The boat is definitely the best part, you need to build around it more. Liked your mutation system(and don't want to know how the player looks). The insect wings felt very awkward to use, maybe put them on shift or something? The player feels very stiff, I think the main problem is the lack of weapon animation, make them move during runing and jumping etc. Add some ui vfx for abilities using like vinitte or speed lines. The binocle using looked silly, move it upper to the eyes and hide I think
Thank you so much for the video, just finished watching it. It's been helpful especially the thorough testing of the controls. Man, I didn't realize how hard I made that first level. I actually did the other two first so by that point I got so used to the combat that I made it way too challenging, at the very least I should have started the player with a couple of medkits. Also this cable was supposed to be there but Godot sometimes removes my shader material from the cable objects for unknown reasons:
For the record, this was my first time playing this demo.
The boat was definitely the funnest part, would love to see the game more designed around that. I think it was the chieftans camp where there are several canal like stretches of water that you can sail down? Has the potential to be really cool, moving around and taking a chance stopping off at each section, or continuing on to preserve supplies.
I think my main criticism would be some of the level design, I could snipe a lot of enemies from halfway across the map, and although the boat was fun, some of the ground movement got a little tedious - although I liked the glide mutation. I think if you gave a thought to some vertical level design, mixed with more movement abilities (superjump? dash?)so you can jump and glide between cliffs and buildings, in more confined areas so enemies are more of a threat, it would feel really fun. Maybe you could add fog to the game too, it would go a long way to prevent that empty look some fps games sometimes have, and would help with the previously mentioned line of sight problems.
Another problem was to do with collisions and perspectives. Enemies feel like they have a very long reach, and I noticed that my guns clipped into a wall whenever I walked against it, maybe the player camera is too far back? I think the machete animation should basically extend to the end of its collision area to give a better idea of distance aswell.
I think the UI needs spacing out too, moved to the edges of the screen and split up - put the health in the top left, ammo bottom right etc - it's all bunched up atm. A very nitpicky thing too, but for whatever reason, everytime I go to reverse the boat, I look at the screen and it looks like it's saying CTRL V to go down, when it's just CTRL and the down symbol. for whatever reason, my brain tries to push CTRL and V almost every time. Dunno if it's worth changing or not, but thats just me.
I'll refrain from going into too much on the graphics as I assume a lot is placeholder stuff? Hope you go with the low-poly pixel art look like the weapons as it's quite easy to make and would tie everything together. Could maybe also add some more sound in the mix, seagulls, ambient music, etc. The sound of waves was quite overpowering.
I think if you gave a thought to some vertical level design, mixed with more movement abilities (superjump? dash?)so you can jump and glide between cliffs and buildings, in more confined areas so enemies are more of a threat, it would feel really fun.
True, the levels were not as thought out as they could have been. The main problem with making levels like that is that I'd like to have a lot more mutations while keeping all of them optional, it'll be a problem to solve at some point. Technically the chieftain level was designed with some of it in mind as the player is able to glide onto some roofs or distant building by grenade jumping but it's the first of the three levels I made so it ended up basic, It's going to get a giant rework soon enough.
Enemies feel like they have a very long reach
True, they do. I found that if they had a reach that matched their attack perfectly they would have a lot of trouble hitting a moving player. I need to make them move while attacking if I want them to have a chance, or just make most enemies ranged. I'll rework them as soon as I can.
and I noticed that my guns clipped into a wall whenever I walked against it, maybe the player camera is too far back?
The guns clipping is because I haven't gotten around giving them their own viewport yet, but I suppose moving the camera forward would make the hitbox feel more fair? I'll test it out.
I look at the screen and it looks like it's saying CTRL V to go down, when it's just CTRL and the down symbol. for whatever reason, my brain tries to push CTRL and V almost every time
That's funny, it is text though so your brain is not wrong. I'll change it to a symbol, why not.
i love the boat too. Controlling a boat mixed with the shooter bits is quite compelling. Boat customization/upgrades would be cool and make it feel like a base.
Water physics are pretty awesome, things like blasting water with a shotgun having an effect
I missed the shotgun and speargun the first time through. I also never figured out how to use mutagen.
Shield guys will charge off a bridge to try to get to you, and I think the spear throwers can keep throwing while underwater, which was frustrating and I couldn't tell where they were.
All settings get reset between levels, although this might be a problem with my sandbox
I feel like the game needs more health packs.
The lighting/ambience needs work, and at night, I found it kind of hard to see.
The game initially kept forcing itself windowed until in the first person section
Mutations took me out of the game thematically - I had thought I was just playing as some guy - and assigning perks for a game that I haven't started yet wasn't interesting.
I don't like the map system. The game gives a nice early 3D PC game vibe that it is at odds with
Something about changing weapons during/after reloading a save let me use the revolver but the first shot after each reload was a shotgun blast. When changing weapons I had to do it twice, so I think it thought there were two weapons out
The water enemies and the ones that lie in wait behind bushes were scary. I don't think the animal enemies should be so persistent in hunting you and trying to jump out of the water to wherever you are. I died because, seemingly, a fish jumped out of the water onto land on a suicide mission to damage me once and killed me
I enjoyed this less than the DD61 demo. I think it was too hard and the new difficult areas didn't give me the feeling of travelling down a river to explore/conquer savages and instead felt like Doom but you have to drag a boat with you to your next combat arena/ambush by a million eldritch horrors. I stopped shortly after the second area
The lore isn't there yet but it is a world where everyone's mutated to a degree. I haven't decided if I want mutations to be the primary mean of player progression / character building or an optional thing, but them being available right away is for playtesting.
I don't like the map system. The game gives a nice early 3D PC game vibe that it is at odds with
At heart it's just a level selector, not much different than Painkiller's pre-level screen for example. It certainly should be moodier, it's a placeholder.
Something about changing weapons during/after reloading a save let me use the revolver but the first shot after each reload was a shotgun blast
Good catch, the fix will be in the next build.
I died because, seemingly, a fish jumped out of the water onto land on a suicide mission to damage me once and killed me
I'll make it so the fishes can't attack you if they're on land. They suffocate after a few seconds so them jumping on the boat is meant to be a funny thing and also a source of free healing. Fishes jump on boats all the time so I thought it would fit.
Sorry about making the game too difficult, it's hard to judge these things. The game is in a bit of an identity crisis right now, it's going to be hard to blend the "surviving -> exploring -> conquering savage lands" theme with the gameplay of a somewhat fast paced shooter, and also I obviously don't want the boat to feel like a dead weight you're dragging around, it's going to take some iterating to get it right so I really appreciate your honesty.
not much different than Painkiller's pre-level screen for example
I've never played it, so I could just be putting expectations on the game that aren't fitting with your vision because of my own inexperience
I played through from where I left off to the end just because I didn't want to leave the boat dead weight comment out there if it was going to bother you and I wasn't 100% sure of it and... the latter zones don't really feel like they're about the boat much at all, so I'm not sure if it's really how I feel But I know I enjoyed the boat in the earlier demos, maybe because (in my recollection) it didn't always feel like you were always trapped in a small area with the boat and were forced to get off to solve the area before you just ride it to the next zone.
Having played more I still feel there are too many ambushes. The cheiftain zone didn't feel well designed because of how much you could solve by sniping. I must have missed something because I walked around a lot at the transmission tower but couldn't find a way up and just hopped up the side of the tower
The bosses weren't bad, though maybe a bit repetitive. I got the feeling the optimal way to beat the elephant was to lure it to crash into stuff, but I didn't do that since it didn't take much more than circle strafing
Also the sound effects are super bass-y. I got the healing perk first thing,so I'm not sure if it was the sound of healing or the melee attack hit, but every time I landed a melee hit it sounded to me like I was the one who got hit with a thud
The acid explosion perk was annoying because I would start bouncing whenever I took damage - I'm sure I could have respecced but I forgot
Very cool prototype. After getting used to it, steering the boat while walking around is really cool. Of course this screams to steal ideas from Sea of Thieves and to make the boat react to the waves for that seafaring feeling.
The first "level" already feels a bit hard i'd say, since those headless chicken creatures soaked up my ammo and there was way too many dudes with shields. I barely had any ammo and health left when i left the area. Before leaving i died multiple times, which always made me respawn at the camps gate where those baddies ganged me up again. I think i died 5 times until i decided to run away.
After that mission the menu said i had 4 mutagen (i think), so i consumed, had 1 left and 1 point for muations. Maybe a bug? Because consuming the last mutagen gave me a point too. So either the initial 4 were a display bug or something else is off.
Thanks for playing! I'm pretty sure that the mutagen bug is an UI thing, I'll fix it as soon as I can.
The first "level" already feels a bit hard i'd say, since those headless chicken creatures soaked up my ammo and there was way too many dudes with shields
There's 4 hidden guns in level 1, if you missed the grenade launcher and the shotgun in particular I can see the level being too hard. going forward I'm make sure not to hide the basic arsenal.
Quite the vibe. Loved the alien bushpigs who surprise you. Dual pistol trap was mean. This is the kind of game that needs its main character to be an old salty dad, that needs a radio on the boat that plays country music and that also needs a walkie-talkie that lets you talk to "Curly", whoever that may be.
Steering the boat and managing shooting at the same time is a bunch of fun, maybe boat controls should fade out if you enter combat, though.
Fish that jump out, weird squid-things on rocks. Played Silicon Scars earlier, which maid me really appreciate that you can shoot sheildguys in the feet in this.
What else... You need a crate of glass bottles of beer on the boat and once you have finished drinking one you should be able to throw the bottle so it gets smashed.
The mutation stuff is fun, got more health, speed and killing gives health.
Like the FTL setup between missions.
There is some kind of physics glitch that happens when snails shoot you on the boat, boat glitches out and moves way back.
I neither liked or disliked it, I can see people loving it but it is lacking in aesthetic for me. Maybe some work on the lightning to give atmosphere? It lack something that appeal to me.
The gameplay seems fine, but i could only use the 2 for weapon change.
Comments
The boat is definitely the best part, you need to build around it more. Liked your mutation system(and don't want to know how the player looks). The insect wings felt very awkward to use, maybe put them on shift or something? The player feels very stiff, I think the main problem is the lack of weapon animation, make them move during runing and jumping etc. Add some ui vfx for abilities using like vinitte or speed lines. The binocle using looked silly, move it upper to the eyes and hide I think
Edit: I just realized I've been recording all my videos without any game audio lol. Oops!
Thank you so much for the video, just finished watching it. It's been helpful especially the thorough testing of the controls.
Man, I didn't realize how hard I made that first level. I actually did the other two first so by that point I got so used to the combat that I made it way too challenging, at the very least I should have started the player with a couple of medkits.
Also this cable was supposed to be there but Godot sometimes removes my shader material from the cable objects for unknown reasons:
Anyways thanks again for the feedback!
For the record, this was my first time playing this demo.
The boat was definitely the funnest part, would love to see the game more designed around that. I think it was the chieftans camp where there are several canal like stretches of water that you can sail down? Has the potential to be really cool, moving around and taking a chance stopping off at each section, or continuing on to preserve supplies.
I think my main criticism would be some of the level design, I could snipe a lot of enemies from halfway across the map, and although the boat was fun, some of the ground movement got a little tedious - although I liked the glide mutation. I think if you gave a thought to some vertical level design, mixed with more movement abilities (superjump? dash?)so you can jump and glide between cliffs and buildings, in more confined areas so enemies are more of a threat, it would feel really fun. Maybe you could add fog to the game too, it would go a long way to prevent that empty look some fps games sometimes have, and would help with the previously mentioned line of sight problems.
Another problem was to do with collisions and perspectives. Enemies feel like they have a very long reach, and I noticed that my guns clipped into a wall whenever I walked against it, maybe the player camera is too far back? I think the machete animation should basically extend to the end of its collision area to give a better idea of distance aswell.
I think the UI needs spacing out too, moved to the edges of the screen and split up - put the health in the top left, ammo bottom right etc - it's all bunched up atm. A very nitpicky thing too, but for whatever reason, everytime I go to reverse the boat, I look at the screen and it looks like it's saying CTRL V to go down, when it's just CTRL and the down symbol. for whatever reason, my brain tries to push CTRL and V almost every time. Dunno if it's worth changing or not, but thats just me.
I'll refrain from going into too much on the graphics as I assume a lot is placeholder stuff? Hope you go with the low-poly pixel art look like the weapons as it's quite easy to make and would tie everything together. Could maybe also add some more sound in the mix, seagulls, ambient music, etc. The sound of waves was quite overpowering.
Hey thanks for playing.
True, the levels were not as thought out as they could have been. The main problem with making levels like that is that I'd like to have a lot more mutations while keeping all of them optional, it'll be a problem to solve at some point. Technically the chieftain level was designed with some of it in mind as the player is able to glide onto some roofs or distant building by grenade jumping but it's the first of the three levels I made so it ended up basic, It's going to get a giant rework soon enough.
True, they do. I found that if they had a reach that matched their attack perfectly they would have a lot of trouble hitting a moving player. I need to make them move while attacking if I want them to have a chance, or just make most enemies ranged. I'll rework them as soon as I can.
The guns clipping is because I haven't gotten around giving them their own viewport yet, but I suppose moving the camera forward would make the hitbox feel more fair? I'll test it out.
That's funny, it is text though so your brain is not wrong. I'll change it to a symbol, why not.
Thanks again for the feedback, very helpful.
i love the boat too. Controlling a boat mixed with the shooter bits is quite compelling. Boat customization/upgrades would be cool and make it feel like a base.
Water physics are pretty awesome, things like blasting water with a shotgun having an effect
I missed the shotgun and speargun the first time through. I also never figured out how to use mutagen.
Shield guys will charge off a bridge to try to get to you, and I think the spear throwers can keep throwing while underwater, which was frustrating and I couldn't tell where they were.
All settings get reset between levels, although this might be a problem with my sandbox
I feel like the game needs more health packs.
The lighting/ambience needs work, and at night, I found it kind of hard to see.
Thanks for playing!
It's goofy but intended, it's meant to be a way to use the environment to deal with enemies.
Right, units with fast projectiles shouldn't shoot form the water. I'll change that.
Yeah the button is easily missed, it's in the bottom right in the map screen. My fault, I'll make it more eye catching.
True but there's mutations that give you some health back in combat. The balance between the two needs some adjustment.
Thanks again for the feedback.
i love the boat
The game initially kept forcing itself windowed until in the first person section
Mutations took me out of the game thematically - I had thought I was just playing as some guy - and assigning perks for a game that I haven't started yet wasn't interesting.
I don't like the map system. The game gives a nice early 3D PC game vibe that it is at odds with
Something about changing weapons during/after reloading a save let me use the revolver but the first shot after each reload was a shotgun blast. When changing weapons I had to do it twice, so I think it thought there were two weapons out
The water enemies and the ones that lie in wait behind bushes were scary. I don't think the animal enemies should be so persistent in hunting you and trying to jump out of the water to wherever you are. I died because, seemingly, a fish jumped out of the water onto land on a suicide mission to damage me once and killed me
I enjoyed this less than the DD61 demo. I think it was too hard and the new difficult areas didn't give me the feeling of travelling down a river to explore/conquer savages and instead felt like Doom but you have to drag a boat with you to your next combat arena/ambush by a million eldritch horrors. I stopped shortly after the second area
Thanks for playing!
The lore isn't there yet but it is a world where everyone's mutated to a degree. I haven't decided if I want mutations to be the primary mean of player progression / character building or an optional thing, but them being available right away is for playtesting.
At heart it's just a level selector, not much different than Painkiller's pre-level screen for example.
It certainly should be moodier, it's a placeholder.
Good catch, the fix will be in the next build.
I'll make it so the fishes can't attack you if they're on land. They suffocate after a few seconds so them jumping on the boat is meant to be a funny thing and also a source of free healing. Fishes jump on boats all the time so I thought it would fit.
Sorry about making the game too difficult, it's hard to judge these things. The game is in a bit of an identity crisis right now, it's going to be hard to blend the "surviving -> exploring -> conquering savage lands" theme with the gameplay of a somewhat fast paced shooter, and also I obviously don't want the boat to feel like a dead weight you're dragging around, it's going to take some iterating to get it right so I really appreciate your honesty.
Thanks again for the feedback, it's very useful.
No worries!
I've never played it, so I could just be putting expectations on the game that aren't fitting with your vision because of my own inexperience
I played through from where I left off to the end just because I didn't want to leave the boat dead weight comment out there if it was going to bother you and I wasn't 100% sure of it and... the latter zones don't really feel like they're about the boat much at all, so I'm not sure if it's really how I feel
But I know I enjoyed the boat in the earlier demos, maybe because (in my recollection) it didn't always feel like you were always trapped in a small area with the boat and were forced to get off to solve the area before you just ride it to the next zone.
Having played more I still feel there are too many ambushes. The cheiftain zone didn't feel well designed because of how much you could solve by sniping. I must have missed something because I walked around a lot at the transmission tower but couldn't find a way up and just hopped up the side of the tower
The bosses weren't bad, though maybe a bit repetitive. I got the feeling the optimal way to beat the elephant was to lure it to crash into stuff, but I didn't do that since it didn't take much more than circle strafing
Also the sound effects are super bass-y. I got the healing perk first thing,so I'm not sure if it was the sound of healing or the melee attack hit, but every time I landed a melee hit it sounded to me like I was the one who got hit with a thud
The acid explosion perk was annoying because I would start bouncing whenever I took damage - I'm sure I could have respecced but I forgot
And I didn't get the point of the inventory
Very cool prototype. After getting used to it, steering the boat while walking around is really cool. Of course this screams to steal ideas from Sea of Thieves and to make the boat react to the waves for that seafaring feeling.
The first "level" already feels a bit hard i'd say, since those headless chicken creatures soaked up my ammo and there was way too many dudes with shields. I barely had any ammo and health left when i left the area. Before leaving i died multiple times, which always made me respawn at the camps gate where those baddies ganged me up again. I think i died 5 times until i decided to run away.
After that mission the menu said i had 4 mutagen (i think), so i consumed, had 1 left and 1 point for muations. Maybe a bug? Because consuming the last mutagen gave me a point too. So either the initial 4 were a display bug or something else is off.
Thanks for playing! I'm pretty sure that the mutagen bug is an UI thing, I'll fix it as soon as I can.
There's 4 hidden guns in level 1, if you missed the grenade launcher and the shotgun in particular I can see the level being too hard.
going forward I'm make sure not to hide the basic arsenal.
Thanks again for the feedback.
I did not expect an elephant boss.
Quite the vibe. Loved the alien bushpigs who surprise you. Dual pistol trap was mean. This is the kind of game that needs its main character to be an old salty dad, that needs a radio on the boat that plays country music and that also needs a walkie-talkie that lets you talk to "Curly", whoever that may be.
Steering the boat and managing shooting at the same time is a bunch of fun, maybe boat controls should fade out if you enter combat, though.
Fish that jump out, weird squid-things on rocks. Played Silicon Scars earlier, which maid me really appreciate that you can shoot sheildguys in the feet in this.
What else... You need a crate of glass bottles of beer on the boat and once you have finished drinking one you should be able to throw the bottle so it gets smashed.
The mutation stuff is fun, got more health, speed and killing gives health.
Like the FTL setup between missions.
There is some kind of physics glitch that happens when snails shoot you on the boat, boat glitches out and moves way back.
On the second mission now. Will play more.
I neither liked or disliked it, I can see people loving it but it is lacking in aesthetic for me. Maybe some work on the lightning to give atmosphere? It lack something that appeal to me.
The gameplay seems fine, but i could only use the 2 for weapon change.
Road is long but I hope you will make it.