Demo Live Now, Give us your feedback.

[PQube Community]

Hey everybody

As part of the amazing Bullet Heaven Fest, we have just released our first When the Light Dies demo and are excited for you to give it a go.

As we continue to work on developing the game and the demo, we want to hear from you!
In this thread, please feel free to give feedback and share your ideas with us. We really want to know what you liked about the demo, what you didn’t enjoy, and what you’d like to see in the full release.

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.

Stay in the light!
PQube & Electric Monkeys

[Nosteru]

Oh, that is awesome!
Thanks

[Nosteru]

The gameplay is fun.
However the performance is horrible even I disable shadows, barely go above 37FPS in gameplay. Also it stress my GPU more than some very good graphics 3D games, even more in levelup menu.
I have FPS limited to 60 by RTSS and Vsync enabled so this is not the case.

My system
Win7 x64 Pro (yes I know it is obsolete, but I have no problem in most games)
RX 580 4GB (Adrenalin 22.6.1)
i5-3470, 16 GB RAM

I drop this game untill performance issue resolved.
Thanks

[GrafOrlockVII]

I definitely like the interesting take on this genre. However, I am having some trouble understanding the mechanics. Like the sanity meter and what that does (I think it might disable your ability to use your active at the very least?), how "temperature" fits into anything when you drink alcohol you find in chests (does it help sanity or help decrease the impact of cold on sanity?), what the icons in the bottom right corner mean when you got pictures of lungs and other things with arrows on them, what do you mean by "pages" since I have to find them to unlock something, is there a way to "refill" the lantern since I found that is not infinite...there's just a lot not explained that the gameplay doesn't naturally teach you all that well. It doesn't help that the first map is literally mostly pitch black and you're wandering around aimlessly rather than picking up on clues/mechanics more naturally. Definitely not a bad game; I do feel a good foundation here and interesting premises. I just wish things were at least a little more clearer.

[emgotcha77]

Originally posted by GrafOrlockVII:

I definitely like the interesting take on this genre. However, I am having some trouble understanding the mechanics. Like the sanity meter and what that does (I think it might disable your ability to use your active at the very least?), how "temperature" fits into anything when you drink alcohol you find in chests (does it help sanity or help decrease the impact of cold on sanity?), what the icons in the bottom right corner mean when you got pictures of lungs and other things with arrows on them, what do you mean by "pages" since I have to find them to unlock something, is there a way to "refill" the lantern since I found that is not infinite...there's just a lot not explained that the gameplay doesn't naturally teach you all that well. It doesn't help that the first map is literally mostly pitch black and you're wandering around aimlessly rather than picking up on clues/mechanics more naturally. Definitely not a bad game; I do feel a good foundation here and interesting premises. I just wish things were at least a little more clearer.

I agree with this.

The game made more sense once i upgraded the first range node: icon shows the nearest fire.


Game loop:

• activate the fire
  
• disable your lantern
  
• kill enemies, wait for the exploration time window
  
• activate your lantern
  
• move to the nearest campfire
  
• repeat

Lung icon: character is out of breath? (after running too long)
The book seems to restore "sanity"?

Am i correct with my assumptions?

[PQube Community]

Originally posted by GrafOrlockVII:

I definitely like the interesting take on this genre. However, I am having some trouble understanding the mechanics. Like the sanity meter and what that does (I think it might disable your ability to use your active at the very least?), how "temperature" fits into anything when you drink alcohol you find in chests (does it help sanity or help decrease the impact of cold on sanity?), what the icons in the bottom right corner mean when you got pictures of lungs and other things with arrows on them, what do you mean by "pages" since I have to find them to unlock something, is there a way to "refill" the lantern since I found that is not infinite...there's just a lot not explained that the gameplay doesn't naturally teach you all that well. It doesn't help that the first map is literally mostly pitch black and you're wandering around aimlessly rather than picking up on clues/mechanics more naturally. Definitely not a bad game; I do feel a good foundation here and interesting premises. I just wish things were at least a little more clearer.

Hello GrafOrLockVII,

Thank you so much for your feedback, we passed your comment to the team and they have made a demo quick start guide to help. If you have more questions please feel free to give us some more feedback :)

DEMO QUICK START GUIDE

[Bum]

Imo the balance is off, the enemies are getting too tanky too fast. We also have to compensate a lot for movement speed/reload speed/dmg while being constantly punished by something else so you can never win in the exchange. It feels a bit like someone asking you to choose where you want to be shoot.

The inventory is also too small, half the stuff we find are books.

The light even from a campfire, jsut doesn't last long enough.

Stamina is always a terrible thing in any game and here more than ever.

You're punished for unlocking ability slots, becasue the power you lose is incredibly punishing.

[Rafael Moises]

The game has great potencial but need a lot polishing (i understand It is unfinished yet)

Suggestions: when the player is constantly getting hits, the character repeats the same voice line like "oh, oh, oh, ah, ah, oh, ah..." It is anoying and very amateur. End It now.

[Moc117]

I like the mechanics of the game, the system of abilities that use sanity or endurance, the fact of being cold that slows down our movements and our ability to reload our weapon, the tree of upgrades is interesting.

Many good points about the game

After a few tests, I discovered 1 small bug, and a weapon ability that greatly slows down the game (big loss of fps, 60 >> 10).

- The bug
I was reading a book while moving (with my lantern active), I opened a chest (while reading), I replaced the book I had with the book in the chest (it was the same 2 books, the one with 300 pages), during this book change, I kept the book's read button active, and when I moved away from the trunk, not only could I read the book while moving at normal speed, but I could also shoot at the same time, and I realized a little later that even if my lantern was turned off (and well in the dark), the book reading continued.
I'd like to reiterate that during all this, I always had the book reading button active, without having released it. It was only once I'd levelled up that the bug stopped.

- For the slowdown of the game
it's the "piercing" weapon skill that made me lose fps, I tested it on the machine gun (small loss of fps, 60 >> 30/15 depending on the number of enemies hit, with 4 upgrade), on the other hand with the shotgun it was a bit harder to play (60 >> 10, sometimes even freezes of 1 second if more than 3 enemies hit by the piercing).

Despite its short range, the shotgun is super-strong once you reduce the weapon's reload time a bit. I lowered the reduction to 0.3sec and could fire the first bullet from the magazine while reloading the weapon (a bit too strong, isn't it? or a bug? ) , so I was firing continuously without interruption (I should point out that I also had a 13% chance of firing an extra bullet).

[Quane]

Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of Vampire Survivor type of games because it gets super crazy really fast, but "When the Light DIes" hits the spot. I'm not sure if it's intended, but the gameplay seems to be slower-paced, which is definitely a plus, since there's a huge lack of this kind of approach.

Great foundation, needs lots of polishing and more content. But I'm all aboard.

[bangarang]

Ok, here is some feedback and improvement suggestions:
1) Since consumption of items is instant it would be nice to allow player to consume items in the chest looting interface so i would not have to ransack chest twice while running from the horde;
2) Since some abilities (healing, flamethrower) have cooldowns starting upon button release and since gun is automatically reloaded if you release shooting button - it is really awkward that i have to keep skill button pressed during sudden interaction with level up interface not to get locked out of using my skill/gun after i'm done with selecting upgrade. Possible solution - allow a player to trigger lvl up with button or smth else idk.
3) Would be cool to get some stats partly replenished upon levelup - will help with getting an edge at later waves when all you need is a little bit of stamina or sanity to get in the combat loop.
4) Would be nice to have some sort of small dmg invulnerability window not to get instantly chewed upon stumbling over a bunch of frozen corpses while backing off in the dark. I'm not talking about generous protection, i'm saying instadeath in this scenario is really confusing. At least add death animation and some time for player to understand what happened before throwing him off to death stats page.
5) Some containers (probably firecamps too - unconfirmed) get locked off map limits - i'm getting waypoint marks that say something like "6" remaining and i bump into map border.
6) Boss battle definitely needs deathblow animations, it's sad to see instant win screen with stats.
7) While being able to read book during gun reloading is definitely a mechanic it kinda makes no sense.
8) Using flamethrower to get warmth and light is really awesome!), probably should be also affected by piercing upgrades?

[bangarang]

Just got a negative timer value on Kings Landing Hardcore https://steamcommunity.com/id/justacommonnickname/screenshot/2288453514957000114/

[KcBreadz]

Personally I would like to rebind my keys to be different slightly and the cold indicator in my first run was something i wasn't looking at as i was too focused on what was killing me

[make me suffer]

I have so many thoughts (mostly negative) so I'm gonna speak Russian:
Моё скромное мнение:
Хороший, красивый стиль привлек меня к ознакомлению с игрой, пробежал 3 раунда: 1 прохождение и 2 смерти в районе 9 волны.
К моему разочарованию в демо лишь очень, очень сырой продукт

Начнем с того, что для получения прогресса НЕОБХОДИМО ознакомиться со списком достижений. это ненормально. Более того, тебе не дается никаких инструментов для того чтобы достичь самых базовых достижений и открыть ветки навыков с таким необходимым компасом для костров. Зато сразу открыта какая-то ерунда которая в принципе не работает потому что твои показатели всегда на нуле.

Первым прохождением я дошел до девятой волны. Без указателей, без фонаря, без костров, с постоянно тикающим уроном от холода (уже видно проблему?). После забега я не смог ничего открыть из базовых навыков, мол, требуется выполнить элементарное достижение: прочтите 5 страниц книги. Допустим, но что если я за весь забег нашел только 3 костра и 4 ящика, ни в одном из них не было книги?
Здесь стоило бы задуматься либо о переработке системы базовых навыков, либо ввести обучение, где тебе прямо в руки положат необходимые для получения этих достижений вещи и позволят тебе играть не вслепую.

Книги, о книги. В игре столько разных книг и все что они делают - восстанавливают рассудок? Я надеялся получить какой-то навык, его улучшение или кусочек сюжета, но нет, читал 300 страниц между противниками чисто ради прикола и полной шкалы рассудка. Нелепо, скучно, рассудок все равно что показатель маны, и без него как-то неплохо, только картинка в углу страшная. По хорошему стоит переработать как книги так и рассудок, Рассудок должен быть больше, не сгорать за 30 секунд в темноте, но и последствия от его потери должны быть страшнее, возможно даже смертельно страшнее

Оружие. Все оружие, благодаря навыкам, это перерисованный дробовик.

Выносливость. Самая неприятная система выносливости, которую я только встречал.
Тратится моментально, начинает восстанавливаться через несколько секунд ожидания без движения, а эффект для такой жесткой системы, незначителен. В игре, где у тебя каждый шаг на счету и базовая скорость перемещения может превзойти только улитку.

Навыки. Очень скромный набор навыков, позволяющий пережить отсутствие костров и вечные заморозки. чуть бы побольше и разнообразнее, классические урон больше, скорость стрельбы меньше уже было и будет. зацепите меня чем-то поярче, будьте смелее, вам этой демкой аудиторию привлекать

Карта. Пустая смертельная скука. дайте возможность порубить сухое дерево на ветки и сделать костер (может быть при условии что в инвентаре или в навыках есть топор) вы же все равно стараетесь сожрать мое скромное время между волнами пустыми прогулками в никуда и собирательством бесчисленного алкоголя (кстати, это самые часто встречаемые предметы)

Цикл волна/исследование. В суровых условиях выживания в этой игре очень сложно составить баланс между исследованием карты и поиском костров/плюшек (Предметы кстати бесполезны в целом)
По хорошему ты ждешь волну у костра, с началом волны зажигаешь костер чтобы согреться и максимально использовать то время, когда ты в тепле, на середине волны костра уже нет, и по хорошему следует выдвигаться дальше, но опыт который валяется на земле... каждый раз замечал что я возвращаюсь за ним, пока забираю тот опыт, накапливается еще и еще и еще. таким образом ты остаешься на той же точке и, добивая врагов, собирая опыт, на исследование тебе остается около 60% от данного тебе времени. что с базовой скоростью передвижения - мало. очень.

Я искренне надеюсь, что буду услышан. Проект выглядит многообещающе, но пока только выглядит.