Thank you so much for a thorough playthrough and complete analysis! Hugely appreciated! I'll address some of these to garner some interest in the upcoming patches if that's ok. ;)
HP:
You're right about HP bars / damage indicators. Will be implemented, as well as a blink or something along those lines to tell you that you have been hit. In the end it's just basic game feel thing. Very important. :)
Map:
I figured out yesterday how I might be able to keep the exploration for the ones liking that part, AND have a map to ease the mindless wandering around the station while looking for the next phase console: I'll bring in a toggleable map mode. Idea is that the map mode is something akin to the BF2 commander view: real time map that you can actually play in as well. When toggling the map mode the camera would move further up and in the middle of the map, and change to orthopedic view. This way you would be able to see the pulsing green spotlights with one glance quickly - or even play in the map mode. The downside of playing in the map mode would be that it's just harder to aim and hit anything.
Don't know how it will go, but we'll see next week or so. :)
Movement:
This is something that needs a proper overhaul anyway. These current mixamo animations don't really work well on this fellow, so I'll need to work on the movement in general while I'm at it. Got to make the teammates to give room as well. That blocking is annoying as hell. ;P
Ammo:
Ammo, grenades, turrets and such are on the planning board. Maybe different weapons and so on, but this will take a bit longer to implement. I kinda really like the rambo group, but if I want to make this a longer, real game, I need to figure these things out. I have an vague idea that the group escapes and gets stranded on a planet below, and it's in the middle of AI uprising or something along those lines. Chaos anyway.
At the moment the shooting with a full team IS satisfying, but only for the first playthrough. Gets old pretty fast as it takes away the challenge.
Glad you liked the ending! It's a bit chaotic and pretty much the only part in the game I personally can lose anymore after playtesting the whole weekend. But it's the part I like most.
"Trigger devastating chain reactions" :
This is actually invisible in the web-build at the moment. :( But it's there, "trust me". ;) Something happened with the indicators and explosions during the build and that took a lot out of the game I played myself. Didn't have time to fix it, so here we are. ;) Anyway, when the drones explode, they damage all nearby drones as well. They don't explode right away from the first nearby explosions (unless already damaged by the player), but from the second one. For me this was apparent especially in the testing grounds with masses of drones. Killing just a few would trigger a cascade of explosions from drone to drone, that spread like a wild fire. Sadly, I apparently failed to bring it in properly to the final jam-build experience. Needs more drones, a horde of them, to really notice the chain reaction.
Audio:
Very good point. Will bring ambient noises a bit up, and add more of them, as well as more ambient sound triggers and such. Music - not sure of yet. In some form in far future for sure, but how and when is a question mark. :)
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Oooh that map mechanic sounds interesting.
Yeah the walking animations are a little bit wonky. Sometimes it looks like I was moving sideways, even though I'm currently moving upwards.
Different weapons sound exciting, though I agree it may be a huge undertaking. It would be nice, although maybe hard to implement, if you were able to give different weapons to different teammates.
I agree that having the whole team shoot at the same time is overpowered. Though it would be justifiable if the enemies are also overpowered ;)
The chain reaction thing is unfortunate, though I imagine it would be really satisfying to see a whole bunch of drones exploding from each other.
For a little while I had actually implemented that you could switch between teammates with the idea that you could leave them behind or order them to a certain spot on the map. They'll automatically attack anything nearby, so they'd be sentries guarding a corridor or something. With different unit specialties you could even have one "hacker guy" hack the consoles while the machine gun rambo defends in some safeish spot. This needs some work and thought, tho, but would be super to have in the game later on. :)