First time playing Acrolyte; Expected great art direction and atmosphere and got just that.
I'm not sure if the underground area the demo takes place in is considered fully finished yet, but I think its "length" could be cut in half. Currently it does not feel varied enough environmentally and a lot of it is running past the same small enemies without much change in scenery. If the level is varied a bit more in the future or the length is cut in half I think this section would be a lot more interesting. As far as the movement upgrades go, I think they were positioned well enough but the the direction you need to go after obtaining the slide could be telegraphed better.
The boss looks very good, but there's something about him that feels a bit janky with regards to getting hit by his body. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but maybe if there was more telegraphing to when his body slams down on you (maybe he moves up first instead of just shaking?) that attack might feel more fair. Also having him be able to be so far offscreen and not getting any feedback for when he's preparing his rush move feels *bad*. It's a very fast attack where he slams into you with his body so if you have him on screen and know it's coming it's hard to avoid but when you also create distance you don't know when it's coming which doesn't feel great.
EDIT: Oh, I also was having issues with jump inputs being dropped on controller (PS5 controller/Dualsense).
I’m dumb, I thought I got lost because I didn’t walk far enough in Marble Oasis to trigger the end screen lol. Other than that, I managed to navigate smoothly. I liked how the map lets you look ahead and is detailed enough so that you can plan where to go without actually having to walk there. I’d say the pacing is perfect as is, but maybe it’s true that zoomers need action to appear faster or maybe closer save points. I also thought for a moment I found a way to cheese the boss (46:29) but he was dealing damage after all, so it seems fine. I played on controller and adjusted the button mappings so I could keep both thumbs on the analog sticks (by jumping with LB and dashing with RT), it was weird doing super metroid wall jumps on stick but it worked. Loved it.
Metroidvania is not my genre, so I didn't go too far from the beginning. But I really enjoyed whole design of the game. Art, sound, visuals, nice controls. Cutscenes are pure kino. Funny details like how wall crawlers jump off to escape your gunfire. Only had odd thing with shooting like sometimes you can't shoot when you point your gun down. Great job! Wishlisted to help with Steam algos.
A really good game, everything it's very polished, I can't complain about anything really, it's basically a game I will play from beginning to end. Well done!
The gameplay feels polished too. It's quite intuitive and you can discover that some walls can be destroyed or that ledges can be grabbed even by accident.
I did get lost after a while but that's probably part of the intended experience since the environments are so open.
i think your keybinds/settings from a previous demo that had less safety measures for rebinding got carried over. I’m away from home at the moment so I can’t put out a direct fix for this, but in the mean time you can clear your player prefs to reset your game settings.
In regedit: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CYKO\Acrolyte
Sorry for the inconvenience, if I can I’ll try to put out an update soon to include a reset to default button onto all of the settings tabs. The rebinding menu in particular is just something that’s ridiculously obtuse and annoying to set up
Only played for a short session up until I died to one of those bigger enemies, but it does feel like the world is quite empty, or that it's too big at the initial sections without much else to do but walk. I'm sure there's some upgrade later on for it, but I'd like to have a melee attack option to deal with the small enemies when they're up close. That's pretty much all I have to complain about, everything else is insanely good.
Comments
First time playing Acrolyte; Expected great art direction and atmosphere and got just that.
I'm not sure if the underground area the demo takes place in is considered fully finished yet, but I think its "length" could be cut in half. Currently it does not feel varied enough environmentally and a lot of it is running past the same small enemies without much change in scenery. If the level is varied a bit more in the future or the length is cut in half I think this section would be a lot more interesting. As far as the movement upgrades go, I think they were positioned well enough but the the direction you need to go after obtaining the slide could be telegraphed better.
The boss looks very good, but there's something about him that feels a bit janky with regards to getting hit by his body. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but maybe if there was more telegraphing to when his body slams down on you (maybe he moves up first instead of just shaking?) that attack might feel more fair. Also having him be able to be so far offscreen and not getting any feedback for when he's preparing his rush move feels *bad*. It's a very fast attack where he slams into you with his body so if you have him on screen and know it's coming it's hard to avoid but when you also create distance you don't know when it's coming which doesn't feel great.
EDIT: Oh, I also was having issues with jump inputs being dropped on controller (PS5 controller/Dualsense).
I’m dumb, I thought I got lost because I didn’t walk far enough in Marble Oasis to trigger the end screen lol. Other than that, I managed to navigate smoothly. I liked how the map lets you look ahead and is detailed enough so that you can plan where to go without actually having to walk there. I’d say the pacing is perfect as is, but maybe it’s true that zoomers need action to appear faster or maybe closer save points. I also thought for a moment I found a way to cheese the boss (46:29) but he was dealing damage after all, so it seems fine. I played on controller and adjusted the button mappings so I could keep both thumbs on the analog sticks (by jumping with LB and dashing with RT), it was weird doing super metroid wall jumps on stick but it worked. Loved it.
Metroidvania is not my genre, so I didn't go too far from the beginning. But I really enjoyed whole design of the game. Art, sound, visuals, nice controls. Cutscenes are pure kino. Funny details like how wall crawlers jump off to escape your gunfire.
Only had odd thing with shooting like sometimes you can't shoot when you point your gun down.
Great job! Wishlisted to help with Steam algos.
A really good game, everything it's very polished, I can't complain about anything really, it's basically a game I will play from beginning to end. Well done!
Great game, looks fantastic.
The gameplay feels polished too. It's quite intuitive and you can discover that some walls can be destroyed or that ledges can be grabbed even by accident.
I did get lost after a while but that's probably part of the intended experience since the environments are so open.
Keep up the good work.
I found it :peepohappy:
Still the same ancient bug with weapon getting stuck with no way to change lmao
Would not be surprised it migrating to final release if it ever happens
i think your keybinds/settings from a previous demo that had less safety measures for rebinding got carried over. I’m away from home at the moment so I can’t put out a direct fix for this, but in the mean time you can clear your player prefs to reset your game settings.
In regedit: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CYKO\Acrolyte
Sorry for the inconvenience, if I can I’ll try to put out an update soon to include a reset to default button onto all of the settings tabs. The rebinding menu in particular is just something that’s ridiculously obtuse and annoying to set up
Only played for a short session up until I died to one of those bigger enemies, but it does feel like the world is quite empty, or that it's too big at the initial sections without much else to do but walk. I'm sure there's some upgrade later on for it, but I'd like to have a melee attack option to deal with the small enemies when they're up close. That's pretty much all I have to complain about, everything else is insanely good.
dope
very nice super polished metroidvania. Great controls, art, sound, levels.
at the demo end screen. I was wondering if I could use the slide to get past the pillar with the 1 space gaps crawling with worms.
some targets like the red orbs are super small, i would prefer them to be bigger.
some of the entrace/exits aren't distinct enough visually to remember. I kept thinking, "was there where I came in?".
In the boss fight I wasn't sure if I had to aim for the mouth and the orbs were optional, but it eventually died.
I thought the gun would let me break the yellow blocks since it had yellow bullets, but I guess that was a misunderstanding.
I did feel lost after dash, not sure what could be done to better guide the player.
nitpicks
The controls are displayed in keyboard when playing on controller (ps controller btw)
would like to be able to close map with O
the game over screen I had to navigate once to select ok
I think the control scheme reverts to keyboard for a second when respawning.