#Please delay this game

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

wintry condor
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For context, SAS was a big part of my childhood. I'm a huge fan of topdown games, horde shooters, and video games in general. I'm not a developer (Yet ™), but I have done QA for numerous indie projects and have spent hundreds of hours doing volunteer bug hunting and playtesting for small devs. I love SAS and want only the best for it.

nothing I've seen in the demo makes me think this game is anywhere near ready for release. I plan on making a much more in depth video on feedback w: examples, but this is highlighting my main points.

THERE ARE GOOD IDEAS HERE, but this game is not in a good spot technically, gameplay loop, or polish wise for release. The last metric I heard was Q2 2026, and if it releases even as late as July it's going to flop. It NEEDS at least a 1 and a half years development time in the oven. I am saying this with utmost love, this series has been a big influence on my tastes in media.

1: The 3D art style, when it's being used right, can look pretty good, and I've never had any issues with visibility or being able to tell what's happening. There are a few spots on Icefields and Abandoned Colony that stand out. I like the spot with the skeleton half-buried near the toppled truck. The skeleton's textures are shaded and crushed in just the right way to look stylish. The trackmarks gave the ground some nice texturing etc. In general some touchups on the lighting, textures, and shading would go a long way, most of the levels feel way too shiny and clean, like Mining Facility and Icefields. Some maps also feel like props are placed randomly. It doesn't feel like a "place" but a random series of tubes. I can't gather anything about what these places might have been like when they were operational because there doesn't seem to be much thought in the environments beyond their layout. They also feel quite samey, because while they have different visual flavors they are all long hallways with a main circular path around the outside.

Continued

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2: I like how the explosive barrels are very useful, being able to interact with my environment to achieve my goals and survive is a welcome addition, and I wish there was more of it. Some other examples I'd appreciate seeing include:
Using boxes placed around the map to hold back melee zombies temporarily, until they're broken. (Like in SAS4).
Being able to open/close doors or one-way-barriers you can shoot through, but the zombies have to break down.
Assault being able to open certain entryways with explosives, perhaps? Give him an objective clear/combat engineer niche? He feels a little weak atm.
Activating traps or defense systems on maps. (Not just for story progression but as potential side objectives in quick play and campaign missions)
Optional objectives to bring back loot to the extract zone, but difficulty ramps up the longer the evac ship is around, so you have to weigh risking a team wipe vs getting more loot.
Alternative paths to enter objectives (entering through the roof of a building instead of sounding an alarmed front door etc)

3:Aegis Station feels unnecessary. It just adds backing in and out of menus and extra walking between missions. It could just be a menu.

4: Turrets and grenades being part of your base kit is 10/10. Customization for those plz

5: The way abilities and the class skills are handled is a big improvement over SAS4. More meaningful upgrades that have a larger impact, tho it would be nice to see skills have a couple more tiers in the full game. General skills feel like a bit of a step down, with less variety and still the same +2% stat boost. Not much "horizontal" progression there and the bonuses don't feel meaningful. A good adjustment could be to have fewer "main" levels with more meaningful bonuses but have a secondary progression system with these smaller bonuses as end-game content. (See Borderlands Bada**Token System), maybe even potential options for boosting stats you couldn't before.

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6: There are several instances of missing sound effects, notably the Pylons you power up in Breach missions, footsteps, some unique enemy variants seem to share the same sound as base shamblers. Medkits being thrown by the medic don't make any sound, several weapons have missing sounds during their reloads. There's no tooltips in the menu when you hover over things such as mods or stats explaining what they do or how much at a glance. The shotguns rack their pump far too often during reloads. (The flame shotgun also has nowhere for us to put shells into, yet we still reload it by shoving shells into the bottom of it?) You can't hear zombies coming from off-screen at all.

One of the most obvious examples of this lack of care is "Get out the damage zone", when you step into boss damage zones

7: Please move the character and weapon close-ups from the center of the loadout screen to either the left or right, the text and interactable icons should be next to eachother. I think it'd look better if your little dude was on the left, but that's just me. Also, when you compare, you should be able to select what you compare the weapon to, right now you will always compare with your 2nd weapon, and you cannot compare two equipped weapons.

8: The soundscape is quite barren and grating. There's really nothing going on in game sound-wise besides the music (which is solid but not especially moving), a few kind of weak-sounding gunshots, and only a few zombie sound effects. It makes the levels feel especially empty, and not being able to hear hordes coming from off-screen feels like such an obvious thing to improve on after a decade and some change of SAS4 coming out. Compare it to something like Deep Rock's stunning ambience and immersive, satisfying soundscape or Darktide's chaotic battles . I know that you're not a big studio, but it feels like 3/4 of the sounds are just missing in a way that feels unfinished. Numerous UI elements have absolutely zero sounds.

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9: The looting doesn't feel great. Not only do zombies no longer drop loot items in mission, making matches feel less engaging and rewarding, you have to sit through an animation to open strongboxes even after pressing skip. The skip button just speeds it up a little. Your strongboxes just make a sad 'whoosh' .No satisfying sound stinger or anything of the sort. There's also no sound for moving these items in your inventory. No satisfying foley to go with gearing up, which is a step back from SAS4.

10: Armors you earn don't feel different from eachother. The only difference between Gorgon and HVM gloves is .2-.4% in a couple of different stats. The game doesn't use any of its supporting stats to make loot more enticing. So why bother changing armor at all? Just throw one on and upgrade it to max unless you find something that squashes it, if you do. You don't even see your energy levels in game

11: Most weapons feel worse than the starting weapons. The fire shotgun, while cool in theory, shoots very slow and it doesn't do much damage. Its DPS is much worse than the only other shotgun I've found, and is a detriment to use. I'm still rocking the starter LMG at level 12, not because I like it. It feels slow and cumbersome, but I haven't found anything better.

12: It feels like NK employees resent guns. They don't have much "cool factor" or play off of how firearms work at all They feel slow and sound weak. The minigun you get from supply boxes sounds like a pistol. Most of them don't look like they could even work if you gave them the benefit of the doubt on futuristic tech, and their animations don't match up, like there wasn't much attention to detail. Please I am not kidding hit me up, give me a few days I can draw up some concept sketches on how to fix literally all of them, I'll work for free

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13: Mods, at least as far as we can see, are very underwhelming. I get the idea, it's like Warframe's augment system, but the stat boosts are so tiny and unimpactful I just don't care, and there doesn't seem to be a way to scrap or upgrade them in-menu, which means we'll probably have to go through another submenu at another crafting menu in Aegis Station. Having to grind for universal stat boosts will inevitably lead to the same few loadouts being meta on every gun, just like in SAS4 but with the added twist of having to find mods thru RNG and crafting.

15: So hear me out, what if weapon upgrades worked like the ability tree? You selectfrom 3 "mod trees" unique to that weapon (or at least curated to be present on that weapon), they start out simple like +15% fire rate, +1.5 piercing and -5% damage resisted by enemies, then evolve into crazy things like "changes to fire a charged, sustained laser that does massive DPS to a single target and applies DoT, but overheats and has to cool down for 30s" or "shots can bounce off of walls". The more exotic the weapon the more crazy they can get. Every time you upgrade the weapon, you get x amount of "mod points" to play with. Like Deep Rock, you can deselect and change up how you invested the mod points at any time. There's a ton of room to play around with in this game, but it feels like we're not seeing its fullest potential.

Again, hmu, I'm happy to name and design upgrades

16: Shredder fight feels super drawn out because he gets a huge damage resist below half health, that effectively gives him like 5x his actual HP bar. It takes way too long to fight him when the phase has no new abilities and isn't any more aggressive, it just wastes time.

17: The speed that exploding enemies go off essentially pigenoholes you into running speed. Rather than punishing you for camping in a bad spot it forces you to max out speed to avoid taking chip damage.

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There's more I could go on about, but I'll save it for another day. The TL:DR is that the game has:

Not much attention to detail
Didn't learn as much as it could have from SAS4.
Does not hold up to its closest counterparts technically or aesthetically. really struggles in sound and animations which can make it feel a little 'cheap'
Has good ideas, but feels genuinely unfinished for the latest public metric for release.
Desperately needs some new creative blood or team market research playing games of similar genres together.

wintry condor
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Addendum: The influence of Helldivers is really strong, in a way that comes off as a little unflattering for NK. The starting helmets have Helldiver stripes, the extraction ship looks near identical to Pelican-1, and even the banner confirming mission status looks near identical to the Helldivers 2 mission complete banner, just recolored. The repeatable bounty system is reminiscient of Destiny 2 but that really isn't a compliment. They feel unrewarding and like they don't really need to be there. Maybe if bounties were more interesting like "Complete (x) without doing (y)" for a bigger reward, I'd like them.

drifting rock
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I agree. If they release it by Q2 then I don't think 4 more months is gonna cut it to anyone's standards and will fall short of a small and lackluster game since there isn't enough content. Unless they release it as early access with continuous monthly updates/development and assume the full version might finish around Q4 or Q1-Q2 next year with at least 50-100+ hrs of content for a decent $20 product.

Let it cook and have more time in the oven please. Make SAS 5 (i-i mean ZA:R) another great game that stood out from its franchise.

wintry condor
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SAS as a series has been kinda neglected over the years in favor of BTD, I would hate to see it die because it wasn't given a real shot

austere osprey
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I agree with a lot of these suggestions and I do think they have a lot in the work for when it’s fully released I also do believe (on the content that is locked) that they have more stuff that they don’t want to release quick yet. I feel behind the scene they have more content then they are showing us at the moment and I think there is already a lot of potential.
You’re right with what they have shown us the game is not ready (that is the point to demos). Of course I don’t know what is happening behind the scene but late Q2 I feel is enough time based off what I’ve seen to finish a working game with lots of potential for updates. If not Q2 I think it will be Q3. The only real way for them to add onto the game is by having more players and understanding what players are craving. But idk that is just my opinion and I have no experience with game development.
NK has this 100% I don’t feel like this could flop.
I’ve also introduced this game to two of my friends (both whom have no experience with SAS) and both love the game even at its current state and both are already looking forwards to its release.

neat dagger
keen ingot
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A lot of good critique here that is understated or unsaid by other posts. We want ZA:R to succeed, and as fans it's hard to critique your favorite games. The demo majorly lacking in both polish and content is worrying.

The ZA:R demo feels closer to a proof of concept and future promises rather than a vertical slice of a game near release.

Yes, there is a mod system. Is it interesting, meaningful or balanced? No.
Yes, there are multiple maps. They're all small, 'arena style' maps that plays the same.
Yes, there is a hub lobby with an elevator for multiple floors. Can we access the shops on the other floor? No.
Yes, parts drops for a crafting system. Can we craft yet? No.
I can go on, but you get the point.

winter quiver
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the loot drop pool is also horrendous, if this is what they intend to make. because adding mods, cpus and parts on the weapon and armour loot pool, then it just makes the pool too large.

if we will eventually have campaign on release, i dont want to be rewarded with a strongbox that has an rng amount of loots inside AND other loot clogging up the gear pool. its rather counterproductive to be forced to play another game and also be meet with the same fate until luck lands on you.

urban granite
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Take manufacturer parts out of the strongbox loot pool, and instead reward the player with some amount of parts per mission, like the credits, which manufacturer could either then be random upon reward, or told up front, so people choosing their mission can specifically look for one manufacturer’s parts as a reward

wintry condor
wintry condor
wintry condor
wintry condor
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Oh yeah and I really miss seeing enemy names and HP

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And on a positive note, the locomotion on character's movement is a good touch even if the animations can be a bit stiff

gentle ledge
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I think the mods are underwhelming at first because they are common mods. I assume they are going to add better mods as the rarity increases.
The same for other weapons. They are probably like that because they plan to add better versions like the red and black version of the weapon. Most of the stuff I feel is going to feel weak because its the start of the game and they probably want to have some progression for the weapons before they start to feel good

wintry condor
gentle ledge
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You are not gonna get the best weapons at the start. I think its like that so that you get the feel of different guns. The starting weapon is probably like that because they expect people to not get good weapons at the start

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its to be beginner friendly

wintry condor
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The guns rn just don't feel good, partially due to the way enemies have a delay before they fall over when they die and mostly because of the sound effects. The dismemberment and hit reactivity is also really basic

wintry condor
gentle ledge
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I do agree with the box opening animations to be horrible. Why do I have to watch individual boxes open one by one. It would be much better if they all opened at once or had a much simpler animation with them like in sas 4

wintry condor