I was super excited for this one. I've played some of the Tofu Sheets Visual/Triangle Box Studio DOOM mods, but this is the first time you've done something along those lines for SBIG Jam.
Well… it was an interesting first attempt.
I'll start with the good. This game is absolutely hilarious. The setting is absurd and revels in it. I loved the transparent van and hearing it acknowledged in the dialogue. Almost everyone can be talked to and has dialogue that's both good for a laugh and helps flesh out the world.
Voice acting, as always, is an instant plus ten points to production value.
The graphics are strange, with a mix of very different styles, but it's perfect for SBIG Jam. There's line art, realistic and unrealistic textures on a simple 3D environment, MSPaint looking drawings and even what seems to be scanned drawings on lined paper. Some things have shading and some things don't. OpenGL lights are spammed everywhere.
The whole thing, intentionally or otherwise, feels like an homage to Enygmatic's Out Of Order.
As a shooter, though, it's pretty flawed, to be honest, and feels like a baffling step backwards from the DOOM mods you've put out in the past.
The weapons just kind of suck. The long wind-up on the fly swatter makes it absolutely infuriating to use. The style used for the weapon sprites is interesting, but they're very bland to look at and I'm not sure what they're supposed to be. All the weapons have slow projectiles, which is frustrating in a game with so many fast flying enemies. Between the weapon sprites, limited animation, weak sounds, simple projectiles and lack of effectiveness, the weapons just don't feel like they have any power to them.
The enemies are all bullets sponges- even the flies take two hits with the swatter to kill. There's not a lot of feedback when they're hit, either, which adds to the perceived weakness of the weapons. I do like the sprites, and I appreciate that they have rotations, but I wish the time-to-kill was shorter and there was more feedback (audio and visual) when enemies are hit.
Although the weapons are weak and the enemies are bullet sponges, there's a ton of health and ammo around, so the game never really feels tense or challenging.
The level design is a mixed bag. It started off decent, if generic, with those tight, narrow corridors. Having to go through the door in the back of the arms dealer confused me, though it might have been explained in some dialogue I missed (see below). The open courtyard and small jumping puzzle were neat to see. The final street section, while I liked the look of it and the interactivity, feels like it ends abruptly, with two keys in one building, another just one building over and a guy who "doesn't" tell you everything. I do appreciate the variety in the environments, and I hope we see even more of this in the full game.
I'm not sure what the tortoises do. Are they just there for the modifier?
There were some bugs. I ended up playing with GZDoom. The bundled LZDoom launched on the wrong monitor, then crashed immediately. I think the crosshair doesn't quite line up with where projectiles hit, which didn't help when trying to hit flying enemies. Also, talking to the arms dealer before the initial conversation with him finishes causes them to run together.
All in all, it was great to see something completely different from you this year. Although the game as it stands is a mixed bag, there's a lot of potential here and the final finished product could be really good.