Anyone else feel like the demo was kinda predatory?

[Derp]

For some background info I went into this after looking at the demo and looking at the marketing material, also do note i prioritise gameplay over everything else, if the gameplay is bad no matter how pretty the game is it would not redeem it in my eyes

the demo felt good, the aesthetics was good, sound design, artstyle, world building, all of it looked great, i really liked it all, the demo gave the impression of a fun game, a roguelite where you had to juggle dungeon crawling and making sure that your followers were loyal, well fed and healthy, needing a good mix of both to complete the game. That overal sounds like a interesting gameplay loop, i was genuinely excited to see the rest of the game it looked like a well polished thing that someone put heart and soul into.

Same with the marketing, it looked cool, it made me want to know more about this world i liked it a ton.


....But then i forked over my $20, as soon as i finished the demo portion i encountered my first soft lock and had to save and reload, i thought perhaps it was a fluke but later on i came to see that it truly wasnt. And then i ran the dungeon for a 2nd time and realised the demo run wasnt just a tutorial short starter dungeon to get you into the feel of things, all of the dungeons were like that, they were all incredibly short, obviously i pushed on, hoping the second zone would be longer but it too was not. In addition to that things were starting to bug out in my base, followers would be uninteractable, unable to level, a bunch of buildings seemed to be ghosts as the followers just didnt acknowledge their existence, the commandments were usually not balanced with one option being way better than the other, and the reasons to actually care for your cult grow lesser and lesser as you quickly max out your perks and u start getting too many cultists for u to actually micromanage them all as well as get wealthy to the point you dont even need them for that anymore.

I keeped pushing on through this game hoping it would get better but it just got worse and worse and worse as i progressed, when i finished it i was left with a sense of 'what? thats it? surely not? that wasnt good at all:(((( '.

Where the demo felt like a ton of love and passion and care was put into making it, the rest of the game felt like whoever working on it was on a strict deadline, underpaid, and so tired that they just submitted whatever half baked thing they had on hand cus they couldnt stand looking at it anymore and that makes me so damn sad :(((

i feel so lied to by the marketing and especially the demo, it felt like they put everything into the demo and then haphazardly put everything else together afterwards so they could sell it

[OG]

I feel the same. The game isn't bad, but not what I thought it'd be. It's a minor thing but you can see by the Follower Forms. 12 in 1st zone, 12 in 2nd, 6 in 3rd, 3 in 4th. It's like they were just like frick it we done.

[Derp]

Originally posted by OG:

I feel the same. The game isn't bad, but not what I thought it'd be. It's a minor thing but you can see by the Follower Forms. 12 in 1st zone, 12 in 2nd, 6 in 3rd, 3 in 4th. It's like they were just like frick it we done.

Yea the effort put into the demo and full game is jarring , was this a pump and dump? Is this developer/publisher known for this sort thing? Did we all just get scammed? The drop off in quality immediately after the demo just feels too big for this to be some sort of accident to me and if it wasnt a scam what the hell happened here?

[Derp]

I feel like im reexperiencing the launch of fnaf security breach, with all the cool art, grand promises and general hype for the game being replaced with a sense of confusion and sadness after actually playing it and realising the only thing that pulled through was the art and everything else just wasnt there or was broken/cut

[Rafdanero]

Yes, totally. The demo misrepresented the core game loop, and the marketing used "roguelike" as a gimmick to hype it up.

[Jeff]

I didn't play the demo but I knew what I was getting myself into and have enjoyed it for what it's worth.

The roguelike tag can be debated forever if people want, it does lack a good deal of replayability because the first hour of the game is basically a tutorial making it a slog for anyone who wants to repeat it (especially streamers). The majority of events are scripted and happen at exactly the same time every time you play.

What is is though is a fun game that has a few bugs which seem to be getting fixed rapidly. I'm glad I bought it.

[meshpet]

yea while I like it, it definitively isn't a roguelike. Most of the dungeons are just super linear and I find myself spending more time with the cult then doing them because I can't leave long enough before everyone starts starving or gets sick. I feel like there's a bunch of things in the game that are not fleshed out or just pointless as well. Also I have a ton of followers just standing around since only one can do something like tend a whole farm. It's a good base but i hope they add more to it.

[Derp]

Originally posted by Jeff:

I didn't play the demo but I knew what I was getting myself into and have enjoyed it for what it's worth.

The roguelike tag can be debated forever if people want, it does lack a good deal of replayability because the first hour of the game is basically a tutorial making it a slog for anyone who wants to repeat it (especially streamers). The majority of events are scripted and happen at exactly the same time every time you play.

What is is though is a fun game that has a few bugs which seem to be getting fixed rapidly. I'm glad I bought it.

This game does fit the action roguelite tag, u have dungeons to crawl through and the obvious tarot cards and random weapons and spells u use in it, and every run rewards you with resources that u could use to improve your odds in the next, thats textbook action roguelite

What i feel cheated/lied to about is the quality of the full game, the demo gave the impression that it had way more polish and content than it actually did. When going through the 1st dungeon in the demo, youre under the impression that this is the tutorial meant to teach you the basics of dungeons in this game, you expect what comes next to be more complex and bigger because why would the whole game be exactly the same as the tutorial? But it wasnt, dungeons stayed mostly the same, nothing new was introduced in further dungeons, the length of each. Dungeon was still equally short.

Same can be said about the town management portion, demo gave us the impression that it was really really important to take care of your cult, that its a core part of the game, but in actuality they didn't even bother to balance the perks you could give to the cult, many times u could immediately tell that 1 perks way better than its counterpart, and theres so many ways that u could just circumvent putting in effort here that its clear they didn't care about it.

Im miffed because they ended the demo literally right before these cracks start to show, right before u can notice the shallowness, right before u realise building is a pain in the ass on keyboard, right before a lack of a proper way to look after your followers as a whole becomes a problem, right before the bugs start to show

You can say its my fault for making these assumptions but at the same time it really feels like they delibrately led us on

[Jeff]

Yeah that's why I don't play demos anymore.

A common problem with game design is the first 90% of the game takes 10% of the total time to develop. So yes, they can have a well polished demo but polishing the entire game several times over tends to be difficult to fund. Time is the enemy and they have to wrestle with having a job vs putting a perfect product out.

[Virgil]

I do feel a little deceived by the marketing that went into this game. I also have to wonder what the hell the streamers were all thinking with hype titles like "IS THIS THE NEW ISAAC?" and "ROGUELITE GOTY??" type stuff. I honestly have to believe they were paid, though I could be wrong about that. I had fun up to about 10 hours or so and will probably play it off and on since I bought it and would like to see what happens maybe in six to twelve months with updates and patches, but for right now I just don't think it holds enough depth to be my kind of game.

Don't get me wrong, I don't ever watch streamers on a regular basis (didn't even know about this game until about a week before release when I started getting bombarded with streams in recommended) and I know they're not exactly the best spokespeople for the authentic state of the game, but it's shocking how different the game actually is compared to what I thought it was going to be. I figured we were in for something in the same vein as Hades or Isaac - obviously not the same, but similar. I thought the roguelite stuff would be a lot more emphasized, front and center. Right now it feels like it's basically tacked on to give you something to do as you hunt for resources for what is obviously the main focus, the village sim, and that makes me sad.

The overall story, while short, is enjoyable to me. The art style and the music are excellent in my opinion and deserve special mention. I still think this game has promise and could be an enjoyable casual game for when your brain needs a break, but that's just not what I'm looking for in games I play.

When the game does get more polished, and I still think it will, I would still recommend it to non-gamer friends who want to dip their toe into something approachable, fun and light. As for me, I'm probably gonna stick to Gungeon and Hades and consider this a $25 spent for a fun weekend of bug hunting and related forum discussions. Why not? Keeps me outta trouble, heh.

The game is getting quite a bit of positive reviews overall, most of which seem to be rather meme'y in nature rather than actually helpful or genuine, but if people are enjoying it then I think it's a good thing. It's just not for me I think. Maybe that'll change, but if not, so be it. I wish the devs all the best regardless.

[Derp]

Yea, i know that, i just like to test out things before i buy, i usually pirate and play through the first chunk of games before deciding if i want it or not because i dont like to be cheated but i felt like this demo in particular was adequate, but i was wrong.

I know that demos usually have higher qualities than the rest of the game, i didnt expect the rest of the game to be as good as the demo, i just didnt expect the quality to drop off so drastically, its like being served super expensive caviar for the appetiser and then getting a bowl of poop for the main course

[Jerry]

I wouldn't call this a predatory 'tactic'. You aren't psychologically or financially invested by playing the demo. Encountering bugs in the game should be an expectation, not predatory.
This is an indie title after all and they are working on it to fix the bugs we reported...I believe anyways. It would be a different story if they weren't fixing anything.

[Derp]

@virgil the amount of positive reviews tends to be a bad indicator of a games overal health, with good marketing and good aesthetics any game can have mostly positive reviews, look at fnaf security breach its mostly positive too, even at the start. but we can all say that the game was a mess.

Its the depth of the negative reviews that reflect the true health of a game, negative reviews are often written by folks that really really cared about a game, and tend to have the deeper insight on things

[CalamitasCalliope]

I really enjoyed the game, I've sunk over ten hours into it already, but it definitely feels unfinished. It really feels like an early access game. Its fun, but if this game did not receive any further content updates I would be really disappointed. Personally I'm hoping for a proper rogue like mode to add into post game. They've said that they are going to be adding future content, but I'm still sad about the lack of content available at release

[Virgil]

Originally posted by Derp:

@virgil the amount of positive reviews tends to be a bad indicator of a games overal health, with good marketing and good aesthetics any game can have mostly positive reviews, look at fnaf security breach its mostly positive too, even at the start. but we can all say that the game was a mess.

Its the depth of the negative reviews that reflect the true health of a game, negative reviews are often written by folks that really really cared about a game, and tend to have the deeper insight on things

Yes, I thought I had that figured out a long time ago. This was the first title I've prebought since Diablo 3, and will probably be the last one for good. I used to prebuy games all the time up until the mid 2000's, but things have changed.

I don't regret my purchase necessarily, but I'm almost a little embarrassed that I started feeding into hype which is something I haven't done in a very long time. I guess I was excited for new blood in the roguelite genre as I've only within the past six months or so been absorbing myself into it, after a friend gifted me Hades. I'm normally a 4x or ARPG type guy. I enjoyed Hades enough that it kind of broke me into trying out Nuclear Throne, replaying Binding of Isaac and finally finding my one true love in the genre, Enter the Gungeon.

Ah well.

[Derp]

Originally posted by Jerry:

I wouldn't call this a predatory 'tactic'. You aren't psychologically or financially invested by playing the demo. Encountering bugs in the game should be an expectation, not predatory.
This is an indie title after all and they are working on it to fix the bugs we reported...I believe anyways. It would be a different story if they weren't fixing anything.

the demos job are to give you a taste of what is to be, it gets you emotionally invested and fills you with the desire to play the game/puts you off, so you definitely get invested into the game through the demo,

obviously i expect bugs thats not what im calling predatory, i am a dev myself and i know not a game in the world releases bug free, its just that this game had a huge amount of bugs to the point that some core things were clearly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up, things that had no business getting to release