i don't even know why i'm bothering to write such a long and critical review over a less than one dollar game, but i suppose the experience was frustrating enough to motivate me to
i'll talk about the controls and the player character first. there is no tutorial prompts, or even a way to check keybinds in the settings, or in game. while taken for granted, telling the player the have to hold RMB to aim the gun at the cursor, instead of firing in the direction your moving, is a very important thing. also, the player character feels sluggish in ways that do not feel, or play well, for example, trying to switch weapons. i know were not playing a Mr john call of duty, but it still feels excessively slow, especially when the mule is barreling down on me and i would like to pull out my shotgun to use for its intended purpose. this, coupled with the fact that the act of turning around and shooting takes time and does not feel responsive, means that you easily get put into situations of "pop a flare and hope the help comes from the direction your running into in time, because the moment your stamina runs out your dead" and along with that, the weapons feel ineffectual, even beyond the intended purpose. barring the very start, the pistol can't keep up with slowing the mule down, the AR, while effective, requires you to resupply off the dead infantry, and the shotgun feels inconsistent, to say the least, there are times where it will readily reduce the mules speed, but sometimes it just eats the hit with no reduction to their speed, leading to death
second, the collision on the environment is wonky at best, i find myself getting stuck in spots clearly past the branch in the way, or caught on corners i had no idea existed, and not much in terms of visual clues to tell either, unless i had gotten stuck there and most likely, died there before. and some spots you can wiggle through in you move in a particular way, and example being the well with the snack and ammo in the graveyard, once the coffins come up, you can't get in or out from the top way, unless you wiggle and walk in a particular way.
third, the actual mule(?) itself, with which i have issues and gripes. the former problem with map geometry seemingly does not apply to Willickers, i swear I've seen him get through gaps and spots that i myself would easily get stuck on. as for player readability, that is also an issue. while i can figure and assume the the mule's max speed and acceleration go up over time, any other factors are hard to tell. if i shoot it while its stopped and it rears up, did i just "enrage" it and make it gain a chunk of speed? Does shooting it cause it to get faster? it gets skinnier the more you blow it up with barrels and shoot at it, so maybe, who knows? and the magical child grab. i understand the reason for it, its to put pressure on the player and keep them on their twos if the mule is off screen, so they don't think they're safe merely because they have distance, but when it can do this from just off the edge of the screen, and then still come running in full speed, means there are times where you can just insta-lose, especially if approached from the top or bottom
and speaking of the camera, and information given, it is severely lacking in some ways. for example, having no idea the general direction, or speed at which they're approaching, is something that i think is important to tell the player, if your going to limit their visible FoV. along with that, knowing the direction that support is coming from would be a very important to know, especially if they're the only thing standing between you and an all expenses paid trip back to to start of the timer
on that subject, in my frustrated rush to simply "go next" on the next run and mashing space, i discovered a broken and seemingly nonfunctional UI to save, a feature that might've made all the former jank more tolerable, as at least then i could save after doing the initial looting phase, saving me the time and hassle of doing that every single time and letting me focus on routing and figuring out how the mule works
honestly, i still don't quite know why i bothered to write all this up when i could've just refunded this and been on with my day, but i guess i wanted to somewhat advise people on what await them inside
