itch.io

i see you have done a great job fixing the AI. their attacks didn't miss, and i saw you added a failsafe so that they skip their turn after a while if their path is blocked.

i love your characters and writing, they always keep me hooked

the keep is HUGE. this added to the fact that running is comparatively slow and points of reference are not abundant makes it very easy to get lost. eventually i was tasked with entering the baths to investigate, but even after talking to the employee i was unable to actually enter the baths themselves.

i understand not wanting to add skyrim style quest compasses and arrows, but if you want players to not get lost then you need to hide more hints, both in how you decorate the exteriors to subtly "guide" them in the right direction, but also npcs that tell you where to find important places when you talk to them

this could be partly mitigated by a more fleshed out journal that actually summarizes the current objective and how to reach it, but right now it seems more focused on archiving completed missions (useless)

combat wise, since i played similar games in the past i figured out that attacking from behind makes my attacks more accurate and waiting restores my mp, but neither is immediately intuitive. it needs to be communicated to the player

occasionally i got stuck while maneuvering around an enemy, player collision seems very finnicky overall

shortly after, after two or three "rooms"

not a big fan of bullet hells. they make the player feel weak and helpless
this is not helped by the fact that the range of the gun is so limited that it doesn't even reach half of the width of the arena, so i shoot enemies and my bullets just evaporate halfway through, though i understand the balance reasoning to prevent cheesing from a distance
i don't really like how the music stops when you receive damage. i get it, you need to communicate to the player that they got hit, but it doesn't SOUND good. it stops the flow

i was about to complain about the fact that i CAN'T SEE SHIT, but i'm glad you fixed it in the latest build. 
i liked the feeling of boosting around, but the primary weapon feels kinda wimpy, and for a secondary i would expect a bazooka or some other explosive device. i would just turn the current secondary weapon into the primary and buff enemy health accordingly

i actually liked this one! it's interesting to see the perspective of point based competitive fighting games instead of the usual street fighter tekken style ones.
two nitpicks: first of all, i would make the transition between scoring a point and starting the next match a bit faster, there's some dead waiting time in between
also, at one point we both hit each other at the same exact time and both fell to the ground, but the enemy got an IPPON and i got nothing. somewhat confusing

the controls broke after a short while. the character just stopped rotating with the mouse, making the game essentially unplayable. did you test playing with keyboard and mouse?

the art and juice took a huge step up. great job
the second level felt pretty long. i think it would be better to start with with shorter, easier levels and get progressively harder later on
there are SO MANY SPIKES in the third level. you seem to go for the speed game angle, but having to carefully navigate between so many obstacles kinda forces players to move more slowly to avoid dying in two hits. this was mitigated by sonic since you can't really die so long as you have a coin, but here it felt more frustrating. personally, zooming through levels super fast while shooting enemies felt more fun than having to painstakingly navigate through the spikes hell, which kinda reminded me of old school rayman and not in a good way.

what's the point of the extra cameras
some meshes seem flipped so you can't see them but still collide with them?
the jump is way too big compared to how small the gaps are
it really needs a landing animation
at this point i just assume you are making shitposts on purpose

i like the idea of travelling from planet to planet, but we are yet again in "what the fuck do i do" territory. i assigned two guys to a system, skipped to the next turn, had some failures, some successes but i don't have any idea what to do next. i tried moving to another system but couldn't assign anybody to it

i loved it. took me a while to figure out that the bells were at the top rather than at the bottom though, they aren't super visibile unless you know what to look for
the game is relatively hard, so being brought back to level 0 after dying in level 1 felt somewhat unfair
in general, some things need to be better communicated to the player, like how much time you have left

the walking speed feels kinda slow.
the walking sfx is somewhat loud, repetitive and annoying

please make the cutscenes skippable, this makes it really hard to play through multiple times.
also add a restart button in the pause menu
some of the cars had the "plant tracker" collision working in some places and some in others. it felt a bit inconsistent
the vr training seems pretty cool
melee combat seems pretty overpowered. you can just run up to people and beat the living shit out of them, I AM THE MASTER OF STEALTH. 
u is a somewhat unintuitive keybind for the mission objectives

pressing esc should let me close the pause menu.
battles felt like a slog. both the enemies AND the player have way too much health
i'm not fond of the neon fuchsia color scheme personally
the boss died as soon as his first wave of attacks was done, it felt underwhelming compared to the brutal gauntlet to reach him

solid work.

small nitpick: i think the right mouse click would be more intuitive for placing items on the ground for crafting

i love the movement, gun feel and the "trail ghost" effect that follows you. you are really good at 2d juice

nitpick: i don't see why i wouldn't want to pick up the gun. why not just equipping it on touching it rather than having to grab it manually?

unironically a cool gimmick. this better be coming back for dd70, OR ELSE!

couldn't figure out how to open the shed door. it looked like there was some piece of wood stuck behind it and it didn't budge beyond a certain amount
the camera lag feels awful, please turn it off by default

possibly the heaviest demo i tried so far. after a few seconds my pc fan was spinning like crazy and the room even smelled like burning.

worth it

cool game. some nitpicks:
default audio was very high. even after lowering it to near minimum menu sfx were pretty loud
sometimes you interact with things with E, sometimes with F? small inconsistence
i completely missed that i had to press C to detonate a charge and i had to look it up in the key bind
at some point i ran out of pistol magazines but i was unable to pick up more? like i did find some but when i tried to grab the pickup it just didn't.
if i destroy all the parts surrounding a wood piece i would expect that piece to be destroyed as well rather than float in the air

possibly the lamest jump i have ever seen. it's low, slow and it has a long wind up, making it useless at best and annoying at worst. also, not being able to even partially redirect the fall mid air is a deliberate choice that CAN work in some domains, but it's very restrictive and can exacerbate further the clunkyness 
the controls are completely alien. j, k and q? have you ever played a third person shooter in your life?
there's a lot of effort put into the aesthetics and vibes side of things, but if the fundamental arcade loops fails then people will not stick for long. i cleared a few rooms but you should focus a lot more on the arcade feel if you want it to be fun. both movement and shooting need to be fast and reactive, don't be afraid to sacrifice realism for their sake.

somewhat unappealing imho. brown pieces over a brown background don't really pop much.
also, even the most basic enemies felt like they had too much HP, especially for the very first floor
to hook players i feel like the beginning should progress faster with easy loot and wins and then progressively raise the difficulty later
in all honesty the entire "tetris but you are not fully in control" thing kind of annoyed me, especially when an enemy started transforming my own pieces right before they landed, ruining my strategy and making all my planning and reflexes worthless

i played the day one version, and it was like, 5 seconds long with one enemy.
i redownloaded it now, and it had a more fleshed out level, but still very short
i'm watching the youtube clip now and it's longer than either of them?
how many versions of laboratory have you made
does this game even exist
is it personalized like mario 64
i'm so confused

game's great. i love how the shotgun and gatling gun feel.
thank god you haven't implemented dying yet, otherwise this game would have been brutally hard. 10 hp? no health drops? REALLY?
now some nitpicking:
i didn't personally grew up with old pc games, so using numbers to change weapons never made any sense to me whatsoever. please allow players to cycle between the equipped slots with the scroll wheel
also, pressing I to open the inventory is very uncomfortable in WASD games. let us use tab to open and close it
game ran perfectly fine even with a billion enemies on screen on my 3060 w10

it took me a LONG time to figure out how to do this jump. eventually i had to look up footage on youtube and i learned that there's a drill attack and a ground pound move, but there was really no in game tutorial mentioning them. 
C is an awful default keybind for shooting. when games are controlled with arrow keys, the default shoot button is usually Z or X
while i was fiddling with the pause menu i pressed I and i found myself fighting against a boss? i don't think this was intended for the players, not this way at least
the art is genuinely amazing, some of the best i have ever seen, but the first level of a game should introduce the mechanics to the players step by step, while this one was actually pretty punishing, with multiple enemies and even a chain of ground pound jumps over a chasm which isn't exactly beginner friendly 

i also got filtered by the red bugs ambush. i tried a bunch of skills but they seem detrimental, since the characters just spin in place for a while and then get separated and swarmed.
it also took me a while to realize i actually had to click on the missiles to use them, i defeated the first 4 bugs without any missiles and it was a slog
your game looks amazing btw, i can't wait to see more of it

had some issues with pathfinding. when you lock into tanks that are behind walls, the units will just kinda freeze in place, not knowing where to go to reach it

is this mgs1
because if it is i'm interested

finally a good game.
let's begin with the fact that i have no idea how to do anything in the hangar. i just clicked deploy and started a mission
the tank controls in a mech are kinda weird but i definitely see the appeal
the laser felt very wimpy, it doesn't have the right PUNCH you know
if you are gonna make fuck huge levels, either give me a fast movement option to reach the action quickly, or at least let us spawn closer to the enemies, as it is it's a long walk before any shooting
i was delighted to see you included a first person view option, now that's some kino right there
the vertical boost is so slow that it basically just turns you into a big target while priming and hovering. if you want to add vertical mobility, might i suggest playing HAWKEN™ ?
i am definitely keeping an eye on this one

it looked very unique and interesting from the screenshots but i feel like the gimmick gets tiring after a while
after you get used to the crazy old dall-e AI art, all you are left is a game that intentionally looks as bad as possible
i can see it potentially interesting as like, one trashlands themed world part of a larger traditional game, but i don't know if i would want to play an entire game like this
the combat was not great because enemies don't really telegraph their attacks, which would work if the player had ranged attacks, but in a melee game you really need to let the player know when they are about to receive damage, because right now you are forced to get close to deal damage to them, which leads to receiving tons of damage you can't really avoid
had a weird bug after sleeping in a bed and getting up immediately right before the fade to black finished
after waking up the character model was twisted in a weird way which made the rest of the game barely playable
i wasn't able to find the guy watching tv either
btw please add audio settings and a pause menu to quit to desktop for the next build

the big open world is ambitious but felt very disorienting.
at first i just beelined towards the town completely ignoring the walkable path, so i eventually hit an invisible wall and missed the travel to town prompt
in town i talked to the woman in the shop about cursed clothes to recover, i roamed around the town until i found a "laboratory ship" prompt, there i found some cursed items but after equipping the blindfold i essentially softlocked myself, because after getting back to town i was unable to find my way back to the shop or anywhere else, really. 
if you are going for the big open world route might as well add a skyrim like compass to guide towards the next objective
the menuing is kind of weird. it took me a while to realize i had to HOLD f to pick up the cheese, and later during the dialog sometimes you have to press space to progress, and sometimes F to pick a dialog option, i would just use E for both personally

hard as balls. i eventually got past the zombies and the harpies, but it's trial and error basically. if you were trying to recapture the feeling of old GnG arcade games you 100% succeeded
ONE GUY?? NO CONTINUES???? NOT EVEN A CHECKPOINT??????????

i like the aesthetic, and the controls were pretty interesting.

just make a sword the initial default weapon, i don't wanna fight with a table's leg.
i noticed that if you have a slight elevation disadvantage enemies struggle to hit you, because they just swing above your head
menuing and controls are still kinda weird. why would i want to grab a single ducat instead of all of them? if i press E with a chest open, i would expect the default to be grab everything.
i like that you are adding lore and dialogue, the beginning is taking shape
 in a dialogue, i would also expect E (or space or whatever you want your default keybind to be) to pick by default the first dialogue option. 
the combat does not really work without iframes imho. if you want it to be hard le dark souls you need to give the player some proper tools to defend themselves. right now it kinda feels more like skyrim, except skyrim works because the player is usually overpowered compared to the enemies, here everyone can beat the shit out of you and there's swarms of them
the stagger mechanic is just very punishing. you are basically being punished for being bad at the game, which leads you to being left open and receive even more damage, potentially leading even to stunlock chains where the player can't do shit, not even dodge since the dodge clearly has no iframes so it might as well not exist. 

i got filtered by the vagrant trainer. even after buffing myself with magic crystals, it just outhealed the damage i did to him via regeneration. can you even catch more demons yet?

i figured i needed to grind more against enemies in the safari crackhouse, but they are even stronger
now i'm looking at haporal's playthrough, and apparently i completely missed where trophies are equipped. i think you should telegraph more to the player how important they are
also, since the sewer is so dark, i also missed the road to the bottom left next to the vagrant trainer, so i missed on the extra exp from defeating all those rats

great concept. tense, and rewarding
can't really think of any complaints honestly. the music is a bit loud by default, that's it. 
maybe skeleton bones should have a bigger "swing" to them for crowd control? right now it's pretty easy to get overwhelmed by numbers, which incentivizes kiting tactics, which aren't exatly ideal. if skeleton bones were buffed a bit (more reach, uses etc) it could help push the player do a more aggressive approach

i eventually got used to the diagonal shooting and started liking it and i like the lever puzzles, but later there were some levels with both lasers and enemies that were pretty annoying, because a stray bullet can just bounce on the wrong thing and kill you at the wrong time.
sound is weird, it feels like you are mimicing the mono channel of old electronics so that sfx kind of override each other because only one sound can play at any given time, but it honestly does not sound good. sometimes being TOO retro has its detriments
nice aesthetic, i enjoyed it

yes there is actually already a "coming soon" steam page!

still a long way to go though

the text at the beginning isn't great as a tutorial substitute. i eventually learned that STG means stratagem and you can use camps to heal there, but i imagine a lot of people are going to skim through the text without really assimilating the instructions.
the rogue isn't really any good against most enemies, the cleric is just so much more useful
why do you even have infinite steps before being in "danger"? why not let enemies roam the map as well? 
i love the music choices, but the combat music by default is a bit loud
one last nitpick, the "buttons" to select what enemies to target with an attack are deceptively small, often i feel like i clicked correctly but i pretty much have to click at their center to register the input, i would just make the actual buttons a bit larger so that they work even if i click on the area of the enemy rather than specifically on the target overlay thingy

make the default music volume MUCH lower, i'm glad i had the option to lower it but before doing so i was pretty much deafened lol
i find the idea of pressing enter to advance text in a VN kind of confusing. most of them use the left mouse button to do so
the constant permanence of the previous lines of text as the cutscene progresses is kind of confusing. VNs usually have a log mechanic that allows you to read the previous dialogs, while only showing the currently spoken lines at any given time
the chaotic nature of the cutscene system also makes it hard to understand who's actually talking at any given time
some typos here and there, like "what are the task?" 
please add a button to close the game, i was genuinely surprised of having to open the taskbar to end the process when the demo was done lol
it kind of feels like a remake of your original game? why are you remaking it from scratch? i feel like you had reached some solid foundations back then, i would have just expanded that with the new stuff 

the checkpoint system seems pretty punishing. i played at the highest difficulty, reached the boss of the third level, quickly lost my last life and i immediately found myself at the very beginning of the stage, ragequit inducing stuff.
i'm not super fond of the second level, it seems pretty linear and repetitive, unlike the third one which is much more interesting
i still think the default keybindings are weird. having to press V to kick and left control to throw the weapon felt very unnatural. i rebinded them to RMB for kick and MMB for throwing and it felt much better
the guys with the guns still feel super unfair. i was already prepared for them but they shoot at you way too quickly and accurately, which pretty much guarantees a ohko at that difficulty