# TL;DL
- If you're game developer / game designer play this game, it's a great example of how not to make a game. You can learn a lof from this game (I'm not kidding). Learn from others' mistakes.
- If you're interested in games made with Blender game engine (UPBGE) you can try this game to see an example of such game, just... lower your expectations.
- Otherwise (if nothing from above) don't play this game.
I rate this game 0.5 out of 5:
1. interesting/fun gameplay: 0.2,
2. good sound design/music: 0.1,
3. beautiful/interesting visuals: 0.2,
4. interesting world that you want/love to explore: 0,
5. technical state: 0.
But since I want to help the developer as I know that making a game solo or with a very small team is very hard. This is why I'm writing this huge review (more on this below).
# Summary
I was following the developer on YouTube because I was interested in games that are being made with Blender game engine (UPBGE). My expectations were low but my god... Don't get me wrong, technical issues are not that bad here, it's more of a game design / level design / etc. things that make the game bad.
You can finish the game in 1-2 hours on your first playthrough. I was writing this huge review in parallel with playing the game this is why it took me more time to finish it. If the game had normal difficulty and was not trying to make itself longer (see details below) you could've finished the game in less that an hour. There's very little content in it.
Below I write about different game issues in details.
# Sound
- Chill music in loading screens / main menu does really not fit the game's mood
- Gun sounds needs to be reworked: need more clicking sounds and more punchy sounds (i.e. listen to how gun sound in shooter games made by bigger studios, at least take Fallout's energy guns as a reference). The shotgun sounds like a BB gun - very unsatisfying.
- You could've made more sound effects/filtering to the voice of the characters to hide poor sound quality and poor acting.
- It's really hard to understand what the characters are saying, they speak quite (compared to the ambient/world sounds). You should decrease the volume of all sounds and make the voice slightly louder when somebody talks (again, use other games as a reference).
- The breathing sound of the main protagonist should not sound like that. He has a helmet and the sound should be like we are in the helmet. Either remove this sound or change it. Take Stalker: Anomaly as a reference, when you wear a helmet your character makes really realistic breathing noises.
# Visuals
- Explosive barrels should stand out from the environment more (i.e. the player does not have a hint that the barrels can explode - hightlight the outline or make them more red like other games do). Some explosive barrels are even have greed color on them - no, this is not right, they are dangerous, they should be red, red is the color of danger. Look at other games that have explosive barrels as a reference.
- The game seems to have a sharpness filter enabled or something similar - it looks a little weird.
# Gameplay
- Gun reloading animations are boring. I get it, they are energy weapons, they charge or something, it fits the game's world but this is not how reloading animations should look. Reloading should be enjoyable and entertaining, I mean, you will see it really often since the game is about shooting and it will become boring really fast. Make more actions and add more details to the reloading animations, maybe add some minor variations of the reloading animation and play a random variant when needed to reload. Again, take Fallout's energy weapons as a reference, but don't focus on them too much since IMHO they are not THAT great (but better that what you have in the game).
- Hint with what buttons do what needs to be always available, I was not able to read it fully until is was hidden. Additionaly, since the game does not have options to change/see controls I was just completely lost.
- The game is intentionally made harder to be longer. I get it, you want to release the game already as you've probably spent a lot of time on it but you also want to make the game feel like a game and not like some cool demo, but... there's really no other good choice for you, sorry, a lot of players hate when developers make the game intentionally longer to compensate for lack of content. This game does that by making all enemies have a lot of HP - not good, makes the game very repetitive and boring.
- Energy guns that don't have ammo are not fun. IMHO this is because you don't care about ammo and thus don't care if you aim good or bad - you just shoot and that's it. Again, look at Fallout's energy guns - they have ammo and you need to care about it.
- There are only 2-3 types of usual enemies: walking robots, drones and kamikaze drones (that only appear near to the end of the game). This is your enemies for the whole game and it's very boring.
- The progression is very slow, I walk with just a pistol for a very long time. Yes you give me a grenade but only 1, moreover I spend it to throw it as a test (I though the game actually wants me to do this - to throw it as a test).
- I can climb on some (very) high obstacles (marked with little purple color) but can't do the same thing for lower obstacles that I can clearly climb on - dissonance, ruins the immersion. In some cases you have to get some space between you and the obstacle then run towards the obstacle and jump in order to climb on it - very unintuitive. Either think of a better way to do vertical gameplay or make a general climbing system (this one will be the best).
- The AI uses just one strategy: "go to player and shoot" even if the AI does not see the player it will go exactly where the player is - this, again, ruins the immersion. Instead, try the following strategy (at least): make the AI have 2 states: "searching" and "attacking". First, the AI should look for the player, then when found, attack the player. When the player goes out of sight (hides behind something) the AI should go to the last place where the player was (when the AI saw the player) and then enter the searching state and so on. For AI I recommend playing F.E.A.R. (2005) and learning about its AI and also, from the recent thing I played, play Trepang2's demo on Steam, this game also seems to have good AI.
- You can't crouch. How I'm supposed to take cover?
- The X-Ray can show you some hints on the level, I'm not sure this was in the tutorial as I've found it completely by myself. You need to have a point in the game that requires the usage of this X-Ray to teach the player.
- The game does not reward you killing the enemies. You can shoot evil robots or just run passed them - no difference, this is a problem. What's the point of killing them when I can just speedrun the whole level, why waste my time? I mean it's fun for the first 5 minutes but not more. If the game had limited ammo on your guns, headshot hits were making more damage, you could've used it and make the robots drop ammo. This will force the player to guess: "Will I have enough ammo for the boss/big enemy? Maybe I need to aim better and kill some robots to get some ammo" - this starts to feel like an interesting/fun game.
- You can't reload the gun when you want, it will be reloaded automatically when there are no "bullets" or when the gun has not that much bullets left (only then you can hit R to reload). Let me reload the gun, maybe I'm in the cover and I want to reload the gun now and not when I will get out of the cover.
- Level are very short.
- We get new weapons "from the air", literally, you are just given new weapons out of nowere. This breaks the immersion. The process of getting new weapons needs to be built into the plot/gameplay. Give it as a reward for something.
... this is only 1/3 of the review, Steam limits the size of the review somewhere here I will try to continue my review in the comments ...
