So, this game, "Killing Machine Movement", has been around for a while now. We're in the process of finishing off another game, "ROBTORON", which we will release soon. And we're also finishing off our let's play / DVD commentary series on this game, Killing Machine Movement, which I will link to below. As such, we will leave Killing Machine Movement alone for a long time.
The ultimate question that follows is, how long do we leave it alone for? Do we ever return with bug and jank fixes? Do we fully add all of the content that we originally intended to include? Do we begin to produce the sequel?
And regardless, whatever state it remains in right now, what do we do with it? Where would we put it if anywhere?
Now we must say, we only want feedback from players who have progressed to level 5 or beyond.
We have feedback already from players who have hovered around the beginning of the game, and as a result of either our intentions, mistakes or risky choices, those stages have thinned out the herd as much as could or could not be planned.
So we know and can estimate the most egregious outrages:
- "OMG! WTF!? IF YOU DIE YOU HAVE TO START THE WHOLE LEVEL AGAIN? TO HECK WITH THIS GAME!" (This is the biggest sting you'll feel. And you'll feel it again. If you think this is something you can accept, take a deep breath. and try the level one more time.)
- "OMG! WOW this is janky! Object interactions, skittish movement, dropping framerate. It all functions solidly and overall reliably enough but I can foresee some bugging out coming up." (If you think it's worth desensitising yourself to it, you will find yourself laughing alongside it one day soon. )
-"This art direction? It's just off. The proportions of everything, bodies, weapons and machines don't work. Kinda amateurish. Often ugly." (What?? How many downloads did you say Cruelty Squad got?)
-"A lot of these early sound files have this annoying hiss in the background. Due to bad recording quality or compression?" (Yeah, can blame one of the developers for a mispriority there.)
-"This game clearly seems to place an emphasis on story. But the story is all over the place and distant, it's not grabbing me." (If you told me that you liked the first two or three episodes of The Wire at all, I would call you a liar.)
-"Plus the pauses between lines really gives me time to think and reflect upon all of the negative things above." (....Yeah I got no new helpful information for you on that one. Can amend it down the line if the project is worth saving overall.)
-"I'm getting a really smarmy, arrogant, self aggrandising, artsy, post modern tone here. Like the whole thing is parodying an attempt at quality." (You wouldn't happen to know the scenes where the type of people into this stuff are would you?)
In additional to progressing to Level 5 (Gethsemane), it's also been a mystery to us what's the furthest a player has ever got. It would be great to hear how far anybody got beyond 5 and also why they got stuck at that point or why else they may have ceased playing.
Any feedback on what can be gleaned from piecing the story together would also be interesting. Plus what characters/moments/aspects were liked and not liked.
Also, any tips for promotion. This game is obviously niche in its mission statement but there are some demographics who would appreciate aspects of this for sure. But how to get it to them? Obviously the bloated cutscenes makes me want to post this on metalgearsolid.net or nosgoth.net or a Monkey Island fansite since those games have many cutscenes, unskippable cutscenes or else the gameplay itself is almost a lot of talking cutscenes. However, it seems the forums are down on some of those.
If you find the game too difficult but do want to see where it goes, please follow along with our letsplay/DVD commentary series as we continue to update it and finish it off.
The full game is - and will always continue to be - free to play by the way.