I played through it again but this time you'll have to put up with my live impressions and feedback. I'm not an expert developer or anything so don't take anything I say too seriously. I had a fun.
I think the first handful of levels were very fun. I had a lot of opportunity to make my own decisions and find a playstyle that worked for me. The later levels started to feel like I was forced to play a certain way (again, I may just not have the skillset to see my options).
Here are a few videos that reshaped my thinking on level design. Maybe there's something in there that you find useful too.
Tips for open level design:
Your levels are essentially puzzles for the player to solve:
I went back and played again because I think this is a cool project and it has a lot of potential. I'm a big Gears of War and Company of Heroes fan and PANDORA feels like it fits right in the middle.
Gameplay:
I already mentioned the controls in my other comment and I still feel the same way. Sprinting always shows the throw grenade cursor which is kind of odd from a gameplay standpoint. Right clicking directly on a cover should make the second character go to that cover (right now you have to click behind it).
Give me some indication of which character I'm controlling. Both on the character and by the health bar would be nice. I wasn't getting confused while playing but it would make the gameplay more clear. It would also benefit streamers/content creators who have viewers that aren't playing the game themselves.
A lot of the maps aren't very fun. Maybe I just don't have the skillset yet but they seemed like they were set up to be challenging instead of rewarding. One of my previous games had the same problem and all of my playtesters said the tutorial was more fun than the main map.
The enemy AI is just an obstacle to the player. They take cover between the player and the objective and mostly sit there. They often take very dangerous routes to their end position instead of moving cover to cover. I think this is good for some enemies but I would like to see something more as the game progresses.
I would like to see more depth added to the cover gameplay but I don't know exactly what this game needs. In Gears of War every player starts with a rifle and a shotgun. Players try to out angle each other with their rifles while also trying to get close enough to use their shotguns. The close range combat is surprisingly technical and the cover is used for player movement instead of protection.
More bugs:
The red cursor is often wrong. I also never saw the out of range specific red cursor.
There seems to be a reload bug with the heavy machine guns. I think there are some actions that cancel the reload but I couldn't figure out exactly what I was doing wrong. This needs to read better in general but it should also cancel the reload sound effects. I've also had completed reloads not refill my ammo and I've ended up in states where I can't reload my gun at all. Spamming left mouse and R to reload seems to maybe cause issues. The friendly AI also doesn't seem to know how to fire HMGs. These are the best weapons in the game for virtually every encounter right now but they don't work consistently.
Telling my buddy to hold caused the game to crash on 2 different occasions. In both cases it was when he was holding a HMG but wasn't firing.
Switching characters back and forth while one of them is auto-moving seems to have some weird behavior at least some of the time. Having your controlled character die and then auto-switching to the second character while they were auto-moving felt bad most of the time.
The enemy can sometimes stand off the edge of the screen when zoomed out. Zooming in seems to show more of the map around the edges.
Moving my character along the edges of environmental objects feels bad for me but it's probably just a skill issue.
I got my character stuck in the trees one time. I don't know if it was a bug with the game or if there's a part of the level that needs a little bit of adjustment.
There were a few maps where I couldn't find the end. I wasn't sure if I had to capture the flag or run off the edge of the screen like the other missions. There were no prompts that I could see.
Holding left mouse to precision aim and then canceling the aim with sprint causes a few bugs. Your precision continues to increase during the sprint and then after the sprint is complete it makes the shooting behave strangely.
Character footsteps cause a little dust cloud or something but it's always an unnatural color.
Video:
This was my third time playing the game and I'm just testing mechanics and looking for bugs. This was the furthest I've gotten so all the levels were new to me.
Very cool experience and great concept. The gunplay is very punishing but I think there's absolutely a market for this type of game. The visuals are great and the combat feels extremely intense and rewarding. I think the early game might be a bit too difficult for new players overall but that's something you can continue to balance over time.
Input:
The controls were kind of strange and some actions required bizarre combos. Let me right click to aim, g for grenade, v for melee, etc. C to pick up grenades is weird and shift plus double left click to throw is really cumbersome. Shooting while sprinting would also be nice.
Audio:
The directional audio seemed too extreme. I like the effect but something just off center sounded really far to the side. Character footsteps have a weird echo even in open areas. No footstep audio while sprinting in the early game but it seemed to work later on. Solider footstep sounds are overwhelming. Music stopped in some areas but there were no atmospheric sound effects to make the environments feel alive.
Camera:
The manual camera zoom felt kind of unnecessary and zoomed in/out too slowly to be that useful for me. Different zoom levels also seem to have different image clarity. The camera panning also needs some work. I didn't use it very often except by accident.
Gameplay:
I think the cover mechanic is great but it still felt a little clunky. I don't really know how to improve it but I sometimes felt like I should be in cover but still got hit. Maybe it's just a readability thing. Enemy cover usage also felt just a little off and suppressed enemies could sometimes still shoot me. The AI in general needs a little more attention. They never tried to flush me out of cover and trading shots back and forth felt a bit random. Maybe I'm missing something though. Ranged shooting is trivially easy compared to close range.
Getting a second character to control was kind of awesome. I didn't think it would work but after a few tries I could see why you added it. I never won a level if my buddy died so I don't know if there's revive or any kind of combo abilities but I think those would both be cool features. Multiplayer would be truly amazing but I don't know how much effort that would take.
Bugs:
I'm on an ultrawide and the first time I played the game was all screwed up. It seemed to resolve itself after I reloaded the first checkpoint. I had a few cases where multiple prompts covered each other up. The game crashed to desktop twice when I told my teammate to hold. My teammate entered a state where he couldn't shoot (not related to hold fire). I had a reload bug that wouldn't let me complete the reload. I also experienced some input bugs with holding left mouse to shoot sometimes not firing on release or staying precise after releasing the button.
Cool concept! It could be nice to have some more control over the timer and interval lengths. It would also be nice to have additional space projects to work towards.
Very goofy and creative. It would be cool to see how many more modes you could come up with using this theme. Or on the flip side, how good you could make one of these modes if you focused all of your energy on it.
It's definitely good to add multiple difficulty levels for the player to choose from. It's hard to find a balance that works for everyone. Even among first time players there can be a big gap in what level of challenge they might enjoy.
My expectation as a player is that unlocking new weapons will make it easier to handle the number of enemies the game is throwing at me. The problem is that each new weapon slowed down my movement and in some cases made it harder to deal with the horde. The weapon accuracy felt very punishing and only seemed to get worse with the heavier weapons. It's not really a game that will let me sit and defend one position but the weapons punished me for trying to move around too much. A lot of your mechanics seem like they were made for a slower and more strategic shooter but the gameplay fits a faster run-n-gun playstyle.
I don't recall what wave I made it to but I had unlocked all of the weapons and doors. I think the interiors felt about right but the exteriors were oddly claustrophobic. I played a few more times with selecting higher starting waves (50 and 100). The enemy count seemed suitably overwhelming and they came at me from all directions due to their spawn points.
If I got surrounded it was only because of the spawns and the constrictive environment. With ReDead we made a system that tries to predict where the player is going. The zombies became much more fun to fight because they're more reactive and try to cut off the player's movement. It also meant that open spaces suddenly became dangerous to the player and we didn't need to rely on other environmental constraints. I'm not trying to claim that our way is best, it's just something that worked for our project.
Overall it was fun but there wasn't enough to keep me engaged through the whole experience. I'd like to have different items to click with new movement patterns as the game progresses to keep it interesting. Maybe some combos or other things to look for beyond just clicking. The clicking itself was smooth and satisfying. I didn't personally care for the music or the themes if I'm being honest. The brain + intrusive thoughts concept is pretty cool but I didn't feel any connection to the different interactions. It also might be worth adding some difficulty options. I was able to finish the game on my first attempt but I see from the comments that some people struggled.
Very fun! Similar in a lot of ways to my game ReDead. I was worried about the aim but it felt pretty good once I got used to it (though I would prefer the camera to lead the character instead of lagging behind so that I can see where I'm going). The decals for footsteps and bullet holes were a nice touch but they would look better if they didn't have to align with the grid. The shooting felt good overall but slowing the character down so much with heavier weapons kind of took away from the power fantasy. I would also like to see more open spaces with enemies coming from multiple directions. Overall I had a good time with it.
I just spent 30 minutes with the game and I'm a little torn. It seems like a great concept for the game and it has some nice elements. Watching the plants grow in front of my eyes is really cool and the object physics were great. The blood interaction works well and there was clearly a lot of thought put into the different mechanics. With that said, I found the gameplay very confusing even with hints and on screen text. The new player experience needs a lot of work for people like me who don't always pick up on things easily.
Here are a few other notes:
I saw a lot of decal stretching and decals applying to things that they shouldn't. You may be able to deactivate decals per object depending on engine. I've used 3d noise based decals in the past to get around stretching and orientation problems. Triplanar mapping might also work here.
Pressing two input keys lets you move faster. If you don't want this feature then you might need to normalize the input. Also consider adding a mild sprint feature.
There's a lot of nice artwork but it doesn't feel very cohesive right now.
The music was good and seemed to fit nicely. Having different music styles was great and let me personalize my experience.
I really appreciate your feedback and support. It's been really helpful and motivating.
I'm glad you like practice mode! I have some ideas to make it even better in the future. I'll try to fix the bugs soon. I'll also keep working on the checkpoint times.
Where was the lighting too dark? I can adjust it in the next release. I'll fix the audio settings too.
Can you tell me more about #9? I don't quite understand. I also want to know about the double dash you mentioned a while back.
Low Latency mode changes how Unreal Engine displays the game. It's meant to decrease input latency but can have some drawbacks. It might lower the frame rate on your PC or make it look choppy. It's best to only use it if you have a very high frame rate.
Really well done! I'm working on some new tools that should help. I don't any concrete stats but I've run each course many many times. I spent hours creating those records haha.
The hop doesn't increase your speed at all but it has a different arc than the slide jump. It gives you a little more height and less distance which can be useful in some cases. Sometimes it's better/easier to get a hard fall and then convert that into forward speed with the slide.
If you try to jump while in the air it will buffer your input for .05 seconds and then jump as soon as you touch the ground. You need to hold the jump button down during this time. You can see it in the first video below.
While testing it today I discovered a bug when using it with slide. It's using a cached version of the slide speed instead of re-calculating it on the landing. This is how I was able to maintain my speed for my Tutorial record. You can see it causes me to jump backwards in the second video below.
I've thought about adding a practice mode that would let you select a checkpoint to restart at. I think that would help a lot since you wouldn't have to play the whole level to test specific skips. Maybe it could include other features like flight so that you could examine the course.
I was able to break my Tutorial record twice. The slide jump doesn't have a minimum timer so you can do some pretty creative stuff and there's also a "hop" mechanic that I didn't explain in the tutorial. It lets you maintain a lot of your momentum with a normal jump if you can time it right.
I made some mistakes but I was able to beat my best time in this recording. You found some original skips in both your Course and Tutorial runs. I'm impressed! Part of the fun is finding the best route and part of the fun is trying to execute it perfectly.
Thank you so much for all of your notes! I really appreciate your time and dedication.
I've had that jump bug before but I haven't been able to consistently reproduce it. If it's something that requires skill to perform then I might leave it as a mechanic.
If I decide to make any more updates then I'll include checkpoint splits. I think I can add them to the leaderboard too. I can also add the restart key and a speed indicator pretty easily, those are some great ideas. A replay function would also be great but I'm not sure if there's a way to share them with LootLocker.
I would love to watch you beat the main course. Thanks again for playing :)
I didn't rate this because I didn't have a second player. My main feedback is that it's difficult see your health bar when you're focused on the action. Maybe consider adding some damage to the player (cracks?). That way it conveys the important information in a way that also enhances the visual presentation.
Thanks for playing! I used a free service called Loot Locker for the Leaderboards (I still had to set up the UI and game logic separately). I really appreciate all of your feedback.
I wanted to do so much more with it but I ran out of time. The lobby is incomplete and I had a bug preventing player respawn. The plan was to earn money in combat that could be used for unlocking new characters and weapons.
I do have one bit of feedback. I felt that the aim smoothing was way too strong (I'd personally like to disable it). I liked the camera shake but I know some people get motion sickness. It would be nice to have options to adjust both of these features.
To echo some of the other comments, I found myself fighting with the controls at times. The mechanics were great but I had a bit of trouble with the actual gameplay.
What kind of monster puts run on CTRL instead of shift? Neat game. I make it anywhere near to the end but I was impressed with how much content you got out of relatively simple mechanics. I also liked the music.
It took me a while to get the hang of the mechanics but once I did it was really fun :)
I had a little bit of feedback. I think the the dash meter should refill when you load a checkpoint. The bullets block the player so if I was moving too fast and shot in a forward direction I would get blocked by my own bullets. The slow moving bullets also make it a bit difficult to hit the boxes unless you use slomo (I loved the slomo, I just think it was too hard to play without it). Great concept overall.
Not bad. The movement felt responsive and the collision was very forgiving (which I liked). The game was very short and I think extra stages or more enemy types would have gone a long way.
