First Impressions from the demo

[M500]

Overall, this game feels pretty good- very heavy inspiration from the Ratchet and clank series- with a hint of Jak and Daxter for melee/personality.

• The demo feels like there is a lot of non-combat at the beginning of the demo. It feels like it can be shortened slightly or have more things to engage with the player. Something to use the melee attacks on that does fight back, and not the NPCs that you can hit.
  
• The special weapons feel nice, got to try out 2 of the 4 so far. Gameplay is slightly awkward when running out of special ammo and before you get your first normal gun, where it's this area that you would just have to melee the enemies. I figure this becomes a non-issue when you have more weapons and items to work with, it just feels a bit off at the start of the game before you get your first normal gun.
  
• The camera bobbing while walking feels extreme. I highly recommend including an slider option in gameplay settings to scale it from 100%-0%.
  
• Same with the special weapon screen border glow, maybe toning it down slightly or have a options slider so the user can adjust it.
  
• Combat feels like it's missing "something". I don't know what. Maybe some kind of sidestep/side jump to make dodging bullets and projectiles feel better? I noticed that I tanked a lot of shots since my mobility options are the dash- which has a small cooldown, and double jumping.
  
• Is the default controller auto aim too strong? I noticed I was fighting against it when shooting down those floating platfroms where it would try to snap to one I wasn't trying to aim at, and it feels like I almost don't really need to aim- the auto aim almost does it a bit too well for most of the enemies as if it was more of an automatic 'lock-on' feature. If it wasn't an option already, I would recommend having a adjustable value to set the intensity/distance that auto aim takes hold of the cursor.
  
• First impressions of the player character dialogue feels... a bit soul-less? or maybe a bit cliche/generic? The "edgy, lone-wolf anti hero has to team up with a happy-go-lucky companion who acts brave but is cowardly" doesn't break any barriers in narrative creativity, and I'm hoping it can change over the course of the story with some character growth to make their personality feel a bit less stale? I get some Jak3-esque feeling from the duo, and can tolerate the starting personalities to the characters, but I wonder if it might be a negative aspect to the story?

I definitely will still be keeping an eye on this game, as it goes through development into launch. I enjoy the classic games such as the R&C series and having more games in the genre is always welcomed.

[Spinker]

Thanks for the feedback! Very helpful!
Here are my feedbacks on your... feedback?:

- Indeed the demo is quite long at the very beginning. It's kinda hard to reduce it at this point, but as the rest of the game is pretty heavy and actionful.
- As surprising as it can sounds, I never ran out of special ammos before getting the rifle. I'll have a few tries to test how to feels and adjust accordingly
- I've added this weekend an option to lower the camera shake intensity, and also completely removed it during the walk/run xD
- I've noted to also reduce the the special weapon effect on screen :)
- Could you describe a little bit more the feeling of the combat thing that is missing? I'm not quite sure to understand. If you have any idea about how I could improve it, I'll be glad to give it a try
- You can reduce the aim-assist in the settings
- Characters evolve along the story, but I feel like you're looking for something more serious or darker. Akimbot aims to be light and soft, with a touch of darkness. Tho, the game gets way darker as the story goes.

If you feel like talking a little bit more about how the combat could be improved for the release, I think it would be easier to chat on the Discord server. Please, come around :) ( https://discord.gg/xJkqtMhg )

[M500]

Thanks for the reply, to go a bit further into detail about some of the questions:

Originally posted by Spinker:

- Could you describe a little bit more the feeling of the combat thing that is missing? I'm not quite sure to understand. If you have any idea about how I could improve it, I'll be glad to give it a try

I guess what I had in my mind was this game was more inspired by Ratchet and Clank instead of Jak and Daxter (since funny enough, I discovered this game a couple of weeks ago on a forum when discussing about R&C), and I had the mindset that the gameplay was similar to that going in. J&D did not have any additional mobility moves other than jumping and the dash during combat, so it makes sense that Akimbot wouldn't have it as well.

But, when in combat, one of the main thoughts when I was in combat in the demo was that I was that if there was a button to do a quick side-step, akin to something like the "phantom dash" in the newest R&C game, or the equivalent of rolling in a souls game; something that you can time well against an oncoming projectile or attack to negate it- something that adds to the gameplay loop of combat to make it feel more dynamic, instead of holding down the shoot button and jumping constantly.

Originally posted by Spinker:

Thanks for the feedback! Very helpful!
- Characters evolve along the story, but I feel like you're looking for something more serious or darker. Akimbot aims to be light and soft, with a touch of darkness. Tho, the game gets way darker as the story goes.

This may be a non-issue, as I was expecting something inspired by R&C and not J&D, where the protagonist was more about light-hearted quips and jokes, and was not expecting the Stern and uncharitable personality of Exe- which matches the more serious tone of Jak in the later games.

Originally posted by Spinker:

- As surprising as it can sounds, I never ran out of special ammos before getting the rifle. I'll have a few tries to test how to feels and adjust accordingly

This was most noticeable on the laser cannon/purple special weapon. I did not have the issue as much with other weapons. (I used up some of the ammo on the NPC bots first time around, as I thought they were a means of testing out your special weapon & that special ammo was given through breaking boxes, akin to R&C, and that led to being fairly low on special ammo for the next couple of fights)