My group ran into a number of issues with the game, even in the solo tutorial area & had to reboot the game several times to get it to work. The most problematic of the bugs we ran into (and we ran into this one a number of times in various ways) was that either:
- Enemy Health Bars would disappear, making them invulnerable.
- Player Health Bar would disappear, making us unable to do anything.
There's definitely a lot of things that need to be ironed out:
- Getting Multiplayer to work was extremely unclear. Even when we did unlock it, it was difficult to navigate: It isn't explicitly stated that a Room Code is necessary to join; Cannot invite others from within the game; Steam invites only allow for Remote Play Invitation.
- As a Streamer, hiding the room code is 100% necessary & it wasn't obvious that we could interact w/ the console in order to Copy the Room Code.
- Having Game Features (like Multiplayer) locked behind a long, drawn out SOLO tutorial felt ... meh. Especially when the mechanics were fairly simple to understand.
- Visual Display Bug where it says Secondary Attack is activated w/ A when it is Q on the keyboard.
- Better Visual Difference between Friendlies & Enemies. With the amount of visuals that can appear on the screen, it becomes extremely difficult to discern who's who & where.
- Tooltips to explain (or visually show) what a skill does would be helpful.
- We also weren't sure how Cards/Skills stacked. With the F.A.I.L. Device & Passives, it was oftentimes a random roulette between 0-3 revives. We were unsure how it worked or why.
- Please allow for an adjustable UI. Elements were extremely small.
- Considering we aren't allowed free camera control, there were WAY too many environmental elements blocking line-of-sight. Non-destructible elements need to hide/become opaque.
- While I loved the Voice Acting, the Story/Narrative was completely lost on all of us. It seemed botched. Why were there golems attacking our ship? What was our objective? Everything moved too quickly for us to process anything that was happening.
- When Defensive Battles finished, the game would pull us toward the center of the Arena, sometimes causing us to bug & not be able to move for a round.
- Enemies didn't immediately reset when pulled too far. Instead they'd become "invincible": healing faster than we could kill & continuing to hunt us down.
What we loved:
- Friendly fire, but without the damage! Loved being able to just hit each other lol
- Fighting was easy & satisfying. I loved the exploration & movement.
- Cooperative function. We LOVED how we had upgrades that not only affected ourselves, but the camp & party, as well.
Improvements:
- Dedicated Biomes & Map Variety.
- Monster Variety.
- Increase Round Duration: Levels were extremely short & it felt like we BREEZED our way to the Bosses. However, this meant the game also felt EXTREMELY imbalanced. Enemy Difficulty scaling definitely needs to be looked into, else increasing the number of rounds before a boss.
- Base expansions.
- Ability to invite while in-game/inbetween rounds.
Kritter definitely has the potential to be a really addictive co-op family-friendly game because of how quick it plays & how easy the grind is, but the sheer number of bugs makes it impossible to love in its current state. So, I'm looking forward to how it improves!
For our initial reactions to the game, you can find the VOD here. You'll have to forgive me, as I played the game during a 24hr Charity Stream. Timestamps are available, though: