I've been wanting to play this for a while.
First play (<30 minutes) experience / feedback:
GAMEPLAY
- Immediately (~1 second of gameplay) I see the dual-stick aiming has a preference to orthogonal directions (up, down, left, right). In a 360 degree aiming shmup where all angles are required, this is already fundamentally broken control. It implies the game's controls are unimportant. More significantly, it is likely unintentional, so it doesn't set a good stage for the rest of the game design.
- The character avatar has very inconsistent movement. Glides a lot. Sometimes does not glide from shooting. Sometimes it does glide from shooting. It seems dependent on the direction of the avatar, which is determined by a slow rotation of your last motion input. Therefore, it ends up being random and unintuitive. This is just not precise control in a game that demands it, and hides behind the focus (slow movement) mode to save it from itself.
POWER-UPS
- Power ups appear and scroll off screen before you have a chance to consume them in the first levels.
- Some power ups allow for a dash, but it seems to be in random directions that don't help. It seems to be the same slow to respond rotation of the avatar motion input, and has nothing to do with the direction you are demanding. I may have this wrong, since it is very unintuitive.
GUI, HUD , CAMERA
- Generally, it feels the bosses present themselves on top of you, yet, the HUD presentation puts your power up icons directly over the bottom center which is where you generally are positioned.
- Camera control is made to enforce the arena limits and has a sudden jerk when arriving at the limit.
- I am playing on a 32-core 4090 Alienware, and I am waiting on loading screen each level. This is a bit off-putting. Also the menus are designed explicitly to show leaderboards, and have to wait, telling you that it is delayed, and then expands when the data appears. It doesn't remember any data, so as you move back to items you just viewed, this delay and animation happens again and again. It is like a living part of the UI that you are intended to experience.
- The above makes the PLAY button which is under your mouse move away from your mouse. This isn't CSI -- I am not making a query into some crime database and anxiously awaiting a result. I am playing a game. Why is the GUI designed around delays and explicitly reporting it? The leaderboards have a lot of scores, which is great, but it ends up just showing your score next to a ton of other almost identical scores. I don't think this offers much value.
- I have launched the game a total of 3 times (as of writing this), and 2 of those 3 takes at least 30 seconds before the game's icon even appears in the task bar. Looking at Task Manager, I cannot even see any activity. I'm unsure if this is Chippy or Steam's issue.
OVERALL
- The idea of chipping away is great. It's why I am here. Very quickly though, the game demands that only specific very precise targets in the bosses allow for damage, and it compounds with a bunch of random bullet spray from outside of the arena -- like distractions. I don't think this is good boss design by making the thing you want to do, the very purpose of the game, not available, and then to distract you without outside forces. This is literally level 3.
- All in all, I am disappointed. I wanted to play Chippy, the game shown in the trailers, where you chip away at a boss. This is only 10% of the game I am actually playing. I wanted to play a fine tuned, precise shmup. What I got is a game made by developers who are unaware that 4-way axis alignment for a 360 degree shooter, and inconsistent gliding, destroys that experience. I get that there is more to the game that can hide these core problems, but the lack of this proper core is bothersome.
Will update as I play more.
