PANDORA: Legion of Two

Tactical Run&Gun with Cover and Explosions in Retro Modern style. · By sezereth

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Leveldesign /Map Feedback Sticky

A topic by sezereth created May 31, 2025 Views: 129 Replies: 8

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sezerethDeveloper119 days ago

Please use this threat to post which maps feel overly hard to beat and send a screenshot with it. Also let us know which weapon combos you tried (Main weapons each character had).

All maps are supposed to give interesting tactical/skill based puzzles and should feel great when you master them. Often this requires a good combination of arms and decisions when to rush, when to stand ground, which objective to prioritize (e.g. stop reinforcement by taking down propaganda towers or stop mortar fire first, so you dont have to be on the move all the time)

Please mention the version (e.g. v68) as balance and map design can change and improve with each version based on feedback.

blackjackGT118 days ago (4 edits)

SUGGESTION
It would help for bug-reporting/feedback if each mission had its own "title," and maybe "mission #" in-game; otherwise, I have a hard time tracking down and remembering what missions I had the most trouble with or how to describe them. Well, I guess "Mortar Hell" would be the unofficial name of the mission I can't so far find a way to complete.

My next run through I'll try to type out a list and see if I can add a description to each mission.

blackjackGT118 days ago (2 edits)

[environment SUGGESTION] Maybe "go prone" in explosion craters as a type of cover?
Example screenshot at imgur:
https://imgur.com/JuwhCR4

Since many maps later on have these craters left by explosions, perhaps our character could auto-go-prone when in these craters?

it would help in some areas where there simply is no cover at all or just very thin cover (branchless trees).

blackjackGT118 days ago (4 edits)

[Map FEEDBACK; late map that's like an "L" shape on left side leading to an "O" around a "tree circle" on the right side.]

Here's a video of my various fails before finally getting some successful rifle-snipes to reach the southern grenade stash safely and then use it to clear the upper right area to complete the mission.

NOTE: This mission I think used to have a regulary firing mortar but now seems disabled, which I am most certainly NOT complaining about. :) But you can see the mortar guy in the right/middle of screen no longer firing.
GENERAL FEEDBACK:

I know the idea is to do flanking and what not, but when the pathways are this narrow and under fire by machine gunners, there's very little opportunity do do any flanking to get a side-bead on an enemy (no room to maneuver). What actually helped cracked this was resorting to Revolver to clear some enemies in the upper middle because the SMG or MG just wasn't hitting enemies in cover.

blackjackGT118 days ago (5 edits)

[FEEDBACK on late map with barbed wire wall, Mortar guy, MGs]
This was the map/mission I've complained is (imho) IMPOSSIBLE. I have tried more than 30 times and can't find any way to crack it. The video at end of this past has 22 of my FAILS on this brutal map.

My main criticisms/feedback:

-The mortar is way too accurate (IMHO) - and apparently has x-ray vision because it can target you even behind a tree clump which gives it no line of sight.
-The mortar fires something like every 2 seconds, even though the guy firing it doesn't have a loader or a spotter even. Every other shot is pinpoint accurate, which forces you to constantly babysit BOTH characters if they're to have any chance to survive. You also can't leave either character in one spot for more than a couple of seconds. Constantly micromanaging both characters to avoid laser-precise mortar fire disasters is no fun.

-By having the far east wall take up the entire vertical slice of the map, there is no way whatsoever to FLANK the enemies behind it. Make the wall narrower, or put some of the enemies closer to the middle so the player has some fighting chance to advance to the far north/south sides to have some sort of flanking opportunity.

-The middle of the map doesn't have enough hard cover to survive more than a few seconds. The far east wall is too far away to use a rifle or toss a grenade at it from any location that isn't in mortar or MG killing zones.

-The grenade clump to the south is for suckers because it's too far away from the far east wall, and from the grenade spot you have no way to get a grenade on enemies at the wall.

-AFIK the map has NO medkits on it. If they are, once against they're hidden behind trees or invisible on the ground.

The closest I came to accomplishing anything on this map as far as its right/eastern half was taking out one enemy on the far north side, but then the character that did it was splattered on the northern side. I've poked around the circular tree clump to the south, but the southern MG fries any character attempting to get around it into grenade range.

sezerethDeveloper118 days ago(+1)

Hey mate. Thanks so much. This level is tough due to the large open space and especially tough with invisible medkits.

As a strategy: Actually the key here is to clear the top and bottom side bases as you did. And then use a rifle to kill their sniper at top of trench and shoot the red Barrell to blow up the mortar guy. Both relatively unaffected by the mg. Then use both characters to distract and attack the MG (focus your aim at it when it's reloading and release the shit when it's starting to fire) respectively.

Which is interesting as you discovered that the red barrel will blow up the mortar pretty early on (in fail 5 around the 6:30 min mark).

I do need to apologize for the medkit bug which made them invisible after the tutorial message, due to a parentheses error when I implemented the large "heal up" arrow tutorial message.

It will be fixed in v69 together with a lot of other things you pointed out.

Watching your gameplay is very very helpful. It shows me that I need to add and restructure the early levels with "puzzles and clues" that force learning and applying certain strategies. As I often see you trying to take on the mg when it's in full fire instead of waiting for it's reloading pause.

I will also change some of the armored MGs to regular ones. As armored are hard to suppress, while regulars get suppressed easily.

I will record a gameplay when I play the missions to show you how I approach certain situations (just to make sure you see it's not broken, just my gamedev skill of creating good early tutorial levels teaching tactics and gunplay better).

Again thanks so much for your patient and fighting against my tiny bugs I accidentally implement when trying to improve things (I often had worked on it at night when coming home after seeing your feedback and felt motivated to act and improve upon it)

blackjackGT117 days ago (4 edits)

OK, this revamped mission is now BUGGED:

-The grenade clump NO LONGER APPEARS in the southern area west of the tree cluster; either it's no longer there or it's invisible.
-On some of my continued many fails on this mission, a couple troops show up west of where the grenade clump used to be, and the two enemies seem "stuck together, facing each other" and can't move.

I'm not having any luck on this still. Imho it counts too much on rifle accuracy and most of the time I can't hit anything. Sometimes I'll hit 2 enemies in a row and then I'll miss 20 times consecutively no matter where I place the crosshair.

The mortar firing every 2 seconds and never missing on the 2nd "triangulated" shot still strikes me as deeply uinfair.

THEN the one time I could nail the mortar guy with the rifle, another troop stepped up and took over the mortar (!). Give the player a break I say. If you can actually eliminate the mortar for crying out loud give us that much. :p

sezerethDeveloper117 days ago

Hi Mate, i was able to make a quick recording showing how i approach clearing the trench.
Not to mock you or anything, just to proove, that it can be done quickly and efficiently (obviously i know all the mechanics and have played this game for a long time, so i dont expect this to be "intuitive").
I would be happy to see another recording from you where you try to reproduce my strategy (there are some charotic factors obivously, like the type of reinforcements, movement of enemies, bullets, mortar, etc.)

sezerethDeveloper116 days ago

I noticed you might have meant the other mission without trench but barbed wire and chests.

that one has a sneaky way between the trees in the south, which makes it easy to flank the line.

I recorded some here:

itch.io

PANDORA: Legion of Two

Leveldesign /Map Feedback Sticky