RoboCop Black Panther Sim

[Yang李安]

Praesidium Review

Thank you very much for releasing your game for free on Steam for us to try.

I have spent some extensive time playing your game, attempting to beat all three levels and achieve the best times. To begin I would say that although I had fun, I would describe my experience as frustrating. This futuristic robot jumping adventure definitely took me by surprise. It took me around 5 hours to realise a fundamental part of the game is about exploring the maps in detail to find the best routes to take and then the next 5 hours desperately trying to cut seconds off my times, a secret ledge here, a long jump there and a sigh of relief when I finally reached the goal.

There are only three levels available currently but each are full of secrets and alternatives routes which means no matter how many times you play through them you are bound to find something new, and skip more of the course using shortcuts. My favourite was the first map due to the amount of secret building rooftops which at first glance didn't even strike me as usable terrain. Sadly this was also the only level I could not achieve gold on. I have decided to list my thoughts and bugs that I found here so that other people can look out for them along the way. Overall I had a great time in this tiny world and would definitely recommend it to others for some light challenge, however, don't expect to achieve the fastest times quickly!

I managed to finish with a silver and two gold medals and will post the screenshot as well as some other bugs and views.

CAUTION SPOILERS AHEAD

Improvements & Thoughts

The movement of the character is very nice, and feels very natural. I expected it to be much more janky and rigid but overall it was easy navigate without too much stress, there is however a few issues with the gravity when mixed with the bubble shield jumping which means if you arn't lucky sometimes you can be stuck flying forward constantly really far if you touch the bubble at a certain angle. It could be slightly nicer to the player if you allowed them to steer the character a tad more in mid air to avoid those "nonsense" moments which make you want to rage quit.

_ Crouch Animation

The crouch and roll animations are VERY strange and completely slow the game down, ruin the effect of the speed and are not very user friendly. May I suggest a slide action that doesn't stop or reduce speed? (As the only times you need to use it are at the end of level 1 and some other varied spots that arn't too important) When I think of the slide I think of call of duty running slide animation as an example.

There are some occasions on level 1 that allow you to crouch under certain objects, if you stand up under them you will be stuck and locked forcing you to restart, it might be best to prevent the stand-up animation in certain spots just to not run into those annoyances. ( It is very unlikely players will spend lots of time under these objects but I thought it worth noting.

Respawning

Re-spawning after death always seems to put your character facing away from the direction they need to be going in and after 5-10-50 deaths you can end up running off the side and this adds more fuel to the rage when really pushing for the gold medal runs. I would prefer to spawn facing the direction I am going it.

Another point about re spawns is can you add more invisible "checkpoints" so that for when new players are doing the map for the first time they don't lose heaps of progress after a fall which again can be frustrating. Although additionally this might accidentally allow people to cheat if they jump off at the right time so perhaps I could be wrong on this one.

- The Turrets

Please give a sound to the turrets when they are destroyed, sometimes it would be nice to know they were cleared as well as adding to the minimal yet relaxing atmosphere of the game.

The turrets de-spawn time after you have hit them is too long, meaning very commonly you can be stuck on a climb animation on the side of them even after they have died and this seems to happen extremely commonly meaning your character wastes around 3 seconds climbing on thin air.

- Game Mechanics

I think one of the biggest abilities in this game which needs to be discovered by players is the 4th shield jump option which is gained by throwing the shield first before jumping and setting it up, then giving you effectively 4 bounces. This wasn't obvious to me at first and I wasted a lot of time thinking I could only perform 3 jumps. (might just be me lol) Might be worth writing in the controls? or tutorial?

I was slightly sad to realise that all of the work you have put into the levels is quickly rendered as nothing when you discover the amazing powers of the shield allowing you to skip EVERYTHING with the right timing on your clicks. Although, I suppose this is kind of the point in a speed run game.

- Bits I failed heavily on, personal but worth noting.

The ledge at the start of level 1 is hideous, annoying constantly got me stuck when I was jumping over it constantly. As the first thing the player sees and interacts with in this game, I really think it sets a bad tone as the jump needs to be quite perfect to navigate over it without being flung off the side. ( Was this intention? if it was, It worked)

I really think the shield should auto retract if the character runs too far away from something or is moving, there were so many times I would be in a run and somehow forget my shield hadn't retracted and I would be plunged to my doom from always forgetting. This was especially apparent in level 3 doing the long jumps trying to figure out the gravity at the same time. Having said that though, the whole shield animation, jumping on the circles and the freedom you have to create your own paths is fantastic and was very enjoyable to use. Its a very cool concept.

-- Suggestions? Updates? Random Ideas?
- Add a police chase scenario in which there is no timer but you are running from the police who are using futuristic vehicles or running behind you in which you need to get to a safe zone using different routes.
-Add small blurb of story to the beginning to set a scene before mindlessly entering the world without purpose.( just for fun)
- make the courses longer, with perhaps objectives at different locations or NPC's to meet to deliver things too? Open world style?
- Make sure there is a "world top 3" overall high scores so you can see what the truly fastest times are.
- Make a ghost mode that can be saved and raced against by other speed runners, they could also use it to learn new routes to the end.( this might ruin the experience though as the whole point is to find the routes yourself, but good be fun)

-- Footnotes (with spoilers)

- When I found out level 3 could be completed in 10 seconds I was annoyed, not relieved, it kind of ruined the entire level for me. I'm happy I got my gold medal, however I did spend around 2 hours sat on 1m 10 seconds trying to save the time. Am I right in thinking you need to use the second gravity lift to launch yourself to the final building line?

- Why do you have so many buttons and extra parts of the level that don't do anything? It would be cool for them to at least lead somewhere to find an Easter egg or funny thing. ( especially on level 2 when you have the GIANT button on the building and the button in the middle of the two towers which activate a platform and a bridge with zero point.

- The gravity lifts are really annoying, they don't work properly and they are also unclear how to use them. I didn't know I could jump in the gravity with the lift to shoot up for a long time which meant I spent a lot of time staring at nothing thinking how do I proceed. Also your speed run requires you to jump perfectly off the gravity lift and then use your shield jumps to be flung across the map, this is a cool mechanic but VERY RNG on the landing, there is no option but to die if you are slightly off.

PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO GET GOLD MEDAL ON LEVEL !,
I spent way too many hours failing and still only finished with a close silver.

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Thank you very much for the experience, I will be following the game and hope to see more updates and improvements I can try.

Good luck!