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Thoughts recorded during my playthrough
+ = I liked it
- = I didn't like it

- There was a voiceover at the beginning, but it's muffled, so I have no idea what it was saying. Was that deliberate?


+ The 3D model of the ship is gorgeous!

- I tried pressing all of my normal interaction buttons, but nothing is working! What do I do to make it go?


+ I pressed some random keys and eventually stumbled upon this menu. A tooltip a la CoD for interactable elements would be helpful for people who don't play these kinds of games much (like me). I know I checked the options menu before I started but I don't remember seeing the "interact" key. Maybe I missed it?

+ I like how each character has their own personality.

+ I love how you included characters from your previous game jam game. I think other characters in this game are references as well?

+ First mission was quick and snappy. Delivers me right to the action, and the enemies are not too tough.

- First mission ended so abruptly that I thought the game had restarted.

+ You do a nice job of handwaving it, though. I suspect some sort of limitation (time, knowledge, etc.) prevented a smoother transition.

- It's kinda hard to aim the magical shots without a reticle.

+ Combat is simple and it doesn't take long to mow down the enemies. It's pretty easy to get damaged in close quarters, but health is generous enough that it isn't too much of an issue.

- Second mission was a little confusing since it wasn't clear where I needed to go.

+ Once I found where I needed to be it was a fun time. Sakura helped out, which was a nice touch.

- I'm finding a recurring problem with trying to determine where I'm supposed to go for each mission. There is a popup indicating where the enemies are at the start of each mission, but without some visual indicator (minimap, waypoint, etc.) it's pretty meaningless. Fortunately the map is small and is the same one every time so it's just a matter of process of elimination, but it could be a big problem if the missions were longer, more complicated, and/or on different maps.

- I don't know if this was just a limitation on your part (and I am dreadfully ignorant of Unity), but given that we're going back to the same place every time, I would have preferred the missions to be a string of encounters instead of going back to the ship each time.

+ BGM during the "Extremely Hostile Presence" part rocks!

+ Oh wow, voice acting!

+ The Discord-esque cutscene was cool

Summary

This is a definite improvement over your previous MGGJ entry. While it still has its flaws and room for improvement, the combat mechanics are interesting and fun. I hope you keep sharpening your skills and I look forward to your next project!

(+1)

Thanks for playing!

The voiceover is deliberately muffled. I was kind of on the fence about how much I wanted to muffle it. It was supposed to be barely intelligible but I think it turned out completely gibberish unless you already know what they're saying.

I picked that little ship model up off the Asset Store, and it was chosen because it was free 😆

Once again I forgot my audience isn't an FPS-playing audience (E is the most common interact key in shooters, followed by F). Better tooltips definitely would have helped, though honestly I think even if I had thought of it I probably would have left that out of scope because of time. It is something that I will try to address in Shattered 2.

I decided to do a sort of "crisis crossover" that brings the worlds together, it's ambiguously canon for now but I could start welding the lore together in the future if I decide that's a thing I want to do.

The reason the mission ends abruptly is because **SPOILER** it's a dream, and dreams tend to loop and shift and flow erratically. **END SPOILER** I did test without it and the game flowed better, but I was desperately trying to find ways to get across that spoiler thing I just mentioned.

The lack of a reticle is actually something I screwed up on. I tested entirely with crosshair enabled... but left it disabled by default 😅. I'm not willing to do an entire release to fix that but I'll try to leave a note somewhere recommending people turn it on (Options/Gameplay Options/Crosshair->Always).

At one point I wanted a minimap that displayed dots where the enemies were, but this was pretty quickly cut for time. I thought about putting in objective markers that showed where the enemies spawned, too, but I didn't have time for that either. Shattered 2 will probably provide a world map to track quests.

The next project is Shattered 2 which derives directly from this one. I'll be posting some updates on that pretty soon.