I last played this several DD's ago back when the main enemies were all just sprites. This has now ascended to absolute kino and I had a lot of fun playing it.
i still love the idea of a boating boomer shooter. The boat controls are good and its really smooth to get on/off the boat
the guns feel good and powerful. The grenade launcher should 1 shot mooks in my opinion. the SMG fire-rate is crazy high which i love
some of the gun viewmodels look a bit strange (double barrel, speargun look 10 feet long)
the levels are really well designed in my opinion. The ambush with the handstand guys got me good and the construction site was fun as fuck
taking the boat through the little caves was fun, but in one in the chieftan level i managed to clip thru the ceiling by getting on the HMG
the enemy AI is pretty fun to fight! I like how they come at you in droves too
I realize these are probably the first few levels but I found the game pretty easy even without the lifesteal upgrades (which made several parts trivial)
the boss fight was chaotic but fun and was really impressive to me. definitely the hardest part of the demo and i went through all 5 medkits to survive
the flesh wings were great for getting back to the boat
I like Rag conceptually but wish he had a bit more personality. I'd like him more if he actually felt like a gruff boat captain. as is he is kind of a nothing burger
I think you should play up the mystery of what is at the heart of the island and have it be a crazy reveal. im thinking of the ending of DUSK and how cool the last few levels were
some textures clash with eachother and the game overall looks a bit washed out to me. I honestly dont mind but it could put some people off
The HMG is a great addition, but the boat still doesnt feel very tied in with the main gameplay
I also encountered the issue where my framerate slowed to a crawl for a few seconds when i got the boat close to shore at a weird angle
I realize these are probably the first few levels but I found the game pretty easy even without the lifesteal upgrades (which made several parts trivial)
Balance is going to be a challenge. Some people tell me the game is too hard and other tell me the game is too easy apart from the bossfights. I think it comes down to experience with FPS games and using mutations well. Either way I think it's better if the game starts a bit too easy and gets challenging later on.
I like Rag conceptually but wish he had a bit more personality
Noted, poor Rags was made in a day so he didn't have a ton of care put into him. He's meant to be a sidekick of sorts because I didn't want the player to feel like they're just a henchman, I might make the crew larger down the line if I want different characters for different roles.
some textures clash with eachother and the game overall looks a bit washed out to me. I honestly dont mind but it could put some people off
This will also be a challenge. I'm learning texturing as I go so some textures are different because I'm experimenting with things. I'll be sure to settle on a style and standardize existing textures before I can start churning out content.
but the boat still doesnt feel very tied in with the main gameplay
Yeah, it's a level design issue, redoing the first level to be more boat-centric will be a priority. I could ditch the boat entirely for some levels though so the player doesn't have to go back for the boat after finishing them.
I think its neat. I would buy this game on Steam.
I am planning to put this on steam when I'm done so I'll do my best. Thanks again for the comment, much appreciated!
Hub is great, but a bit empty for now. Plasmid-like upgrades are very, very cool! I dig them a lot, especially the gliding one - very helpful for the "assault on the boss" level (which also filtered me).
First level is alright, worked well enough. Blue slugs are extremely annoying, and the enemy placement is kinda dickish, but it wasn't the problem on the first level. The second one though... Felt extremely starved for ammo and HP, had to turtle and snipe enemies, which wasn't a lot of fun.
Also - the boat still doesn't rotate players camera when steering.
Just got done watching this, thanks for the video it's very useful.
I can see I did a poor job of communicating some important things and maybe that's why some people are finding it harder than others. I'll make sure gun pickups and supply crates are more noticeable. Rags tells you that the chieftain's camp is the harder of the two available levels but In retrospect it's obvious that if I unlock two levels at once they should be equally challenging, or at least I should add some difficulty indicator on the map screen.
In my game's defense I think playing it with a timer trying to rush to the boss is counterproductive since a lot of resources are rewards for exploring but I agree that at the very least pistol and shotgun ammo should always be plentiful. I'll be more careful with balance going forward.
Thanks again for streaming my game! It'll be more fun next time.
Wanted to try this again because I really like the idea you’re playing with here. Just jotting down what comes to mind.
Text in dialogue is too wide and revealed too slowly, put some margins either side and reveal it maybe 50-100% faster.
I like the skybox but they’re very high res compared to everything else and clash as a result. The water also suffers from this, if you tried reducing the resolution it might look a lot more cohesive with what you’re trying to do with the models. That and/or everything could use a heavy coat of grime and noise to give the textures more texture.
Godot’s infamous shader loading stutter strikes again. I don’t know what you can do about it unfortunately, good luck with that.
I can’t remember if this was a problem last time, but it’s really annoying that turning the boat doesn’t cause you to turn while standing on it. Makes judging your movement way harder than it could be. Otherwise, the simplified controls and revised UI I think are a big improvement over the last time I played.
It’s awkward getting back onto the boat if you stop it on a shoal. You can walk right up to the boat but can’t jump high enough to actually get into it.
I had to stop in the level with the construction site. For some reason when I got close to the shore the game’s framerate nosedived and the main thread started rocketing at max speed. If I had to guess it might have been something to do with collision? I’ve seen in Quake how they only attempt four traces per entity per frame to avoid hitting an infinite spiral of little corrections pushing objects into other objects again.
Thanks for playing again, good to hear that the game has improved in some areas.
I like the skybox but they’re very high res compared to everything else and clash as a result
I don't think it matters too much if the sky looks better than the rest of the game but I will be experimenting with lower res ones, especially because the ones I'm using are free assets and there's only so many different skyboxes I can make with those.
but it’s really annoying that turning the boat doesn’t cause you to turn while standing on it
That sounds like it could be disorienting but I suppose I can test it out and see if it works.
You can walk right up to the boat but can’t jump high enough to actually get into it.
Noted, I'll make jumps from shallow water higher, that should do it.
For some reason when I got close to the shore the game’s framerate nosedived and the main thread started rocketing at max speed
Dang it. This happened to me a couple of times but I thought I had fixed it. It's something to do with the boat colliding with the shore at some specific angle, now I suspect it might be because of Godot's axis lock setting, if that's the case it should be an easy fix. Sorry about that.
Thanks again for the feedback, it seems like I still need to iron out some kinks in visuals and gameplay before I can focus on adding content, but I think I'm getting close.
I did a whole playthrough, I think it was pretty good. From the get go I see you planned to have a certain flow of combat maried with exploration. Small pickups by the broken boat, enemies hiding in the bushes, ambush by the gate, jumping down to be ambushed by headliess dogs. I liked the level design for the chieftan, the idea of desolated and flooded construction site was pretty neat, going up and then moving between buildings,either you have a natural talent for levels or it took a lot of planning to make it good. The chieftan was a motherfuck, does too much damage and is a damage sponge himself, pls nerf. Too much grenades thrown at his second phase, his ground pound shouldn't be that powerful I think. Grenade launcher has a very low splash damage and I'd expect it to be end-it-all when it hits enemies point blank, but normal shielded enemies were almost immune to the explosions. I had two health mutagens that could heal me very fast, very powerful, so I liked it a lot, but I expect you to nerf it or have this mutagen more costly or maybe even tiers, so 1 mutagen to heal 2 damage, another mutagen to heal 4 etc. Your basic spear-chugging enemies are way too accurate and spears should lose their height faster.
Graphics and animation are serviceable, but I'm afraid it's not enough. The most jarring are spikes, just rows of neatly ordered triangles. I didn't like the animations for human enemies too, they're very basic. Pickups are very bright which on one hand makes them easier to find, but they also stand out from the surroundings a lot.
Regarding lore, if mutations make people devolve then why are we injecting ourselves with them in the first place? When going out for hunt aren't we just risking being turned into mindless beasts ourselves? And since people devolved why they managed to form tribes and even cooperate with other animals? There are some general questions I had when playing the game. Not everyone is cooperating of course, red-handstanding guys and the mutated elephant killed the default badguys, sure, but other than that I don't know why they'd form an alliance. Maybe I'm reading too deep into it.
I was thinking that maybe with smaller levels and some randomness in them you could have a very enjoyable roguelite - levels with different amount of enemies, supplies, random order and events spicing up the gameplay, with bigger levels, like those in this demo, as milestones. Add mutation research, find new "blueprints" for new mutations and ingredients on levels to give additional incentive for exploration. As a linear game it might not be as fun and replayable.
Hey, thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback.
Too much grenades thrown at his second phase, his ground pound shouldn't be that powerful I think
I think a bigger arena with an extra row of columns will be enough to make him a more fair fight, also I need to find a way to teach players that "ground slam" type attacks can be avoided by jumping.
but normal shielded enemies were almost immune to the explosions
Unless something is broken they take two nades, which yeah I'll bump it down to one.
I didn't like the animations for human enemies too, they're very basic
They're the first enemies I made so it's good to hear I've gotten better. I'll make a note to redo their animations.
Pickups are very bright which on one hand makes them easier to find, but they also stand out from the surroundings a lot.
I've gotten some feedback about that, but I like having something that I can use to guide the player's eye towards secrets or the way forward. I guess they are a bit jarring. I'll have to think of a substitute if I do end up making them more plain.
Regarding lore
I didn't want to explain too much for the demo, I was thinking of adding an intro level down the line that would explain things more clearly. Basically the idea is that, while rapid mutations caused the collapsed of modern society, by the time the game takes place contamination can be treated and most of the danger is from the mutated creatures themselves. Mutagenic serum is not the same as the industrial contaminant, it's meant to be stable and controllable so people can use it to give themselves useful genetic mutations. I understand that this might be counter intuitive, there's a chance that I might scrap the mutation system in favor of various equipment that does the same thing.
And since people devolved why they managed to form tribes and even cooperate with other animals?
The tribe you fight are more like dumber aggressive humans than feral beasts. They are capable of having language, a social structure and even domesticating animals. Lore-wise the big fishmen enemies should be fighting with the tribals in the chieftain level but I didn't get infighting ready in time for the demo. Speaking of domestication, there's a pup that you can adopt in the lair level, it's right before the bossfight. Rags has unique dialogue if you bring it back before doing the chieftain level.
As a linear game it might not be as fun and replayable.
I did toy with some procedural generation but I found that it cheapens the exploration and it's a pain in the ass to set up. I'm definitely going to add more things to find in levels, and the mutation system could use some more depth yeah. I just don't think this game can be anything more than a linear game, I'm hoping that a complete mutation system will give player different enough playstyles that replaying levels with different ones will be fun.
Anyway thanks again for the comment, much appreciated!
The following are stream of consciousness notes that I'm writing as I play.
The game boots in a tiny window, I can't see why you'd want this.
Intro cutscene is nice, more sounds would be nice but I can't dock you for something that's clearly WIP. The plot setup is pretty neat. Are those Houndeyes, by the way?
The tutorial is ok, nothing to write home about but it does its job. It doesn't overstay its welcome, which is nice.
I'm not sure I like the VN-style dialogue boxes, it's never good to take control away for the player (even if just for a few moments). I think you should follow in Half-Life's footsteps here and just let the character move around while a VA speaks.
I think the text centering breaks if you try to fast forward through dialogue.
From what I gather, the game is mission-based with persistent progression. I'm wondering if missions are replayable, guess I'll find out soon.
Having a bunch of enemies in the very first combat encounter feels like a bit much. It might not phase players generally more experienced in shooters, but could be overwhelming for a novice. If your game is meant to be hardcore, I guess it's fine.
You can chop the grass up! Cool detail.
The jump you make to get out of water is comically high. Maybe a shorter jump and a tight mounting mechanic would be better.
The VFX on the slug's slam attack is very underwhelming: not only is the shockwave tiny, it's almost the same brown as the ground. Make it whiter, bigger, and maybe even add a tiny bit of screen shake to give it some oomph.
I have 4 nades, but pressing 5 does nothing..? I tried pressing random buttons, nothing worked. The inventory description makes it sound like they're for a noob tube or something, guess I'll keep playing and see if I get that.
The water ripple effect can proc through solid ground, maybe add a raycast.
Questionable choice to mark a checkpoint exactly when you enter the fortress and like 20 dudes start trying to kill you. I was on low health, so I kept reloading and instantly dying. I had to eventually reload an earlier autosave
Shield enemies got stuck trying to pathfind around this edge.
Interesting, you can't replay missions. So the game is purely linear, no level select? I'm not sure that's the best idea for replayability, especially if you're going for a boomer shooter where people want to play every level again and again to optimize their strategies.
I got the two health regen upgrades and wow, they really seem to trivialize a lot of combat. I haven't had to use a health kit all level (The Lair), and I haven't been particularly good at dodging. 10hp per melee hit feels kind of absurd right now.
I'm not sure how one is supposed to avoid the elephant's ground slam attack. I tried being in the air while it performed it, didn't help. Maybe I timed it wrong, but it felt like BS.
Why is there a distinction between available and consumed mutagens? Why would I want to not consume them?
There is a lot of free sniping you can do in the Chieftain's Camp, most of my kills were from just circling the structure and using the mounted gun and the harpoon.
The chieftain fight was underwhelming. The boss is tiny and doesn't feel particularly unique, it's just a dude who jumps sometimes. I melted through him with the trench gun.
The game felt like it would be pretty tough at first, but again, those health upgrades made things so much easier. I didn't die once after getting them. The boat still feels divorced from the core gameplay, it's often just a tool to get in and out of the level. The only time it made a real difference was in the level where I could just circle the map and kill stuff for free. You could make a level where you have to stay on the boat and keep moving on the boat--maybe there's a tsunami behind you or something. The floaty controls don't allow for any sort of crazy obstacle dodging, but still, you could have more boat than land for sure.
I liked the animal enemies much more than the humans. The animals are more varied and serve clear roles, whereas the humans all look really similar. There is a general lack of movement in the enemies, they all either stand there and shoot at you or just walk towards you. Even the floating squid dudes, which you would assume stay at a range and pelt at you, hone right on top of you and just insta-die.
Overall, the game was decently fun, but it didn't really feel exciting. There were moments where I thought "oh, cool", and that's about it. I'll play it again next time you submit.
I tried being in the air while it performed it, didn't help
It should but maybe it's not working as intended. I'll check it out.
Why is there a distinction between available and consumed mutagens? Why would I want to not consume them?
It's a holdover from when there was a trading system and items could be bought and sold.
I'll cut that.
most of my kills were from just circling the structure and using the mounted gun and the harpoon
That's intended, to a degree. I'm all for players cheesing a couple of enemy kills, if I want to force them to engage with an encounter from up close I can make enemies spawn or aggro through trigger areas.
The chieftain fight was underwhelming.
those health upgrades made things so much easier
Balance is in an horrid state right now, getting the right upgrades makes the game so much easier. The health on melee hit is so strong you can outheal a lot of encounters by standing still and swinging your machete. The chieftain's health was nerfed a bit because some players were having trouble with him, it's too easy to burst down as a result. It's the lesser of the two evils, the arena is too small and it's hard to avoid damage if he lets off a grenade + SMG combo. I guess he's due for a rework as well.
I'm focusing on getting combat and movement feeling right so that's more important than trying to make it properly balanced for now, I will probably have to scrap at least the first two levels at some point anyway. A lot of people pointed out that the boat is not used enough and I agree, I was focusing on nailing down regular combat first so I made those levels as a series of land combat arenas and that isn't good enough. Given, not every level will have ample space for sailing but the first one sure should.
Finished the demo, overall enjoyed it. Last time I played was DD62, so this is my point of reference. Recorded gameplay, unfortunately no audio:
The lore is a good addition. Previously it felt kinda stupid, but now it all makes sense why I'm shooting weird animals and tribal SWAT teams. It actually makes it more enjoyable.
I think there some scripting error with leech dogs at 00:11:40. I assume they were supposed to jump at me from the bushes when I enter some trigger. But here they're very passive when I walked behind them.
I got stuck during Elephant mission for almost 10 minutes because I couldn't figure out where to go. (00:38:00) I jumped down behind the gate, but didn't notice there's path to the elephant, because it's behind a rock, and seeing only water ahead I thoughts it's just the end of the level. I think there should be a visible and walkable path between that small piece of land near the gate and the ramp to the elephant.
Melee life steal works even when hitting shields. Once the enemy got stuck and I could easily farm him for hp. (1:13:37) I don't know if this should be removed. Finding exploits like that feels pretty cool.
I like the weapon variety. They all sound pretty satisfying, except the double-barrel shotgun. I know it has the same sound as the trench gun, but that click at the end makes it work, while double-barrel sounds weak.
All enemies were good and fun to fight. Except the lizard people. Based on how big these guys are I think they're supposed to be stronger enemies, but maybe because of their positioning, fact they're not melee and their size making them easy to hit they were one of the easiest enemies. They have same attack as slugs, but slugs were much harder even in the Chief level when I had all the weapons.
Are old weapons obsolete? Trench gun feels like an unquestionable upgrade from double-barrel shotgun and I don't see point in going back to it. But for machine gun and revolvers I'm not so sure. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just want to know what's the intention.
Also regarding lore: the huts the leech dogs sometimes sit in bug me a little. Do locals build them as dog houses because they're domesticated? Or are they abandoned houses that people used to live in? Or are leech dogs intelligent and build them on their own? I feel the answer is probably "those are just semi-randomly placed decorations", but knowing these are mutants, I wonder whether they used to be dogs, people or leeches.
Removing long narrow corridors between large areas feels like an improvement, but this time I think there's not enough sailing. In DD62 there were large bodies of water where I could see many islands and I could choose which ones I want to visit and in what order. It felt like a small-scale open world. That was really cool. Now each area has only 1 place that can be visited at a given time. I feel like it takes away from the boat, making it smaller part of the game.
Hey thanks for playing and for the video, I'll watch it as soon as I get the chance they're always so helpful.
I don't know if this should be removed. Finding exploits like that feels pretty cool.
That mutation will need to be reworked because it's possible to out-heal most encounters with the machete alone but yeah I'll try to keep them strong.
They have same attack as slugs, but slugs were much harder even in the Chief level when I had all the weapons.
I think part of the slug's problem is that their weakspots are not obvious enough: It's not quite their heads, is their mouth and the small thing they have on their backs. The idea was to give the player an opportunity to deal more damage as they're about to shoot but that was poorly communicated, I should make weakspots more obvious in general.
Are old weapons obsolete?
The SMG deals 25% less damage but gets half of that back when hitting a weakspot, it's meant to be slightly less ammo efficient. The double barreled shotgun has a wider spread but that's not really an upside. The reason why they are different is that I'm still trying to figure out if I want earlier weapons to have their own niche. That is the obvious path to take but if I decide to have some sort of loadout system I can add a lot more weapons and leave it up to the player to pick what they prefer without worrying too much about them overlapping, as long as they are all viable. Gun upgrades are also on the table but I need to figure out the basics first, SMG + double pistols + single pistol is already too much for a single ammo type for example.
the huts the leech dogs sometimes sit in bug me a little
The huts are built by the humanoid mutants, the implication when the dogs are in a hut is that the huts have been abandoned, but they are domesticable. There's actually a pup that you can adopt. It's in the Jumbo level in a cave right before the bossfight. Rags has some special dialogue if you get it before doing the chieftain level and it has a special non-canon dialogue if you interact with it after unlocking freeplay mode and loading up the area again.
but this time I think there's not enough sailing
Yes, agreed. I made the levels too foot-centric because I was focusing on making land combat feel good. Not all levels will be focused on sailing but the boat should be more prominent. Giving it a gun, lights and a supply crate made it more of a gameplay element but the levels should be reworked at some point.
Thanks again for the comment and the feedback, much appreciated!
I think the Chieftain area could be a lot brighter, since I just end up losing track of him in the darkness and it's already a crazy hard fight with all the mobs on the way there. Started the fight with nearly nothing but what was in the supply crate (somehow I was at 0 HP when I reached it), so it's probably impossible to clear it with those resources. I might manage to get a couple shotgun shots off, but I just don't have the resources to do the rest of his health bar, especially when almost any attack he does will kill me at that point. Also, his grenade always gets me, and I have no idea how that hitbox works. In general, a lot of the monster attacks have hard to read attack hitboxes, especially the slugs underwater.
Never found the grenade weapon, so that might be why I was struggling so much, but when weapons are so easily missable it might be worth considering how a player with only a specific weapon type might still be able to clear the level. Ammo feels a bit too scarce, it doesn't feel like it's enough to kill everything in the level with despite having that show up on the score at the end. Checkpoints are pretty well-placed for auto-reloading without having to backtrack too much and without much manual saving.
Hey, thanks for playing. Chieftain arena is due for a rework, I agree. In the hotfix I just uploaded I also added an extra crate and medkit outside of the arena so that it's a bit easier.
Never found the grenade weapon, so that might be why I was struggling so much
Did you do the chieftain level before the other one? A couple of players did that, the NPC tells you that it's the harder of the two level but I guess I should have added some indicator or color coding for difficulty levels. My solution to weapons potentially being missable was adding several instances of them to each level, you must have gotten unlucky to miss it until the chieftain fight. There's two different grenade weapons in the same floor with the gate lever, past the hole. I'll make a mental note to make areas like that more obvious, sorry.
Ammo feels a bit too scarce, it doesn't feel like it's enough to kill everything in the level with despite having that show up on the score at the end.
I think part of that is playing without the grenade launcher but also I might have gotten carried away with putting ammo crates in places that are out of the way. My intent was to reward exploration but I suppose pistol and shotgun ammo should always be plentiful.
Thanks again for the feedback! I'll do a better job balancing the game next time.
Just a heads up: setting the framerate higher than 60 causes some issues. Hotfix tomorrow, it's ready but I want to test it to see if there's anymore problems I didn't catch.
I got to the chieftan but i only had about 36 health left. Still I had a lot of fun playing this game. I liked how the boat controls and the shooting controls were separated so you could do both at once.
I had fun with this game, it reminds me of the boat levels in half life somehow, which is a good feeling. The levels flowed nicely, and I never felt like I didn't know where to go.
Thoughts and comments:
>Some better kind of aiming would feel nice, especially on things like the spear gun
>A few levels felt a little too big, and could maybe use some more hidden collectables to make it feel less bad when you fall off and needing to backtrack
>The enemy variety was nice, and their AI was very solid to play against
>Liked the upgrade system that I saw, felt good when I found one
I like piloting the boat a lot, but it kind of felt like a side note to the gameplay. Mainly I'd pull up, do the level, then ride the boat out. I'm sure you have stuff like this planned, but levels were you need to stay on the boat, multi-tasking driving and fighting would be cool.
My main gripe was the final boss (Tribal leader) was way too hard. His final form had an annoying tendency to jump and hit a pillar in the arena, instantly triggering the damage and killing you. Even then I could never quite do enough damage to win the fight. See the footage, I spent probably 20 minutes on him.
Hey thanks a lot for playing and thanks for the gameplay video, I'll watch it as soon as I get the chance.
I like piloting the boat a lot, but it kind of felt like a side note to the gameplay
Yes I agree I think I was trying to make regular land combat feel good so I ended up making levels that made the boat kind of an afterthought.
The gun upgrade, lights and the supply crate make it more useful compared to last time but levels need to be built around the boat to a degree.
His final form had an annoying tendency to jump and hit a pillar in the arena, instantly triggering the damage and killing you
Yeah that fight needs some touchups for sure, sorry about that. I realize it's not communicated at all now that I'm writing it, but that attack is meant to be a shockwave so it's nullified by being in the air, if you jump when you hear the noise it won't do any damage to you even if it hits the pillar right away. Again I should have probably polished the fight more, my bad.
There's a gun you missed in a cave near the lower scaffolding and some ammo crates around that might make the fight easier, if you have enough ammo for an IED or two you can cheese part of the fight that way, it does a lot of damage.
I'll be more mindful of balance going forward, thanks again for the feedback and the video!
Comments
I last played this several DD's ago back when the main enemies were all just sprites. This has now ascended to absolute kino and I had a lot of fun playing it.
I think its neat. I would buy this game on Steam.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Balance is going to be a challenge. Some people tell me the game is too hard and other tell me the game is too easy apart from the bossfights. I think it comes down to experience with FPS games and using mutations well. Either way I think it's better if the game starts a bit too easy and gets challenging later on.
Noted, poor Rags was made in a day so he didn't have a ton of care put into him. He's meant to be a sidekick of sorts because I didn't want the player to feel like they're just a henchman, I might make the crew larger down the line if I want different characters for different roles.
This will also be a challenge. I'm learning texturing as I go so some textures are different because I'm experimenting with things. I'll be sure to settle on a style and standardize existing textures before I can start churning out content.
Yeah, it's a level design issue, redoing the first level to be more boat-centric will be a priority. I could ditch the boat entirely for some levels though so the player doesn't have to go back for the boat after finishing them.
I am planning to put this on steam when I'm done so I'll do my best.
Thanks again for the comment, much appreciated!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2563708229
Hub is great, but a bit empty for now. Plasmid-like upgrades are very, very cool! I dig them a lot, especially the gliding one - very helpful for the "assault on the boss" level (which also filtered me).
First level is alright, worked well enough. Blue slugs are extremely annoying, and the enemy placement is kinda dickish, but it wasn't the problem on the first level. The second one though... Felt extremely starved for ammo and HP, had to turtle and snipe enemies, which wasn't a lot of fun.
Also - the boat still doesn't rotate players camera when steering.
Overall - good progress, but def needs balancing.
Just got done watching this, thanks for the video it's very useful.
I can see I did a poor job of communicating some important things and maybe that's why some people are finding it harder than others. I'll make sure gun pickups and supply crates are more noticeable. Rags tells you that the chieftain's camp is the harder of the two available levels but In retrospect it's obvious that if I unlock two levels at once they should be equally challenging, or at least I should add some difficulty indicator on the map screen.
In my game's defense I think playing it with a timer trying to rush to the boss is counterproductive since a lot of resources are rewards for exploring but I agree that at the very least pistol and shotgun ammo should always be plentiful. I'll be more careful with balance going forward.
Thanks again for streaming my game! It'll be more fun next time.
Wanted to try this again because I really like the idea you’re playing with here. Just jotting down what comes to mind.
Text in dialogue is too wide and revealed too slowly, put some margins either side and reveal it maybe 50-100% faster.
I like the skybox but they’re very high res compared to everything else and clash as a result. The water also suffers from this, if you tried reducing the resolution it might look a lot more cohesive with what you’re trying to do with the models. That and/or everything could use a heavy coat of grime and noise to give the textures more texture.
Godot’s infamous shader loading stutter strikes again. I don’t know what you can do about it unfortunately, good luck with that.
I can’t remember if this was a problem last time, but it’s really annoying that turning the boat doesn’t cause you to turn while standing on it. Makes judging your movement way harder than it could be. Otherwise, the simplified controls and revised UI I think are a big improvement over the last time I played.
It’s awkward getting back onto the boat if you stop it on a shoal. You can walk right up to the boat but can’t jump high enough to actually get into it.
I had to stop in the level with the construction site. For some reason when I got close to the shore the game’s framerate nosedived and the main thread started rocketing at max speed. If I had to guess it might have been something to do with collision? I’ve seen in Quake how they only attempt four traces per entity per frame to avoid hitting an infinite spiral of little corrections pushing objects into other objects again.
Thanks for playing again, good to hear that the game has improved in some areas.
I don't think it matters too much if the sky looks better than the rest of the game but I will be experimenting with lower res ones, especially because the ones I'm using are free assets and there's only so many different skyboxes I can make with those.
That sounds like it could be disorienting but I suppose I can test it out and see if it works.
Noted, I'll make jumps from shallow water higher, that should do it.
Dang it. This happened to me a couple of times but I thought I had fixed it. It's something to do with the boat colliding with the shore at some specific angle, now I suspect it might be because of Godot's axis lock setting, if that's the case it should be an easy fix.
Sorry about that.
Thanks again for the feedback, it seems like I still need to iron out some kinks in visuals and gameplay before I can focus on adding content, but I think I'm getting close.
I did a whole playthrough, I think it was pretty good. From the get go I see you planned to have a certain flow of combat maried with exploration. Small pickups by the broken boat, enemies hiding in the bushes, ambush by the gate, jumping down to be ambushed by headliess dogs. I liked the level design for the chieftan, the idea of desolated and flooded construction site was pretty neat, going up and then moving between buildings,either you have a natural talent for levels or it took a lot of planning to make it good. The chieftan was a motherfuck, does too much damage and is a damage sponge himself, pls nerf. Too much grenades thrown at his second phase, his ground pound shouldn't be that powerful I think. Grenade launcher has a very low splash damage and I'd expect it to be end-it-all when it hits enemies point blank, but normal shielded enemies were almost immune to the explosions. I had two health mutagens that could heal me very fast, very powerful, so I liked it a lot, but I expect you to nerf it or have this mutagen more costly or maybe even tiers, so 1 mutagen to heal 2 damage, another mutagen to heal 4 etc. Your basic spear-chugging enemies are way too accurate and spears should lose their height faster.
Graphics and animation are serviceable, but I'm afraid it's not enough. The most jarring are spikes, just rows of neatly ordered triangles. I didn't like the animations for human enemies too, they're very basic. Pickups are very bright which on one hand makes them easier to find, but they also stand out from the surroundings a lot.
Regarding lore, if mutations make people devolve then why are we injecting ourselves with them in the first place? When going out for hunt aren't we just risking being turned into mindless beasts ourselves? And since people devolved why they managed to form tribes and even cooperate with other animals? There are some general questions I had when playing the game. Not everyone is cooperating of course, red-handstanding guys and the mutated elephant killed the default badguys, sure, but other than that I don't know why they'd form an alliance. Maybe I'm reading too deep into it.
I was thinking that maybe with smaller levels and some randomness in them you could have a very enjoyable roguelite - levels with different amount of enemies, supplies, random order and events spicing up the gameplay, with bigger levels, like those in this demo, as milestones. Add mutation research, find new "blueprints" for new mutations and ingredients on levels to give additional incentive for exploration. As a linear game it might not be as fun and replayable.
Hey, thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback.
I think a bigger arena with an extra row of columns will be enough to make him a more fair fight, also I need to find a way to teach players that "ground slam" type attacks can be avoided by jumping.
Unless something is broken they take two nades, which yeah I'll bump it down to one.
They're the first enemies I made so it's good to hear I've gotten better. I'll make a note to redo their animations.
I've gotten some feedback about that, but I like having something that I can use to guide the player's eye towards secrets or the way forward. I guess they are a bit jarring. I'll have to think of a substitute if I do end up making them more plain.
I didn't want to explain too much for the demo, I was thinking of adding an intro level down the line that would explain things more clearly.
Basically the idea is that, while rapid mutations caused the collapsed of modern society, by the time the game takes place contamination can be treated and most of the danger is from the mutated creatures themselves. Mutagenic serum is not the same as the industrial contaminant, it's meant to be stable and controllable so people can use it to give themselves useful genetic mutations. I understand that this might be counter intuitive, there's a chance that I might scrap the mutation system in favor of various equipment that does the same thing.
The tribe you fight are more like dumber aggressive humans than feral beasts. They are capable of having language, a social structure and even domesticating animals. Lore-wise the big fishmen enemies should be fighting with the tribals in the chieftain level but I didn't get infighting ready in time for the demo. Speaking of domestication, there's a pup that you can adopt in the lair level, it's right before the bossfight. Rags has unique dialogue if you bring it back before doing the chieftain level.
I did toy with some procedural generation but I found that it cheapens the exploration and it's a pain in the ass to set up. I'm definitely going to add more things to find in levels, and the mutation system could use some more depth yeah.
I just don't think this game can be anything more than a linear game, I'm hoping that a complete mutation system will give player different enough playstyles that replaying levels with different ones will be fun.
Anyway thanks again for the comment, much appreciated!
The following are stream of consciousness notes that I'm writing as I play.
The game felt like it would be pretty tough at first, but again, those health upgrades made things so much easier. I didn't die once after getting them. The boat still feels divorced from the core gameplay, it's often just a tool to get in and out of the level. The only time it made a real difference was in the level where I could just circle the map and kill stuff for free. You could make a level where you have to stay on the boat and keep moving on the boat--maybe there's a tsunami behind you or something. The floaty controls don't allow for any sort of crazy obstacle dodging, but still, you could have more boat than land for sure.
I liked the animal enemies much more than the humans. The animals are more varied and serve clear roles, whereas the humans all look really similar. There is a general lack of movement in the enemies, they all either stand there and shoot at you or just walk towards you. Even the floating squid dudes, which you would assume stay at a range and pelt at you, hone right on top of you and just insta-die.
Overall, the game was decently fun, but it didn't really feel exciting. There were moments where I thought "oh, cool", and that's about it. I'll play it again next time you submit.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!
It should but maybe it's not working as intended. I'll check it out.
It's a holdover from when there was a trading system and items could be bought and sold. I'll cut that.
That's intended, to a degree. I'm all for players cheesing a couple of enemy kills, if I want to force them to engage with an encounter from up close I can make enemies spawn or aggro through trigger areas.
Balance is in an horrid state right now, getting the right upgrades makes the game so much easier. The health on melee hit is so strong you can outheal a lot of encounters by standing still and swinging your machete. The chieftain's health was nerfed a bit because some players were having trouble with him, it's too easy to burst down as a result. It's the lesser of the two evils, the arena is too small and it's hard to avoid damage if he lets off a grenade + SMG combo. I guess he's due for a rework as well. I'm focusing on getting combat and movement feeling right so that's more important than trying to make it properly balanced for now, I will probably have to scrap at least the first two levels at some point anyway. A lot of people pointed out that the boat is not used enough and I agree, I was focusing on nailing down regular combat first so I made those levels as a series of land combat arenas and that isn't good enough. Given, not every level will have ample space for sailing but the first one sure should.
Thanks again for the notes! Much appreciated.
Finished the demo, overall enjoyed it.
Last time I played was DD62, so this is my point of reference.
Recorded gameplay, unfortunately no audio:
The lore is a good addition. Previously it felt kinda stupid, but now it all makes sense why I'm shooting weird animals and tribal SWAT teams. It actually makes it more enjoyable.
I think there some scripting error with leech dogs at 00:11:40. I assume they were supposed to jump at me from the bushes when I enter some trigger. But here they're very passive when I walked behind them.
I got stuck during Elephant mission for almost 10 minutes because I couldn't figure out where to go. (00:38:00)
I jumped down behind the gate, but didn't notice there's path to the elephant, because it's behind a rock, and seeing only water ahead I thoughts it's just the end of the level.
I think there should be a visible and walkable path between that small piece of land near the gate and the ramp to the elephant.
Melee life steal works even when hitting shields. Once the enemy got stuck and I could easily farm him for hp. (1:13:37)
I don't know if this should be removed. Finding exploits like that feels pretty cool.
I like the weapon variety. They all sound pretty satisfying, except the double-barrel shotgun. I know it has the same sound as the trench gun, but that click at the end makes it work, while double-barrel sounds weak.
All enemies were good and fun to fight. Except the lizard people. Based on how big these guys are I think they're supposed to be stronger enemies, but maybe because of their positioning, fact they're not melee and their size making them easy to hit they were one of the easiest enemies. They have same attack as slugs, but slugs were much harder even in the Chief level when I had all the weapons.
Are old weapons obsolete? Trench gun feels like an unquestionable upgrade from double-barrel shotgun and I don't see point in going back to it. But for machine gun and revolvers I'm not so sure.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, just want to know what's the intention.
Also regarding lore: the huts the leech dogs sometimes sit in bug me a little. Do locals build them as dog houses because they're domesticated? Or are they abandoned houses that people used to live in? Or are leech dogs intelligent and build them on their own?
I feel the answer is probably "those are just semi-randomly placed decorations", but knowing these are mutants, I wonder whether they used to be dogs, people or leeches.
Removing long narrow corridors between large areas feels like an improvement, but this time I think there's not enough sailing. In DD62 there were large bodies of water where I could see many islands and I could choose which ones I want to visit and in what order. It felt like a small-scale open world. That was really cool.
Now each area has only 1 place that can be visited at a given time. I feel like it takes away from the boat, making it smaller part of the game.
Hey thanks for playing and for the video, I'll watch it as soon as I get the chance they're always so helpful.
That mutation will need to be reworked because it's possible to out-heal most encounters with the machete alone but yeah I'll try to keep them strong.
I think part of the slug's problem is that their weakspots are not obvious enough: It's not quite their heads, is their mouth and the small thing they have on their backs. The idea was to give the player an opportunity to deal more damage as they're about to shoot but that was poorly communicated, I should make weakspots more obvious in general.
The SMG deals 25% less damage but gets half of that back when hitting a weakspot, it's meant to be slightly less ammo efficient. The double barreled shotgun has a wider spread but that's not really an upside.
The reason why they are different is that I'm still trying to figure out if I want earlier weapons to have their own niche. That is the obvious path to take but if I decide to have some sort of loadout system I can add a lot more weapons and leave it up to the player to pick what they prefer without worrying too much about them overlapping, as long as they are all viable.
Gun upgrades are also on the table but I need to figure out the basics first, SMG + double pistols + single pistol is already too much for a single ammo type for example.
The huts are built by the humanoid mutants, the implication when the dogs are in a hut is that the huts have been abandoned, but they are domesticable.
There's actually a pup that you can adopt. It's in the Jumbo level in a cave right before the bossfight. Rags has some special dialogue if you get it before doing the chieftain level and it has a special non-canon dialogue if you interact with it after unlocking freeplay mode and loading up the area again.
Yes, agreed. I made the levels too foot-centric because I was focusing on making land combat feel good. Not all levels will be focused on sailing but the boat should be more prominent. Giving it a gun, lights and a supply crate made it more of a gameplay element but the levels should be reworked at some point.
Thanks again for the comment and the feedback, much appreciated!
Plays really well, but damn it's a hard game.
I think the Chieftain area could be a lot brighter, since I just end up losing track of him in the darkness and it's already a crazy hard fight with all the mobs on the way there. Started the fight with nearly nothing but what was in the supply crate (somehow I was at 0 HP when I reached it), so it's probably impossible to clear it with those resources. I might manage to get a couple shotgun shots off, but I just don't have the resources to do the rest of his health bar, especially when almost any attack he does will kill me at that point. Also, his grenade always gets me, and I have no idea how that hitbox works. In general, a lot of the monster attacks have hard to read attack hitboxes, especially the slugs underwater.
Never found the grenade weapon, so that might be why I was struggling so much, but when weapons are so easily missable it might be worth considering how a player with only a specific weapon type might still be able to clear the level. Ammo feels a bit too scarce, it doesn't feel like it's enough to kill everything in the level with despite having that show up on the score at the end. Checkpoints are pretty well-placed for auto-reloading without having to backtrack too much and without much manual saving.
Hey, thanks for playing.
Chieftain arena is due for a rework, I agree. In the hotfix I just uploaded I also added an extra crate and medkit outside of the arena so that it's a bit easier.
Did you do the chieftain level before the other one? A couple of players did that, the NPC tells you that it's the harder of the two level but I guess I should have added some indicator or color coding for difficulty levels.
My solution to weapons potentially being missable was adding several instances of them to each level, you must have gotten unlucky to miss it until the chieftain fight. There's two different grenade weapons in the same floor with the gate lever, past the hole. I'll make a mental note to make areas like that more obvious, sorry.
I think part of that is playing without the grenade launcher but also I might have gotten carried away with putting ammo crates in places that are out of the way. My intent was to reward exploration but I suppose pistol and shotgun ammo should always be plentiful.
Thanks again for the feedback! I'll do a better job balancing the game next time.
Just a heads up: setting the framerate higher than 60 causes some issues. Hotfix tomorrow, it's ready but I want to test it to see if there's anymore problems I didn't catch.Hotfix is out
I got to the chieftan but i only had about 36 health left. Still I had a lot of fun playing this game. I liked how the boat controls and the shooting controls were separated so you could do both at once.
Really nice demo! Please music and nerf the Elephant boss!
I had fun with this game, it reminds me of the boat levels in half life somehow, which is a good feeling. The levels flowed nicely, and I never felt like I didn't know where to go.
Thoughts and comments:
>Some better kind of aiming would feel nice, especially on things like the spear gun
>A few levels felt a little too big, and could maybe use some more hidden collectables to make it feel less bad when you fall off and needing to backtrack
>The enemy variety was nice, and their AI was very solid to play against
>Liked the upgrade system that I saw, felt good when I found one
I like piloting the boat a lot, but it kind of felt like a side note to the gameplay. Mainly I'd pull up, do the level, then ride the boat out. I'm sure you have stuff like this planned, but levels were you need to stay on the boat, multi-tasking driving and fighting would be cool.
My main gripe was the final boss (Tribal leader) was way too hard. His final form had an annoying tendency to jump and hit a pillar in the arena, instantly triggering the damage and killing you. Even then I could never quite do enough damage to win the fight. See the footage, I spent probably 20 minutes on him.
Recording of gameplay:
Hey thanks a lot for playing and thanks for the gameplay video, I'll watch it as soon as I get the chance.
Yes I agree I think I was trying to make regular land combat feel good so I ended up making levels that made the boat kind of an afterthought. The gun upgrade, lights and the supply crate make it more useful compared to last time but levels need to be built around the boat to a degree.
Yeah that fight needs some touchups for sure, sorry about that.
I realize it's not communicated at all now that I'm writing it, but that attack is meant to be a shockwave so it's nullified by being in the air, if you jump when you hear the noise it won't do any damage to you even if it hits the pillar right away.
Again I should have probably polished the fight more, my bad.
There's a gun you missed in a cave near the lower scaffolding and some ammo crates around that might make the fight easier, if you have enough ammo for an IED or two you can cheese part of the fight that way, it does a lot of damage.
I'll be more mindful of balance going forward, thanks again for the feedback and the video!