A lost ship. Crew member either dead or missing. An illegal experiment. An alien presence. What could go wrong.
Four months in the making.
EGGHEAD proudly present I.X the game. A 2d top/down sci-fi shooter.
Game trailer available at
YouTubeIn game screenshots:
Comments
Is the game done? What're you looking for here, feedback?
You sound pretty happy with it the way it is, so unless you say otherwise I'm going to assume you don't want to improve upon it or receive any critique. (What I mean is, that if you do want critique and player feedback, the type of post you've made makes it hard for people here to give you that. It's pretty close to writing "So long as you want to give us praise, we're happy to receive your comments").
Yes , please do provide feedback and critique. Any comment will do. And thanks again for pointing it out. Really do appreciate it.
Your text seems to suggest that you want a scary experience "A truly horror sci-fi mystery game". And the environment upholds this, with the signs of carnage, chairs stacked in piles presumably to blockage entrances against the monsters, stretchers covered in the remains of corpses and attempts to resuscitate the dying, and the flashlight and the poor visibility of the enemies. It looks like, from the trailer, like you might manage to evoke a quite scary atmosphere. There's some pretty rad environmental story telling going on in IX.
But the music in the trailer is fun and pumping (which probably why @Tuism mentioned "Hotline: Spaceship", because the music gives the feeling that the game is meant to be a bit like Hotline Miami). Hotline Miami is an intense game, and its very stressful and horrific in its own way, but it isn't the kind of horror that you seem to be going for with your game, which looks dark and oppressive and kind of slow, rather than bright and colourful and fast like Hotline Miami.
I'm not sure if the fast music is a part of the game itself, but in the trailer it feels to me like a bit of a mismatch.
The other thing I'd comment on about the game is that the enemies seem to take a while to die. I feel that it'd be better if the enemies died quickly, and the player dies quicker as well (more like Hotline Miami). Or alternatively the enemies could be tough, but react more to being shot, so they slow down temporarily or get knocked back.
In general I prefer top down shooters where I get to kill a lot of things, though I know you're going for a horror aesthetic, so making the player feel weak is important. So I'm not sure that making bullets do more damage is actually a good solution, but I do think if you can make the combat feel a bit more interesting, and also keep the player feeling stressed and weak, you'd have a fun horror experience.
(Obviously Dead Space is an example of a game where the enemies react quite well to getting shot, and they're also quite tough as far as enemies in shooters go. So may work towards something like that if you take this further)
(Sorry to post so much critique at once, hope I'm not coming across as too harsh)
It looks like it wants to be a fast paced game. The initial impression of Hotline: Spaceship gave me that. The music gave me that.
But it moves super slow, the enemies die very slowly AND move very slowly, making it less a matter of reaction and more a matter of backpedling.
On top of that, I could barely see a thing, and the torch actually makes very little sense in realism terms - the further you point it the more you can see, and when you try to look at your feet you get that single point that I guess you could burn ants with. It doesn't make sense. And it shines through walls? The vision cone thing you got going here is strange, there are no obstructions so light shines through walls, but enemies "appear" out of nowhere in the dark (you can literally see them become visible from being invisible in one frame) an with the "radar" thing, and that looks broken. Maybe fade them in or out, or better yet, don't make them disappear/appear. Make the environment dark enough to shroud them in actual darkness rather than the appearing/disappearing thing?
I do realise that you're trying to make the player have no idea where the enemies are without using the torch/radar. But it just looks broken as it is.
I understand the vision impairment is supposed to be an atmospheric thing, but it feels more broken than a feature right now. At least from the video.
So all these things add up to a disconnect between the presentation (techno music, fast paced, twitchy), the look (top-down speedy shooter, looks like Hotline) and some of the mechanics (slow movement, low damage, "fog of war" system) I can see in the game.
The environment does tell a good story. Though it's very strange that in pitch darkness (or supposedly pitch darkness) there are so many huge white squares that are so painfully visible (I assume they're tables). The whites show up way too much in the dark, which again makes no sense to me, and takes away from the horror thing.
So I feel like you should try and find the focus of the game and really push everything towards it - right now to me it feels fractured - if only because of the presentation.
(so yeah, like @Blackshipfillthesky said, sorry to drop so much crit in one go, and I know I haven't played the game yet either. Also know that it's "done" so I don't know how much value you can extract from this. But always happy to help, if it does!)
As for the Youtube trailer, any suggestion i can download a good game recorder?
On OSX you can record with Quicktime -> screen recording. To get sound, google Soundflowerbed. Together they'll give you video and sound pretty nicely.
http://www.pixellore.com/games/subterrain/