So I checked out the update and can confirm that the upgrades disappearing issue I mentioned is actually limited to the 3D printer (and maybe inventory items?).
If you die or reload a save in any way then you can't repair the ship with thrash anymore, the only way to fix it is to get a chill point and get another upgrade, though it happens again next time a save is loaded.
After that bug happens the 3D printer also doesn't show up in the inventory menu anymore, same for the trash, though that could be just a visual thing.
Also ran into an issue with the item you find in one of the asteroid areas (the nav computer I think?), when I picked it up it would break the ship menu's camera and dialogue menus, making them almost unusable.
I didn't pick it up because of it so if it was needed for the main quest then I might be softlocked now.
TheFoxyDragon
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I knew I wasn't great at rhythm games to begin with but I very much suck at actually landing hits on enemies here it seems.
Welp, skill issue and all that. Still, I enjoyed what I played and there is a certain charm to the game that kept me interested!
Unfortunately I had to stop after a bit as the game started breaking on me, my upgrades started showing up in red while still saying I had them, but I in fact didn't have them anymore.
I also got stuck for a while trying to complete the objective to find a job at the station, then realized I did everything except press E on the menu as you can usually use the mouse on everything else.
The PoI icons can get a bit finicky to select when there are a few of them overlapping each other, it seems like the icon's placement on the screen doesn't align with where your mouse need to be to select them either.
Simple and with a chill vibe, had a pretty good time with the game and it got me in the mood to replay Super Mario Galaxy again!
Only hiccup I came across was the camera getting stuck in place when reaching the "above is like below" planet, going back to the central area fixed it but on my first attempt I walked away and got soft locked so I had to restart from the beginning.
Also, you can jump over the edges of the starting area and get stuck in the empty part of the planet, took a bunch of jumping around before I was able to make it back. I think unlocking the framerate helped with that as jumping and camera speed seem to be affected by it?
That's understandable!
And I've come across Look Outside a few weeks ago, I should definitely check it out then since it's a free demo. Haven't heard of Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass before though.
I'm going to try wrapping up my search for the last few shapes, once I've seen them all I might end up drawing one if I can decide which one!
Ah I see! Yeah, games like No Delivery, Sorry We're Open and BB3313 really have a specific vibe to them, kind of a ever present dread that still can manage to be almost meditative at times? FriendShapes very much managed to hit that similar vibe!
I went back into the last digression while looking for the last encounters I've missed, had a better time with it now knowing things to expect. Save points will definitely help with the feeling of "I gotta keep going, surely the end must be pretty close by now" since the rest of the game doesn't make you rely on autosaves at any point.
After that second go around I can more precisely put my finger on the issues I had with that digression.
Those being the glitched encounters that feel more like you just have to wait and sit through them than anything, some can be avoided so I guess I unfortunately ran head first in all of them which made going through them get old very quickly.
The section between M p'u ゥ and ABRIDGE dragging on for a bit and not feeling like you're making any progress compared to the rest?
And the Fritztial part that get a bit much in its second part with the exaggerated camera movement and kinda confusing navigation.
Also the main itch page mentions there being close to 40 shapes, was just curious about the specific number?
I came across 34 right now including Malkin so I should have 4-5 left max?
Finished the game just yesterday, I think I had come across it before while looking through random itch.io games but only got to playing it after checking out the recent Flipside Frights demo disc.
Really strong atmosphere, I loved the varied colour palettes and the unique music for all encounters, adds a lot of charm!
Overall reminded me of Undertale's pacifist gameplay pushed further into a full puzzle gameplay and with a vibe kinda similar to "No Delivery".
The Backwoods took a few attempts to get a better grasp of the encounter systems before I was able to fully make it through, but it was relatively smooth sailing after that.
I've recently replayed through the Super Mario 64 hack "B3313" so this ended up feeling like a pretty appropriate follow up with all the liminal areas making up the digressions on top of the glitchy nature of the later parts.
The different environments, events and all the encounters kept each digression fresh and different from the others. It did get a bit easy as it went on with the abundance of items making any obstacles not much of a problem, though personally difficulty was far from a primary appeal for a game like this so it wasn't much of an issue.
Really my only issue with the game was the 5th digression. There was some cool visuals and interesting parts like the sudden quiz and the figuring the sentences section, though out of about 3 hours it took me to go through, it started overstaying its welcome halfway.
The nonsense fights where spamming attack for 5 minutes seemed like the way to end it, the sections where you have to fight the camera to figure out where you're going and how long this part of the game was, it got old fast unfortunately.
It was exhausting but didn't ruin the game or anything, still loved it overall!
Also, came across a small error in an Axenic conceptual parasite encounter, seems it was trying to load "Vemödalen" rather than "Vemodalen". It kept spamming the error message so I had to fix it myself.
Sounds good!
A lot of recent multiplayer horror games have done the whole "fake player" as an added mechanic to the overall thing, so that's why I thought it'd be interesting to have something single player focus on that.
A back and forth between player and enemy where on top of avoiding it and finding how to escape, you also have to stop it from screwing you over.
And by the way, the current demo only has the one way to escape with the ship?
That sounds pretty good!
Going back through the same areas while trying to make it to the next region again doesn't really become frustrating in the demo, as you get better and know the rooms you get into a certain rhythm that's fun on its own, but having some extra things to help on the longer term seems good.
Also I played a bit more, got to pipeworks a few times again and got further so I thought I might as well write down some thoughts I had:
- The stutter from audio loading seems to be gone, though I got another type of stutter while reaching the next room in a region. I had the game on my hdd since I didn't expect it to need more than that but I've moved it to the ssd now, seems to be good.
- Grabbing items can be a little awkward at times, the game understandably prioritizes grabbing ledges so sometimes you end up grabbing everything around except items.
It usually depends on the surroundings and happens more with smaller items, especially cockroaches (it feels appropriate for them though!).
- I found the drill item you can use to create a climbable spot and came across one of those big bugs that tries to ram into you. Tried to drill it to death but it didn't end up in my favour!
There are plenty of bricks and rebar around to do the job, but I thought it would be a nice interaction to have, unless it's already a thing and it was just a skill issue on my part.
- Had a weird death in pipeworks, I was in a room that has the monkey bars close to the top and going across the side of the room. I tried to jump from it while parallel to it and got instantly bounced backwards and fell.
Maybe I just hit the ceiling and it looked weird, I'll check next time I'm there again.
Hey, I've played some of the previous versions but forgot to leave a message here, so I'll do that now after playing the new demo!
I'd say this is a good improvement. My two main problems with the previous versions were navigating the map and the enemy ai, which both seem to be better now.
The map is more clear to navigate and it feels like the unique landmarks stand out more, the generators map definitely help too by showing the corridors as it didn't feel really useful before without that.
The monster (which actually surprised me since I expected the same one as the previous versions still) is no longer continuously on your ass the entire time which is way more enjoyable and less predictable.
I like that it tries to stop the ship charging, reminds me of the game Monstrum.
It could be interesting to have the creature sometime prioritize screwing the player over rather than going after them, like destroying generators or taking batteries?
So I've played for a bit over 2 hours now, managed to reach up to the pipeworks and I've had a great time with the game!
Controls took a bit to get used to, but the tutorial is well made and it always felt like I improved each run.
I was actually surprised by the amount of stuff there is, everytime I thought I had come across everything, there was a new room, a new alt version of an area or loudspeaker lines I hadn't heard before.
The base idea of the game is simple and fun, and the presentation really pulls everything together on top of that!
I'm curious how the full game will be, will there be checkpoints in the main campaign or will it stay as a single try? The description mentions 3 areas so it would work fine like this unless there's some crazy difficulty spike closer to the end.
Just played through the update and all the changes seem good!
I managed to get to the end on my second attempt, first run died to the voyeur after I didn't spot it quickly enough.
It definitely feels better while still being stressful to do deal with.
Outside of that, some things that I came across/ thought about:
- Sometimes, the yellow highlight on interactable items stays and you can see it across the map. It disappears when you interact with it again.
Not sure about the cause, but both times it happened was when I stopped what I was doing and quickly left.
- After 3am, the angel completely disappeared and the cyclops only appeared once. Not sure if I was just lucky or if something wasn't working correctly?
- What do the upgrades do exactly? I got all of them through the run but it still felt pretty rng as to which area would need repair next.
I had an area with an upgrade active that I had to go to multiple times in a row while others were fine.
Could be interesting to have some environmental obstacles like that appear around later during the night.
Love the idea and vibe! It was a bit rough at first and I died to almost every enemy before being able to deal with them, but the backstory and how everything looks is great!
I didn't get to the end yet but I think I've seen all the threats and gameplay elements unless there are surprises later on, so here are some thoughts:
- The first time dealing with the voyeur is a bit awkward, I was still looking around and reading notes when it appeared and killed me.
The guides you unlock are nice but having the first enemy needing you to not move and look at it makes for a pretty likely and confusing first death when it appears so early.
- Also with the voyeur, I died multiple times because it spawned right on top me. It wasn't instant but it's like the game didn't register me looking at it from being so close?
- I only played on the "intended" difficulty but the enemy appearances feel a bit too front-loaded. They all become active in pretty quick succession and in less than one in-game hour.
It might be more interesting if it was more progressive throughout the night?
- Control rebinds would be nice. I have an azerty keyboard, I can switch it to a qwerty mode but I have to switch back everytime I get the code writing mini-game as the letters are changed around overwise.
- The more or less mini-game could use a bit more clarification.
It's kinda difficult to see which numbers you have selected, the unselected numbers should have a darker colour and become brighter when you select them. Right now they get slightly darker when you click on them?
- The code writing mini-game doesn't feel worth bothering with compared to the other two.
I don't type too fast but even if you do, I think the other two mini-games would still be much faster to complete, making the typing one not worth doing.
- Unless I've missed something, you can't skip the game over cutscene, which makes restarting another attempt much more annoying since you have to alt f4.
This was pretty fun!
The whole drone 6DOF metroidvania idea is great, it works well and controls are good. Love the prime inspiration for the scanner!
The only two things I had issues with were going up/down in tunnels, it's pretty easy to bump and get stuck on walls as you do.
And needing to go restock flares and rockets at different printers before attempting the boss again everytime you respawn.
But outside of that, hoping to see more of it!
Played through the updated version, didn't encounter the submit form terminal issue at all.
Though I realized that the inconsistencies with the interactions aren't a bug, you have to wait a second when you interact with something before you can exit, hence why it felt like it wasn't registering the F key inputs at times.
I got 7 submissions correct out of 13 this time, though I kinda stopped caring about the ships as getting used to go full speed through the tunnels and finding spooky places I might have missed got more interesting then scanning ships on replays.
I don't think you get another ending for surviving unless you get all ships info correct anyway?
Had a good time with it! Basically a game right along the lines of Iron Lung or Sender.
Took me some time to fully get used to the controls, but using both wasd and arrow keys became more comfortable once I realized there was no need to always look around with the mouse when piloting.
Only real issue I had with the controls was interacting with things was kind of random in how responsive it was, sometimes just tapping F once would work and other times I'd have to spam the key for it to register.
There was also a few times were the game would keep registering my keyboard inputs while off the form submitting terminal so I'd end up with wasd soup letter when coming back to it.
Overall it was pretty enjoyable, good atmosphere and finding ships to get bits of stories kept me interested!
I think I found all ships across multiple run through but only did 4 corrects out of 11 in a single run, it's definitely not that easy to tell how many damaged parts there are at times.
Good stuff!
I remember coming across the game on the Ace Combat subreddit some time ago but couldn't get a feel for the controls .
Still took some time to get use to it since it's pretty different from AC and PW with the whole throttle and double tapping keys to change the plane's speed, but it feels pretty good when you do get used to it.
The core gameplay is pretty solid already! The one thing I thought could be improved would be the missile switching, since you can have several missile types equipped at once it can be a bit tedious to only go through them one by one with one key when you need to switch.
It'd be nice to have the ability to bind equipped missiles to d-pad directions, so tapping one direction instantly switches to a specific missile rather then having to cycle through them.
