Vapour: Borders Of Purgatory (pre-Alpha Gameplay Footage)
Finally, we can share with everyone what we've been up to the last 6-7 months.
Now, we need to start getting Vapour into Alpha stage.
Let us know what you think:
Now, we need to start getting Vapour into Alpha stage.
Let us know what you think:
Comments
Tell us a bit more about the game?
I do have concerns about the dialogue as well though. Is this meant to be parody, or is the dialogue supposed to be serious?
Actually, I think that confusion is going to be a regular thing in feedback on this - you seem to have designed it primarily for yourselves, so you know where everything is and what everything does and where to go next. Don't worry, this pretty much always happens. All you need to do is broaden your mapping so that the level communicates to players where they should go or that there might be interesting things down this passage (the swim to find the weapon - I think that's what it was - wasn't something that an inexperienced player would simply discover easily) what tools do you have for that kind of direction? Your fog makes typical distance goal reveals and lighting direction hints really hard to use. Have you thought of offering players visual shorthands to indicate where they are?
The enemies are also really hard to see - I expect that players will die to them quite a few times before they actually see what the thing is that's attacking them, the spiders especially.
I'd agree with others that the dialogue feels out of place. Though the voice acting is excellent. I expect you're trying to get a kind of Evil Dead Army of Darkness feeling?
But the work you've done since the last version really shows. The environments feel a lot richer, and the enemies more animated.
I'd expect that those spiders will annoy players (the spiders are small and players might not see them the first time). I'm not sure if that was the point (in the sense of trying to make YouTubers rage out?)
Agreed on many of the previous points - I doubt that new players would be able to understand or find anything in that world - walking in the lake would be the last thing I'd do. So the game needs to show the player what to do - subtle or not, it's needed.
Titties comment is off-putting. It's just not funny. But the voice acting I'll second - it's very very good. Did you guys get someone or is someone on-hand with awesome voice? :)
Then some of the details are a bit weird just because it's incomplete, I guess. Like moving without arms moving, but when you kick a door all of a sudden the arm moves. Swimming without arms moving. Having the statue head thing stuck to the palm of your hand.
And there's NO WAY anyone playing would have noticed those spiders. Like NO WAY. I'd just be taking damage and be frustrated as hell.
Very good to see how far this has come since the previous version :)
One thing that really bugged me was the inconsistency of the fire arms. When in the wooden cabin the arms don't touch anything because the cabin would catch a light, makes sense but once in water nothing happens to the fire or water around the fire???
Also thank you all so much for all the constructive criticism it helps us a lot in getting a bit more of a reflection to see what we still need to change and fine tune.
@raithza: Hahaha yeah, we have always had a bit of a juvenile and sadistic taste of humour, but we do agree that it still needs to be fine tuned, balanced out and placed with better placing at more appropriate times.
@Rigormortis: Glad youre liking it! In terms of the dialogue yes we are actually going for a bit of a parody approach but with very dark and sadistic humour to still gel with the horror and gore. We were mostly inspired by comedy horrer movies such as A Nightmare On Elm Street, Child's Play and Evil Dead and all the Build Engine games (Duke Nukem 3D and Blood specifically).
@dislekcia: Thank you so muc hfor the compliments man, as for most of the confusion, for this video we just wanted to show the basic gameplay of the Vapour and the different types of stuff you would need to do.
Apologies we guess it could have had a bit better pacing and introduce the elements a bit more specifically and gradually, thank you for helping to point this out as well as it is also something that we still feel is a bit lacking so it is great to have it confirmed.
@BlackShipsFilltheSky: Thanks for the support man, and especially thanks on the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness compliment, exactly what we are going for, but obviously we still need to balance it out a bit and fine tune the pacing and specific moments for the lines. Thank you so much for the guidance on the dialogue, we also felt that it still feels a bit out of place, but it is great hearing it and confirming it from other developers.
@Tuism: Hahaha, glad that we could disgust you with the "titties" line. If we dont disgust at least a few people with our character and lines then we didnt do a good enough job and our character isnt offensive enough. We also want this power struggle between liking and being creeped out by the character, basically a similar effect characters like Freddy Krueger, Chucky and Hannibal Lector have on people.
Again thank you everyone for all the support and feedback, it really means a lot getting compliments from the members of this esteemed community. Thanks for all the questions it helps us so much in confirming our doubts and concentrating on what still needs to be improved and fine tuned.
Looking forward to hearing more of youre feedback.
@raithza: Apologies there arent too much more details that we can spoil on the game just yet. We can give you a few basics though:
You will be playing as a sadistic, time-traveling Warlock that has been brutally executed, though he uses his last strength to keep his soul from going to hell and gets stuck on the borders of purgatory.
The game is being developed in Unity 4 and we've been busy with this current build for about 6-7 months (we started completely from scratch after the prototype).
We are also on Steam Greenlight at the moment, so you can go check out our campaign for some more info as well.
Thats about all the info we can share at the moment though. If anyone has any questions though on specifics we will try to answer as much as we can.
Though to be fair, I can't imagine you guys will struggle much to get onto Steam.
While I really think you guys are doing a good job with the graphics, and I think your fire effects are really solid (and fire is difficult to get that good I think)...
If I were to be critical, I'd say that your projectiles could use a bit more juice. As they fly through the air they could distort to indicate direction, or leave a bit of a trail, and the impact effect could be a bit juicier (you've put in zero camera shake, and no particles that pop from the impact origin).
Lichdom does a fairly good job of FPS spell casting effects:
Yes we also agree that the spells and particles need a bit more feedback and dynamic nature, such as sparks and a camera shake when shooting.
Wow, thank you so much for the video, Lichdom looks quite fantastic and we can get some inspiration from them.
The disconnect I'm feeling to the humor however comes from the fact that everything except the dialogue seems to want me to take it seriously. This makes the character's dialogue feels completely out of place for me. Duke Nukem 3D opens with this ridiculous line: "Damn those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride". You then go on to shoot some barrels that should by all rights completely blow up the roof but conveniently only destroys the one vent which you need to fall down in. I mean even the name, Duke Nukem(so he's the Duke of Nuking them) is ridiculous. The entire game supports the parody of the game.
In what I've seen in the video of Vapour however, it's like I have to take everything seriously except the dialogue. There is nothing humorous about the horror/gore. In fact it's unsettling and creepy(which is good). The first enemy, which does a good job of freaking me out, is accompanied by a reference to a meme...which is supposed to be funny I guess, but feels completely out of place.
I'm not sure if mixing this style of horror with this style of humor is a good fit. I'd be glad to be proven wrong, but I think that will take a lot more work which might not pay off.
Something I don't think anyone's mentioned so far are the sounds. I think you guys are doing a BRILLIANT job on the sound. The ambient sounds are working so well! I love the raven/crow. Also the lack of a "backtrack" music seems really fitting. I think the footsteps can be slightly less loud and that you can still add a lot of interesting sounds for the enemies(which helps the player identify them and create tension(think Ghast in Minecraft ;)))