1 person found this review helpful
Recommended
11.5 hrs last two weeks / 11.5 hrs on record (9.1 hrs at review time)
Posted: 24 Jan @ 11:56pm

This is just a fever dream type of game,
First of all I just want to say I can tell quite a bit of effort was put into the game and I know it's a big deal to finish anything and release it, even with source engine so am not trying to put the dev down, but rather give pointers to improve in the future.

There is a lot of different problems and issues, a lot of things that just don't make sense at all, and frankly I don't know why the developer decided on using the source engine. (especially since source isn't good at very large maps)
It is still unfortunately a bit unstable at times and loading a save breaks gravity and your stamina.(and so requires a restart of the game)
The story is hard to follow a bit some but I understand that english isn't their native tongue so am giving it a face value. so it is just kind of bland and boring having a lot of text on screen some times but other wise the story is just ok.

It has inconsistency with how dialogue is displayed, Some times there is speech bubbles with a choreographed scene, other times it's an image on the screen, other times just text in the middle of the screen. This gives the game a incoherent feeling to the game and makes it quite chaotic. which if that is what the dev was looking for , they accomplished it, I just want to say that if you can you should show more than tell, it's ok to have less text if you can show something, and when you do show text it is good to stay consistent of the method used.

A lack of more obvious indications of where the player should go and be-able to do hurts this quite a lot.
There is no indication of when something is interactable, and the lack of knowing where to go most of the time just kind of has you explore aimlessly until you find something.

Which brings me to the next thing level design, I don't know where to start.
having some things unknown is ok, but when the player can't even know they are supposed to go to a boat and dock that you can't even see from a distance really detracts from the gameplay. Now some things are done ok like the castle as it is point of interest considering it's size, and so is the island but it's not quite enough to guide the player in the right direction after the first time. You just again aimlessly run around and just run into a trigger and just hope you can find a way to continue.

In this case I would have recommended to place lights in area's of interest.(enable some, disable others as things progress.) Level's are also some what empty feeling a bit still.
There is also area's where the player can go but has no point so those shouldn't allow the player to go there. open world doesn't mean the player is able to go anywhere at all times just able to do a good amount. There is different approaches doing it to detour and guide a player but not making them always feel like they have to or if they can should have a good reason for an area if able to be gotten to.(rewarding the player well)

The audio is some times frankly a hard pill to swallow but can be ignored.
Developer I recommend adding the music to be adjustable to the music slider in the menu it is as simple as putting # in front of a sound script or in your ambient_generic's.

Next is Player controls, oh lordy
they are just kind of horrendous frankly, it's hard to aim weapons, and some times get stuck going in and out of confined area's, and as well when cut scene's play they don't entirely stop the player from moving the camera most of the time. The player can some times get stuck in stuff or more recently I got stuck in the well not being able to jump anymore, I think it thought I was in the air still some how. you can also some times get thrown into the sky and beyond and not die, but most of the time you will die. Am just glad the game isn't a platformer focused game or I'd have much harder time with it (not intuitive).

Combat, not great the stomping can work, but because of low moon gravity like and the player controller it's quite difficult to aim, melee can't really be used for combat and I understand that they are meant more for breaking things but more suitable melee options would have been nice, as for ranged weapons again hard to aim and hit, some times a crosshair isn't even visible.(most likely a bug)
some weapons like bombs are nearly useless due to the gravity,

For future reference please add an auto aim(enemy targeting) if you are going to be doing this sort of system it's a huge player Quality of Life feature.

Next I want to talk about the graphics, I do have to say at least the style is some what consistent, and that it's just alright, it's nothing to ride home about but some of it could be improved.

The game overall is a bit rough( scuffed even), some more smaller details or other things that could have improved the experience more but despite all the issues the game really still gave me a lot of laugh's and an enjoyable experience playing it for my friends to have a good time.

Do I recommend you to get it? maybe if you like fever dream games then sure. this is just pretty baffling in the way where it's not a great game in fact it's bad in a lot of aspects but it's one of those kind of games that it is incredibly funny in that way even down to the prerender images.
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Developer response:
♥ ﮩ ﮩ R.G.M.D. ﮩ ﮩ ♥  [developer] Posted: 25 Jan @ 9:22am
1 - Dialogues: this is going to stay this way “so the player doesn’t break the pacing.”
Why? I wanted to make dialogues like in Half-Life 2 “without cutscenes,” but then I realized the chaos it could cause.

2 - Melee combat should not be improved, since it would make the game too easy. If it had gameplay like Ocarina of Time, it would lose difficulty.

3 - Ranged combat: well, this needs to be looked at, but the fact that the crosshair isn’t very visible is to avoid “inconsistencies,” like in Postal 3 (even so, it’s not perfect).

4 - The fact that everything can be explored is because the game wants to tell “hidden stories” without using dialogue, “like Bethesda,” such as seeing that the dragon monster lost its friends because of a “stupid challenge.”

Conclusion
I had to fight against my limitations when using the Source engine to make a game like this, especially without having “advanced C++ knowledge.” And it’s a good thing I didn’t use another engine, otherwise it would be much less detailed. Basically, I wanted to make a unique game.