The visuals are very nice, but the gameplay feels quite dull for now. None of the environment feels relevant, and there’s not really any mechanics to counterplay elaborate enemies or anything like that, I can mostly just sit in place and shoot, and sitting in place elsewhere in a level doesn’t make a difference. I’m looking forward to the game being updated, though.
Viewing post in Project Landsword jam comments
Thank you for the feedback. Could you please elaborate on what you mean by the environments not feeling relevant?
I can mostly just sit in place and shoot, and sitting in place elsewhere in a level doesn’t make a difference.
That's fair. Maybe I have made the enemies too easy. May I ask if you tried any of the different weapons out, or was it all the same regardless?
The levels all just feel like an open field; the lack of a physical objective and terrain that is nondestructible makes any semblance of layout currently irrelevant; destructible buildings seem to only give you an advantage and enemies a disadvantage, and so it doesn’t feel like there’s any design to them. The… third? desert with water. level felt a bit more interesting with the water slowing you down and there being hovercrafts. What I think you should do is add in non-destructible terrain and physical objectives in the mission that you have to attack/defend/escort? or simply progress through the level to a goal, so that there is a reason to care about the terrain & certain spots can be better/worse to play around in. Destructible terrain would then act as a way to modify the battlefield as you play, but you would still be constrained to a degree on how you play in the level.
This is all very fair and useful feedback, thank you.
I originally did intend to have set objects/installations that you'd have to destroy for the fourth mission, but I simply ran out of time for this DD. I'm going to be redoing a bunch of levels and the mission's structure since all of them are honestly placeholders right now. There's going to be different missions other than search and destroy/shooting of course - defending and escorting missions will be included as well.
I'm not too keen on adding indestructible terrain since I feel it takes a lot of the oomph out of the gunplay and weapons if they hit objects and don't react, but I understand that this can make the levels feel maybe too open. I'll see if I can include enemies that also demolish terrain when the player is close and don't hold back firing even if they're behind cover. I realize now the player maybe has too much advantage by being the only one doing that.