Awesome update! Thanks a lot for the reticle. The ability to scale it was a fantastic idea. I can centre my screen and still be immersed in the spooky atmosphere. I really appreciate you going out of your way to do that, I know programming is a time-consuming nightmare :)
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The new guns are enjoyable to look at and play with, and your animations give them a nice feel and heft. The Weber is awesome, though I feel the screenshake on it is a nauseating. That might just be a me-problem though.
I feel like the Kar98 doesn’t suit your game very well. The Kar98 works in CoD zombies because the starting zombies are a lot slower and come at different time intervals throughout the wave, so it fills a niche by allowing you to snipe some zombies at the start of the round and thin out the horde. Your starting zombies are a lot faster and come all at once, making the Kar98 feel way too slow and obsolete, even compared to the starting pistol. Your zombies behaviour doesn’t create a situation for your Kar98 to be useful. A possible solution to this would be to let your Kar98 fill a different niche. With a buff to the Kar98’s cycle and reload times, and even maybe it’s damage, it could become a poor-man’s trench gun; filling a similar role but with pierce instead of spread.
You could leave it as it is considering it’s meant to be a cheap starting weapon, but as it stands I think it’s worse than the starting pistol, purely because of the way your zombies work.
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Your new upgrade system is simplistic, but I definitely agree that it’s more fun. It feels a lot more rogue-like and leaves room for you to fill in the gaps with a perk system.
It would be cool if each weapon got a special ability when fully upgraded, kind of like how the World at War/Black Ops guns would sometimes get attachments or special ammo types when upgraded.
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A nuclear power plant map is an awesome idea. Have you considered maybe adding a dynamic map event that triggers every few waves, like an artillery bombardment or an air raid that can kill zombies but forces the player to seek shelter, or maybe some event that changes the layout of the map temporarily? Something like that could really contribute to the fun of your game lasting into higher rounds, but it would be a slog to code.
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I really like your time stop power up. It’s made me feel like your game might benefit from some sort of slow-motion mechanic, kind of like FEAR. Your character controller feels very reminiscent of movement-shooter games, and I think it’d be cool to narrowly dodge through hordes of zombies while appreciating your gore system in slo-mo.
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Right after WW2, the Nazis tried to form a resistance group named “Werwolf” to scare and harass the Allies. I think that could play into a cool title for your game, “Operation Werwolf” or “Night of the Werwolf” or “Revenge of the Werwolf ” or “Army of Wolves”or something cheesy like that. The lore could include something about them releasing some sort of biological or occult weapon as a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide on the Allies, or maybe even zombifying their own men to try and create some sort of super-soldier. And it might differentiate your zombies to make them undead resistance fighters instead of the usual SS/Army zombies from other games.
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Overall your efforts and dedication is fantastic. Your game is really fun, very atmospheric, and I can’t wait to see where you take it.