Really interesting game! I loved the graphic style of an old TV graphics, with low polys, kinda similar to how Lethal Company is, you pulled it off really well. The music and sound effects are also very fitting.
I finished the first (and seems like only) level a few times, with the first being just normal gameplay, then I tried to break the game. I’ll mainly be leaving details on the bugs and exploits I found, as well as some things that could be worked on. Do let me know if you want more!
Settings/pre-gameplay
The textures of the game seem a little wonky, when I move my player while eyeing one of the rocks beside me, it seems as though the texture is moving. I’m not sure if this was intended. The ground, especially at the spawn is also pretty eye-hurting to look at if you focus on it while moving.
There should be some settings for things such as Mouse Sensitivity, Brightness and FOV, as these usually are the main things that contribute to motion sickness in 3D games. I know this can’t really be done due to Web Browser currently, but the “Esc” key in the game should open up the settings menu.
Game mechanics/balancing
For starters, currently there doesn’t seem to be a point to getting Vivula, as there isn’t a way to spend it, but I feel you might be adding it as some sort of upgrade/requirement soon.
The dash is on too low a cooldown, while the guns take too long for the heat to dissipate. Currently I find myself spamming dash throughout the entire game, as it refreshes so fast that it doesn’t even matter. The guns take a long time to refresh when it is overheated, but this forces the player to use the Missiles and Orbital Strike, which might be a good thing. If the game difficulty is supposed to be hard, the guns are actually quite balanced around this, but the dash makes it too easy.
It doesn’t seem like you have to defend the mining extractor currently, so in subsequent runs, I simply placed it down and started it, before running all the way to afk at the shuttle area for it to be done. The enemies don’t seem to be able to pathfind to the player that way, so although I did hear battle music and 20+ enemies detected, I wasn’t in any danger at all.
There is a rock/arch close to the shuttle area that you can go up (I dashed up it, not sure if it’s possible without dashing), where you can kind of safespot against most enemies while waiting for the shuttle. There are times where the ranged enemies can shoot at you, or even climb up the same slope, but the melee enemies are basically all stuck.
It is easily possible to excavate and extract in the shuttle without killing a single enemy or taking any damage (mainly because of the dash)
Bugs
When you dash before the the shuttle lands, you can kind of glitch through the walls to instantly drop to the ground. Similarly, when you dash after the shuttle leaves the map, you can drop down onto enemies before it throws you into a loading screen. I have not tested if you can die if the enemies hit you right before you enter the loading screen.
When climbing onto the safe spot I mentioned, you can technically dash more into a taller rock at the top of it, causing you to enter the wall and momentarily drop onto enemies stuck below before getting teleported back up. Could be some sort of visual glitch but I ended up not going too far up to hug the wall.
Some suggestions
Indicators might be something nice to add, for things such as where the enemies are spawning, where the extract position is after the mining is done, the range of the orbital strike are some examples.
Homing missiles, or a small explosion when the missiles land. Currently the missiles feel more like a burst of the base armament, and it doesn’t seem like they actually explode unless I missed it.
Adding HP to the exacavator, so the player has a reason to stay and protect it instead of just running and waiting at the extraction point for it to be done.
A very well made game so far! I can see that a lot of effort was put in to convey the atmosphere and art, and it just needs more content and polishing to be better!