A few suggestions

[Darkness]

Hi, I just finished the game alone a few minutes ago, and had plenty of fun with it. I'd like to contribute with my experience with it, and suggest a few things. I'm not sure if they're reasonable or viable at all, so I'm just sharing a few insights I had.


Kicking: I personally loved that we can kick while reloading, really saved me a few times, but how about kicking in mid-air? Would it be reasonable? I'm not even sure if that would be ok, as you'd end up like Bruce Lee your way, but I felt some trouble when I had to jump over some obstacle to be able to shoot my way, and ended up getting bitten or shot in the face without any chances of proper reaction, as it's also hard to control your shots while jumping, and you can't aim vertically.

Stairs: They really harm the gunplay, as you can just shoot straight. When going up, I can easily get shot, and can't react properly. Should the shots on stairs be relative to the stairs or something? Don't know, as it would then create some problems as well.

Progression: I felt the game lacked some sort of permanent progression system. I'm ok with no leveling and such, but I didn't like to lose my weapons when I started at chapter 1 after finishing the game. Still, I wish something could be unlocked. Maybe the character skins could be unlocked after beating some chapters, or even after finishing the game on some difficulty? Not sure, but it's usual to reward the player somehow - even though the main reward is the fun itself, sometimes some sort of positive reinforcement is desired or expected.

Exploration: In platform games, you're usually rewarded for exploring, getting to optional ways, finding alternative paths, and so on. In a few places I noticed it could give access to some weapons ealier, but still, I found it lacking. Have you thought about adding some collectables? My suggestion would be rare/expensive alcohol bottles from the game's background... no need to use original names, of course, maybe some wordplay with their names, I don't know... so each level would have one or more of those hidden in boxes or something. They don't need to give bonuses or anything, of course, but just are some sort of reward for exploration. Would even contribute to the choice for the game background.

Damage display: Any chance for an option to show the damaged landed? I know it's usually used by RPGs and similar games, but I bet it could help to know the weapons better, and see which ones are more suited for each job. Shouldn't be something mandatory, nor it's really necessary, but I bet it'd be a good addition. It's a feedback tool for the players.

Stagger: when some melee enemy get to you, specially rats and some zombies, the character slows down, diminishing his reaction times. Until you're familiar with the commands and manage to quickly do some kick in their face, I didn't like it at all. I don't know if the duration is too long, or the slow too severe, or maybe it's because you'll be constantly taking hits and it'll continue until you kick then, but I didn't find it enjoyable.

Also, when facing the rat boss, sometimes I'd get hit by him, being knocked back, and landing on the acid/poison surface. I felt like the damage I got was way too high... probably because I got damage from touching him, from his attack, and later on, from the hazard, and I couldn't quickly get out of it, mainly because of the stagger mechanics. I bet the damage is big because you don't have a single moment of invulnerability, so you take damages from that "combo", and it does really harm.

Slowdowns: Sometimes it looked like the game slowed down in framerates drastically, even though my steam overlay FPS counter showed 60 FPS all the times. I had this problem on a few gunfights, but also on the sewers, on that part where you climb vertically and there was some kind of smoke in the middle of the section. Not sure if it skipped to keep the 60 FPS... looked like that.

[No exit]

Hi Darkness,

Thanks for the feedback. It was very constructive and clear.

If we had more time to work on this game before releasing it then many of the points you had discussed had been implemented.

Right now it is different though as many people that have bought the game have had the time to play the game up to the point where they overplayed it. Changing the campaign with relative minor changes at this point will not make it feel fresh enough for a lot of people to actually come back to play the game as it will still feel too much the same from the last time they played it.

This is why we chose to add a brand new versus game mode with a new AI which will come out soon which will give more gameplay for both the old and new players.

So don't feel bad if a lot of the suggestions you gave here will not make it into the game, the feedback was really good and we'll remember it and learn from it :).

On a side note:
Even though there is no invulnerability, there are damage reduction mechanics that happen when you take damage from the same or different sources in a short period of time.

These damage reduction mechanics are made such that the order of the damage does not matter in the end. This is to avoid a flaw in invulnerability mechanics that happens when an ability that damages you for low damage and an ability that damages you for high damage are hitting you (near) simultaneous. You can have a big difference in outcome depending on which hits first (as when the second ability hits you, you will be invulnerable), even though the player did (almost) the same thing wrong.

Glad you had plenty of fun with the game :).

Crazy Monkey Studios Developer.