nice

I finally played this demo. Absolute blast of a time; I love the unique direction you've taken with this. It's not Severed Steel and it shouldn't be; its own identity really shines through here.

The hoverboard is a fantastic mechanic to design the game around. Shooting enemies while skating on walls and then floating at them to ram them at high speed is amazing, especially when you launch them into walls. The one thing to be mindful of is that a first-person perspective has historically been horrible for platforming because you can't see your position in relation to the environment like you can with a third-person camera. Designing the world around the hoverboard should alleviate this as precision is less of an issue as you navigate platforms and environments.

As for gunplay, I reckon the precision-based mechanics are to the game's detriment. You simply can't move so fast and shoot accurately without slow-mo, especially with the aiming mechanics and the sniper rifle. They simply don't integrate smoothly into the combat loop.

I think the guns ought to be rethought in general; the SMG is redundant while the assault rifle exists and the pistol might as well be paperweight, which is why DOOM Eternal never brought it back and started us on a weapon that was actually fun. Again, the sniper rifle simply isn't suited for a game this fast. This lineup feels like a holdover from the traditional school of FPS thought with conventional gun types (pistol, SMG, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, maybe an LMG) and I'm not convinced it works here like it does with Severed Steel as you're encouraged to pick up anything and everything without the ability to reload.

The powers introduced in the demo are alright but I question their implementation. Having only one active and tabbing between them with a button makes them finicky to use outside of exploration, which is a shame because there's a lot of combat potential with these. It's a good thing you have key rebinding because G is a horrendously awful key because I won't be able to move right in a firefight while I'm trying to press it.

I'm reminded of the arm cannon from Severed Steel and I begin to think perhaps these powers should be made the primary weapons of the game, albeit modified (obviously). Perhaps the sledgehammer could be remade into some kind of pneumatic drill or air cannon that blows enemies away and also takes chunks out of stone. Perhaps the fireball can be some kind of grenade/rocket launcher that melts ice and hits enemies with its explosion radius.

This would raise the issue of how you would navigate puzzles and obstacles if you ran out of ammo. If you were to take me up on this advice, perhaps it'd be worth looking into abolishing ammunition altogether. Not only would this free up the reload button for another function within the finger's easy reach, it's quite possible that players would feel incentivised to swap weapons depending on the different enemy types they encounter as the weapons function very differently and function better in different circumstances.

All in all, I encourage questioning the conventional wisdom of shooters and devising original weapons that compliment your fast-moving hoverboard-centric gunplay better.

"made shield guy 50% more intimidating" I see you writing these patch notes shield guy

honestly, I liked hunting down the last few. If you maintain the intensity throughout the big fights, there's far less incentive to use your various mobility options and not just find a good perch and snipe

Originally posted by ⎝⧹Quirken⧸⎠:

honestly, I liked hunting down the last few. If you maintain the intensity throughout the big fights, there's far less incentive to use your various mobility options and not just find a good perch and snipe

That's a decent argument but I'm not sure it counteracts the tedium of having to look for the last lousy enemy who's probably clipped through the destroyed floor and is really hard to get to.

Makes me think there ought to be more incentive to move around and keep on your hoverboard, then. Maybe enemies have mortars that rain on your position and you need to keep moving to not be bombarded?

One of the things I liked about the orb fights was the sense of progress from picking off the enemies - the decreasing tension was actually satisfying for me. Making it into an endless swarm of high intensity survival just sounds dreary. (To the point that this news post dropped the game WAY down my wishlist from "must-have" to "maybe if it's on sale.") There's plenty of games that do stuff like that, and this doesn't need to be one of those. If you want to have enemies gradually respawn, I wouldn't mind, because that might mean in the time it takes me to take out 2-3 enemies, 1 new one would spawn.

Originally posted by Eternal Echo:

Originally posted by ⎝⧹Quirken⧸⎠:

honestly, I liked hunting down the last few. If you maintain the intensity throughout the big fights, there's far less incentive to use your various mobility options and not just find a good perch and snipe

That's a decent argument but I'm not sure it counteracts the tedium of having to look for the last lousy enemy who's probably clipped through the destroyed floor and is really hard to get to.

Makes me think there ought to be more incentive to move around and keep on your hoverboard, then. Maybe enemies have mortars that rain on your position and you need to keep moving to not be bombarded?

Honestly, I'd hate that; it would make the sniper useless. Maybe if you stay in one spot for way too long, but in general, I like being able to play these sorts of games however I feel like playing and not get pidgeonholed into one style of play.

I didn't have any trouble hunting down the last enemies thanks to the outlines that showed up, but there was one time where one was in a weird place. The game could just have all enemies start heading towards you gradually to prevent that, and detect if an enemy's height seems suspicious and respawn them.

Originally posted by ⎝⧹Quirken⧸⎠:

One of the things I liked about the orb fights was the sense of progress from picking off the enemies - the decreasing tension was actually satisfying for me. Making it into an endless swarm of high intensity survival just sounds dreary. (To the point that this news post dropped the game WAY down my wishlist from "must-have" to "maybe if it's on sale.") There's plenty of games that do stuff like that, and this doesn't need to be one of those. If you want to have enemies gradually respawn, I wouldn't mind, because that might mean in the time it takes me to take out 2-3 enemies, 1 new one would spawn.

Originally posted by Eternal Echo:

That's a decent argument but I'm not sure it counteracts the tedium of having to look for the last lousy enemy who's probably clipped through the destroyed floor and is really hard to get to.

Makes me think there ought to be more incentive to move around and keep on your hoverboard, then. Maybe enemies have mortars that rain on your position and you need to keep moving to not be bombarded?

Honestly, I'd hate that; it would make the sniper useless. Maybe if you stay in one spot for way too long, but in general, I like being able to play these sorts of games however I feel like playing and not get pidgeonholed into one style of play.

I didn't have any trouble hunting down the last enemies thanks to the outlines that showed up, but there was one time where one was in a weird place. The game could just have all enemies start heading towards you gradually to prevent that, and detect if an enemy's height seems suspicious and respawn them.

To clarify, have you tried the new orb fight style and not liked it? Spawns are on a delay and you might find the pace ok!

Originally posted by mattlarrabee:

Originally posted by ⎝⧹Quirken⧸⎠:

One of the things I liked about the orb fights was the sense of progress from picking off the enemies - the decreasing tension was actually satisfying for me. Making it into an endless swarm of high intensity survival just sounds dreary. (To the point that this news post dropped the game WAY down my wishlist from "must-have" to "maybe if it's on sale.") There's plenty of games that do stuff like that, and this doesn't need to be one of those. If you want to have enemies gradually respawn, I wouldn't mind, because that might mean in the time it takes me to take out 2-3 enemies, 1 new one would spawn.


Honestly, I'd hate that; it would make the sniper useless. Maybe if you stay in one spot for way too long, but in general, I like being able to play these sorts of games however I feel like playing and not get pidgeonholed into one style of play.

I didn't have any trouble hunting down the last enemies thanks to the outlines that showed up, but there was one time where one was in a weird place. The game could just have all enemies start heading towards you gradually to prevent that, and detect if an enemy's height seems suspicious and respawn them.

To clarify, have you tried the new orb fight style and not liked it? Spawns are on a delay and you might find the pace ok!

Prior to this reply, I had not, but I re-downloaded the demo and tried it out. I felt about it exactly as I expected. It felt like I was playing a Bullet Hell game. There were constantly projectiles everywhere and enemies kept suddenly appearing right next to me so I couldn't focus on the enemies I saw and had to keep checking behind me.

I don't think it's more difficult. But it's definitely less fun for me than it was. It's total chaos, so instead of feeling like you're some badass that can take on a platoon of enemies, it feels like you're trying to meet some arbitrary objective that doesn't mean anything.

Also, I'm not sure what changed with the sniper, but it's nearly unusable now. It keeps randomly bobbing a huge amount even when you're not firing or being hit.