Straight of the bat this did a great job at taking me back to 'Zapzone' and other laser tag places from my childhook. The map, layout, scoreboards etc were all spot on for creating that atmosphere.
The enemies and the world gave a interesting fututristic impression that made me interested in the world. There was definitly a forboding atmosphere to it all and it felt very dystopian. I would like to see a little more variety in the enviroment if you carry this on. I think the layout was great but maybe some environmental hints at the story/world building?
I though the glow/neon/effects were all very fitting for the setting as well as things like the healing stations see throuhg doors. I also liked the way you chose to display health on their chests, It really kinda sold the robot thing and for some reason felt quite menacing .I would personally speed up the enemy dieing animations or remove the model and leave only the effect, as it felt a little slow compared to the fast pace of everything else.
I could see work went into the AI so was trying to track them and see what they did. A good sign was I started to get a bit paranoid 😅. Im _sure_ i saw one climb through one of the holes, but didnt see it again so am not sure if i should trust myself. I did notice though that they patrolled and had aggro. Some of them seemed more verticaly inclined than others and the ones that ended up just staring down from atop the walls were menacing as hell, it reallly amped up the atmosphere. The biggest problem I had with the AI was it ending up trapping me in the corner and bunching up. Apart from in that scenario it was really effective at sort of selling the being hunted feeling, but when there were loads just milling around, that was lost a bit. It did give me a good chance to admire the models/effects and experiment on seeing how much damage my gun did.
At the start the overheating mechanic was so frustrating. However, I think it was implemented kinda perfectly. It felt bad at the start because i was just using muscle memory from other shooters and feeling penalised. It left me feeling a little underpowered and spending more time running than shooting, but this ended up realllly selling the whole 'trapped by killer AI' feeling. I felt like a rat in a maze. Then when i stopped working against the mechanic and understand it I ended up balancing my shots and letting it cool manually a little between bursts. This made an interesting risk v reward mechanic where in some desperate situations I ended up choosing to just unload my entire clip till it overheated and then scurry away.
Using the health stations was a little confusing at first too. It sorta had the same effect as above where it sold the feeling and i was relieved when i finally realised i needed to enter them and not press a button or something. Seeing the door finally whoos open and give me some safety was a relief. I thought the effects of the transparent doors, timer and sounds were all really really well polished and kinda made th healing a bit of a set piece. Like it really felt solid to heal back up and the game telegraphed it really well.
The music was good. I think for this sort of game you kind of want the music to add from the background and not take center stage, which i think this did well. It certainly added some atmosphere but i think there is room for some variety.
The soundeffects hit the tone of the game well however i couldnt actually work out what some of them were 😅 some of the beeps didnt feel connected to things, or I wasnt able to link them anyway.
The UI worked and the theme/styling fit the game. I think there are probablys ome accesability issues with yellow on pink 😅but personally I really like the asthetic and its a game jam so im not sure there time to worry about some things 🤷. Im glad to see an options menu and it was nice to be able to fiddle around a little, however cranking it melted my PC, so i think the default settings were probably correct, at least for me. Finally the highscore table was a great touch, especially for a game like this. Seeing it at the start gave me immediate buy in and really gets the player interested and invested. Unfrotunatly, it looks like im not great at the game.... but i did at least make it onto the leaderboards!
Overall I think this is a really great foundation and pretty amazing to pull together in 2 weeks! I think theres a lot of exciting things to explore here and I am excited to see the story fleshed out, more mechanics for variety and even more polish on top of whats already there. good job!