Delta Manifold

So I'll say this. It's a good start. Unfortunately if you're looking for a 3d Metroidvania, it's missing a few things. 1. The map is utterly useless. Its all in one color, it doesn't appear to have a marker for the player character, and there's no good distinction between individual areas. This is exacerbated by my second point. 2. The areas are bland and forgettable. One of the things a game like Metroid prime has going for it is individual rooms that you can recognize based on recognizable landmarks. Almost every room in the prime trilogy was easily recognizable, aiding in navigation. While this game does have a couple memorable rooms, on the whole navigation based purely on recognizable landmarks is impossible. 3. Progression is almost entirely invisible. This is in part due to the poor map, unfortunately it's very difficult to tell if you're progressing in the game, or even if you're visiting areas in the right order. 4. The game as a whole seems unfinished. There is an area with far superior textures and object models, while at the same time containing inconsistent collision that doesn't match up with the visuals. Overall, it just needs work.

I think I like it better than Secrets Under Eco...but I intended to give that game a fair shake. I don't really want to waste my time, or my money, on something I'm not going to enjoy. The gameplay is decent, and it's nice to see Metroid Prime-style scanning again. Music sounded pretty good (when it wasn't cutting in and out randomly), and I thought the sound design was pretty decent. Level design...I'm not too sure, but it at least didn't feel [i]terribly[/i] intolerable. Enemy design, especially on the more organic creatures was really bad - it looked like someone just did a single pass on them using Blender's Skin Modifier - I've used this before, and it's a powerful tool to get a basic shape down, but you have to do further work to make them look great. Some of these maybe had extra details on them, but it was otherwise very...uncannily smooth. Once again, we encounter a problem with lighting, textures, and rendering making things too dark to see. It can be an intentional thing, of course, but that must be counteracted by effective tools for the player to use. You do have a flashlight, but it has a very narrow beam, if you shine it too close, it flares up brightly, and it also has a very short effective distance. This wouldn't be a problem in areas designed to be dark, but there were areas there were just too dark for no discernible, justifiable reason. The tutorial area at the very beginning was the most egregious example, with a black-and-glowing-white grid for most of the level construction, but the Distortion castle area (which is when I decided to abandon and refund the game) had that problem a lot as well. There was also something of an artstyle dissonance. We have ultrasmooth enemy entities, blocky, angular gun models, BSP/Quake Engine/Goldsrc-inspired level design, high-fidelity lighting, and textures that can't seem to decide if they're low-res or not. It's clear that this game was made by a "first" (Dev has one other game released) time developer. I do admire the effort, but it needed some extra work. I don't know how many worked on it, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was less than three guys (plus maybe a music artist).

Poor man's Metroid Prime.

Okay, this is a negative review but I wish it could be neutral. It's not personal. I have to say all the comparisons to Metroid prime need to be taken with a grain of salt. Visually, I get it. The UI and lots of the movement are clearly inspired by Prime, in a good way. Anyone who says it plays like Prime- I get why you'd say that, but this game hasn't earned that paise for me. Now don't get me wrong, it's not bad. The game feels good to play and move around through, but it's clearly someone who is still practicing their game development skills challenging themselves. And for that expectation, it's awesome. But all these comparisons to Metroid Prime had my expectations set a bit higher than what was delivered. The overworld has stuff like tunnels made of square tubes with overlapping textures. Again, it's good for what it is, but comparing it to Metroid prime is not accurate. I was ready to keep playing until I feel into a bottomless pit in a very dark room in a corner of the world and died, then respawned on the other side of the world. I just decided I didn't feel like trying to reclaim my progress after that because it felt like a really cheap death. Also, dev, please improve the map. I couldn't read it at all. Sometimes it seems like it wasn't moving with my character, and there's no marker to tell where I was. A working map would have helped so much. And some extra save points would have helped too.

A short title, but otherwise a fun one. I got this as part of a giveaway. Delta Manifold has some of the obvious features that come with playing an amateur game. The lighting is engine-default, so often you'd get bright-shined just from having a flashlight on. It's easy to go out of bounds with the late game rocket launcher, and even without you have the dash jump which can do the same. The simplistic graphics make it hard to navigate often, with many areas having that early 3D issue with, "was I just here?" in the back of your head. The combat is fairly easy, as well. And yet, despite these issues, it was a fun time. Exploring around the different locales looking for the right items to continue forward. Some of the discoveries along the way are clever, and some of the environments are a lot of fun to peruse (I wished for more of the titular Delta Manifold). Movement feels nice barring some annoying platforming, and scanning can sometimes be fussy (some creatures seemingly cannot be scanned at all). Easy recommend for someone who wants to spend an afternoon with a game like Metroid Prime but a little less refined, and still very charming.

Pretty decent, if not simple, exploration shooter. It's rather easy to get lost and miss some passages, but there are multiple pathways to lead you to the next upgrade or artifact. Dying to enemies almost never happens, it's always the environmental hazards that kill you, but there's no penalty for dying aside from being sent back to the last save point. It'll amuse you for a while trying to find all the sparks, but I gave up searching at about 1,020/1,200. I got the feeling the ease with which you can escape the level boundaries late in the game isn't necessary for finding anything cool.

The game made me feel guilty, sad and depressed over killing harmless little crab :(

it's afun game clearly insspired by Metroid prime and i will see how the rest goes and i will try to 100% and while the combat doesnt'feel to hard some jumps sare tough but for that allow yourself to get used to the controls.