Recent reviews by Anthony_python

This is just a fever dream type of game,
First of all I just want to say I can tell quite a bit of effort was put into the game and I know it's a big deal to finish anything and release it, even with source engine so am not trying to put the dev down, but rather give pointers to improve in the future.

There is a lot of different problems and issues, a lot of things that just don't make sense at all, and frankly I don't know why the developer decided on using the source engine. (especially since source isn't good at very large maps)
It is still unfortunately a bit unstable at times and loading a save breaks gravity and your stamina.(and so requires a restart of the game)
The story is hard to follow a bit some but I understand that english isn't their native tongue so am giving it a face value. so it is just kind of bland and boring having a lot of text on screen some times but other wise the story is just ok.

It has inconsistency with how dialogue is displayed, Some times there is speech bubbles with a choreographed scene, other times it's an image on the screen, other times just text in the middle of the screen. This gives the game a incoherent feeling to the game and makes it quite chaotic. which if that is what the dev was looking for , they accomplished it, I just want to say that if you can you should show more than tell, it's ok to have less text if you can show something, and when you do show text it is good to stay consistent of the method used.

A lack of more obvious indications of where the player should go and be-able to do hurts this quite a lot.
There is no indication of when something is interactable, and the lack of knowing where to go most of the time just kind of has you explore aimlessly until you find something.

Which brings me to the next thing level design, I don't know where to start.
having some things unknown is ok, but when the player can't even know they are supposed to go to a boat and dock that you can't even see from a distance really detracts from the gameplay. Now some things are done ok like the castle as it is point of interest considering it's size, and so is the island but it's not quite enough to guide the player in the right direction after the first time. You just again aimlessly run around and just run into a trigger and just hope you can find a way to continue.

In this case I would have recommended to place lights in area's of interest.(enable some, disable others as things progress.) Level's are also some what empty feeling a bit still.
There is also area's where the player can go but has no point so those shouldn't allow the player to go there. open world doesn't mean the player is able to go anywhere at all times just able to do a good amount. There is different approaches doing it to detour and guide a player but not making them always feel like they have to or if they can should have a good reason for an area if able to be gotten to.(rewarding the player well)

The audio is some times frankly a hard pill to swallow but can be ignored.
Developer I recommend adding the music to be adjustable to the music slider in the menu it is as simple as putting # in front of a sound script or in your ambient_generic's.

Next is Player controls, oh lordy
they are just kind of horrendous frankly, it's hard to aim weapons, and some times get stuck going in and out of confined area's, and as well when cut scene's play they don't entirely stop the player from moving the camera most of the time. The player can some times get stuck in stuff or more recently I got stuck in the well not being able to jump anymore, I think it thought I was in the air still some how. you can also some times get thrown into the sky and beyond and not die, but most of the time you will die. Am just glad the game isn't a platformer focused game or I'd have much harder time with it (not intuitive).

Combat, not great the stomping can work, but because of low moon gravity like and the player controller it's quite difficult to aim, melee can't really be used for combat and I understand that they are meant more for breaking things but more suitable melee options would have been nice, as for ranged weapons again hard to aim and hit, some times a crosshair isn't even visible.(most likely a bug)
some weapons like bombs are nearly useless due to the gravity,

For future reference please add an auto aim(enemy targeting) if you are going to be doing this sort of system it's a huge player Quality of Life feature.

Next I want to talk about the graphics, I do have to say at least the style is some what consistent, and that it's just alright, it's nothing to ride home about but some of it could be improved.

The game overall is a bit rough( scuffed even), some more smaller details or other things that could have improved the experience more but despite all the issues the game really still gave me a lot of laugh's and an enjoyable experience playing it for my friends to have a good time.

Do I recommend you to get it? maybe if you like fever dream games then sure. this is just pretty baffling in the way where it's not a great game in fact it's bad in a lot of aspects but it's one of those kind of games that it is incredibly funny in that way even down to the prerender images.

game is fun, if you like rouge-lite spell slinger's you'll like this. just keep in mind it is pretty challenging.

This is a fairly challenging platforming game. I like the mechanic of only being able to jump and I appreciate the fact that you can save at any time, whereas most others punish you severely for a single misstep. If you want a casual playthrough you can do that. Otherwise you can disregard saving and have more of a challenge.
loved it.

What a sorry release, this is possibly the worst attempt of something like this, it holds no merit compared to HL2, this can't even exit out correctly.

Artistically it's interesting and I have to give them that where credit is due, but anything beyond that is abysmal on every other front in terms of gameplay. Where is the impactful feeling you get when playing something such as HL2?

The zombie's have no locational damage, they don't react, the sounds are very meh, and over all the movement is very floaty. only a single time is it even required to use the gravity gun which works ok-ish. but there is nothing really making the player want to do this. In the case of HL2 before we ever got to ravenholm we had plenty of time to use the gravity gun, before you were in ravenholm. Now this is important that we see it, we use it, we practiced it you were made to want to toy around with it. Here it's just drop in, not even telling us we even have acquired it to begin with or anything.

I want to get back to the zombie's they have their own problem's as I mentioned but the crawler's and headcrabs by far need the most work, the crawlers need adjustments to their range they go way to far out and is impossible basically to kill with a crowbar. headcrabs too are hard to hit and they sometimes can result in them ragdolling but still having active AI which still try to attack you but because they are ragdolled just act very strangly . which brings me to the rest of the weapons, what is with the sounds and animations?

They aren't again "impactful" when you use them this makes the player feel like they are practically worthless to them, they have no "weight"

while yes there is blood splatter and when you kill a zombie they produce a decal that just scales over time but these isn't enough, they are suppose to react to you when hitting them or shooting them but they just don't again this makes the gameplay feel hallow. pointless even.

Movement the biggest problem: they tried too hard to "replicate" HL2/Source engine movement and ended up going too far, instead of making movement that feel good, and is roughly on par, they made it feel just way too floaty it needs to be tightened up it shouldn't feel like were on ice constantly were on snow, snow!

Why does it require us to use TSR to even have this remotely playable? are you kidding me a 3080 TI can only run this at 60 fps? I've had more frames in cyberpunk 2077 than this thing.

Also was any play testing even involved barely, it sure didn't seem like it at all?

also why is it so absurdly short are you kidding me?

I think overall they only have a art video and shouldn't have released this at all, this just shows clearly they don't really know what they are even doing nor how game development even works. When you work on a game you don't just work on only a couple of the aspects and then leave the rest which is what this had clearly done. This was rushed to get out of the door in some attempt to keep people's attention to a project most thought was long dead.

This needs to be in the oven for another decade before it can even be considered good.

I've followed josh for quite some time ever since leadwerks, Ultra Engine is the successor of leadwerks and is much better in performance than what leadwerks could ever have or do. Sure there is some missing features but its an in development engine in early access, while yes you don't get the source code you do how ever get great support from josh and the community as well as the fact you never have to worry about royalties,

Ultra Engine is rapidly improving every week with something(in recent a lot of stuff with tessellation, and extra CSG brush features)

There is still plenty of things getting created by the community to try to fill in some of the gaps that Ultra Engine doesn't have and so you should expect some coding with-in this engine. Pro allows C++, or lua while normal is lua only
but since the lua is multi-threaded it will not be a bottle neck unlike leadwerks.(being single threaded)
There is a input/output system a lot like source engine/ hammer or UE3 kismet, Components can have inputs and or outputs to be hooked up by level logic via the flowgraph editor. As time goes on and more components are made, less overall coding will be needed for a faster workflow.

The editor is very much a mix of hammer and unity, you have your main window usually with 4 view at start(this can be changed) and allows the use of CSG brushes for level work rather than having to only rely on mesh only work flow.
on the right side is the scene hierarchy/project files. and on the left you now have a sidepanel like hammer for the various views, flowgraph, asset library, and main scene currently.

This is certainly not production ready yet, but I think its on a really good course.

I like the game, but doesn't seem like much of a puzzle game not any real challenges you'd expect from a puzzle game.
It's more of a chill, immersive game than a puzzle game which is fine in it's own right, and I have huge respect for the programming side of things but for 25 USD. I can't really justify that much for this game. The game is pretty short for the price.

used blender for quite a while. one of the best 3d programs out there, and it's free forever.

you can practically do anything in blender, 3d modelling and sculpting being a strong feature. but you can animate, both 3d and 2d( grease pencil), video editing, vfx's. hair particle's, armature rigging for both body and facial. evee, & cycles rendering engine. shader node system, the new geometry node system.(sorta like houdini which could've been the inspiration). smoke & fluid simulation, motion tracking, uv mapping, udim's, etc.

pretty much what ever you need you can probably do it in blender.
and if you can't do it in blender you can look for addons which may do what you want. if there is something you can't do as easy in blender then go ahead and do it in your preferred program.

Texturing/baking is a bit behind in blender so I use substance painter or 3d coat. but it is possible with the default just a bit frustrating with out addons.

It's KillMonday nuff said, buy it.

I really wanted to like this game, but it had so much potential, but it kind of dropped the ball multiple times. too short, not free, bad pacing, writing is just meh, I don't really recommend it, I don't even think I have enough to write an article on it.
Sorry... try again
Mia Blais-Côté don't worry, just try to add more text, and better choices for starters you rarely want the player to reach a good end that easy. You always want the player to end with some bad endings once or more to enrich the game. Don't make your choices too obvious, but don't make them non-sense. some improvements to the UI is needed. Please change preserve/recovering to Save/Load it is easier for a English speaker to understand it.

My review is here. [hanketsu.com]