For Devs - READ & LEARN

[Deep_wolf]

You here? Take a minute and write it down on paper.

Things to be done:
1. Tell to the Versus Evil to remove game from Steam/PSN/XBLA.
2. Hire the testers (or me).
3. Read comments of gamers who played, read them all.
4. Make conslusion (dismiss the team or keep working on the project).
5. Improve all broken aspects of the game.
6. Release the game how it's ment to be.

Now, this is serious, if you really want to people like your game. Consider your time, money and man-power. If you don't know how - learn or ask someone who know. We all need a good game.

Things that need to be fixed:
1. Controls. Add keyboard support. Since there is no camera in the game (Where is the camera?) mouse is not needed. Make the buttons layout full on keyboard (take a DMC4 as example and to the same thing). Make controls to be changeable. You can easy do it, since you working with Unity. If you don't know how - learn or ask someone who know.

2. Settings. Besides audio, there is no game settings in PC-version. Needed to add features like: screen resolution, textures quality, shadows quality, window mode, vertical sync, subtitles. All things considered.

3. Cutscenes and story-driven sequences. Make all of that skip-able. There is no indication what you can skip and what you not. Make inditication on screen one in a while. "Press B button to skip". That enough.

4. Transitions. There in no clear transition in game betwen cutscenes and gameplay. "Should I put controller down?" or "I can play now?". Add moive like black lines to divide cutscenes from actuall gameplay. That one on your matter to decide how it is to do.

5. Speed of story-driven sequences. I like slow pacing of the game, it fit well in the Afro universe, but at times it's unnessesarry slow. In most of the times. I found myself yawning all the time during cutscenes and story-driven sequences. Make a little tweaks here and there, speed up some parts, speed up the character movement during crawling parts of the game. Keep the game being fast, intense and interesting.

6. QTE. Remove them, just remove them all. They unnessesarry at all. There is no need for them to be. They made poor and not fun to play. Boring. Very much.

7. Boss Fights. There is none. Add boss fights. If you don't know how - learn or ask someone who know.

8. Sound effects. There is very little amount of sound effects within the game. Needed to add sound of enviroment (birds and bees), during fights (kicks, crashes, breaking, beating, slicing), during cutscenes. Game feels empty without all these sounds.

9. VO. Voices are all good, but there is issues with volume. Everyone must (!) speak on the same level of volume. Work on that too.

10. Level structure. Some of the levels are cryptic in most unpeasant way. You can't figure out where to go. And yes the game is straight forward. For example: forest level, when Jino is following the Otsuru. There is a broken tree in a way, but there is no clear indication in which direction you need to go. It's good for a art style not to flood the HUD, but there is need be such thing like ''Arrow' or "Marker" to guide player through the game.

11. HUD. In the game you can die, but how this is indicates on the screen? Yellow tringle flashing in the corner, what in that, an electrycity warning? Add a heath-bar in the northen-left corner with character face and red bar. On status screen made a clear sign of current objective. For example: Chapter VIII - Battle in the Bar. How player should figure out to hit back flying knives into the speakers? No one told you to do that. Game is not tell you, so you can fight these four enemies over and over, until ... ?

12. Game genre. One-button-masher. That's not what everyone expected. X,X,X,X,B is not a combo, since there is no combos in the game. Add combos, 4 at least. Remember the first game? There was like 9000 combos. Where all that gone? There is styles (just like DMC), and they works well in a different way.But progression is a bit off. I've max up all styles (to Level 9) at Chapter VI. What the point? How can I be so strong in the beginning of the game? Isn't it I suppose to learn all skills during all the three episodes?

13. Enemy Intelect. There is none. Game is easy to beat and not challenging at all, and all because of the bad intelect. It is a very bad sign, when the game don't even try to kill the player. Also, bad enemy apearing also needed to be fixed.

14. Unsolid invisible box. It's when the character is stand in mid air with no reason. Fix all boxes of all objects, made them smaller. I steped of the rock, and now I'm 10 feet in the air.

15. Hit detection. Since there is no sound, you can't feel if you hit the enemy or him you, like at all. Of course there is "Combo Meter" but the game doesn't feels like DMC, when you made thousand hits and enemy flew away to the moon.

EXTRA 16*. Too much story, too little gameplay.You've focused too much on story and forgot about the actuall game, Revise your thoughts.

That's all issues that I've noticed during the walkthrough of the first episode. If you, developer, want to build the game, that worth playing, take a time to consider all things. And again, if you don't know how - learn or ask someone who know. Being a small team don't make you any excuses. There are two people teams, that works better than all 20 of you.

There are good aspects in the game, but we not gonna talk about them, before all thing written above will be fixed. Hope the Redacted Studios will hear my "fan-boy-cry". It's very sad to see game of the great franchise in such bad condition. Hope with me, you, people, will get what I ment by this message.

You've got 6 months. On Your Mark!

With a great hope,
Deep_wolf

[Beta]

Nice im glad you said this without bashing the devs im sure they got the message about this game and how many are upset however explaining why its so bad instead of just bashing the devs/game will make much better impact I believe. My opinion is this needed to bake in the oven for another year aleast, but anyways will said sir.

edit:
This is a episodic game, so It's story driven aleast most episodic games I've played are alot of story and less on gameplay which is what I think they are going for, its ment to tell a story thats why there is so many cutsences its focus on story and not much gameplay. Also im sure they know not sure why they would ask somebody it's probaly a budget thing.

[Kelvin]

Hopefully they will pull a Batman Arkham Knight on this and remake the game. Heck I don't mind waiting for 6 months if it means the game is being remade to be good. As it is, the game is just plain bad....worst game of 2015 for me.

[niels.v.d.sype]

You can skip movie sequences by pressing B on your gamepad. I am using a Logitech Wireless Gamepad F710. (which has the xbox 360 layout). There is a small configuration menu where you can change your screen resolution or that you want to play windowed. By choosing the option Configure game. I agree that you can not change much of the ingame settings. But you always can do that in AMD Catalyst Control Center or the equivalent of Nvidia to enable antialising and other settings. I agree with you that you do'nt have any indicator how many health you still have. Normally it is LT to focus on the enemies. The only bad thing are the camera angles. Sometimes you don't see the enemies because of that. There is some combination you need to perform to give example first you need to be in Afro Style and afterwards press LT+A to break the defence and afterwards swith to Kuma to finish. But I agree with you beside X and Master slice B you don't have many combos possibilities.

[Brune]

As a game developer I am going to point out where you could use a better list.

1. Tell to the Versus Evil to remove game from Steam/PSN/XBLA.
- This is foolish to think that they would tell the publisher to pull the game. It would be more or less ask or have a meeting about it. That said the publisher would be more interested in pulling the game rather than the developer. The developer has released very little titles and has no real reputation anymore regardless of their move. The publisher has an existing reputation that is new and would benefit from pulling this game.
2. Hire the testers (or me).
- This is in the wrong spot should be fourth and it's foolish to think you can replace a entire QA team. Should be Hire testers (including me).
3. Read comments of gamers who played, read them all.
- This is in the wrong spot, should be third and very foolish to think a developer has the time to read through ALL comments. They should get some of the biggest complains/threads and aggrate them into a known bugs list which they probably have already. They probably know of all these bugs and listed them as known shippables. They aren't braindead, they play their own games.
4. Make conslusion (dismiss the team or keep working on the project).
- This should be the first thing that the publisher does. The developer has no say in this and they shouldn't have a say because of course they are going to tell the publisher they want to keep working. Also it's very foolish to think they would do all of the above then then scrap the project.
5. Improve all broken aspects of the game.
- This should be reworded to patch the game to meet the expectations of a quality Versus Evil game. (that's way it looks better in the publisher's eyes)
6. Release the game how it's ment to be.
- This is fine but needs reworded as it feels like a bit too much attitude.

[Deep_wolf]

Of course no one is ever gonna read this topic and do something about it, since this game is "cash-grab" or devs has no money for this or (all others reasons). I admire all your thoughts on this matter, it's good to see someone else on tha same page. However, keeping the game in current condition on the market is dangerous. All reviews of the product are 2/10 at max, game is biggest downfall of this year. Ring a bell?

You mentioned:

"They aren't braindead, they play their own games."

Then why on the earth is this game is out on market, if it's not working properly (with all issues that was pointed out before). Publishers wants to rush the development? Out of time? No, I don't buy this, there is no reason to release unfinished game. None.

[Brune]

Originally posted by Deep_wolf:

Of course no one is ever gonna read this topic and do something about it, since this game is "cash-grab" or devs has no money for this or (all others reasons). I admire all your thoughts on this matter, it's good to see someone else on tha same page. However, keeping the game in current condition on the market is dangerous. All reviews of the product are 2/10 at max, game is biggest downfall of this year. Ring a bell?

You mentioned:

"They aren't braindead, they play their own games."

Then why on the earth is this game is out on market, if it's not working properly (with all issues that was pointed out before). Publishers wants to rush the development? Out of time? No, I don't buy this, there is no reason to release unfinished game. None.

There is a saying in the game industry. No game is ever done. It's true. I can get the greatest games and find something wrong or some feature they could add or adjust to make it better. Anyone can do this. You have to release sometime and finding where you should release is difficult.

Although you kind of answered yourself.

"why on the earth is this game is out on market"
"since this game is "cash-grab" or devs has no money for this"

In reality a small 10 man indie studio takes about 50,000 a month. A 30 man team? probably around 120,000. This is cost of man power and nothing else. Not floor space, licenses or anything. If anyone is in a position to work for free or less than the medium wage in America then they should consider themselfs very lucky.

Redacted has about ~20 employees so that's actually around the middle of those two numbers. 80,000 dollars a month just for employees. Not computers, not visual studio which costs thousands or maya which costs thousands or anything else. Just employees.

So you don't "buy" that games get shut down and forced to market all the time? Well let me know when you wake up to the real world and get some industry experience. It's very much a money thing and the fact is that the game industry is taking a big economy hit right now. Investors started investing way less in games this year http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/13/game-deals-fall-89-in-first-half-as-mega-transactions-fail-to-materialize/ and on top of that the Canadian and Chinese markets just crashed. This is probably fallout from a tough economy this year.

[Deep_wolf]

So, since few month, the devs made to the first step, as I planned.

Sadly, there is no word that there are gonna be any continuation of current situation.

[UnclePauly]

Yup, game is dead unless picked up by someone else.

[Prpich25]

Originally posted by Mr.Fishy:

Originally posted by Deep_wolf:

Of course no one is ever gonna read this topic and do something about it, since this game is "cash-grab" or devs has no money for this or (all others reasons). I admire all your thoughts on this matter, it's good to see someone else on tha same page. However, keeping the game in current condition on the market is dangerous. All reviews of the product are 2/10 at max, game is biggest downfall of this year. Ring a bell?

You mentioned:

"They aren't braindead, they play their own games."

Then why on the earth is this game is out on market, if it's not working properly (with all issues that was pointed out before). Publishers wants to rush the development? Out of time? No, I don't buy this, there is no reason to release unfinished game. None.

There is a saying in the game industry. No game is ever done. It's true. I can get the greatest games and find something wrong or some feature they could add or adjust to make it better. Anyone can do this. You have to release sometime and finding where you should release is difficult.

Although you kind of answered yourself.

"why on the earth is this game is out on market"
"since this game is "cash-grab" or devs has no money for this"

In reality a small 10 man indie studio takes about 50,000 a month. A 30 man team? probably around 120,000. This is cost of man power and nothing else. Not floor space, licenses or anything. If anyone is in a position to work for free or less than the medium wage in America then they should consider themselfs very lucky.

Redacted has about ~20 employees so that's actually around the middle of those two numbers. 80,000 dollars a month just for employees. Not computers, not visual studio which costs thousands or maya which costs thousands or anything else. Just employees.

So you don't "buy" that games get shut down and forced to market all the time? Well let me know when you wake up to the real world and get some industry experience. It's very much a money thing and the fact is that the game industry is taking a big economy hit right now. Investors started investing way less in games this year http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/13/game-deals-fall-89-in-first-half-as-mega-transactions-fail-to-materialize/ and on top of that the Canadian and Chinese markets just crashed. This is probably fallout from a tough economy this year.

Originally posted by Mr.Fishy:

As a game developer I am going to point out where you could use a better list.

1. Tell to the Versus Evil to remove game from Steam/PSN/XBLA.
- This is foolish to think that they would tell the publisher to pull the game. It would be more or less ask or have a meeting about it. That said the publisher would be more interested in pulling the game rather than the developer. The developer has released very little titles and has no real reputation anymore regardless of their move. The publisher has an existing reputation that is new and would benefit from pulling this game.
2. Hire the testers (or me).
- This is in the wrong spot should be fourth and it's foolish to think you can replace a entire QA team. Should be Hire testers (including me).
3. Read comments of gamers who played, read them all.
- This is in the wrong spot, should be third and very foolish to think a developer has the time to read through ALL comments. They should get some of the biggest complains/threads and aggrate them into a known bugs list which they probably have already. They probably know of all these bugs and listed them as known shippables. They aren't braindead, they play their own games.
4. Make conslusion (dismiss the team or keep working on the project).
- This should be the first thing that the publisher does. The developer has no say in this and they shouldn't have a say because of course they are going to tell the publisher they want to keep working. Also it's very foolish to think they would do all of the above then then scrap the project.
5. Improve all broken aspects of the game.
- This should be reworded to patch the game to meet the expectations of a quality Versus Evil game. (that's way it looks better in the publisher's eyes)
6. Release the game how it's ment to be.
- This is fine but needs reworded as it feels like a bit too much attitude.

Who do you work for again? As a game developer?