I played a couple of levels, it's fun. I don't think XCOM comparisons are necessarily a bad thing, I really enjoyed that and it looks like you'll have far more maps than XCOM offers. I found the mouse scroll a bit hyperactive (very little pointer motion results in a great deal of scrolling). It worked well on my 2560x1440 monitor, but I'd still like to have the usual Unity resolution options, monitor selection, and window/full-screen dialog. I'm not a fan of pixel graphics, but even if I were, it gets a little ridiculous maximized on a 24" desktop screen. I agree with some of the earlier comments, it's occasionally difficult to figure out what is cover and what isn't (although the icons help, obviously) ... I'm sure it's way too late to switch to a more common 3/4 view. But it isn't a deal breaker. I'm following it on Steam and will probably buy it.
Viewing post in Tell us about your Experience playing DOE
Thanks for the kind words! We're hard at work on getting an early access build that has massive improvements over the current demo. It's probably 6-8 weeks from being ready and we're debating on updating the demo or leaving it as-is.
The 3/4 view will be hard to switch away from at this point but we have heard the feedback on the cover and are working on some creative solutions. We are also going to spend some time on mouse/keyboard/gamepad controls so I expect they'll be improved as well.
Gamepad support would be great.
Earlier somebody commented about the difficulty of leveling up a new recruit and I agree... one of my original three got killed, everybody was level 5 or so, and the level 1 replacement was pretty much useless.
Spent another hour playing and I have a few more comments to add. I can't see earlier posts while writing this reply so some of this has probably already been mentioned (or you've fixed it already, sounds like a lot of UI tweaks have taken place), but in no particular order:
- When there are about six units active (friendlies + enemies) the info boxes at the top go off-screen and I didn't see any way to scroll. It's also often tricky to discern between enemy robots and any robot units in my group (insert pixel-art grumpiness here).
- Inventory is only a single line and doesn't scroll. My robot had a bunch of items that it couldn't use (health regen) and it also had oil, but I couldn't select the oil.
- Similarly, if I can't use health packs with a robot or oil with a human, I shouldn't be able to assign them in inventory. (Doubt this is news to you but just in case.)
- I think it was mentioned, but weapon reassignment is a must. Class reassignment would be nice but doesn't feel as necessary.
- It isn't clear to me what it means when "my" level increases (versus my team). I guess that opens up higher difficulty missions?
- It took me awhile to figure out the little star meant I had level-up skill points to assign. I'd probably go with an up-arrow, maybe even animated.
I hope it's sufficiently successful that you decide to release an HD-graphics reboot! :)
Thanks for the additional input. I'll give a quick overview of where we are with the game design at the moment since others might like to see this also:
- Removed single use items in favor of items that have limited number of uses on a mission. Also items are either usable or passive bonus types and one of each can be equipped. We also have added grenades as one of the usable items which was a pretty common request
- Weapons and armor can be freely equipped or removed and we have a lot more of both.
- Streamlined classes down to just "weapon classes" but they are more of a combination of weapon and regular classes. A second class can be assigned also at level 5. The weapon class would not restrict weapon use but provide bonuses when using that weapon
- Stat categories have been totally changed and are more meaningful to the game and have better effects
- A level up will allocate 2 points that can be spent to level up a stat or a class. Certain levels of both stats and classes have skills that are assigned when you level up to that value. Leveling up a stat can improve multiple elements in combat and leveling up a weapon class can improve damage, aim, etc with weapons of that type.
- Skills are similar to items in that they are either usable (with a cooldown) or passive bonuses. We've got 27 total skills implemented so far and they really add a lot of different tactical options
We also are adding some new enemy types and variations to the current characters.