The Black Pool

kranke4ks game

Quite fun.

Roguelite, roguelike, Coop!!! Il fallait essayer! de jolis graphismes, de jolis effets dans un univers vraiment sympa mais c'est tout pour l'instant. Le jeu est tout nouveau donc il s'agirai de ne pas de l'assassiner, mais je peux dès à présent annoncer que j'ai clairement l'impression de participer à une phase de test d'un jeu en développement. Ce jeu n'est pas infini et les compétences ne changent pas vraiment. Différents pouvoirs et éléments nous sont proposés et sont sensés promettre un gameplay toujours unique en fonction des mélanges que l'on choisi. Ce jeu des éléments me rappel "SpellBreak" d'une certaine manière. Seulement la physique et les mécaniques du jeu manquent de cohérence. Peu/Pas de feeling de contact ou d'impact, quelques skills vous proposent de vous décoller du sol et le design des ennemis vous fait croire à une verticalité mais ne croyez pas pour autant que vous pourrez vous battre vraiment en l'air, jouer sur le momentum etc... Aussi incroyable que cela puisse paraître ce jeu est trop peu "skillé" pour le moment.

I wanted so badly to love this game. An action roguelike with wacky abilities, unique enemies, and a slightly weird setting - it's everything that I want in a game. Unfortunately it's marred by extremely bad balancing and poor design choices. Many abilities are just terrible or completely impractical to use, a few regular enemies are harder than the level bosses (i.e. colossus), certain maps make it hard to see or easy to get stuck, and so on. I'm really sad to give this a thumbs down, but most runs ended up being infuriating in unfun ways. ----- [i]Edit to detail my issues with various abilities.[/i] There are some fun abilities in the game. And others that I can appreciate as creative or interesting. The problem is too many skills are dull or ineffective, leading me to finish most runs unsatisfied. [b]Area attacks:[/b] Enemies move around so much and stay so spread out, if you're lucky you hit one target who leaves the area immediately. Most Area attacks are very short range or body-centered but don't do enough damage to make up for the risk of getting so close to enemies especially considering the lack of healing. Most don't work at all against flying or distant enemies, including several bosses. Super long cooldowns compound these problems. Generally I pray to get good Quick and Strong attacks because Area attacks are so useless. - Light's diameter is particularly small, plus you can't use other attacks while charging it, making it extremely difficult and risky to use. - Fire is the most annoying, its overwhelming visual effect makes it impossible to see anything. - Ice's small area and lack of DoT means you have to pray whatever you hit stands in it for it to do any damage at all. - Wind covers a nice area and its projectile actually travels, unfortunately it's so weak (even when upgraded) it's more of a utility skill for picking off scattered low-health enemies. - Terra's turrets are nice, but again their damage is so low even when heavily upgraded that they only help against the weakest of foes. [b]Quick attacks:[/b] Most are just little round projectiles that go in a single direction. They don't hit hard, it's difficult to hit enemies due to the slow projectiies, they're boring/repetitive to use, and they quickly go on cooldown. - Decay, Fire, Chaos, Ice, Terra, and Void fall into this category. - Terra is the worst, the summoning animation adds an extra click and short delay before shooting, which means in a firefight I can never be sure if my shot is going to just go or if it will just start an animation and mess with my aim and timing. - Void is by far the most effective since its homing effect means it usually hits something. It can easily be the highest damaging skill in a run but it is incredibly boring to use. [b]Strong attacks:[/b] Generally the most fun and powerful. But long cooldowns means they get limited use. - Terra's pillar is just not practical in a fight. Positioning yourself behind a stationary object to line up a shot is basically suicide. Add to that the way you have to be right next to it to hit anything above ground level, and this is probably the worst attack in the game. - Chaos boomerang is incredibly difficult to catch even when not in a fight, meaning it's really just an okay projectile attack with no upside. - Ice I had a hard time blocking attacks, with so many coming from random sides, so mostly it just felt like a projectile attack, like Chaos. [b]Dashes + Jumps:[/b] Some are better than others (especially stuff that lets you avoid damage, i.e. Fire flight, Decay invuln, Lightning teleport), but almost all are generally fun or useful. [b]Rally:[/b] Really hard to use due to boss fights requiring lots of moving around. Generally when I used a Rally, it didn't impact the fight at all because it got left behind almost immediately. As a result I can't really comment on these. Kind of a bummer. I really enjoyed a few of the abilities (Wind quick attack, Void/Light/Air strong attack) and there were others that I didn't love but were fine to use. The problem is I felt like there were too many bad ones with no way to avoid them.

Love this genre, but The Black Pool just doesn't do it for me. Some skills feel critically important; some are near useless. Every enemy is a generic sci-fi construct that shoot generic 'beams' or 'balls'. The game feels like it's lacking a lot of sound effects, so the combat feels oddly quiet and insignificant. The temporary power-ups are as temporary as they can be; I never feel like I'm getting stronger in any way. I kept trying to enjoy it but it just never became fun. Oh, and though this doesn't affect gameplay, the character models you can pick look deeply unsettling. Like 40-somethings with a child's body. It'd have been better to just have faceless, generic astronauts or something considering the rest of the aesthetics in the game.

Decent concepts, just doesn't feel very interactive with the enemies, a lot of heavy reliance on distance/evasion while elements stack. Not enough control over what abilities you get.

mush

I want to like this game but it's ROUGH. The premise is cool: think of Returnal but low budget. Cool skill combo ideas, some very original skill mechanics... But also some really underwhelming ones. Sound design is all over the place: the music is cool but the sound effects are mostly awful. Skills with cool visual effects lack punch in their audio, making them feel wimpy. Aside from that, as mentioned at the start the game is really rough. Movement is floaty and imprecise, camera does weird things often and the controls are not very responsive. All three are very important features for a roguelike. All in all, the game has good bones but I don't think the developer plans on growing it much further. I'd only advice getting this if you're starved for a new 3D action roguelite and wanna try something different. But be prepared for the jank, and get it at a sale.

Really Good Game Hidden Gem Tbh

banger of a game - love it