a classic fun game, but honestly, I'm spoiled from aom and aoe4 tbh, This game lacks the spice the later titles have and the civs feel more like gimmicks than civs

many bals.

many happines

FUNN!!!!!!!!!

Scheduled out some time away from work & projects to fully play this game thoroughly and 100% it. Wasn't expecting it to be so incredibly huge and polished all the way through.

Literally never has a game made me cry because of the feeling of it being over. This game did that, whether that also comes from me waiting for the game for like 9 or so years, sure, but it literally exceeded all my expectations I had and is now probably one of my favourite games of all time.

I don't know how they managed to build something so amazing from the shoulders of Hollow Knight, since that game was already so insanely good, but now after playing it, Hollow Knight barely feels polished now in comparison. THIS is why we let developers cook, because when they get the time and are dedicated, they WILL cook!

Just simply one of those games that will inspire so many game devs and shape the world of game development for the better. 10/10

Fantastic. Literally all around just fantastic game; Music, Art, the new content, SO GOOD

Worth it alone just for the beautiful new animations.

If this game seems like it has an interesting style, then you would be a fan of lvl374's art. I've been following lvl374 for years for their art, so when they announced a game suddenly out of nowhere, I was excited, but also skeptical for obvious reasons.

And well, this is 'game' is kind of exactly what I expected from lvl374: A walking simulator that plays a bit like LSD Dream Emulator and have a mood more akin to Antichamber & Manifold Garden.

Unlike Antichamber and Manifold Garden, this game kind of lacks the graphical polish, gameplay feel and other things that make those previous 2 mentioned games very satisfying to play through. If you like looking at interesting shapes and being an observer, this game is definitely good at that. However, be warned that this really is less of a game and more of a museum-experience.

Now, I do want to address some small gripes I have with the game:

- Lack of sound design variety
This is more of a small gripe, but when you're just walking around, it can honestly get kind of boring on an audio level. This game is very much centred around visuals that I feel like it often overlooks the sound portion. Sounds that kind of clash, lacking sounds that just don't exist. Just overall kind of meh sound-wise, but I can forgive it for that

- Poor optimization and lack of anti-aliasing:
So the game doesn't run the best in certain spots. My frames dropped to a meager 10fps in 1 or 2 rooms with a 3060ti. This mixed with the fact that there's like no anti-aliasing whatsoever makes the game look great on most screenshots, but as soon as there's any movement, it can look so incredibly jittery. Manifold garden has a lot of similarities in how pronounced the lines and shapes feel with the more flat plane-centric approach to 3d geometry, but that game has a lot more care put into the optimization as well as rendering of the game itself.
This game really just misses the high quality performance and tech behind manifold garden to elevate the experience further.

So yea, overall, I enjoyed my time with it, but this game doesn't really do much with the game aspect of games. I kind of just prefer browsing and sharing the art from lvl374 over this sadly, but if you've never actually seen their art, then this is a really awesome introduction! (There's also a room dedicated towards psoted art as well, so you won't miss much on that side anyhow from playing this <3)

:steamhappy:

Hmm. This is a mixed bag for me. First impression is really important for these kind of games and my first impression?
Lackluster...

Everything about this game just feels kind of worse than Eternal to me sadly.

- Environmental design isn't as memorable.
Eternal has SO many stand-out moments of pure adrenaline-filled awe, beautifully orchestrated levels with care being put into every single arena and viewpoint. I think this was able to be masterfully executed in Eternal because the levels are quite linear with the real only open spaces being the arenas you traverse to. It has these "key viewpoints" where you can take in a crazy vista each level and more than once. However with this game, I feel like that's kind of been lost and instead we're greeted with more open levels which makes it harder for the level designers to create vistas both literally because of the lack of player control and because of graphic fidelity being higher because more open areas = more stuff to draw.

This mixed with the fact that some of the re-used enemies from Eternal/2016 weren't really designed to be fought in such spaces, makes for this weird janky AI where there's like unrealistic clusters of enemies just kind of here and there? It's hard to describe, but it feels way less believable than eternal and 2016.

- Sound design isn't as snappy
I'm a big sucker for sound design. Eternal has some of my favourite weapon sound design of all time, and it's also been my full-time job for the past 9 years. That being said, TDA lacks in sound design (at least from what I've seen). Compare the plasma rifles from 2016/Eternal to the accelarator in this game and all of the amazing technical juice that powered the sound design of eternal just kind of disappeared in this one. The difference feels like someone who's been doing sound design for 15k hours vs someone who's been doing sound design for 60k hours. It's one of those things that I think a lot of other audio nerds might pick up on and it's kind of a bummer. There is at least one weapon I'm eager to try out if I play the game again because it has the same satisfying clunkiness as the balista. (Although I have no idea what it's called because I didn't get that weapon yet LOL!)

- Combat clunkiness.
Why can I not parry while switching weapons??? Hello??? This feels absolutely horrible. Did I just like miss this? I feel like I actively couldn't do that.

- Parkour is somehow worse...
Why is the climbing automatic... Why can't we do the fun hops and tech anymore ID... Tech is so important for this franchise, the last thing you want to do is get rid of stuff that just worked fine.

Lastly, I can't imagine how overwhelming this game would feel like if this is your first DOOM game. The tutorials only help so much. Eternal didn't do this great either tbf, but this feels so incredibly random if you're new to the franchise.

I want to like this game, I really do! But for now I just can't recommend it over Eternal and when you advertise your franchise as "Bigger and Better" that stuff matters a lot. Big shame, I'll prob pick it up again sometime if stuff has changed at all :)

Fantastic first chapter. Wow.

Editing this review after a couple more hours of play.

Right now, this needs some serious time to bake in the oven.

There's so much potential for something really good, but the biggest issues I have currently are:

- Animations look really fluid and feel fluid on their own, but the transitions between animations feels extremely rigid and sometimes downright unfair. This has caused most of my deaths because the game either wouldn't listen to my inputs or the animations didn't line up with the feel of the gameplay resulting in clunkiness. It also feels very stiff that you can't easily switch directions mid-combo. It only does it when snapping onto new enemies but if I'm trying to break something like a bunch of crates, this feels super stiff.

- Lack of graphical options, and graphical instability. Like many others have said, there aren't enough options for graphics and I really don't think I should be getting as many stutters as I am getting with a 3060Ti. Looking forward to future optimizations.

- Hoverboard feels kind of useless? I don't see myself using the hoverboard that much since it's just not fun to use and the difference between dash spamming to get around vs hoverboard is minimal. When initially hopping on the hoverboard, the directional inputs being really restricted makes it feel quite jank.

- No sensitivity options for mouse and camera speed is tied to framerate(??). This is a very big oversight considering a big chunk of the game is you aiming guns and shooting things. Where are the sensitivity options? Why does the camera freak out when I get stutters. Just overall I think the way the camera is implemented might need to be thought of more. Frames should NEVER impact camera speeds.

- Way too much stuff being thrown at you from the get-go, a lack of story. This is a lesser point because I wouldn't be surprised to see this get added later.

- The little byte modifications you find around the map just disappear when you try and apply one if you're full? I'm not sure if this is intended...

- Enemy spam immediately when you spawn in. This was immediately off-putting as a new player and it feels incredibly annoying losing all your health from a random enemy encounter because you're checking your map for spots to look for.

- Turning around looks really unorganic and silly right now. There needs to be a lot more smoothing between turning around I feel like.

- Hopefully faster loading times or a quicker re-queue option after you die so you don't have to go back to the hub. The waiting times were worse than the deaths themselves. It's a huge fun-killer when you can die so quickly.

I think these are my main negative points, but I'm very much looking forward to this game. The music & sound is amazing, and a lot of the actual animation work is really good. Hoping some of the frustrating parts get better with development!