- I'm having trouble putting my finger on exactly what you did to make the game look so much better, maybe it's the new snow combined with the new suspension? But it's feeling downright beautiful sometimes, so good job.
- When reviewing my screenshots to upload for this post, I discovered that the screen was being stretched horizontally to fill the screen instead of the render FoV being adjusted for the new aspect ratio. This makes screenshots feel super weird to look back on, which is bad for word of mouth, which is going to be important now that you're moving into the Steam phase of things.
- The new settlement UI is slick and convenient, but the hover tooltip could use some work. Partly because it tends not to display in the right place, partly because it's too small to easily read, and partly because it doesn't match the rest of the UI aesthetically. Also, having a tooltip for each high-demand item is kind of redundant? The only information it's really providing is how high-demand items work, so the tooltip would be better-suited to when hovering over the "High-Demand Items" label itself than on the item listings.
- The tank exiting settlements facing forward is much more convenient. Still think it would be better if the claw arm started retracted instead of preserving its state upon entering, though, for immersion if nothing else.
- Holy crap, storage view is the shit, and you even fixed the weirdness with the claw arm being able to insert objects inside of other objects?! Awesome~!
- Holding the claw button to activate special features feels weird for some reason, but it works. It's pretty inconvenient the way it enforces a set arm length and camera perspective, though; I would definitely want to set down explosives as faaaaaar away as possible, and neither cargo covers nor explosives really need a special camera. I'd say it's actively detrimental with cargo covers, even, since it does not play nice with the storage view. It looks suspiciously much like a third-person aiming perspective that I suspect this is groundwork for the grappling hook, but what's good for the grappling hook doesn't seem to be helping for anything else. I would recommend reserving the arm and camera behavior to things that explicitly need it, and giving us a camera toggle if we specifically need a detailed perspective from the claw. Which would basically be a toggle between third-person video game view, driver's visor Eli view, and claw camera Elena view, which I think is inherently neat.
- Though at some point it became possible on paper to play the game with a controller, in practice it's not actually doable. First and foremost, the menu takes precedence over the key binding prompt, meaning it's impossible to bind up/down on the left stick because it moves to the previous/next option instead of binding. Past that, because you can't set separate keyboard and controller binds, there's a high switch cost due to needing to rebind all of the controls. The lack of controller defaults also means it's pretty much a non-option for people who don't play games regularly, as you need to understand game design at least well enough to know which button each function belongs on. Previously I would've said this was a low priority, but since you've moved to the Steam demo phase and generally seem more comfortable with UI design than most solo devs, it's probably worth reviewing.
- Said improvements have revealed a very minor weirdness with objects' physics not waking up properly if the objects they're resting on are removed without ever technically colliding with them. Which is easier than you'd think, with the new storage view.
- This tutorial message persists when triggered until the signal receiver is purchased, rather than dismissing itself after a while like it's presumably supposed to.
- I'm not sure what changed with the claw arm physics, but I just managed to haphazardly chuck a radiator around 400 meters. That small black dot in the center was in my claw arm five seconds previous. Pitching large items seem about the same. Realistically, the maximum pitching speed of the tank isn't going to be a simple matter of (Turret Rotation Speed * Current Arm Length), as the farther the arm is stretched the more its individual joints are going to sag under the stress. The heavier the object at the end of the arm, the more severe the sagging will become, so something like an I-beam or rail track might actually pitch faster if held closer. Even if we're ignoring this and letting the arm always move at full speed for the sake of player convenience, you might want to enforce a maximum pitching speed.
- The cloth draped over Crater's entrance is missing collision. I can see why this might have been intentional, since it's technically cloth, but cloth can get pretty tough once water has soaked into its pores and frozen solid. Especially with snow weighing it down on top of all that, I would expect it to be at least as tough as lake ice.
- Now that the snow is deeper, the end of your tracks has become much more noticeable. Snow trails should probably last longer, at least when it's not actively snowing.
- The metal cargo cover is more picky than it should be, especially early on. Even when the cargo is clearly not filled past the side, it still tends to refuse to attach.
- The dirt outside Metro has a weirdly small repeating texture, which feels very artificial once you see it. It didn't use to be very noticeable, but now that the snow is sooooo much prettier it stands out.
- There's occasional visual artifacts spawning in on top of ice, then retreating once the camera gets within a certain distance. Sometimes this retreating happens much closer within a single frame, not sure what the pattern is. Again, this was probably always there, it's just more noticeable now that my eyes are getting used to so much of the game being prettier.
- The new ice mechanics are muuuuuuuch better. I'm not sure how well it's communicated outside of patch notes (I don't remember being explicitly told that ice doesn't re-crack when reversing), but once it clicked, I was able to navigate fairly consistently even without an ice scanner so long as I'm slow and mindful. I saw something about you weakening the edge of the lake's ice, but it's still fairly safe and easy to circle the valley (Caldera? Strip mining pit? Nuclear crater?) so long as you drive up to take the bridge between Oil Extraction and Metro. I'd recommend not changing this, as it's really only worth the trouble if you're travelling to the opposite side and already have all the torque upgrades. It's mostly only useful for cleaning up the last few deliveries before heading on to act II, before then I wouldn't call it any easier or harder than driving normally.
- I like that the invisible walls aren't so much invisible walls so much as invisible inertial dampeners. I feel like there should be something to make it obvious that this is a gameplay concession, though, given the potential for players to meet with an invisible wall over rougher terrain and not be able to tell it's not the terrain stopping them. Perhaps have the topographic scanner read as red outside the play area, regardless of slope?
- So, I barrel rolled the tank. I feel like Elena should've had an opinion on that~
- Overall, the difficulty feels much more consistent: Crater, Scrapyard, Oil Extraction, Metro - I got S on everything with minimal retries. (That boulder out front of the Scrapyard is evil, though.) That said, I've played the game enough at this point that it's going to feel more consistent to me than it actually is, so hopefully you're getting plenty of surveys in.