Things this game does good/bad

Dreepa

By Dreepa
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Dreepa Survivor

Dreepa

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Posted

Hi,

so I've checked out the alpha, and wanna give the devs some feedback. I'll keep it to the high level stuff. Detail polishing is always nice, but being a survival game that is about immersion, you can spend years polishing every little thing.

So here is my take:

 

The good:-Atmosphere! Sound design! (down the the simple jingle when exploreing new stuff). It is just great. A touch of mystical feeling. Brings across the mood of "the unknown" and "the danger".
Sound design is a blast! Super well done!

-GFX: Simple, but so elegant. Stormy leaves in the trees, snow in your face. The abstract GFX help to keep effort low while doing a perfect job at transporting the immersion. It really puts me into the world. The only little thing that could be better is the contrast at times. The world is simple, but you use your VFX and SFX so well, great work.

-UI & Controls: Simple and to the point. All is there, but it is not overblown.

-Interaction is within the world most of the times. Instead of a GUI game. Adds a lot of immersion.

-Leveldesign: Overall layout is cool, you always have the feeling that you are not quite sure where exactly you are, but still you can guesstimate your situation quite well (I try to not use maps).

 

The bad:

UI; Campfire: Creating food/tea/coffee: Flow is tedious, as it is required to leave the campfire UI, go to the inventory, use the item, and then re-enter the campfire UI. 
UI: Drinking: Drinking a lemon juice can does not show how much thirst is removed. 

Leveldesign: Hard to read what slope are meant for traversing, and what slopes are level bounderies. You only find out the hard way. Could be more readable.

Exploration: Game mechanics work a bit against exploration. That is not so nice. Basically once I got some food, shelter and basic equipment there is no point in exploring due to harsh carrying capacity balancing. Either you have a "hideout / base" that means you will not go far, but can gather your stuff... or you are a roamer / explorer... which means you leave most of the stuff behind. This severly limits the options and creates tedious backtracking...  Need a lamp? Go backtrack 2 days of travel to fetch it... Need a rope? etc...   Maybe character could increase in strength over the course of the game (after all he IS surviving in a testing environment) and thus increase carry limit?

Balancing of survival needs: It might be a reasoning by game design, but given that the game is so much focussed on the immersion side and the "believability" of the world and experience as a whole, I find it totally contradicting that my character needs THAT much stuff. Same is for resting. I sleep all night, wake up at morning and half way through the day the guy needs to go to sleep. So he wakes up in the middle of the night and cannot continue to sleep... And waiting costs so much food and thiirst, it is really not believable. Waiting in a house doing nothing is basically the best energy saving option a human could do....

Wild animals: Feels cheap to not be able to use your axe. 

Sleeping: Once I forgot my sleeping bag. Even in a house (the dam) where the cold was no problem, the game did not allow me to sleep. Feels wrong. Takes you out of the immersion.

 

Overall:

Super great entry. Gives you a real good immersive experience for the first hour or two, due to the atmosphere. However, the current balancing soon makes it feel more and more "gamey" (need balancing, backtracking issues)

 

Well, that is my impression so far. I think the game has a lot of potential, Keep up the good work!

 

Cheers,

 

 

 

 

 

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Wastelander Pathfinder

Wastelander

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Welcome to the forums, Dreepa!

I wholeheartedly agree on your list of good points of the game, and I have nothing to add.

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Leveldesign: Hard to read what slope are meant for traversing, and what slopes are level bounderies. You only find out the hard way. Could be more readable.

Yeah, I did run into some invisible walls on clearly climbable slopes. I agree with that.

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I sleep all night, wake up at morning and half way through the day the guy needs to go to sleep.

Yeah, that's weird.

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Wild animals: Feels cheap to not be able to use your axe. 

Do you mean you should be able to attack animals with your axe? Because you can do so in a struggle, however, the game chooses the best weapon for you, so if you have a knife, you use this to shank a wolf.

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Super great entry. Gives you a real good immersive experience for the first hour or two, due to the atmosphere. However, the current balancing soon makes it feel more and more "gamey" (need balancing, backtracking issues)

Agree on this one, although it should be said that the game is still in Alpha state and this will be tweaked in the coming months.

That being said, you've done some good thinking on this post! Glad to have you on the forums :)

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Dreepa Survivor

Dreepa

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15 hours ago, Wastelander said:

 

Do you mean you should be able to attack animals with your axe? Because you can do so in a struggle, however, the game chooses the best weapon for you, so if you have a knife, you use this to shank a wolf.

 

 

Ah, I see. So you always have to wait for the wolf to jump at you. Feels a bit passive. I would be throwing that axe at the wolf if I was in such a life threatening situation :)  Then grab the knife. And growl. And shout. And jump. And do all kind of silly things to make the wolf go away (if the axe didnt hit properly).

 

 

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Wastelander Pathfinder

Wastelander

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Just now, Dreepa said:

 

Ah, I see. So you always have to wait for the wolf to jump at you. Feels a bit passive. I would be throwing that axe at the wolf if I was in such a life threatening situation :)  Then grab the knife. And growl. And should. And jump. And so all kind of silly things to make the wolf go away (if the axe didnt hit properly).

 

 

I have always advocated for a craftable spear to shank 'dem wolves with :D But yeah, I agree with you!

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Wasteland Watcher Pathfinder

Wasteland Watcher

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8 hours ago, Dreepa said:

 

Ah, I see. So you always have to wait for the wolf to jump at you. Feels a bit passive. I would be throwing that axe at the wolf if I was in such a life threatening situation :)  Then grab the knife. And growl. And shout. And jump. And do all kind of silly things to make the wolf go away (if the axe didnt hit properly).

 

I never wait for the wolf -- when I decide to go bat-shit crazy on a wolf, I strip naked, and run right up to it, and BOOM! Wolf fight immediately with no waiting around :excited: 

Another thing I do if I want a more "dramatic" (long, drawn out) fight is to light a torch and wait for the wolf to get close and then start waving the torch around like a crazy man.

Your character starts screaming at the wolf -- it's pretty entertaining:D
"Come on!!! You wana do this??!??!"

And I like your assessment of the game -- very well done :)
 

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Wastelander Pathfinder

Wastelander

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22 minutes ago, Wasteland Watcher said:

I never wait for the wolf -- when I decide to go bat-shit crazy on a wolf, I strip naked, and run right up to it, and BOOM! Wolf fight immediately with no waiting around :excited: 

Another thing I do if I want a more "dramatic" (long, drawn out) fight is to light a torch and wait for the wolf to get close and then start waving the torch around like a crazy man.

Your character starts screaming at the wolf -- it's pretty entertaining:D
"Come on!!! You wana do this??!??!"

And I like your assessment of the game -- very well done :)
 

I don't have anything worthwhile to add, but I just laughed IRL at the thought of a naked person screaming at a wolf and then shanking it with some random knife :D

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