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.
TheFoxyDragon
Recent community posts
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.
