Antares

A solid little indie game made by a solo dev!

I have been following this game through it's evolution. it has come along way from it's humble alpha beginnings. For a solo dev and a first game this is an incredible effort in a very crowded sector. My hat goes off to Byron and a great success of getting the damn thing out!!! If you like spooky sci-fi this is for you.

Interesting game made by one person. Give it a try! I'll test it more to find out the couple later fixes.

In various aspects as a gamer of many years, the setting, story and theme of this game is brilliant for Science Fiction lovers, it's brilliant in terms of what the actual game is about so it's not too hard to figure out what you are buying... Value for money - totally would recommend this game as the developer has put a lot of time into it! Hopefully with future updates further settings can be added, Controller Functionality, Key-Bindings, critical points which I have advised my colleague, I have performed a Beta / Early access testing on free code , however if you purchase this game it will support future ventures and games to be created by this lone Developer Sonaloux... Really looking forward to more games in the future with possibilities of different genres! In all honesty keep up the good work Byron!

[b]Disclaimer: I received an early key for free to check out this game. If anything changes I may update this review in the future.[/b] Okay so Antares is a relatively small Indie Horror FPS with the majority of the game developed by one person. I have no history with the developer but Sonaloux seems rather passionate about what he does and playing the game you can tell a lot of work has gone into it. Personally, I have lot of respect for Solo developers. I consider my self one but I've never really created anything to the level of something like Antares. I find that games created out of passion come from mostly smaller teams, so while these games may not be of amazing quality it is very easy to overlook a lot of the minor issues when you find out it came from one person alone. I will now create a Pros vs Cons list: [h1]Pros[/h1] - [b]Story:[/b] The game actually has a pretty nicely put together story, you can find data logs scattered throughout the facility that give a bit more insight into what is actually happening and why there are weird skeletons and monsters hanging about. It's worth picking them up. - [b]Focus:[/b] The general structure of Antares feels solid, confined and understandable. You're in the Antares facility, there are a number of different areas you can explore with a core objective for each of them, once you complete all the objectives there will be a final challenge to complete. When you aren't busy exploring there is also a small hub area where you can upgrade your skills and collect an endless supply of ammo and health. - [b]Gameplay Loop:[/b] This falls into the above category to an extent but I felt it was worth mentioning on its own. The core gameplay loop as described above is really solid. Exploring the facility and keeping your eye out for the "Power Down Imminent" message in the top right can be a rather tense experience. - [b]Atmosphere:[/b] The Antares facility is really quite haunting. The lighting, sound and music ques all help to keep the game tense and when the Power goes down is when it becomes much more unnerving. [h1]Cons[/h1] - [b]Performance:[/b] I put this at the top as I find it to be the most annoying. I'm running the game with an i7-4790k and a GTX 1070 and experience a LOT of frame drops to the 40s and I recall it reaching the 20fps zone as well. These are one of those things I can look past considering the size of the team behind this but it's still an issue worth bringing up. People with lesser hardware may have a rough time. - [b]Lack of Options:[/b] Similar to the issue above, there isn't many options to tinker with in the menu. No way to change keybindings within the game for example. I prefer to use 'F' to interact with things rather than 'E' so it would of been nice to be able to customise that. Mouse sensitivity also acts rather strange, feels like it sometimes slows down then speeds up, almost like acceleration although that could just simply be the performance being wacky. - [b]Combat:[/b] I didn't really want to put this as a con as in some areas I do enjoy the combat. There are a few areas where the combat urks me out. For example you only have one weapon being your assault rifle, despite being able to upgrade it I would of loved something more old school to go along with it like a shotgun. General polish of the combat is where I take the most issue though, enemies can be seen clearly spawning in more large open areas, some of the many hordes you encounter are rather boring to fight, no clear dismemberment or visual feedback, just shoot until they die. It feels okay when there's only a few coming at you but when there are beyond 15-20 at a time coming after you it just drags on and on until you finally get through them all. - [b]Difficulty:[/b] I'm not going to complain and say a game is too hard, I don't think that's a worthy criticism, however I will point out how unfair I find some aspects of the game to be or more so how it feels. It is incredibly easy to die in this game. I first played on Hard, then realised I was getting my arse kicked so toned it down to Normal and restarted but still found my self easily dying. As I said before, it's not the case of how actually hard it is, more so how the game feels like a chore when you die. Make one simple mistake and you will most likely be dead. A key example of this would be getting caught in a corner, full shield, full mag everything and not being able to fight your way out. It feels like there's no challenge there and a rather cheap way to mess up. It's a dodgy subject. I take issue mostly with the fact that the actual combat itself doesn't feel like a challenge in essence, the only times I actually die is when I get caught on the enemies, which happens a fair amount of times. I recall also getting hit by a skeleton and suddenly not being able to sprint, probably a game mechanic but easily led to me getting overwhelmed. Like I said, it's a dodgy subject, some may think this is a fine mechanic, I just find it to be a little cheap, if enemies had more varied attacks like projectiles for example to add to the overall challenge rather than simply just getting stuck, dying and having to waste time trying to get back to where I was I think I would be less salty about it. I usually don't have much issue with difficulty in games, especially FPS games. I don't know, some people may not take issue with it, but it bothers me personally, see it as you will. - [b]Power Down Cycle:[/b] The power down cycle is an interesting mechanic, I do actually like it on paper, but I feel like the way it was implemented makes for a bit of a tiresome experience. Essentially what happens is Antares will sometimes power down, so all lights go off and the world becomes a night vision look, nothing wrong with it until you make too much noise, if you sprint for too long or shoot your gun then a whole horde comes at you, I personally found it was just a better idea to simply go back to the hub and wait for the power to come back on before venturing further to the current objective. Again not a terrible idea, just felt a bit disruptive of the flow. - [b]Darkness:[/b] Now make no mistake, the game is meant to be dark, I totally get that and while it's not a big issue, I found that in some areas of the game, it was simply impossible to tell that there was a skeleton 2 feet in front of me even with the flashlight switched on, this seemed to be because the skeleton texture and the surface texture was the same level of brightness, I cannot tell you the amount of times I've died simply because I walked into a skeleton I couldn't actually see. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] Now, despite the amount of cons vs pros, I definitely recommend checking this out. The game has currently got a launch sale going on, which would be a good opportunity to pick it up I'd say. I have a lot of problems with the game, but I see a massive amount of potential for something like this. To clarify, I played through the entirety of the game and despite getting genuinely frustrated with the issues listed above I still really liked it. Of course it isn't a AAA quality game by any stretch, but even with the issues I can see the passion that has gone into it. I'm not recommending it out of pity, I genuinely did enjoy the game. Whether that is because of the short length of the game I don't know. I think the game needs a bit more polish, whether Sonaloux will release future updates to the game or not I don't really know but I believe the game was in development for about a year and a half, it could of probably used an extra 6 months to a year to iron out these issues listed. For a game made by one person though, I am genuinely impressed and can rather easily look past a lot of the issues presented, I recommend it. Good little game worth picking up to support the developer.

When i loaded in game, it reminded me old school Alien vibes and then i proceeded to change my shorts thereafter. Good game!

Spooky atmosphere and story in a mix of shooting and stealth. Enjoyed a lot the exploration and discovering the secrets the facility holds. Depending on the person battle can feel repetitive at times - often you have to deal with swarms of the same enemies. Stealth is thrown into the mix - there are periods where you have to keep quiet to not awaken a horde, which is quite hard to deal with. Make sure you play it on a good PC, so you can best experience the atmosphere.

Noch ein wenig in den Kinderschuhen, hat aber durchaus Potenzial. Schade gibt es dies nicht im Multiplayer. Ich durfte die Beta spielen, und fand absolut genügend für 2020 Aber am besten schaust du dir das Angezockt von mir an um besser einen Eindruck zu bekommen! Bitte daran denken, das Gameplay ist in der BETA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53d45m8lC04&feature=youtu.be

Buggy game! With purchased assets from the UE4 store .... I bought it to support the authors, but I say NO

divertido e atmosfera assustadora, é simples mas vale a pena jogar