This belongs in a museum
Reviews for "Rail or Die"
Pretty good overall. Not gonna judge too harsh bc you already said you plan on updating, but there are a few things to pick at.
First, the warehouse sections are ok, I guess? But they're not much more than busy work for the player to do between fighting and crafting. It'd be interesting to try and implement a platform-type shooter, but if that's beyond the scope of what you'd want, fair enough. Otherwise, I definitely wouldn't downgrade it either.
I think having the random trades is fine, I'd argue the cost to get a motor should be higher though. Motors, at least atm, give you the highest-tier guns or access to making parts from metals, so they really make the game cheese after you get the two you need. Also, that the bird poop trade for iron should be 10:1 instead of 5:1, or at least higher.
Honestly, It'd probably be more interesting and efficient with your time if you just focused more on the train and the machine gun combat. Some ideas I had while playing were:
-Having some sort of fuel system/mechanic for the train
-Having some sort of mid-tier enemy or even boss enemy that strafes, requiring you to track to shoot it
-Maybe having some sort of path you can choose to vary it up? Could be a good way to vary enemies and environment as well. Maybe condors instead of ravens (or whatever heavier birds are) in a desert, or something equivalent for some variety, stuff like that.
-Music is aight, can use some variety tho, and maybe a theme while the trains stopped. The white noise works fine otherwise, i s'pose.
-Specifically, in the combat phase, give the player a stronger reason they'd want to get out of the MG nest. This could be as simple as having to press a button to steer, something intermediate like repairing the train, or as complex as having birds that get in the train and need to be fought off.
>With this, I think MG cooldown should be tweaked so that 2 lvl 1 MG's would be preferable to 1 lvl 2 MG (and equiv for lvl 3,) I think making the upgrade inherently better than two under leveled guns makes the game sorta droll after awhile, since I don't have to get out of the OP machine gun nest. Needs to be more hectic, but fair.
-The types of upgrades were alright, maybe would split them up into a couple more tiers tho, especially for cooldown and train HP, and maybe accuracy and base damage.
-With the AP gun, having the ammo pierce through a couple enemies could be cool and up its effectiveness
-With the HE gun, it might be better if you had a bigger swarm of low health enemies, so maybe implementing a new enemy type or changing the current sparrows would be better than reworking the gun
-I'm not sure quite how it'd work out, but maybe instead of crafting special MG types, crafting a limited amount of special MG rounds could make more sense, and give the player another reason to strategize before combat or get out and reload the guns
And last but not least, some random bugs or other stuff I had:
-Inventory icons would sometimes stay on screen after I tried to drag them. Usually, they went away after I closed the storage window, although there was one time where it didn't, and stayed on screen for the rest of the game, unless I was in a MG nest.
-The bird indicator icons would sometimes jump around, are they fixed on a random bird in the flock? Not really a problem, but just curious.
Overall, the game's set up pretty well, and is decently polished. I had fun for like an hour. I don't mean to sound like a prick, but I found the game pretty easy to keep up with if I was a bit cautious with my resource management. Some balancing towards making it harder, or at least more hectic would be nice. And some variety in the background/music/enemy types, whether mechanically or cosmetically, would be cool.
StalenGD responds:
Thank you so much for the feedback. I will mention once again that the game is at an early stage of development and it is planned to add a lot of mechanics and content. Most of your suggestions were on my mind one way or another, and either are too complicated to implement at the moment, or they had to be simplified in this version.
- Bosses will be added
- The route selection system is in development right now, I already had a post on Game Jolt
- Something like a system for reloading and crafting ammunition for weapons was postponed because I found it difficult for players to understand, but it will probably still be implemented
- Bird indicator points to random bird within bunch, and after its death point to another bird.
And once again, thanks for playing and feedback!
10/10 game
Gameplay was amazing! Can't wait for the update.
Maybe you could make an upgrade for more cargos(there isn't much space)
Gun cooldown are also kinda too fast, not that its a bad thing.
Nice game
There was a lot of nice things in this game especially the graphics and the medals are nice I thought it was weird But I also found myself enjoying this entry as much as the next guy, so I got a positive feel from this so props to you for a decent submission. You have Distributed a very good entry here, This is Loaded with lots to see and do, This is a very Acceptable game, and would love to see it Thrive into even more.
~~THINGS TO IMPROVE ON~~
Seems like it could use more content especially end game content,
~X~
Some advice for new players, this is a play it until you die kind of game, with only 3 enemy types to fight, so once you’ve killed everything and maybe upgraded everything, you’ve seen everything.
Of the upgrades, the explosive rounds is the worst. Try and get the double gun, then the advanced bench and the final gun. AP gun is also useful for one of the enemy types.
To the developer, an ending would be nice, or some incentive to keep playing, like a score or something. Pick something arbitrary, like ‘it will take 100 days to reach safety’, but a game that doesn’t is a game that’s never finished.
StalenGD responds:
About the amount of content: yes, everything is about that, and I would have to indicate this in the game description.
About guns: each weapon in the game has a specific purpose and works best against some kind of enemies. MG turrets are something average btw. Most likely, it seemed to you that a high-explosive turret is useless because after 20 days without upgrade it requires 2 hits even on small enemies to kill them.
About ending: I'm not planning to make an ending yet, and it makes sense to play on, because the enemies are getting harder every day and it's harder to pass on, but not everyone will like this. So you can stop at 40-50 days and not lose anything, or you can accept the challenge and try to beat the record.
Thanks for feedback!