itch.io

Very ambitious game. It's like zero escape, namely VLR (the game is based on prisoner's dilemma), but with a proc-gen system that enables the player to shift the story through various choices.

Mystery as a genre is always one of my favorites. It's exciting, intriguing, chilling, but also very comfy. The creator seems to understand that the goal is to create this balance- the vision seems straightforward. The tutorial felt a little too macabre, but the main game brought back a certain sense of lightness.

The most outstanding fault of the game is in its performance issues. On my desktop with rtx3080, main game runs at around 5-15fps, with frequent loadings and hang ups. Looks like the game was created with a relatively new engine called Bakin, I'm not sure if this is a fault of the engine or if there are some optimizations the dev can employ. 

Thank you for leaving me such a kind review last DD. Looking forward to trying it again and hope the performance can improve so we can experience the game as intended.

i want to bounce higher, like 10x the current limit

Items flying everywhere all the time, and how the hat is an item and also your armor, leaving you chasing after it as explosions happen every second and everything scatters everywhere, works SO WELL. All the distracting elements like the camera zoom-ins and the overtweaked juices feel intentional and not just a stylistic flair, because it's making it harder for the player to read the screen and retrieve your hat. 

I wonder if there's more room to push this feeling even further. And what can be pulled back? Which choices reinforce this feeling and which of them get in the way? My intuition is that some of the environmental pieces can have their visual hierarchy reinforced and tweaked - having a clear separation between items, set pieces, background, characters, through contrast and saturation tweaks might make things clearer where it matters while retaining the vision of the game.

Peak character designs

It's got a great basis. Has a PS3 era JRPG feel to it which I love, and found the controls to be neat and smooth as well. There isn't really a proper level design yet but the systems felt coherent enough for me to imagine it becoming a focused experience. 

There's a  suspenseful, horror like vibe to the environment and music. I wish the actual threats and gameplay followed this theme more. Maybe the enemies are stronger/ are laid out in strategic ways to invoke a sense of fear. Judging by the vending machines and their infinite food items, this is still supposed to be a developmental test playground. 

Art, animation and juice shined to me the most (the vending machine item spawns is really cool). I'm excited for its next steps.

Not sure why but it feels smoother than the last version I played, which was maybe from 6-7 months ago. Boosting and flying around with the mech is still fun. Played 4 levels including the imsim one and I enjoyed the ones with a more straightforward objective (got lost on one level and didnt know where to go) Looking at other reviews here, I also felt that it may be a good idea to start focusing on the best parts of the game, which is mech maneuvers and testing different weapons. Having different missions as opposed to a straight up arcade gameplay is cool though. Maybe with the "im sim" approach, you can have a hub area to go upgrade/ customize your mech inbetween missions instead of doing it debug test style as the game has it now. I wonder if you could have some sort of a currency you earn with these missions, that you can spend inbetween missions to unlock things. Nuke is my favorite weapon, it's so ridiculous and fun.

This nails the simple but addictive gameplay. And I can see how it can grow to be more complex ,even though the sets of actions are very limited. Easy to pick up, hard to master, kind of thing. The enemies seemed to have some kind of procedural animation setups, which was also cool. The anime girl portrait also adds a layer of concept and story. I would love to see the story and setting  expanded. Why is she here and where is it? With some environmental art and lore building it could really capture the audiences' attention. 

I liked how the enemies were very distinct from each other. You have to approach them differently and the systems are built to maximize their designs. Using the boomer spider's explosion to kill the flies was a nice aha moment. 

I wonder if you'll add a non-combat approach to progression, maybe something stealth focused. They're already so spooky due to how much damage they can do and I'm curious if there's a method to get by them while cowering in suspense that they might take notice.

https://jumpshare.com/s/IYYPkycDpUopspuOMkGV

Can't wait to see more, big fan of this one.

I love the outline/ cell shading and the minimalist art direction. There's a whimsical nature to this. appealpilled

It's all Russian and lung cancer victims. Character controller is kinda smooth and fun wit a lot of acceleration

Got the incinerator ending. I noticed an NPC with a wizard costume was picking up the pink worms I killed, and decided to follow him to find out where he was taking them. Turns out he was just cleaning em up, and I became charcoal. A ton of fun! The open world approach makes me want to investigate and understand my surroundings. I found the game on the easier side, especially with the health potions you start with. Are there other methods of healing in the game? I saw a NPC dialogue that suggested potions can be created with flowers. I wonder if being inside a house you purchased can also slowly heal your HP. I also wonder if there are secondary goals of self preservation besides health, like a hunger bar or a stamina bar of some kind. 

The number of enemy variations was appreciated, but I felt that they didn't vary from each other all too much (even though they looked quite different from each other). The only current method of approach is to click on them to attack, but it would be nicer if you could eventually treat the enemies differently based on their characteristics. I guess some of them have different spells but I didn't find them significant enough just yet.

The moments with the NPCs taking interesting actions were the most fun. Interacting with puzzle-like fixtures like the ruby statues was also fun. 

https://jumpshare.com/s/0I2bvgMLDM3WlQG5KEti

Gonna try another run later. Very impressive! Looking forward for more!

Got stuck after the blue cube section. I'm not good at precision platformer games. The character & vertically rich area design are what's most interesting about this demo. Would love to see what these giant walls are made of- they remind me of sunk buildings or something like that. Moving felt good, wanted to do more with the ziplining. Wonder if it should be more accessible, whether by having more blue surfaces or making it stick to regular walls too

Nice writeup, I'm also finding the event system quite beneficial. Fiddling with addressables for modding support- not entirely intuitive but hopefully it will be worth it. As for the buttons, wouldn't it work to simply make the normal color and selected color the same color?

nice loop, i like how it's voxel-y. I wonder if the snail's pathing can be manipulated for player's advantage, loop hero style.

Love it, it's sort of like rimworld. Is there a way to assign work priorities yet? 

How are you making these soundtracks with suno? Do you generate melodies and lay them down yourself and edit? Would love to know your process. 

Controls really well and the fight totally works like a fromsoft boss! Boss character has charm. Couldn't beat the boss after a handful of tries. Never played Sekiro, so maybe that's why. I'm just bad in general though

wtf didnt know this was a marnix joint. The application is pleasant looking, not much interactivity aside from fondling the character's boobs.  Maybe it needs to have a casual idle game mechanics like in rusty's retirement. Hiding the background option was fun.

It is a joy to play! Love the sound and visuals. The shooting reminds me of cave story. The boss was impossible to beat, gave up after 10 or so tries. 

I love the concept and the guy is awesome, has a lot of charm. I can see there being alternative characters or skins you unlock. Like a cube girl. Game is pretty fun, I also couldnt get past the yellow cubes. Maybe the animations can be faster in general. 

it's amazing, it's structured like a real demo, with mini tutorial levels, which helped me learn the controls better. and it also makes me feel like there's a whole game waiting for me after the demo. The general art direction had a sense of intrigue which made me wonder about the game's setting. I've never played a plane sim before, (do all plane games control this way?) and could not beat the turrets level.  Maybe there could be more visual effects indicating the plane's move direction more intuitively. Or perhaps it's supposed to be a little hard by nature, so that the players can have a journey of mastering them? Good work!!

Love it,  M&B-y combat is FUN! great proof of concept, can't wait to see how it will evolve in the future. Wonder if you can implement more dynamism into the combat, maybe messing with physics, maybe having unique enemies and patterns and attacks... I'm sure you already have some ideas. Nice job!

The ambience sfx, improved camera, higher poly ships, flavor particles, the charming main menu sequence are all helping the game towards the developer's vision. Liked how the cannons shot farther and faster.  Toggling the ship's speed instead of holding it down felt good. Still think the movement can be faster, whether it's through upgrades or by default.  Awesome progress!

Love the vision. There's nice writing in this game. Interesting flavortexts, i.e. the description of the environment on top right seems to evolve as the player character observes more of the structure, description of the stats (Strength, intelligence etc.) offer an intriguing perspective. I couldn't finish it with a 4perception 2intelligence character. Picked up all the items for diesel and found the generator, but didn't know how to actually make the fuel. I guess there's an inventory screen? couldn't figure it out.

Some feedback : 1.There's a room with a pot with 2 sets of Inspect & Cancel options, and a pot with 0 options. 2.Thought the item pickup dialogue was inconsistent. Sometimes you pick up multiple items with "take" option for each item, sometimes it says it grabbed a bunch of items just from taking it once, passcodes are remembered without any take option...this could relate back to exposing the inventory screen to the player more intuitively.  3. the flashlight system is novel but it has room for visual improvement. Could be higher res, or take advantage of other lighting techniques.

Excited to see where it goes.