Just gave it a try

[Zeebob]

Gotta say, this game caught my interest since when I was a kid I really enjoyed watching videos of a Nintendo wii game called Monster Lab. It had the same premise but more watered down and cartoony, with a pokemon-esque battle mechanic.

Creature Lab has a neat premise, and I feel like there's something fun wrapped up in here, but there are a few issues that kinda detract from the experience.

1. Off the bat there were noticeable lag/stutter issues. It could be my set up, but I've played more complicated complete games that ran smoother. Mainly when you enter and exit rooms, and whenever you mess around with the potion stands to make mutagens.

2. A lot of clutter in the lab areas. You need to grab flasks to make your mutagens, but there are flasks everywhere, the problem is most of them are static props. the ones that you can hold kinda get lost in the mess when you lay them down.

3. The Mutagen system is kinda not fun. The whole process of looking at the ingredients with a microscope, mixing, injecting, is all novel, but I feel it might get tiresome based on how done I was with it in the demo.

Maybe I'm not a puzzle/chemistry guy, but when the tutorial tasked me making a mutagen on my own, I zoned out, and kinda dreaded learning how all the symbols worked when I realised certain combos of ingredients would churn out unusable sludge. Luckily I guessed that the 4 unique chemicals mixed together would prob give me what I needed.

I think if you really are set on the symbols and everything, then you should give the player a way to see what properties their flask has after they've thrown it on the microscope. I really don't know what I'm looking for in the mutagen mixing system, but I can only think of BOTW's cooking mechanics where you just throw whatever you find in a pot and yield something...some times usable, sometimes really good, or other times inedible. I usually remembered the recipes when I got something good, but with flasks of coloured liquid I just kinda go blank.

4. Sound effects and Lighting. I know it's a demo so I don't really care, but the weird siren from outside the lab that would play felt like it was doing it too much. Also the stasis chamber doors having no sound, mixed with how dark that back room is, left me clicking the open/close button multiple times thinking the chamber was bugged. It was opening, but the glass door is so clear that in the dark you barely see it move.

5. The final part of the tutorial where you chooses a mission to spread panic in the city, the animated cut scene took quite a while to load. The screen was just black with no loading icon or anything. I almost thought it crashed, then I got jump scared by my own monster when the scene finally pulled through. I'm half wondering if it was just because the end of the tutorial was a linked to the scene.

I'm still pretty interested in the turn out of this game, there's potential to be really weird and gruesome. I like the idea of sending your monsters out to do your bidding. Maybe it could be more involved if you could read news stories of recent missions or see news reports?

[marek.grzywacz]

Hi,

Will try to answer all points.

1. The full game is much more optimized (and tested out) than the old demo, so such issues should be gone.

2. We have considered this and in full game substances spawn only on dedicated shelves, and the rest is props. So you will never have to seek anything in-between props.

3. In the full game you have a helping hand here. We have a poster on the lab wall that details all elements and what they do. We also have Substance Encylopedia which you can use to replicate the mutagens and elixirs you created. There is also the FAQ you can always check if you need to understand some mechanics better.

4. Afaik the siren is gone in the full game :D so not only you found it irritating. We have also added many sounds and also made the back section of the lab bit brighter.

5. This part of tutorial is gone - the whole tutorial was revised and the animation was thrown out for the full game.

As for news, you actually get news of your recent story progress sometimes on the TV.