Thank you for this, comrade Conrad. RIP to Fistshark Marketing and Mime's the Word. Can't wait for spinoff doctors to return in 2025!
po6llnu
Recent community posts
Pretty good, but I have some criticisms. First of all: please don't make the camera jerk eyerytime you jump! I don't know if there is a way you can add something to the options menu to turn it off, but that makes jumping so unpleasent in this game. Other than that, it's a little weird that you have a game about dodging, but the two usable items in the game are to let you not dodge. I would prefer it if the game didn't have them, because then it could be designed more around the idea of just dodging, but I understand their neccesity as a way to make the game easier for players who are struggling. The aesthetic felt a little incoherent, but overall I think it worked.
This is how I feel after playing the first level.
Visuals & Performance:
The visuals had a pretty high level of fidelity, but it lacked aesthetic coherence. The enemies all felt like they were from the same category, but not the same universe. Mostly the look of the game was good, but it would probably feel more natural if the look mirrored the old-school style that the gameplay is going for. Also, holy framerate batman! I don't know what resolution these textures are or what kind of stuff is being processed, but this game needs some serious optimization!
Sound Design:
The sounds in this were pretty standard, but the dynamic music did not work at all! I don't have a problem with dynamic music, but the shift here was so frequent and jarring that it got annoying very quickly. I know the music changing is optional, but it could have been executed much better! Keeping the more exciting music playing continuously would have been much better choice.
Gameplay:
The movement was responsive. The looking felt normal with motion blur and mouse smoothing turned off. The combat was decent. I didn't like the choice to start with hand to hand combat. It takes a lot of work to get any kind of melee combat to feel satisfying. The melee combat felt more like skyrim than something like dark souls. I also didn't love the shooting. The pattern of the staff in the first level felt totally random. It felt more like I was spamming the fire button in the general direction of the enemies, as opposed to actually aiming and getting the satisfaction of hitting an enemy on purpose. In my opinion, the first gun you get should be a semi-auto weapon that will hit anything in the middle of your screen. I also think that any weapon that's not an explosive projectile or something similarly powerful should be an instant bullet. The random nature of the starting staff mixed with the slow travel time of the spells made it very unsatisfying to use.
These are just first impressions, but I think the first level of a game is very telling. I'll probably play more of this game to see how the level design changes. I really hope this game gets some tweaks, because it could be really good!
I really like the place you've created, and the aesthetic is beautiful. I just wish there was something to do. It was cool, but it's easy to see everything the game has to offer is about 30 seconds. Again, visually stunning. If you were able to go inside more than just the starting building, that would be a really cool addition! I hope I get to see more games with this visual style in the future!
If I'm honest, I'm not a fan. I really like the idea, but I'm not sure this really accomplished what it was trying to. The game doesn't really convey the feelings that it should. For the metaphor to really hit home, the place you were in needed to make you feel trapped and uncomftorble. That way there would be some sort of payoff when you escaped. I think this could really benefit from some improvements. I really respect what you are trying to convey, and I do think it's important for people to know about these things. I just wasn't in love with the execution of the idea.
I tried this out because the art style and concept looked cool, and over all I thought it was pretty good. It was really small in scope, and I would have love to see more, but overall not bad to play for a couple of minutes. I hope you bring out something similar with a little more content in the future. I also loved a lot of the jokes you put in (Like starting with 0 hp)!
This game is a neat experiment that does what it sets out to do, but holy sh*t the noise is annoying! Do not play this with the audio up high! I would recommend turning your computer down to the lowest audible volume level you can, playing this once, and then just playing it muted the rest of the time. Cool, though!