Look and feel of the game is immaculate. I zoomed into first person because directional melee is often fun that way, but here the camera was a bit janky while playing. Something about the way it responds to the swing animations felt inconsistent and made swings hard to line up.
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I will explain the guard mechanic better next time because I recently reworked it. Parrying and even if you keep pressuring enemies by attacking they will eventually guard break, stagger so you can get in some guaranteed hits.
Maybe the issue is that I kinda throw these mechanics all at once, because zombies can do many of the things soldier can do, but have a lower chance to react.
running on i5-1030h capped at 2.5ghz with integrated graphics at 1080p results in unplayable 15fps in first room
720p increases it to nice 40 with drops to 30 which is very playable (for me)
no hover on buttons in main menu and the options not working initially made me think it froze and i almost just closed the game and gave up on playing it (i can now see that the candles in the back are slightly animated which imply the game isnt frozen, didnt see it at first though)
i like the whole tutorial part before first enemies, though it is a bit repetitive with a bunch of containers that dont contain anything or just books, and a lot of doors that dont open (both the ones at the start and later in the game) but its nice
reminds me a lot of the start in gothic 2 (very positive)
(apparently the containers are randomly generated.. in which case its not good.. a carefully placed potion here, coin there.. now thats something..)
armors and stuff looks cool, wish there was a sword or something right away instead of swinging around pieces of brass
as for the combat...
overall i do find the combat janky but janky can be good (like gothic 2 for that matter, if theres a whole game around it to support the combat - noone likes gothic for combat afaik)
main issue i found is that all attacks are so slow - like 0.8s for a left/right/down swing, a whole 1s for an up swing, which seems to be true for all weapons so far (small/large candelabra, hatchet, table leg)
the animations arent particularly flashy or weapons hefty so it feels off to me (gothic 2 starting weapon takes 0.2s or so from input to hit) (checked ds1 too for the sake of it and the starting weapons are like 0.4s)
i know theres a difference between swing/thrust damage but trying to wrangle the cursor to the right position was pretty hard sometimes (i can tell it changes only if you move mouse fast enough, so sometimes i would accidentally move one way, but adjust too slowly and not switch back)
im also really bad at parrying in all games ever so i did it once after 10 failed attempts and never again sorry
my first intuition was to hold S at all times when winding up to avoid damage but that just took too long to do during every fight (and sometimes enemies would hit me with a plunge while i dont hit them with my own? weird)
then i discovered that the left swing hits the fastest so i ended up just walking up to the enemies on the side and clotheslining* them (pic related)
and honestly that made for a much more fun experience than trying to interface with the whole of what combat offers
i wouldnt even move my mouse to not accidentally lose the left swing (being able to run/dodge in all directions helps a lot)
so even though its janky its fun! it can be fun!
if there was several hours of content beyond the cat i could easily see myself doing the same thing all throughout and enjoy my time
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*A clothesline is a move in which one wrestler runs towards another and extends his/her arm out from the side of the body and parallel to the ground
Game looks great, seems very promising.
Menu buttons need some sort of hover effect, probably on click too.
I'd probably make options a priority to put in the game as it will make testing smoother for a lot of people. I really missed a invert mouse Y axis option and kept using the wrong attack because I'm so used to it in Mount & Blade. FoV option would be nice too.
FoV is too low in first person, so I only played in 3rd.
UI is too small in 4k, needs proper scaling. An example:
Interact outline isn't obvious enough I think, its possible its different depending on your resolution?
Pressing ESC should close all open windows before opening menu (I know TAB does, but ESC should too imo).
Double/shift clicking items should move them. Need a take all option too.
Empty and/or already looted containers should have a different outline, for example white for unchecked and grey for already looted. A name showing up for the thing you're looking at might be a good idea too.
Dialogue options and the dialogue are way too far away.
Pressing C while moving doesn't stop you.
I'd like some sort of character screen with all your stats and maybe equipped items. As far as I know there isn't one.
I know you're working on it but I think a save system should be priority one because it will make testing the game a lot less frustrating for testers.
Some items are too hard to see, especially for something very important like keys (if you have no other ideas some sparkles above it or something would work). Example:
Attack direction feels pretty imprecise; like it picks the wrong direction a lot, even though the indicator says the one I'd expect it to attack from.
Biggest problem I think is a general sense of "jank" in the combat that I have a hard time to properly express what the problem is. Probably something to do with your actions and feedback to them not having enough impact and reactions; e.g. impacts and blood from attacks landing isn't pronounced enough and is quite hard to see, same with parrying. Also when an enemy parries you they don't seem to try to counterattack - I just kept swinging and it works fine. But maybe that's how its supposed to be with the beginning enemies.
I played until I got the infirmary key, used it and then opened the door on the right and fell through a white opaque floor into the void:
UI is highly WIP.
I will add settings soon.
Something i recently realized is that the left-right attack is kind of redundant. It could simply be the combo for the "horizontal attack". But I dont know if removing the m&b style attack direction input would make the combat more confusing.
Im no sure where to put the dialogue options tbh. I will need to design a new UI.
I think C is the broken crafting UI? I forgot to disable it.
Everything RPG related is barely implemented.
Thats a good point.
There is a save system. Im an idiot and I forgot to swap the demo day note. The lecterns are the saving stations.
Another reason I'm considering dropping the m&b attack direction input entirely.
I think blood is kind of broken. I dont wanna cope and say the combat system is perfect as it is, but its purposely slow with a big emphasis on footwork and distancing. Some things need to be improved but the combat system is pretty much purposely designed to be this way. You havent found the soldiers, which are basically the real human AI. They are highly reactive and faster than the zombies.
My bad, I forgot to lock several doors.
Hello.
the character creation is a placeholder obviously. I hate UI and making UI art lol.
No art in the game is AI. Some of the writing is AI assisted, many of which is heavily curated or placeholder. The main inspirations for the architecture are Amnesia The Dark Descent and flemish paintings.
You may be right, I initially put fps to fix a bug but I didnt really pay attention to it since then
I designed the game for third person. First person is kind of an afterthought to let you see assets up close but I have to think what to do with it.
You can point out where, i may have forgotten to enable colliders to some assets.
The Pooka compendium is kind of placeholder lore which changed a bit since I added Dara. There is also a different spelling since i ended up with the irish gaelic Púca.
That sounds strange, you shouldn't use the mouse to move the pins at all, only the arrow keys.
Thank you for playing!
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