VELONE

[i][b]Inspired by Opus Magnum[/b][/i] is a nice way of not admitting that you copied everything from Opus Magnum but just gave it a new aesthetic. Given how blatant a copy it it is, let us compare it with it's aforementioned 'inspiration': - First of all, advertising other games from your publisher leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I would expect it from a f2p game, but not from a game I paid money for. - Whilst Opus Magnum had a story, you could skip it and get straight to the puzzles. In Velone, I couldn't skip the opening dialogue that I could not care less about, given its godawful voice acting. - Tutorials are especially important in setting up a player to learn how to play a puzzle game. In Opus Magnum, it was done perfectly. You were given a partial solution and were shown how you could complete it. In Velone, your hand is completely held through the puzzles, telling you where to place parts and what commands to use. - Opus Magnum encourages you to attempt different forms of optimisation, be it using the least resources, least area, or ignoring both and going for the fastest solution, by allowing you to save several different solutions to a single level. There is built-in functionality to save a looping gif of your solution. There's a level editor and steam workshop integration. Velone doesn't have any of these features. - Velone simply feels far less intuitive compared to Opus Magnum. Even in the first level of Velone I could not figure out why my solution was not working. The arms were not releasing the stones despite being given the 'drop' command: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797707377 TL;DR: The lack of polish and QOL in Velone compared to Opus Magnum has made this a far more frustrating experience. If you're trying to copy a good formula, you have to do it better, not just slap on a different uglier aesthetic. Refunded. I'd rather go back and replay Opus Magnum

[h1]A Bad Copy of Opus Magnum[/h1] [b]TL; DR: Not recommended at all.[/b] I'm surprised that this is a completed game, not a tech demo or something. It feels largely unpolished. The quality is bad. First and foremost: Ads I’m certain that 10/10 players will say that it is a VERY BAD IDEA to put ads in a paid game. Before the menu even shows, you are greeted with 3 ads. That’s the first impression you will get for this game. In the menu: Restarting the game (aka save wipe, hard reset) is right above exiting the game. There’s no confirmation whatsoever. If you clicked on it, even unintentionally, the only option for you is to force-quit using alt+f4. So good luck on that. More on the menu: Localisation is terrible. Phrases that nobody use are everywhere (I’m using Chinese localisation), and the control menu is not even localised. Going in to starting cutscene: Terrible voice acting, definitely not a TTS engine. But I guess it is somewhat acceptable for a low-budget game since it does not affect core gameplay. And the game is named VELONE right? So, what is VALONE in the cutscene (on a screen)? Is this the quality we are talking about? Animation feels ancient, almost like a student Flash project from 10 or so years ago Tutorial: Confusing. You are given little information as of how to really design and control the stuff. Instead, you are given a holograph that tells you to put items here and there. Program like this. Tutorial is to help you “learn”, holding hands or not. A good tutorial is supposed to teach players to solve puzzle on their own, from easy to hard. Apparently, the tutorial does that poorly. UI/UX/SFX: Hideous control. The toolbox which contains all the items you will need to complete the level is so unnecessarily large that it’s a chore to drag the items to the place covered by the toolbox. The only way to delete an object is to drag it out of the screen, which is by no means reliable. How about just right clicking? Or toggle the delete mode? And the programming is even more terrible. You must drag and drop each instruction into the panel. If you missed one rotation in the middle or start of your automation, good luck correcting that. Since there is no MOVE, or INSERT. What you have is REPLACE, so you can only drag each instruction forward one by one. UI is, as I stated above, ancient and Flash-like. Also has kind of a Cthulhu-esque vibe. (Talking about our Paul, and how disgusting the germ power plant is) But I guess it’s okay, just don’t advertise it as “relaxing and meditative”. Sound effect is… well, low-budget. Punishing gameplay: You cannot save your schematics mid-game, so that if you screw up you can just revert. Instead, what you have is an energy gauge, which slowly depletes as you place items and it’s not refilled each level. If you used up all the energy for trial-and-error, you are greeted with the powerplant. This minigame is… boring. The solution will be just trial-and-error to create a path for those germs. But you must finish it, or you cannot continue anything. Overall, the playing experience for Velone is frustrating. I personally do not recommend it. Just go buy Opus Magnum or whatever.

Oh no. This is not really inspired by Opus Magnum. This is what you get when you show someone a screenshot of Opus Magnum and say it's about puzzles, ask them to make it, then rush it out the door half finished. A very strong not recommend.

[b]TL;DR - Noooope. This thing isn't ready for release. Maybe come back in a few months.[/b] [i]To be completely honest, I haven't seen enough of Velone to write a proper review. As a huge fan of Zachtronics and Opus Magnum in particular, I was pretty excited when this popped up in my queue. I'm sad to say it's not living up to expectations. Here are a few notes from my ~2 hours' gameplay.[/i] --- - Ads on the main menu in a paid game, not a great look. This is probably the publisher's fault, but it's pretty distracting. - Art style is unsettling. Intentionally or not, the whole game feels cold and sterile. A little more color and detail in the core UI elements would go a long way. - Tutorials are vague and unhelpful. Mechanically deep games need to give the player time between lessons to practice and internalize what they've learned. Velone rushes you through a brief and incomplete description of its basic tools and then throws you to the wolves. - Programming is a serious chore. Despite containing an almost 1:1 copy of the Opus Magnum programming interface, Velone fails to recreate even half of the functionality. Instruction hotkeys (unlabeled, of course) require you to place your cursor over the desired program slot, making them practically useless. The only method of deletion is to drag things off-screen, which is tedious and unreliable. There's no visual feedback for invalid instructions or collisions between pieces. Honestly, it's all a mess in this department. - "The Palette" - this MONSTROUS menu contains all of the pieces the player needs to build their solutions. It's unlabeled, disorganized, and it takes up a whopping 1/3 of the screen, completely swallowing up anything on the board beneath it. Totally unnecessary. - Bugs, bugs, bugs. There's no way to manually save a design in progress, and backing out to the main menu (the only way to change settings, by the way) results in a deleted design about 50% of the time. Menus and game pieces are unresponsive, things get stuck on top of and under each other, and sometimes the entire UI just decides to call it quits. --- Velone is gonna need some major changes to pull me back in. I'm crossing my fingers that a few timely updates can bring it more in line with other games in the genre. For now, steer clear.

Unpolished and confusing, I'm afraid, with tutorials that do not actually explain the game. Sins that could be forgiven, perhaps, were it not for the inclusion of advertising in the menu. Advertising! I paid money for this: I should not be beset with further demands for money within such a thing. Advertising, and the experience of the thing I am made to tolerate ads for is... simply not that good. Perhaps it would have been worthwhile to spend more time with Opus Magnum to truly understand what made it Work before making a version that... does not.

Sour milk like copy-paste of opus magnum, do not buy at least until polished,fixed,playable.

I'm very into these type of games and am very sorry to let this one go, This one has terrible UI with a number of problems. Zachtronics has a history of automation games that they had evolved with the requirements of the player base. This however dont have the tools to cope up with the complexity of whats to come on latter levels. The video trailer seemed really promising and enjoyable, but I could not endure the game till that point. This game lacks a serious amount of polish before getting a retry from me. Refunding, very sadly.

For games like this, it's important to be able to create and change your designs with as little friction as possible, but a rough control scheme and poorly tacked-on systems make doing anything a chore. Positives: - Puzzle mechanics feel like a natural expansion of Opus Magnum - Consistently great art & sound design Interface issues: - Text is extremely small & has poor contrast - Default keyboard & mouse hotkeys are obtuse with no options for rebinding - Poor use of screen space (parts palette covers half the board, no labeling on programming tray icons) - Hard to remove placed objects & instructions Game issues: - Tutorials do a poor job at teaching mechanics and interactions - Energy collection sequence serves no purpose other than to be annoying There is a legitimately great game underneath the UX disaster, and I'll certainly be following updates to see how it improves in the future, but I can't justify purchasing this in its current state.

The game is reasonably fun except for a clunky interface and some bugs. In my case, the game froze twice and stopped "catching" thrown stones in certain circumstances. Opus Magnum is cleaner and more fun.

已退款 玩了大概1个半小时，目前没有找到这个游戏任何一点强过Opus Magnum的地方。 首先是核心玩法，这纯粹就是照抄Opus Magnum，完全没有任何拓展的玩法。甚至连作为Opus Magnum的替代品都做不到，整个UI设计充斥着不合理。那个把机械臂导轨之类的部件拿出来的界面直接能挡住小半个屏幕，每次我都必须先把所有东西一起拿出来放在边上然后才能再调整。编程指令的快捷键默认是反人类的F1 F2一直到F12，而且按F12还会和截图键冲突，抄都抄了为什么不把快捷键也一起抄过来呢，改成qwerasdf默认不好吗？ 然后是新手教程。这个游戏的新手教程简直是灾难，如果你是有意玩这个游戏的新手建议去玩Opus Magnum，去玩那边的新手教程。维隆系统的新手教程什么也不会教你，只会让你把机械部件摆在固定的位置，然后向编程栏里输入固定的指令，再快速的看一遍流程就下一关了，再看完3张gif以后直接会让你开始一个颇有难度的任务（主线第三个任务）。我如果没有玩过Opus Magnum估计第一关就会退款，因为我压根不知道该干嘛。 过场动画烂到离谱，本身这倒是可以理解，毕竟小成本制作。但是你至少给我一个选项让我把那震耳欲聋的开场音乐和诡异的配音声音调低点啊？我找了好久也没找到音量设置。 其他还有更多数之不尽的问题，比如作为一个付费游戏我进去就能看到三个广告。或者是完全没有关于优化流程的引导和动力。好像这个游戏鼓励的就是人们直接用第一个想到的办法莽过去，优化流程或者减少使用的部件基本上没有任何正反馈。糟糕的小游戏。每次退出游戏都没法正确保存，总会丢失很多步骤，看别的评测还有层出不穷的BUG等等。 总的来说，对于喜欢这类型游戏的老玩家，本作甚至不能作为Opus Magnum的替代品食用。对于刚接触这类游戏并且对此有些兴趣的新玩家建议去玩Opus Magnum，维隆系统完全是在浪费你的时间和金钱，打到骨折都不推荐入。