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A pretty fun short demo with a very strong art style

+ The FMV-style graphics, with live-action recordings and photos as the sprites lend the game a really distinctive feel, it's not a style you see often and it works quite well here. The muted colors and short render distance fog really effectively convey an oppressive atmosphere.

+ New gameplay elements are introduced at a good pace, with the core loop even changing midway through, and new abelites and enemy types being introduced at a frequent rate.

+ The game presents dual stories pretty well, with the visual novel-style bits between the levels conveying the post-apocalyptic story the gameplay occurs in, while the short video segments are a bit more meta, showing the story of an indie dev trying to get the game you're playing published. It was a good choice to present both in different styles, this leaves both stories easily distinguishable where two narratives could have otherwise been confusing. While neither story has gotten very far yet, they grabbed me enough that I'm interested to see where they go next.

~ On mouse and keyboard it took a moment to get used to the controls, using the W and D keys to turn the camera instead of strafing. While mouselook is standard for first person shooters usually, the fairly simple nature of the FPS segments and the generous enemy hitboxes meant I could get used to it pretty quickly, so this probably isn't really an issue.

- While the sprites and animations look good, enemy death animations can be quite long, and I think they keep moving as they die. Due to this, and the occasional similarity of the death and hurt animations, it can often be hard to tell when you have killed an enemy, especially the ones that take numerous shots.

- In a similar vein, the kick animation was quite slow, leaving it hard to judge the timing on when it dealt damage.

Overall a really interesting and unique demo! It was quite short so it didn't overstay it's welcome, and the story and gameplay had me interested to see what you do with it next. Good work!

Hey Cody!
Thanks a lot for your feedback :D

Glad you liked the FMV-style graphics, dual narration and various gameplay mechanics. It means a lot!

As for the controls (and rotating the camera with A and D), I'm always surprised how people react to it. At first, I thought that it'll make the game too easy. Some love it, some hate it, but funny thing is that casuals feel quite comfortable with it. I also opted for lack of camera controls, because each enemy is made out of A LOT of frames and GDevelop (the engine the game is running on) doesn't like so many high detailed sprites in one sequence (it also doesn't support more that one video per level, so I had to get creative). What that has to do with mouse controls?  

Each enemy has four animations - walking, attacking, taking damage and dying. Basic mutant is made out of like 237 frames. Another thing that made me drop free camera controls was working with actors (well, essentially me and my brother). If you had a free camera movement, you'd probably try to shoot everyone in the head. Here's the thing though, I would have to take into account every body part e.g in case someone decides to shoot the mutant in the leg. That would create even more sprites to cut out frame-by-frame and additional optimization issues for the engine. That's why every mutant has a one hitbox, despite all the sophisticated frame sequences.

As for kicking animations, I'm constantly tweaking it to make it right. It was even slower before, so I guess I'll have to speed it up even more. Gotta be careful not to go overboard. It's really cartoonish on higher speed. What's worse, when I was recording it, I had to stand on my right leg, put my left leg around the tripod and fake a kick in a way that I wouldn't fall on all the gear in front of me. Maybe that's why it's hard to read, but the gist is that you will hit everytime when the enemy plays it's attack animation. You have about 2-3 seconds to react, so it should be enough. When in doubt, just charge straight at them and kick them away :D

Anyway, thank you so much for giving One Rotten Oath a chance!
Have a good one and good luck as well!