Great potential: My toughts on current demo gameplay

[3º del ******* world]

The game has a ton of potential, there are a lot of things that remind us of “RV” and we love that. There is still a lot to fix and develop, and you can feel it in the demo. I’ll mention some of the things I like and others I’d prefer to see changed, let’s see what everyone else thinks.

All of this is just my opinion, it doesn’t have to be the right or correct take. I think these changes would make my experience more fun, and they are thought from a fun > realism approach.

Boat:

I love the general premise, sailing while dodging obstacles is fun and steering the boat feels good. We haven’t managed to stop the anchor from constantly breaking, so I can’t really say much about its current mechanic. I would like the captain to have a bit more control, but like I said, maybe that’s what the anchor is supposed to be right now and we just haven’t tested it properly. Also, I imagine the sonar increases the gameplay experience for the captain or another crew member, but we haven’t been able to get much further with its use either.

The hook, I would improve the shot or make it feel better, both in the actual action of shooting it (sound & visuals) and in the feeling of pulling the boat, with more noticeable visual feedback. I would also add more hooks in different positions around the boat, or another mechanic to increase cooperation between crew members. I think that in communication coop games, the most important thing is that each player has a role and that role feels important. Right now we have two roles max maybe three with sonar (with a little hope), so either we go deeper into the tasks of each role, captain and hook user, or we increase the amount of tasks.

The repair tasks, so far, I like them. I like the status bar and it’s clear when something is broken and what is broken. The “meta”, just like in RV, is to have the boat as an open-top boat with no railings, since you get more vision and you can leave the captain’s cabin / boat in all 360 degrees.

Player controller:

Emotes and expressiveness are excellent and fun.

When it comes to movement, there is a lot to polish in my opinion. A physics-based controller is always fun, but the values need tweaking. Right now the “meta” is moving by jumping, since you go much faster in the air than by running (it gets my approval, I love it). The collision itself is pretty unbearable, you get “stuck” on any collider, and climbing onto the boat using the ladders is truly annoying. Moving in general doesn’t feel very fluid outside of “air time”.

Without a doubt, the worst part is the tedious task of getting on and off the boat, onto wooden platforms or onto the islands themselves. Together with the previous point on movement, which makes a brutal combo worsening the experience for now...

If we want to encourage exploration outside the ship, getting off and back on has to stop being so tedious. My solution, unless they rework the general controller, would be a jump when the character’s collision is already on the surface of the water, making it easier to use the boat ladders or climb onto platforms without having to go around them by land. But I guess there will be more and better solutions (mine is not really realistic but I find it fun and convenient nonetheless).

When it comes to throwing objects, please give it way more strength. I want to throw the wallet two boats away. Right now throwing objects is sad, to say the least. RV itself handles this mechanic very intelligently in my opinion. Throwing objects is fun, make it feel good to do it, go crazy with it. Let the object bounce, let the physics break and make it fly through the air, let it go so high I stop seeing it, just something that gives life to the mechanic.

We haven’t explored fishing too much. We like the whole thing of controlling something and cooperating more, in the style of RV There Yet, Barotrauma, Iron Wolf. From the little I’ve fished, it feels like a light mechanic that is fine for asking for replacement parts and other consumables in shop, but I haven’t gone much deeper than that.

I would really appreciate being able to carry more than one object at the same time (maybe two, one hand) but I understand that the amount of back-and-forth trips required from the player to gather resources and how spread out those resources are, is a matter of taste.

Consumables:

11/10 the mushrooms.

About the alcohol flask, I dont have enought intelligence to know what it does, maybe it’s speed, but I didn't notice it.

The food, I imagine it heals us, but I haven’t seen it since our deaths have either been my friend insta-killing me by pressing “F” and sending me flying, or the boat exploding. So no idea.

All in all, possible GOTY with a ton of work ahead. Thanks for listening to an old man yelling at clouds. Best of luck, I’ll be waiting wishlisted!

[Leszeq]

Hi there,

Thanks for such a detailed feedback

Harpoons are currently under slighty rework - we'll give them 2 modes: standard and aggresive one + you are able to mount more harpoons (in full game other modules too) on slots on the boat (those cylinders on the top of the boat like the one under the harpoon) - we'll make it more obvious to use

When in comes to movement - we're working on a ladder rework - now - you will be able to "grab" it and move up and down in "ladder" mode in stead of current bugged version

Movement-wise - we'll investigate in furthermore, but I'm not promising anything

Current state of anchor is - it's a joke that it's just always broken (we will [maybe] change that later)

Thank you for kind words - it keeps us motivated to work on this project!

Cheers