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Almost Alive - post-apocalyptic tactical action RPG

Agame

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"Inspired by classic role playing and tactical games with high development standards like Fallout 1&2, Jagged alliance 2 or Wastelands"

Yes I to loved the real time combat in those above mentioned games...

Anyway I like the visuals, hand drawn 2D art? Fuck Yeah! But no turn based combat? Fuck Off!
 

Serus

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Some of the traits are pretty funny

MhpSjtG.png


ReAySWZ.png
You are an easily amused kind of person, aren't you...

Also I like how so many backgrounds get a minus to brains. Capitalists, fascists, priests, hobos, fanatics... all morons. Except communists. For some reason it reminds me of a scene from the film "The Princess Bride" when Vizzini claims to be smarter than everyone else in the World. It was funny there and is funny here, however I'm not sure if it was intentionally so in this case.
 

tripedal

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Feb 22, 2015
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Ultima Thule
Tried it out for a bit. It's certainly a "hardcore" experience. Stats/skills/etc system looks very interesting. Graphics I'm not so sure about, the GUI elements in particular are pretty bad. The writing is extremely juvenile.
 

Lurker47

Savant
Joined
Jul 30, 2017
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Texas
hand drawn 2D art?
I'd like it more if it had some personality and wasn't kind of shit.
Tried it out for a bit. It's certainly a "hardcore" experience. Stats/skills/etc system looks very interesting. Graphics I'm not so sure about, the GUI elements in particular are pretty bad. The writing is extremely juvenile.
This sounds like a kiss of death. "Hardcore" is seldom done well.
 

Lurker47

Savant
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Jul 30, 2017
Messages
721
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Texas
Some of the traits are pretty funny

MhpSjtG.png


ReAySWZ.png
You are an easily amused kind of person, aren't you...

Also I like how so many backgrounds get a minus to brains. Capitalists, fascists, priests, hobos, fanatics... all morons. Except communists. For some reason it reminds me of a scene from the film "The Princess Bride" when Vizzini claims to be smarter than everyone else in the World. It was funny there and is funny here, however I'm not sure if it was intentionally so in this case.
Yeah, I don't get it. If you're going to shit on broad groups of people, why not do it to everyone?
 

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
Developer
Joined
Mar 1, 2012
Messages
2,052
Yeah, I don't get it. If you're going to shit on broad groups of people, why not do it to everyone?

It's not really shitting (game mechanics wise) - all of those perks have their uses. Fascist and Capitalist are actually giving you perk points instead of consuming them so, while they are disadvantageous, they allow you to take something else. This game is also kinda min-maxy so there's no shame in dumping stats. Especially if you're going to go full retard anyway (like, literally). I also wasn't testing it but there's a possibility that being fascist will make fascist gangs friendly towards you (and everyone else hostile, probably). Need to check that out.

Priest, rambo & hobo follow the same logic - yeah, they consume your brains but if you wish to max perception or strength or endurance they'll be helping you a lot. Priest looks actually good, especially if "less fears" means less morale drain.
 

Serus

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Yeah, I don't get it. If you're going to shit on broad groups of people, why not do it to everyone?

It's not really shitting (game mechanics wise) - all of those perks have their uses. Fascist and Capitalist are actually giving you perk points instead of consuming them so, while they are disadvantageous, they allow you to take something else. This game is also kinda min-maxy so there's no shame in dumping stats. Especially if you're going to go full retard anyway (like, literally). I also wasn't testing it but there's a possibility that being fascist will make fascist gangs friendly towards you (and everyone else hostile, probably). Need to check that out.

Priest, rambo & hobo follow the same logic - yeah, they consume your brains but if you wish to max perception or strength or endurance they'll be helping you a lot. Priest looks actually good, especially if "less fears" means less morale drain.

I'll just leave the following, completely unrelated picture:

tumblr_m325lrnSfr1qf3hns.jpg
 

Ezeekiel

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 19, 2016
Messages
1,783
Random thoughts:


I played it a bunch.

The combat devolves into slowly sneaking while aiming (so you can see as far as possible) and taking guys out from either beyond their vision range or behind, or really fast up close.

Playing a melee char probably involves sneaking really well or something? Can't imagine running up to people. You'll get murdered in less than a second depending on their weapon, even with decent armor.

Some of the guns fire so fast it's hilarious, the suppressed m4 empties 30 rounds in like half a second tops... That's not how that works, dev ;D
Might be framerate related though? It runs at a smooth 144 for me btw. Nice. Was expecting disaster because unity, but it's fine.
Slower firing weapons feel fine-ish. No way to switch fire modes though.

I had grenades and only used them once to throw at a guy's feet who I knew was just behind a corner. Other than that, there's no time once combat is joined imo unless you're suicidal.

Basic armor looks realistic-ish, better armor looks whacky as hell. Them huge fucking pauldrons haha.
No matter what armor I wear (so far) I can die super fast. You can make yourself tankier with perks and stats, but that takes away from other things you need.

You can get good guns relatively quickly, but what spawns off the enemies seems to be randomized. Beam guns get through most armor easier, but otherwise just feel like regular guns with different sounds and recolored tracers.

Had to give a guy a quest item which I was supposed to get off a certain other guy. Slaughtered that other guy's faction (died a time or two before I got it right). Then I found the same item as a duplicate in a box 10 meters from the questgiver lol.

The game starts with a dream sequence you can play through (like a real level). After that, you wake up and meet 2 npcs. You can follow them to their base but they walk through a hostile zone and wreck the enemies in seconds, I ended up looting those and losing the guys who just kept moving.

The day/night cycle is too fast imo, and your char gets tired and loses stamina very quickly. You can literally walk 2 blocks and your guy wants to rest. Hurray for energy drinks. Food/drink consumption is a bit weird, it replaces rest, more or less, but you can get negative perk for it randomly :/ Generally have to consume something annoyingly often if you don't just rest all the time. Your char can barely jog 15-20 meters before running out of stamina without certain perks. Jogging is default speed when moving towards where you look. Otherwise you just walk (recovers stamina). Sprint empties your stamina so fast, you can go maybe 10m...

Picked a char that was young and thus needed only 1 negative perk (picked the "no drugs ever" -one). Even if you start with mediocre stats, you can level them up well enough. A lot of the negative perks are a bit much... Like taking control away from your character etc. Might work in a turn-based game, but in this? Oof. In general I kind of wish it was turn-based JA2 style tbh. It's a bit too frantic when the action gets going, and the save-system is basically that you have to rest in a safe place (or maybe you can rest wherever, not sure safety is implemented fully?). So taking out an enemy stronghold in one go can be a bit daunting. Fortunately there are lots of perks to help you shoot with high accuracy and fast aiming speed while moving, for those close quarters firefights.

Overall, if you sneak/aim from outside range the combat is easy-ish. Not much in the way of tactics once you engage.
You have a cone of vision as well as awareness of a small circle directly around your char. Everything else is shadow-y.
Really weird that most of the screen is basically shit your char can't see (i.e. characters, items). This might work better if the perspective turned with your character, but that's not happening in a 2d game.
The vision thing is kind of annoying imo. I get having lines of sight, but I perpetually feel like my char has tunnel vision in combat. Also you generally don't see very far. Super annoying sometimes.

Writing is a little out-there at times.

I feel like the pacing of the pacing of the world/map is kind of whacky. You can go a block from a friendly base and get fired at from out of your sight range (if you don't already know to aim in that direction).

Graphics are a mix of fallout-ish style for the environments and then there are the weird black/white characters lol. Dev has stated that he may color them, but depends on testing and whatnot.
At lest they stand out from the environment. Sadly it can be a bit slow to identify friend/foe in quests where you defend allies and such because they all look too similar and have the same b/w color. I think there are colored elements above their heads but those aren't that easy to see.

All that being said, this appears to be an early version of the game. There are 3 maps (I think) so far, including the first dream sequence. Dev has been patching it and plans to add a lot more.


I'd say give it a try if you don't mind the somewhat abrupt nature of the combat and the general weirdness. It's actually quite fun. Might develop into a good game, aside from the writing ;)
I would prefer if the game was a bit less frantic with stuff you have to worry about, like keeping your stamina up by drinking/eating constantly, worrying about negative perks you may pick up based on a chance or something when you perform certain actions, that sort of thing. The experience is a bit too compressed, like the fallout 4 map where locations are quite close to each other. Add the stamina system and whatnot and I feel like I can't quite focus on the core gameplay as much as I'd want.
This might all be because it's sort of like a demo, though.

You know what, it reminds me of a top-down version of stalker or something, except no non-human enemies so far (mutants are coming, apparently, along with an overworld map).





TL;DR it's interesting but quite rough around the edges. 2d stalker-ish with an interesting but somewhat attention-seeking char system that can distract you some from the actual gameplay at times.
 

Agame

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Combat reminds me a lot of Crimsonland if anyone remembers that game, seems such a waste to have all the character building and items and then make combat a RT twitch fest, even if it was slowed down somehow could help. But I think Roguelike style TB would have been perfect for this game, eg. Caves of QuD. You can still get one shotted, so combat is fast and brutal, but you have time to plan if you need.

Anyway obviously never going to happen but I would have liked a CoQ style game with this tileset.
 

Fargus

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Apr 2, 2012
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Moscow
Cry me a river, dude. I love turn-based games as much as the next guy, but this constant parroting and whining how everything should be turn-based is annoying as fuck. There is enough turn-based games out there.



Game reminds me of Cold Zero a bit. That old game nobody played. Or alien shooter\hotline miami hybrid.

So far it's bare bones, 1 small prologue map, 1 map that is large enough with a few gangs and quests, and there should be another map which is unfinished with only a few quests atm. Not much, but a nice concept\demo.

The art style is great, i love 2d graphics and the dev obviously put some of work in it. Because drawing 2d graphics is extremely time consuming.

So far there are no wymmin characters, only male ones.

No balance or trading, maps are cluttered with tons of loot you just have to discard or keep at some safe location. Plenty of weapons and ammunition everywhere.

Walls, doors etc. can be destroyed, which is fun because you can toy with your enemies and use it to your advantage. If you see a barred window with some asshole hiding behind it: just blast it with shotgun and kill him. Grenades are very useful but you dont always have enough time, so they are perfect to throw at unsuspecting enemies. Melee is not an option and just suicidal as far as i can tell. Dying is easy.

My character gets mental so fast that i gave up on trying to keep him sane. I just roll with it. Take all kinds of drugs: lsd, heroin,coke, extasy, drink booze and smoke cigars and weed, pick mental dialogue lines and kill everyone.

Dialogues need a LOT of work and fleshing out, typos are abundant.
 
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Ezeekiel

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 19, 2016
Messages
1,783
Cry me a river, dude. I love turn-based games as much as the next guy, but this constant parroting and whining how everything should be turn-based is annoying as fuck. There is enough turn-based games out there.
There are barely any good turn-based systems around, and none have topped JA2. But I agree that not everything needs to be turn-based.
That being said, the combat here is rather binary, either you rape him or he rapes you imo, at least most of the time. The combination of at times very fast movement (sprint) speed of some enemies and your very limited vision cone and short-ish sight range overall doesn't help. Makes everything extra frantic if you don't spray them from afar.
Game reminds me of Cold Zero a bit. That old game nobody played. Or alien shooter\hotline miami hybrid.

So far it's bare bones, 1 small prologue map, 1 map that is large enough with a few gangs and quests, and there should be another map which is unfinished with only a few quests atm. Not much, but a nice concept\demo.

The art style is great, i love 2d graphics and the dev obviously put some of work in it. Because drawing 2d graphics is extremely time consuming.

So far there are no wymmin characters, only male ones.

No balance or trading, maps are cluttered with tons of loot you just have to discard or keep at some safe location. Plenty of weapons and ammunition everywhere.

Walls, doors etc. can be destroyed, which is fun because you can toy with your enemies and use it to your advantage. If you see a barred window with some asshole hiding behind it: just blast it with shotgun and kill him. Grenades are very useful but you dont always have enough time, so they are perfect to throw at unsuspecting enemies. Melee is not an option and just suicidal as far as i can tell. Dying is easy.

My character gets mental so fast that i gave up on trying to keep him sane. I just roll with it. Take all kinds of drugs: lsd, heroin,coke, extasy, drink booze and smoke cigars and weed, pick mental dialogue lines and kill everyone.

Dialogues need a LOT of work and fleshing out, typos are abundant.

I agree with everything here more or less. The third map is just a larger version of the dream sequence map.

And yeah, what is even balance haha. A lot of guns have no reason to exist, it seems. Like a gauss carbine has basically no real edge over the gauss minigun (accuracy and aiming speed by the time you get one doesn't matter anymore), and pistols? Why even bother. I'm sure if the dev turns this into a full game, things will be more spaced-out as far as what items you can get. Rates of fire and accuracy/aim speed depending on distance also need some adjustment imo. The top mg matches the top minigun of the same caliber more or less but has much better accuracy but 150 mag size vs 200. Eh. No reason to bother with snipers either, you can't see any further or anything using them, so they're only useful until you get a good machinegun. Ammo not scare at all except for laser/gauss/plasma.

Regarding your char going crazy quickly/losing morale, that's heavily governed by the brain/int stat. Low int will cause you to lose morale when killing.
Mine was a stone-cold killer until he suddenly became retarded (-50 brainz, seemingly not possible to heal). This also killed his experience gain to such a degree I could not level up to increase my int again :/
Maybe I got shot in the head or something.
I didn't notice at first and made camp to save, and yeah. Had to start over haha. Doctors couldn't fix my retardation. How do you even go to med school in a post-apocalypse? Bunch'a quacks!
So int stat is important also to get as many level ups as possible.


Have to retract some of my previous post:
1) The dev has patched the stamina consumption for sprinting and jogging somewhat. So less of an issue now before you get the relevant perks.
2) The framerate actually goes down quite a bit (with some slight choppiness/sluggishness maybe due to the extreme fps difference?) when firing a fast gun vs multiple opponents also firing back. From 144 fps down to the 50's at times. Definitely noticeable, so I guess the game doesn't handle these drops well, even though the fps at it's worst is not particularly low at all. Something going on there. Should stay smooth even at 50 fps imo.
3) Your cone of sight and how far you can see when aiming seem to be tied more heavily to the perception stat than I thought at first. It's somewhat more tolerable now.

Gotta say it's become fairly easy-ish now, I clean up factions no problem. Only thing is that it's a little like the old rainbow six games in that everything can go great but that one last guy just wrecks you in a flash and it's back to the last camp-site ;)
Makes me wish there was more to do though. More stuff to murder... :D
Dialogue is bad enough that I don't care about the factions and just want to kill them.
Art-style: Just the same-colored chars are still an issue for me because I can't tell friend or foe apart quickly. Entered the third map and they were already fighting. May have accidentally killed a good guy along with the bad ones... You don't have the luxury to stare for a while because an enemy who can see you will shoot you super quick with his 1200rpm gun :/
 
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Fargus

Arcane
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Apr 2, 2012
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Mine was a stone-cold killer until he suddenly became retarded (-50 brainz, seemingly not possible to heal). This also killed his experience gain to such a degree I could not level up to increase my int again :/
Maybe I got shot in the head or something.

Dev said there is a chance of becoming retarded by getting criticaly hit in combat. And traits like insane can be removed the same way.


2) The framerate actually goes down quite a bit (with some slight choppiness/sluggishness maybe due to the extreme fps difference?) when firing a fast gun vs multiple opponents also firing back. From 144 fps down to the 50's at times. Definitely noticeable, so I guess the game doesn't handle these drops well, even though the fps at it's worst is not particularly low at all. Something going on there. Should stay smooth even at 50 fps imo.

Same problem occurs to me, but i have shitty 300$ Lenovo laptop right now. Game also freezes during loading screen sometimes, like other Unity games.
 

Agame

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Played this a bit, agree with Ezeekiel, combat needs some balance, it feels like its mostly just hide and seek with one shot kills. Quite a few times I cleared a building and then the last guy just pops me in the head and its a reload. This kind of system worked for Hotline Miami but doesnt feel right here. I have no idea how you would survive as a melee character. I played with sniper perks which made for some fun moments of sneaky headshots.

Shame about the dialogue, quests, worldbuilding etc. all feels very amateur, but it probably doesnt matter as its not like thats the focus of the game. If anything I would like to see them go even harder in the ham direction and really cheese it up with vodka powered slav supermen etc.

I like the graphics and also like that all characters are b&w, but I can see this getting changed eventually to friendly/enemy colors or whatever as it is a legitimate issue when you have lots of people rushing around. Also feel like the sight circle around char could be bigger just due to natural senses, like hearing.

And also forgot to mention it gave me some good flashbacks to Take No Prisoners (I think its called that?), the wierd top down view post apoc game from years ago. Which was also kind of frantic combat.
 
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Fargus

Arcane
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Apr 2, 2012
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Enemies have red outlines. And i think you can enable the outlines for other characters. The problem is when allies run around like retards getting into your line of fire. Then an entire gang becomes mad at you for accidently shooting some Leeroy Jenkins fag. The solution would be to remove friendly fire during quest related fights, like when helping one gang to fight against another. Since nps get in the way all the time.
 
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