itch.io

Going into Ctesiphon I was expecting a lot more of an emphasis on sneaking.

The temptation to make an immersive sim continues to haunt me…

In all seriousness though, I do actually intend on adding light stealth mechanics in that I’m going to make spotting more gradual as it’s currently completely binary. I’ve wanted to do that for a long time now and just didn’t get around to it.

The title screen was going for that Metal Gear look

I haven’t thought about this in a while, I do want to redo the title screen background as it’s still a placeholder from many years ago. Going to try and ape Vanquish instead to imply a little more SPEED.

The game has a simple artstyle, but it’s kept cohesive

Very deliberate. I’ve stuck to a specific workflow have intentionally not experimented much. I’m getting sick of it though and really looking forward to branching out with whatever I do next.

In the first level I jumped into the water somewhere and had a difficult/long time finding my way back to somewhere where I could get on land again. Unless I missed something it doesn’t seem like you can jump out of the water? Would be nice to have that.

No there is no jump out. You can crouch while approaching to sort of “mantle” onto a slightly higher ledge, but I made a point of making ledges low enough that you shouldn’t need to, it should be enough to move towards a ledge and you’ll step onto it.

That level is due for a big overhaul soon as I’m going to be putting together the demo for Next Fest, and particularly the first little island has a bunch of places where there aren’t nearly as many ways out as there should be.

Going in for a kill with the spike at one point (had no ammo in any other guns) and after picking up a gun it automatically switched to it; nearly killed me :(

There is an option under Settings/Game Options to disable Auto-Switch. I originally didn’t have it but then people complained about having to switch to new weapons. I do get a lot of complaints about how it switches to weapons that you already have though, I might just remove that part.

Jumping and crouching in the air kills my momentum a bit and it doesn’t feel intuitive. For being faster paced game I kept naturally jumping and holding crouch to try to extend my jump, but I had to remind myself to jump without crouching to get further instead.

This isn’t intentional, crouch is supposed to make you move at walk speed but only on solid ground and I’ve only been checking for if you’re underwater. That said crouch doesn’t really extend your jump, just that crouching in mid-air causes your collider to shrink upwards instead of downwards which raises your step height.

Oh also the music was pretty good, too

All credit to SystemST91 and fellow agdger JensVide!

I don’t know what else you need to do before it’s complete

Well the plan is another level, a boss fight, a couple more portraits, a bunch of level design polish and dialog lines, and some missing essentials like controller support and exclusive fullscreen. I don’t know if that will be enough but that’s what I’m doing.