bought on GOG, feels unfinished
I've never posted an overtly negative review of a game before, and I hate that Slain might be the first, but I picked up a copy on GOG, and I have to say, it feels extremely unfinished.
Let me qualify the below by reassuring that, as long hoped, the visuals are absolutely top-notch, with all kinds of gorgeous pixel art and environmental effects enriching the world. And, of course, the soundtrack absolutely rips. These are the qualities that made the trailer so compelling, and they do not disappoint.
However, the gameplay itself feels like a rough alpha of something that could be much improved with further development. Controls are loose and sloppy. With the music volume turned down, there are minimal sound effects in the game, to the point that taking and giving damage are hard to identify because of the lack of audio feedback. I tried playing with no music, just as an experiment, and I feel like I'm watching a near-silent graphical demo. I want so badly to be satisfied by the gameplay, but, as it is, the sense of "oomph" I'd expect from so much metal (literal and figurative) is weirdly lacking.
Navigating the menus is laggy, and there are layout issues that make it difficult to read the menu over the death screen. The game also locks up completely when I try to load the credits from the main menu.
I worry that this is maybe an example of the player/fan community's enthusiasm pushing the game to release before it's finished. I've been following Slain for months, and I'm as excited as most to finally play it (hell, I raced over to GOG and created an account just to buy it), but I was pretty shocked at how rough and incomplete the game feels.
Just my two cents. Maybe for some the awesome visuals and animation will be enough, but I really need more impact and grit and tightness from the controls to get into this one. My sense is that (major) patching could correct a lot of this stuff; but the development delays and community anxiety up until this point might complicate that.
And then a lengthy number of replies agreeing with said statement, unfortunate if they rushed the release.
(Still not available via Steam, GOG version was released a few hours ago.)
Damn, the constant delays already were suspicious, and now this..early access in disguise :<, definitely a move that won't do the product any favors. I guess it's another case of "forget about the game and come back in a few months, when/if things will be fixed"
I guess I was right all along. All those nice pixels wasted on unimaginative and uncompleted gameplay. Please devs, take your time and give this game the polish that it deserves I'd love to play a game like this!
and steam has the same build as gog, so looks like it's "early access stealth mode scumbag edition" afterall
Yeah, I grabbed that version provided by the trusty rin men and played through the initial stages..the amount of clunkiness
It's not just that though, there's also the stark contrast between such amazing art-style, gory and metal to the core, and the linear and repetitive gameplay that only involves blindly pork-chopping enemies without strategies, and occasional avoiding buttsecs traps just to spice things up. Slain indeed (I'm not sure the patches can fix everything, since part of the disappointment comes from the odd design decisions).
Addressing bugs
Hey everybody! First of all, I would like to thank everyone for being a part of our first release. We are extremely grateful to have so much interest in our game. Both Andrew and I regret releasing the game before it was quite ready, but we didn’t have too many good alternative options. However, that is a different conversation for another time. In this post, I want to let you know that we are keeping track of our website and the distribution website forums and we're trying to address bugs in the game as quickly as we can. We will update the game very soon to fix major bugs, but please bear with us, as we are an extremely small development team.
Unfortunately some tweaks went in the game during the 11th hour that ended up breaking the keyboard controls. I’m sorry that happened, and I understand how frustrating it is. I will literally be working on fixing it as soon as I finish posting this. Hopefully that doesn’t deter too many people from coming back and trying the game out again later.
Thanks again. Sincerely. Everyone has been kind and patient for the most part and we really appreciate it. We have learned a lot from this experience and we’re still learning a whole lot more.
Both Andrew and I regret releasing the game before it was quite ready, but we didn’t have too many good alternative options.
AKA "We ran out of money, couldn't finish the game, launched it anyway" -- ah well.
~edit~
Ouch, those reviews! >_< The game got slammed on Steam, right now it's "Mostly Negative" mainly due to the incredibly basic nature of the game and the busto-controls. Sadly, in my experience, most people don't go back and change their reviews when issues are fixed.
yep. I think the huge amount of negativity is only exacerbated by the fact that people saw and still see so much potential, that the disappointment is tenfold.
oh well, will keep casually monitoring progress every month or so to see if the potential is at least a bit realized.
Dear Game Developers, please stop making your 2D platformers require precision in movement and then setting the analogue stick as the movement function.
Yeah, of course I will, at some point... It's just that it seems to be the general consensus that the gameplay is the bad part and that's also the part that matters the most to me.
- are issue with control mitigated by using a keyboard?
- I've only seen 3 types of slashing with sword, is there anything else to the game? items, diff weapons a levelling system etc. anything?
Definitely not, I'd say keyboard controls are rougher than the already rough gamepad ones, since there's also a delay that gets in the way (among the other things).
The combat itself has different attacks (and you can actually use 'enchantments', no levelling system though as far as I could tell) but the big problems is, they're not useful at all, since you can kill everything by bashing the main button nextgen style. It's basically the complete opposite of the great Volgarr the Viking
I didn't find the controller hard to use at all! If this game was $30 or $40 dollars I could see it being a failed money grab! The devs feel bad that people are disappointed in the 1.0 release. They are a small team and have already put in 3 years....3 years for a 2D scrolling platformer???? It shows their lack of experience in this! I played the Alpha or what ever it was. It was fine for what it is.....if they had of stayed low keyed and didn't make such a huge deal about heavy metal background music it would have been better.....the hype made the result less then fantastic......but in time and a couple of patches I think it will be what they want it to be.....I would take the heart and soul of 3 devs over any AAA game team!!!!
So I wish good luck to Wolfbrew games....get some rest and come out swinging....OR NOT!? Haha! It was less then $20......
Well they run out of Money happens and it doesn't sound unfixable i still like the art and the music of the game so if they fix it up i will probably buy it.
ok tried it aswell.... love the visuals , the biggest problem of it right now I see the unresponsivness of controls (even with derppad) and the lack of (mostly sound) feedback from hits.
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I'd love to play a game like this!
