Praise, Ideas/Suggestions, Criticism after finishing the game.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Nejtysk, Sep 23, 2014.

  1. Nejtysk

    Nejtysk Space Hobo

    Hello,

    This was one of the first indie games I bought after reading the review in the German monthly magazine PC Games. I certainly did not regret my purchase and really enjoyed the game but there are some issues with the game (given the small price, no big thing though). I will now give, without much order what I feel I should share.

    1) great atmosphere thanks to the music in combination with the retro-style and dialogues

    2a) most missions feel exactly the same. There would have been quite some mission types that could have been implanted without much work.
    2b)For example you have the pretty frail character Josh with hacking abilities on the one side and you have a great light system together with hearing/seeing range for characters and monsters. A mission where a small group (or even just one character) has to flee from a very powerful enemy (it would have been a good introduction for that final boss) to the escape or a mission where one would need to sneak around without making much noise (=use melee attacks on a small number of enemies before it could make a big noise that would bring tons of infected/assimilated/zombified to you). These mission types would have fitted greatly to the atmosphere

    3) increase replay value by hiding places that can be only accessed by a certain character.

    4) some additional background information about the universe of the game as optional reading objects in some places.

    5a) RPG elements? I honestly did not see anything that makes it RPG-like. It's a good turn based tactics game with relatively similar units. The stim-packs were a joke and it was not prominently shown how many your character already took and you could not really plan character developement much
    5b) the special abilities were great, more of them would be better. There could have also been special abilities on the different types of armors or the special weapons.

    6) Change difficulty. An easy-mode could have been implemented easily and I actually did it in one level for me by going into the json files after my my computer crashed before finishing the level. Such an easy mode could be made by having more inventary positions, lower cooldown time

    7) more enemy types

    8) German translation. Germans love these kinds of games. I know it, I live here.


    Well, despite all the negative points I mentioned, I really enjoyed the game and will buy a mission pack continuing the story after the cliffhanger if the company decides to create one.
     
    • Seminus

      Seminus Halfway Developer Developer

      Hey Nejtysk,
      Danke das du das Spiel gekauft hast und uns Feedback gibst. :)
      Now back to english so everyone can understand it. (We are Hamelin based so we speak german too.)

      About some points given:

      Translation: Yes we agree, it would make sense, especially as we are a german based company. Even thought we work with international guys, so we decided to keep mostly everything in english during development.
      But with the next update and the Mod support we can actually add localization to the game and we most likely will do that. (We got some fans wanting to help here too.)

      Difficulty: Yes that is really an easy one and we may add later on. Currently we work on a gamemode++ that is extra hard and has some new hidden things to find for player that finished the game. But we could add an easy mode too maybe.

      Thanks again for playing and giving us the feedback here. :)
       
      • Nejtysk

        Nejtysk Space Hobo

        I know about the German based designers and I agree it makes sense to first release it in English for maximum audience. Other PC dominated gaming markets would be South Korea and Central Europe. There are also still many more easy to add ideas that can bring fun singleplayer challenges and multiplayer modes. For example stay alive as many rounds as possible against an " unlimited" supply of monsters. In the multiplayer version, you could set survive X rounds while the other player or team of players controls the monsters. As I just read about the shooter Evolve (you probably heard about it), there could be a mode where a team of humans need to kill a big monster that can be AI controled or through another player. There's also classic team deathmatch. I loved it at Blue Byte's old Incubation game, which generally had a similar atmosphere a halfway. Also there can be the multiplayer mode where you again have unlimited enemies but the team that killed most enemies after X rounds would win. That can cause some really competitive moments when one team nearly kills a monster and then the other team just needs the last shot.


        Anyways, all those features including the ones you work on currently will make the existing customers happier but for getting more and making more money, there needs to be awareness and advertisement to frame it as "Halfway Complete edition" or something like that. I only majored in politics, not PR, but in some issues, it's really the same. Right now, the game is a diamond in the rough shape.
         
        • Nejtysk

          Nejtysk Space Hobo

          Just curious, how long will it take for that hard mode?

          Also just thought while playing a game on 3DS, it would be great there,too, but...of course...there are lots of difficulties.
           
          • Seminus

            Seminus Halfway Developer Developer

            @Nejtysk The Hardmode will be a part of the Mod Patch. So it will come at the same time. (It is a mod itself ;))
             
            • pletka

              pletka Space Hobo

              Why in that game a very bad graphics (but game mechanics is good)?
              pixelart isnt a good idea

              why not use the normal texture?
               
              • Nejtysk

                Nejtysk Space Hobo

                Because there are lots of people who love pixel art. After I played this game, I played Shovelknight. Also they did the pixelart quite well. You can also create your own style and you can save costs. Would have 3D Graphics made the game better? I don't think so. It would make the modding also much more of an issue.
                 

                Share This Page