Feedback - Demo Testing

[Preacher of The Night]

**This is a English repost from another discussion because i want to know The review of other English speakers**

I've played for about 4 hours with my friends. I love H.P. Lovecraft's books and it's a game I've had on my wishlist for a long time, The gameplay system and the historical lore caught my attention.

The problem comes when I finish playing The demo and I switch my brain from "enjoyment mode" to "bro, what The hell its happening here" mode. Thinking that its release date is July 15th and there is less than a month left, it TERRIFIES me to think about how this game is going to be released.

Let's start with my experience. I've been testing it on a Ryzen 7 5800X, 32 GB of RAM at 2K resolution (High graphics), and a RX 6750 XT. (And it doesn't run poorly at all; sometimes when there are certain enemies and you go deep into the jungle, it drops to around 50 FPS, but on average, it stays between 60–120).

#PROS:

-The design of the characters, weapons, historical period and especially the ship and the elements inside of it, are impressive. In fact, I hadn't seen such a remarkable presentation of a ship and the inspection/roll-call cutscenes. I love the dialogues and how The lore fits in it when you find the characters' logs and journals.

- The game runs even on my buddy's potato PC**—he gets 60 FPS on medium settings, which, considering it's Unreal Engine, isn't bad at all.

- The design of the island's horrors is very well done, very grotesque and disgusting. "Interaction" with them is good; some enemies who have barely turned still have a bit of humanity left.

The sanity system, though confusing just like the audio system, adds a touch of randomness and events, so much players me included we dont know how It works. Even though it's a horror game, you end up laughing at the situations you find yourself in with your friends, especially if you use proximity voice chat and don't know who is who when encountering shapeshifters.

- Enemy attack mechanics are either really well executed or terribly implemented. I'd say the best ones belong to the tentacle monster, forcing you or your teammates to chop them off yourself. The rest of the enemies feel clunky and out of place, or I just haven't interacted with them enough to give a feedback (See grab animations below)

- Brutal executions trigger sometimes, I'm not exactly sure under what conditions. They are highly satisfying to watch, just like the gunshots, which are tremendously satisfying and violent.

- The lack of an in-game map forces you to use your sense of direction and seek out new areas.

- Weapons like muskets, flintlocks, and especially the Francesca feel very well balanced. I'd even venture to say the axe needs a little nerf because I've carried up to two axes and comfortably fought off groups of enemies just by throwing and retrieving them, making it way too easy, also, sometimes you can hit with the wood part of The axe an enemy and you deal no damage.

There is a durability system affecting weapons, so it feels relatively balanced with at least these three weapons.

- On the other hand, the durability system is open to interpretation: I played all night as Alonso de la Torre (?) and none of my weapons broke, one of my friends managed to break two swords and a knife by hitting just once with each one (he was playing the priest ,so I don't know if these are internal character mechanics for broke weapons).

**AND NO, I DO NOT THINK THEY NEED A CROSSHAIR OR SIGHT AS I'VE READ ON OTHER FORUMS.**

- The characters have personality; their names and their signatures on contracts look epic (I wasn't expecting this at all, and it's a great, appreciated realistic and historical detail). The fact that everyone has a specific role on the team is also excellent.

- The maps, although I've seen them all by now, have a unique charm. At first, when you don't know how to play, they make you feel completely uncomfortable because you don't know what to expect—like in the caves or hidden paths.

Sometimes there are even giant idols or statues along the way, which, combined with the soundtrack, create an atmosphere that perfectly matches what you're experiencing.

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And now, without any kind of hate beyond wanting to improve the gameplay experience, let's move on to the cons. Some will obviously depend on the experience you've had during this demo.

#CONS:

-Starting from the very beginning, there is an animation where characters start spitting centipedes out of their mouths.

It's disgusting and I love it, but for instance, my friend ate fruit and drank from the waterskin while I didn't. Plus, I hadn't been hit the entire match, so I assume my character was immaculate when it happened, yet my character still triggered the animation. If anyone could shed some light on this, please do, because it's honestly keeping me awake at night.

- The game has some rather bizarre bugs: flying players after a revive, sometimes you can't climb surfaces that require an animation, and the third-person camera when climbing structures completely breaks immersion. I would leave it in first-person because you can't see what's waiting for you at the top of a climb, and it can give you more than one heart attack for free.

- Visual texture bugs: In the sky (didn't happen to me) and, especially with my PC setup, tree leaves and textures stretched out to a lane's width.

- Movement and combat are slow, clunky, and a disaster depending on the match. I know the game tries to be realistic, and I don't mind a armored conquistador being slow, but I've had fights where the game locks onto an enemy and you can't turn the camera.

Combined with how slow you are, it can drive you to despair because enemies tend to grab you, and combat becomes absolute chaos when allies are nearby.

- Enemies constantly reviving with a bone shield feels unfair. (happens 3 mins before we start a quest, I know they are entities with dark powers, but bro, it's frustrating, considering enemies often can't be decapitated. I've had matches where I decapitated two entities and both got back up—and what's worse, one of them, missing an arm and a head, kept hitting me. It doesn't make much sense, no matter how much black magic is involved.

- Arrows and bolts are barely, if at all, retrievable. Most of the time, it's not even worth clearing enemies with them.

- Certain animations lock your character in place. Picking up items, treasures, and a few others leave you inevitably open to getting hit.

- Res and carrying allies is very unpolished and acts more like a nuisance than a reward. You are completely vulnerable while carrying someone and trying to get back to the cart. It is not intuitive at all that you have to select an item from your inventory just to "stop carrying" a body.

- The sound system has its charm but I don't really get how it works. Sometimes super tense music kicks in when there are no enemies around, and other times my friend brushes a branch with his toenail and half the jungle comes after him. Plus, the whistling and the horn-blowing system can tilt you to death if a random player joins your lobby. In hindsight, I think it would actually be cool if the dopplegangers whistled to confuse you.

- The branch/foliage mechanics are interesting, but I would approach them differently. You don't really need to cut almost any branches, at least on the maps I played. It would be interesting to have bushes you *have* to cut to reach a treasure, new areas, or for the cart to pass through. I don't know why this mechanic is so underutilized given this explorer vive.

- The timer system works against the previous point. You can't clear branches if the forest wakes up 3 and a half minutes into the match and Dagon's cousin comes chasing after you.

- The vast majority of melee weapons suffer from poor design. While you can throw the spear, it has a minuscule range, just like the lucerne hammer. It makes no sense to include long polearms only for them to have such short reach. Additionally, other weapons in the game feel awkward when striking. Right-clicking sometimes gives you the option to do a different strike, but it's rarely worth it, so you just stick to normal attacks. It's very strange, maybe it's just me, but even the shove system doesn't convince me. Each weapon should have unique alternate attack and shove functions. (No jumps and make The space bar shove enemies are not a clever design idea because i feel restrain)

- Forget trying to survive if you're using the short corsair knife. It barely deals damage, and you can't sneak up on enemies to execute them from behind.

I've rarely seen that animation, and when I did, it was during a gang-up of three of us hitting a single entity.

- Breaking padlocks and chests is the same story. With some weapons, you break them easily without any issues, while with others, you practically need a civil engineering degree just to hit an object sitting on the ground.

- Crouching is a mechanic I don't see much use because you cant sneak enemies. Furthermore, characters barely crouch on average, and as I mentioned before, I don't see an actual stealth system in place.

- Not being able to remove your helmet and breastplate, drop weapons on the ground, and especially manage your inventory however you want is something that scares me quite a bit with only a month left until release.

These feel like systems the developers haven't even tested in their own game. It's tremendously frustrating to have a musket on slot "9" and a sword on slot "3" and not be able to swap their places. Additionally, I personally experienced a bug where the mouse wheel wouldn't let me scroll through my item hotbar, forcing me to press the specific keys on the number pad.

- It's not clear how enemy grabs work; it feels clunky and rushed. Sometimes the game seems to slow down when you get grabbed, and I don't know if it's a parry or attack/riposte window, but man, it's so frustrating when enemies chain grabs one after another.

- There is one specific enemy regarding the above that I'll call the "Crawler" because I don't even know how to define it. It's like a spider mixed with the Molded zombies from RE7. It grabs you and literally one-shots you. I don't know under what conditions it spawns, but it's the worst-designed and most annoying creature I've ever seen due to how much damage it deals—though depending on the map, you can cheese it and kill it easily.

- Torches are a joke compared to oil lamps; they are not worth it at all. I thought burning enemies would serve a purpose, but it's just not worth the hassle.

> *I haven't even tried the crucifixes. I wish theyimagined a function to stop your allies cursed-dead in their tracks if they've turned, knocking them out so you can revive them, but I suspect that's not the case.*

- Many animations in multiplayer, like floating weapons, T-poses, and decapitated monsters that just stand back up, become immortal, and stop moving.

- The cart is fine. I understand it's a core mechanic in the game, and the salt detail is great, but sometimes it glitches out when it needs to return, taking paths it hasn't even been on. It doesn't really do much else besides carrying firewood, survivors, and loot. On top of that, its inventory management is unpolished. I've read in many other discussions that they should let you rearrange items, and I completely agree.

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I'd love to know what you all think and what your first impressions are. Don't get me wrong, I like *The Mound*. I think it's a breath of fresh air for these extraction shooter games, featuring a truly unique setting, but the fact that the game is so "green" just a month away from its release terrifies me. I would have preferred them to delay the game by 3 months to polish it up using the feedback being provided, rather than having it like this less than 30 days from its debut.

Let me know what you think!

[Princess Gamer]

I want to like this game but if this is coming out in 4 weeks or so, this demo is unplayable. I keep crashing, fatal crashing, getting stuck in the ground and unable to move. only missions I really completed were no monster missions. I don't fatal crash then or don't get stuck. I was also looking at the captain menu and someone smacked me for fun and bugged my character from progressing conversations, I had to change characters and come back. This game is really unplayable right now. there is no way I am buying it in this state. :( I want to but I can't.

[Preacher of The Night]

Originally posted by Princess Gamer:

I want to like this game but if this is coming out in 4 weeks or so, this demo is unplayable. I keep crashing, fatal crashing, getting stuck in the ground and unable to move. only missions I really completed were no monster missions. I don't fatal crash then or don't get stuck. I was also looking at the captain menu and someone smacked me for fun and bugged my character from progressing conversations, I had to change characters and come back. This game is really unplayable right now. there is no way I am buying it in this state. :( I want to but I can't.

One of my Friends have that problem and the game keeps crashing but its a resolution related error, the game "lock" on a resolution scale and cannot be changed.

The interaction with the NPCs can be broken if a player are hitting you, my friend do that and my game crash on a dialogue xD

[D.Frosted-Wang]

Mouse settings keep resetting every restart.

[HardWorkingLoner]

Unless the demo is an old build, or there will be major reworks in the next 1 month (I don't think that's enough time to fix everything wrong with the game), I believe the game will flop when it releases.

If it were to release in Early Access, then I would gladly support it, as I like the idea....

But a full release in this state? I should not support it out of principle, releasing broken games should be an instant turn off. And even IF I would like to support it, it would need to sell for <20€ and even then it would be a hard sell after experiencing the demo,...

[Macdallan]

Originally posted by D.Frosted-Wang:

Mouse settings keep resetting every restart.

Saw this, too. When I played a few minutes ago I noticed that the invert Y-axis setting was not working but it was still showing as if it was on in the settings.

[Puotek]

I strongly agree with all the points mentioned and had a similar experience. A few more notes:

• It feels like there is no incentive to collect more than just the bare minimum valuables quota, unless I missed something that gives an additional reward.
  
  
• Starting equipment sets often don’t include at least one melee weapon per player, in my opinion. There should always be at least one loadout where we can go full melee.
  
  
• The lack of inventory management is truly hell.
  
  
• When trying to sprint back or cover longer distances, branches and similar obstacles can be extremely annoying and cause this sort of rubberbanding that locks you in place until you stop sprinting.
  
  
• The tall bamboo-like grass you can cut down to make shortcuts feels way too tedious to clear. I feel like each swing should cut more than just a single blade of grass — it should clear a few in front of you.
  
  
• The execution animations from behind are really good and I enjoyed them, though as mentioned, sometimes they just don’t trigger for an unknown reason.
  
  
• The shove mechanic feels absolutely useless. Enemies still manage to attack me back when I shove them, almost as if I didn’t shove them at all. I would expect them to at least be stunned for a moment or something.
  
  
• A small jump, or at least a step-over/climb mechanic for ledges under 0.5m, would be nice sometimes. It feels really weird in some places that you can’t step up onto a slightly elevated rock and instead have to take some roundabout route.
  
  Overall, the game has great potential, a strong vibe, and excellent execution of the story and lore aspects, but the mechanics — or at least the smoothness of their implementation — are piss-poor and make the game unplayable or extremely frustrating at times.

[Princess Gamer]

I completely agree with everyone, if the game goes Early Access I can deal, but if not... I can't deal it's too buggy too broken to buy. It would feel like a cash grab if they go live with this.. Please don't do that, fix your game, cause it has potential to be fun. You got an interesting idea here don't mess it up.

[olarcalin]

id like to add to this

i feel that including a durability mechanic should entail some way to tell how much is left(unless it it truly random which sucks if so), such as a form of inspect to see damage or similar. on the same vain it should have easier ways to maintain equipment if including this

on the subject of the weapons, i am lost on the design for what they want with combat, do they want stealth? or to prefer ranged over melee? id assume that ranged is meant to be safer while melee to be more risky but it seems you cant avoid the damage in melee at all. and its not really possible to avoid with the tools you are given

its fun, ill give it that, just theres some parts that confuse me or make it difficult to enjoy outside of some fun moments or unexpected parts

[Sarra]

There needs to be a panic button.
Like when the forest comes alive, and you need to get the hell out of Dodge?
A panic button, you drop every item you have and get a speed boost.
So many times when we are too deep, and its too late, there is ZERO chance to outrun the monsters, the keep staggering you with their dives