Played for a couple hours. (saw it on the arenafps and playmygame subreddits)
First off, it's really nice and refreshing to see a game that uses movement tech, especially VQ3 or similar as opposed to goldsrc/qw air
strafe-y stuff.
I've really enjoyed my time with it so far and think it has a ton of potential. The art style is simplistic but matches the gameplay well and keeps the visuals clean.
Here is my raw observations/opinions from my first couple hours, don't take them too harshly/seriously.
Be warned: just my personal opinions here, with a lot of spitballing.
- When it comes to the physics, I think the air acceleration is too high, and it doesn't reward proper strafe jumping fully because of that. I know it's probably high because the arenas are small, but I think the solution would be to make a bigger arena with slower air acceleration, that way you really have to get a feel for strafe jumping and circle jumping to succeed at harder difficulties. It just feels a bit 'floaty' right now, maybe it's less the air acceleration and more the gravity being too low, not really certain.
- Something weird is going on with the jump physics, it seems like its whenever you jump as you go up even a tiny ledge (like the trim around the map) it makes your jump really high, guessing this has something to do with Unity's capsule hitbox shenanigans. Also some jump inputs just get dropped and it plays the sound yet doesn't add the velocity.
- Another weird physics thing, when jumping and colliding with a platform you aren't quite gonna get all the way up, you spazz out. Guessing that's another Unity hitbox weirdness. (stopping the physics box from tipping over maybe?)
- Enemy spawn light should really be their color, instead of ambiguous green. Would help a lot with bringing the level of unexpected RNG to a minimum.
- Enemies change direction really quickly, which makes the rocket launcher (and to some extent the plasma gun) feel kinda iffy and not as impactful as one would like. Also the enemies drifting slowly back to 0 velocity in the air and floating feels kinda eh, one of the best parts of rockets in quake (for me at least) is popping an enemy up and predicting their trajectory, which is kinda hampered by the fact they don't follow the same physics as a player.
- Enemy damage seems inconsistent? like sometimes they'll kill me in 3 hits, sometimes in 5, I don't know if theres some splash damage going on or something, but honestly I would just uniformly keep it at 1 damage amount. That was on Terrorbyte difficulty btw. (I love the name)
- It's also kinda awkward that the colors are inverted for the weapons, like I get how it makes logical sense but from caveman reflex brain, it just makes more sense that blue enemy shooty with blue boomstick.
- Speaking of boomstick, shotgun spread seems waaay too high, I feel like the shotgun spread should probably be kinda tight in lieu of some kind of long range hitscan. It doesn't have to be super tight just not absolutely giant. It's essentially a melee weapon right now. (also maybe consider making it a fixed spread, instead of random)
- Shared ammo pools in my opinion are just kinda... meh? Dunno, they just aren't a perfect fit for fast paced games imo, it kinda encourages you stick to one type of weapon instead of managing ammo in every situation. That being said I'm not sure how else you could do it with the two different color thing, so maybe shared ammo pool is the best option.
- Weapon/color swap time shouldn't exist imo, it just breaks up the flow of combat and makes it feel sluggish and sometimes unresponsive.
- I never really figured out how to get armor, how's that work? I would suggest respawning health and armor pickups that are on some kind of timer, but that being said I don't understand the current system so maybe that's redundant.
- FOV configuration please!
Despite my criticisms there, I actually really like it! I get kind of a Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball vibe from the enemies which is cool, and having quake movement is great. Having to manage different color enemies with a rhythmic kinda back and forth between weapon colors is also really neat, though I'd have to play a lot more before I could form any kind of decent opinion on that part.
Here's an uncut video of me playing on octagon, as well as my scores for both maps.
After the video was made I started relying much more on the rocket launcher, but on TerrorByte the enemies turn so quickly it becomes kinda useless. Excuse me kinda playing like a potato, especially for the first 3/4.
EDITS: Typo/word choice