Thanks for a great Indie game (and some tips for people with in-game trouble).

[Wurstobier]

Tried this game for free, bought it before the free time ran out. The athmosphere is effing great. The music fits nicely. The graphics is exactly right for the athmosphere (Shadowrun / Ghost-In-The-Shell / Bladerunner...).

- Yes, it is *very* dark most of the time. That's what E.Y.E vision implant is for. This, Medkit, and Motra are the only things I would recommend to unlock immediately (as soon as you have the cash and the materials.)

- Yes, sometimes you die for no reason on non-mission-maps. I would say it is a map glitch and I don't know many games where that DOESN'T happen once in a while.
- No, there is in my opinion NO STORY MAP YOU CAN'T COMPLETE with a default character with no upgrades, *as long as you choose the right tools for the job*. On some of them you might die a lot if you don't (HQ or Mars).
- Things made of iron (Sentries, Interceptors, effing huge Cyberdemons) need anti-armor weapons. You have one (TRK-AD). Just saying.

For example, this is how I played the entire game through (the first time around):

WARNING, If you want to figure stuff out for yourself DO NOT READ PAST HERE:

- Use polycloning. It is there to be used, it is a default skill. The clones will (try to) guard your ♥♥♥ while you hack.
- Use the alchemy skill until you have the medkit. It is a default skill you have from the beginning. Use it on dropped weapons or ammo clips and it will give you health at the expence of energy (and the drop). You can use it at a distance (aim at clip with Bosco, use skill.)
- Duck and cover! Seriously, standing around in the open SHOULD get you killed.
- This, your trusty BOSCO, your sword, and medium or heavy armor will keep you alive for all but the last 3-4 maps of the game (starting on Sulaco you might want to think about something stronger).
- Hack sentries. You can carry them around and they'll shoot stuff for you.
- If you are too lazy to hack sentries, bring a TRK with you. It one-hits them. (You will probably want to unlock Motra as a replacement for the BOSCO if you do that a lot though.)
- on Sulaco, use Sulfatum (the minigun). Motra on your hip helps (you can zoom and shoot pesky Synicles) but isn't strictly necessary.
- on Mars, use TRK AD, take as many clips with you as you can carry, and maybe a HS010 as a backup in the hip holster (or unlock Motra). (Deus Ex sometimes need a full TRK clip to the head before they die...)

Oh and

- DO NOT JUMP DOWN PLACES UNLESS YOU KNOW THIS SPOT IS SAFE. There are ladders everywhere you actually want to go...

- As for Hacking problems.. Just train on the Banking machines in New Eden. There are a couple of combinations that work every time (and possibly shouldn't...):
- Whatever you press, wait until your load bar is empty again before pressing anything again!
- Mask, Mask (until enemy Attack Value < 37), Attack, rinse repeat. When you are not doing any damage (because your own Attack is 0), use Overflow, Attack, then go back to Mask until his Attack value is 0 again.
- If you get attacked or your own Cyber HP gets too low because you misclicked... just close the hacking interface, kill whatever is bothering you, and start hacking again.

It worked for me on almost anything that is not completely über (Jian soldiers on Mars have twice the Cyber HP you have and hack you back within about 5 seconds).

[Wurstobier]

Oh and last but not least, Things that really suck about this otherwise great game (in the order that people will hit them, not necessarily the order of annoyance).

1. "Watch the tutorial XYZ" messages, especially since some of them mention non-existing tutorials.

2. FEnglish. Guys, you really might want to hire someone to proof-read that. You had the time to build all that detail, the music, the armors, the NPC AI, your own spoken language, and then you're too cheap to do a professional english translation? :-/

3. If you have two characters, logging in with the second one destroys the first character's quick action menu (it still appears correctly on the Actions screen, but pressing C shows an empty menu - the only solution seems to be to reconfigure the menu.)

4. Falls to death like the "Falltraps" on the Mars Arena map giving you a Mortal Wound EVERY TIME. That is crazy, especially since it takes a LONG time to even get to researching Biogen1-5, the traps are almost invisible and there is no way to know things like that even exist.

5. Messages that don't appear in message history. There are quite a few on Sulaco which you just will never see if you happen to be re-arming yourself at that moment.

[Alien Mc Beal]

1. There are few watch tutorial messages and they are only displayed in the beginning of the game. So we also would prefer to do not display them but it a hint for players who doesn’t know their existence. Concerning the non-existing tutorials I need to have a look on that, because I was not aware.

2. I partially agree. You are right the translation is not really fine even if the “French touch” in it has been enjoyed by some people I can perfectly understand it can disappoint and should be better. So the game has been developed with a really tiny budget (self-funded and here no one have many money). So the lack of fund is clearly responsible for that as we were not able to make ourselves a correct job on this point.

3. It is known bug, we have to find a way to fix it.

4. It is intended. Through PVP you can earn many XP but can also lose a lot. It is a kind of bet and you can play with another avatar if you don’t want to bet on your main avatar. Plus there are not many traps.

5. Thanks for the info.

Another thing, when you say “- Yes, sometimes you die for no reason on non-mission-maps. I would say it is a map glitch and I don't know many games where that DOESN'T happen once in a while.”
Please could you tell me more about that, I am unsure to understand.

[Wurstobier]

OK on everything except 4 -- the same traps exist in Solo mode on those maps, ie in PvE mode... It would be good to know that they exist before gathering 2 Headtraumas (somehow, the lowest Mortal Wounds almost never occur)

As for dieing for no reason: actually, I meant to say "on mission maps".
- Sometimes when you jump off things that are otherwise easy to jump off of, in roughly the same spot, you just die with "You have been killed by a mysterious thing". Happened at least twice in Forgotten Center. jumping off the catwalk where the NPC you can talk into suicide is -- but I successfully jumped off it numerous times, as well.
- On Mars I just died _walking_ a couple of minutes ago, at the beginning of the mission with "you have been killed by a mysterious thing" message -- in front of the stairs up to the "Reach" waypoint.

[Wurstobier]

PS
I am sincirely impressed that you could do THIS MUCH artwork and music on a low budget. Would have thought it is a lot harder to find good artists than a native english speaker.

BTW I don't mind the language quirks in the dialogs. Those do add to the atmosphere in places. What I do mind, are language problems on the Information terminals, tutorials, mission texts and instructions, because they make the player's life unnecessarily harder.

By the way of language and instructions: another point of improvement -- some mission objectives are just too short to be usefull. "Kill the deus ex" is perfect. However "Recover the merchandise" only starts making sense, once you've done it at least once and know what to expect -- especially since you need to be close to the guy to see him. I'd find "Find guy X and retrieve the merchandise" more useful. But that's just polish.

[Wurstobier]

Mindjacker, you can always "unplug" (close the interface) before you run out of Cyber-HP... (Well, *almost* always ;-) My hacking adventures so far gave me three "smilies", a set of broken legs and one instant death.)

BTW hacking yourself back gets rid of the overlay and the energy drain.

And yeah, just noticed ducking/energy stuff a couple of hours ago. Great thing. Helps a ton.

[Alien Mc Beal]

You are right, I omitted the traps are also present in the mission version of the map. But I think we might be really bad and dirty humans because we are really think it is a good idea to let them as deathly tricky trap.

Thanks for the explanation concerning the dying for no reasons, I can see what you are speaking about. In a first time I thought you were died suddenly without any reason. But actually, it is more die for a reason (like falling somewhere for example) and a message told that your death is mysterious.

I can confirm it is also very hard to find good artist. We have had the luck to be able to create a good team for the artistic assets.

Also thanks for your feedbacks concerning the mission objectives, what you said makes sense to me.

[Wurstobier]

Thanks for listening to comments :-)

I think I am not expressing myself clearly -- I am perfectly OK with the traps being *there*. I am NOT ok with the facts mentioned below, because I think it makes a bad impression on the player, because given the facts below a player that falls into one will think "damn, stupid buggy game engine". Given a warning, all he can think is "well, I've been warned, so it's my own fault".

Here's why I think a warning is necessary:
a) even WHEN you walk into a trap, there seems to be no indication that it is an intentional trap and not a glitch (you have to either die in the same place a second time or actually creep up to it and look down to see that yes, it is a trap),
b) glitches like that actually seem to exist in the game, so the trap _feels_ like exactly that sort of glitch the first time you fall into one -- e.g. on the bandit ship you can die the same way actually _jumping down_ one of the hatches instead of using the ladder. (Or you can just jump down in the same spot five times in a row and be perfectly fine.)
c) they give you a mortal wound every time you walk into one and
d) there is very, very little information on mortal wounds beforehand, especially on how hard they are to get rid of.

In fact you say in several places that "death has practically no consequences", so the way a normal player is going to discover that he IS paying for every death is by getting a mortal wound, and looking them up afterwards (or accidentally stumbling onto the "mortal wounds" screen), ie you cripple your main character first, and *then* find out that you could've avoided it by being more careful. That just feels unnecessarily annoying, especially since there is a very easy solution: A warning like "Watch out for traps, they can cause permanent injuries" or similar. The best place to put it would be in the conversation with the "special missions" guy, which mostly lacks dialogue anyway -- but even in a MOTD it would help a lot

(but the MOTDs are a little too random to put *necessary* information in there -- e.g. the first time I have seen the "ducking recovers more energy" tip was _on the loading screen to the "outer limits"_, ie after finishing every single mission in the game -- which was of course after I had already discovered that on my own...)