets cancelled the moment you stop pressing shift. And that means - the only instance of move cancelling doesn't actually serve any purpose aside from making the experience more miserable.
Got killed a couple of times by a crate falling on me. Fun.
Allies use the same models as enemies - only distinguished by green circles which aren't that visible once the VFX start playing.
Levels are differentiated by the kind of enemies spawn in the beginning. While having random junk with goodies on the level is nice - it doesn't make the arena more interesting.
I did not have fun playing it. In fact - I kinda suffered through it. There were improvements from the last time, sure. There are less characters now, and you can shoot in the direction of the mouse. Though I feel like that should've been in the game from the very beginning.
I think you can salvage it, but I also feel like feedback is falling on deaf ears, cuz non-cancellable animations (especially on the melee guy, cuz they are VERY long and close range) were in the last demo, along with insanely long cooldowns and unbalanced enemies. I have no idea what your vision for this game is, but so far it's not the kinda game I would be willing to play voluntarily.
Thanks for the feedback and taking the time to play it. All animations are cancellable with other abilities and kicking. The axe guy's basic ability is meant to combo so you cant cancel it by clickicng left click again but you can cancel it by clicking another ability or kicking (kick has 0 CD). There is no proper move cancel like in fighting games though, maybe that should be a feature? The rest of the characters are in the paid version :(.
I tried rebalancing before, going to do some balance again. Some people are okay with the balance some are not, kinda weird.
Have a nice day and happy new year.
Hey, writing down a few thoughts as I play:
Overall it is good. I think with a bit more work on the feel, it will help it sing.
Thanks for the feedback!
Somehow restarting the game fixes game feel 😂
About the impulse on attacking, I've heard people be positive and negative about it. With the negative being, that, when attacking a chunky enemy up close you kind of move to his left/right from that impulse because it pushes you into him. It's probably fixable if first you do a raycast and see if there is anything in front before applying the impulse.
Blocking enemies take normal damage from the back and also take more posture damage from the back as a way to counteract the large dmg decrease.
Played until the End of the Demo, altho after the first Boss it just turned into me standing there and shooting Enemies essentially.
I don't know why this is on Early Access, this is not Early Access ready.
You have Empty Levels, Empty UI and Menues, Music is way too loud, pretty much all Models are Placeholders still.
There are no Bugs, which is a Positive. No Idea why I can't walk during attacking, if you're afraid it'd make the Game to easy, up the speed, other Stats and Intelligence of the Enemies. Some of the Props you spawn in your otherwise empty and Flat Levels have Collision when they feel like they shouldn't, I got stuck on some Floor Panels I should be able to easily walk over.
Overall the Player Controls feel too slow and static compared to the Type of Game I think this wants to be.
Only some Enemies have Healthbars, Drones and similar don't have anything. Scrolling on the Level Select Screen is atrociously slow.
In every Menu you have a huge Amount of Screenspace just black, if this isn't designed for mobile first, consider a different Layout, or filling these Parts with something interesting.
thanks for the feedback!