Counterclocking

After three hours of immersion, this game has left me with a lot of experiences worth talking about. It has a commendable framework, but also many details that need to be polished. Here’s my breakdown:​ Mission Design: Right after completing the initial training level, you’re thrown straight into the mission selection screen before having a chance to fully grasp the controls, which is quite jarring. While missions are numbered, they lack strong connectivity. The freedom to choose missions ends up making the overall flow feel fragmented, missing that tightly woven, immersive narrative thread.​ Camera Handling: There are pros and cons here. The semi-transparent treatment of obstacles is a nice touch, preventing vision from being blocked. However, the camera directly penetrates when it hits the ground, which is distracting and breaks the scene’s realism. Additionally, adding close-up sequences during key battle conclusions or scene transitions would greatly boost visual impact and storytelling. What’s more, the "hit stop" effect when taking damage is overly frequent—it disrupts operational smoothness and causes uncomfortable camera shakes.​ Character Movement: Incorporating motion match features would significantly improve things. Currently, movement feels a bit stiff; with this adjustment, character actions would be more natural and fluid, enhancing coordination with the environment and elevating immersion.​ Controls: The tutorial showcases a variety of skills, but in practice, only a few are actually usable. Most skills are underutilized due to restrictions, which is a waste of design. It’s also strongly recommended that keyboard and mouse support be added later, as not all players prefer controllers.​ Attribute Upgrade Module: This is quite confusing. First, it’s unclear how many available points you have—you’re left guessing your "balance" when trying to allocate points. Second, tracking the number of points added to each module is difficult. Most importantly, the actual impact of upgrades is hard to perceive, unlike the clear, intuitive animations for new skills, which robs players of a sense of achievement from upgrading.​ Item System: There’s room for improvement, especially with healing items, which are scarce. Late in the game, you often face bosses with low health, leading to an extremely low margin for error and frequent frustration.​ Scene Design: Combat is confined to a rectangular area, but the sprint skill makes it easy to accidentally cross the boundary and fall to your death from the scene’s edge. This type of death is frustrating and disrupts the game’s rhythm; adjusting the area restrictions or sprint mechanics would help.​ Boss Battles: These should be the game’s highlights but fall short. Bosses have relatively limited skills, repeating the same moves, which becomes tedious. They also lack a sense of pressure, failing to deliver the tension and excitement of facing a powerful foe—both challenge and enjoyment need to be stepped up.​ That said, these issues are mostly about optimization. The game already has a solid ACT framework similar to a mini-version of DMC, showing the development team’s good ideas. With enriched gameplay and polished details, it has great potential. Let’s keep an eye on it!

总体来说，我喜欢这个游戏。打击感，快速杀敌。特效，杀敌的花式让人觉得很有意思。特别是有一些过程会采用慢动作的特效，感觉很酷。一开始得研究一下招式。有一些特殊招式在玩游戏过程中会事半功倍，不过如果不采用特殊招式也是可以打倒boss的，就是要花更长时间。游戏整个环节会让人停不下来，想持续打完通关。不足的地方是故事饱满度不够。可以再拓展一下整个故事线，让游戏更有意思。从动作游戏角度出发，整体通关下来还是蛮有意思的。

Cool mech designs! Has a lot of potential and the different weapons each had their use facing different enemies. The action animation transitions can be more smooth. Played on steam deck, so theres a few bugs.

Counterclocking (EA 0.5.1) sits in that rare space where an indie swings at a full-on 3D action experience—and mostly connects. Animation work and enemy variety carry it hard; presentation hiccups (menus, audio, missing languages) drag it back. I can live without CG cinematics, but I *do* want clarity in storytelling beats and a proper options suite. If you’re starving for 3D ACT outside the AAA sphere, dive in now. If you’re audio/UI sensitive, keep it wishlisted and watch the patch notes—the potential is obvious.

先放一个结论吧，《Counterclocking》在现阶段（Early Access 0.1.2版本）呈现的内容确实跟我的期望有些差距，但考虑到游戏目前只是EA版本，开发者本身也很明确是半成品提前发售希望通过社区获得改进，也确实在发售后更新了部分内容，这款游戏的未来正式版值得期待。 游戏的闪光点 游戏类型与可玩性 目前市场上的3D、ACT游戏数量太少，3A游戏还好，几个顶尖大作玩完后，下滑到下边一档，老游戏打击感差、画质体验差、动作与建模也差很多，独立游戏受到3D游戏制作成本高的缺点，少有往3DACT方向发展。即便有这样的游戏，动作打击感、3D总有不满意的地方。 相比之下，这款游戏的动作打击感、建模可以说出乎我的意料。宣传片实机演示的视频可以说非常惊艳，这也是我所期待的来源。 实际体验下来，抛开声音不谈，起码从动作与画面上，整个动作与招式的制作还是比较不错的，如果钟情于动作打击感与连贯性的玩家，与其体验上古画质而且动作不成熟操作不连贯的游戏，这个游戏值得体验。 游戏选材与敌对设计 赛博朋克题材算是比较流行的题材，相对来说，虽然部分场景模型制作确实比较差，但尤其是最后的几张地图赛博朋克风格还是比较不错的，但可能受制于制作成本，前几张图不怎么符合预期。但对于低成本（极低成本）独立游戏来说，质量还算够了。 敌人的设计我觉得算是用心了，低成本一点的，一般都是无双的感觉，这游戏前期上手时小怪实际没有那么割草（虽然也有无双的成分），不完全依赖堆怪。BOSS的模型也还不错，不同BOSS之间有不同风格，甚至BOSS战也略有难度（不完全依赖砍一刀就跑或者一直射击的刮痧的话） 游戏缺陷 游戏最基础的体验设置与架构 这个游戏不推荐的原因有很多，但现版本最重要的是无中文、不支持键鼠、游戏设置不完善 不支持键鼠这点算是最天然的限制，虽然ACT玩家受众手柄配置比例很高，但总有键鼠玩家会体验的。设置不完善这个其实说起来画质确实没怎么需要，但是确实是很影响体验的。甚至于，手柄的操作都不完善 打击音效与音乐 单看打击动作，质量确实不错，但这个音效确实体验太差了，音乐方面也可以优化。 个人认为，如果这点和前面的可以得到优化，起码可以考虑入手了。 剧情、战斗触发 剧情上，受到语言限制，没认真关注，但也草草看了，单纯为了战斗亦或BOSS设计的剧情。CG没有算不算硬伤这个见仁见智，我感觉有点CG哪怕是扫视场景全貌、对BOSS模型从头到脚展示都是好的。 战斗时长上，固定刷新点倒没啥，就几波小怪，中间没对话没其他场景，多少差了点。 定价与横向对比 游戏时长2-10小时，上述内容就算优化，对国内玩家来说，定价也还是略高，大体看了一眼高价区还算合理，低价区可能受steam涨价影响，确实有点不值了 此外，横向对比下，这款游戏中规中矩，没什么亮点，各方面都很稳定，战斗动作、模型有突出与闪光，画质上可以说有闪光，但是都不是明显突出。 这里提两个对比，同类型的《初体计划》两部，略微偏向割草，CG、画面、剧情上虽然也不能算顶尖，但在独立里已经算不错的了，动作虽然相比于这个游戏还差一些，但瑕可以说不掩瑜。这个游戏的动作被音效拖累，整体游戏质量都被短板拖下去了，只能说确实不值。 而对比《光明记忆》系列，差距就更大了。 但确实这方面游戏本身制作成本上有差距，游戏视角上也有区别。 总结 总的来说，我个人很期待正式版，但现有框架下的许多问题可能非常难进行解决，尤其是剧情上与战斗上的一些内容，改动可能要推翻很多东西，不是一个小的工程。对这个游戏的推荐，基本分两层吧，改动了音效与基本设置，基本上就可以作为一款合格可玩有打击感的短ACT游戏进行体验了。如果在此基础上剧情可以优化，我认为可以作为一款不错的独立ACT游戏进行体验。

Fun game!

Awesome game! Levels are super fun and keep me hooked. Would love to see more story depth andenemies with different moves later on.

 Great mech designs, great weapons, great arenas—there’s a clear aesthetic vision here that belies the tiny team. Combat is crunchy once you acclimate to the higher-than-expected difficulty curve, and the boss variety kept me guessing. On the flip side, basic QoL is undercooked: the options menu is skeletal, there’s no regional pricing or language support beyond English, and controller is basically mandatory right now. Give us sprint/double jump (or explain why we don’t need them), tighten the soundscape, and this thing could absolutely anchor a small franchise.

This game has potential. The first thing you would notice is a lot of ..spelling/grammar errors but you're still able to read through the text and figure out what you need to do. Very straight forward play. You pick a boss and just slash your way. No puzzles or anything. I am looking forward to any updates as it was pretty fun. Pros: Fun action hack n slash. Different weapon swaps. Unique enemies and design. Unique move sets. Cons: Game cannot be windowed. I use split monitors and I can't move the game over to the other monitor. Lots of spelling errors. Some AI enemies are funky like they are stuck in the corner. Looks like some "upgrade" videos are missing? luve tis gaem <3

Super fun game! The levels are packed with cool challenges that never get old. Really hope they add more story and some unique enemy attacks down the road