Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

CULTIC - Blood-inspired episodic retro FPS

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,157
Is there a reason they can't get a friend to do the art for them?
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,226
Where does one find such an individual that meets all those parameters?

-Is a friend and digital artist
-Is interested in old school FPS
-Actually has the time, instead of his/her own projects elsewhere.
-Is willing to work for free for multiple years until the game releases, then royalties
-Has the faith in you, as the project lead, to see the project through and to success.
-Is actually a good artist.

This is the main roadblock for me, as someone that wants to indie dev.
 
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
7,304
I remember early development days of Dusk wherein everyone said it looked like shit (gameplay and graphics) including me, yet now it is apparently a codex darling (I've not played it yet).

Dusk is easily the best one out of all these "retro-FPS" games. Everything except graphics in it is solid. Shooting feels good, movement feels GREAT, level design is solid and soundtrack is highly enjoyable. Not only it understood what made old school shooters great it also added couple cool things of its own - crouch slide, projectile deflecting. Play it.
 

Riskbreaker

Guest
So guys, the demo actually wasn't half bad. The environments look fine once you remove the filter. You can tell that actual effort went into this demo map. What's most objectionable visually are the weapon sprites as they're really too low-res, more akin to something you'd see in a Wolf3D TC.
Also, the demo's enemy roster isn't limited to various cultists, he introduces more enemy types and he actually bothered to properly - introduce- them which I appreciated. You'll see what I mean.
There are some nice quality of life touches too. The game's equivalent of Blood's doctor's bag, as long as it ain't at 100% but player's health is full, gets filled up by bandages you find. Meaning you don't have to go back to scrounge for them if you're low on health, nor do they need to be separate item in your inventory. It's such a small thing but it feels like this obvious, logical improvement.
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,226
It's such a small thing but it feels like this obvious, logical improvement.

It may seem that way, but I never liked mods and games that do this. Thankfully it is optional in two awesome mods: Duke+ and Quake1.5/SMC. Management of pickups in FPS is part of the core gameplay, and taking note of pickups you left behind, or deciding whether or not to pick up a +30hp health pack when you are at 90hp is a part of that. It adds strategy in a genre that is usually lacking it. That said, I don't think this way necessarily is worse if your game wants to maintain action pacing, but I think the old way is generally better. I'll add that while I think pickup management is important to a FPS, I don't think these details are THAT important, that it will make or break the game. Especially if it is only applied to bandages (the weakest health pickup I'm sure), not any and all health pickups.

I agree with your overall statement though: this game certainly does not look low effort at all if it is a one man show, just low creativity.
 
Last edited:

JDR13

Arcane
Joined
Nov 2, 2006
Messages
3,930
Location
The Swamp
Just tried the demo, and I don't think it's bad at all. Only thing that bothered me is how low-res the sprites are. Once my eyes adjusted, it was actually pretty fun. Good level design and hidden areas to find just like the old Build Engine games. So what if it rips off Blood? Is that necessarily a bad thing?

A lot of whiny little bitches in this thread.
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I found the demo fine, though i think the enemies being sprites when everything else looking like made out of voxels look weird - either make everything sprites or everything voxels, or at least low poly models, the game already has some polygonal models anyway, in fact i got stuck between some rocks before exiting the demo :-P.

The melee feels quite punchy and i like the "clanky" sounds the weapons have but there is a bit too much screen shaking for the effect some have (e.g. the shotgun feels weak).

And yeah, the screen filter is something to disable instantly. Also the "dithering" is broken, it assumes you are using 1920x1080 resolution and looks weird in anything else.
 

Denim Destroyer

Learned
Joined
Mar 20, 2021
Messages
425
Location
Moonglow, Britannia
If the color filter couldn't be disabled I would have dropped the game before exiting the warehouse at the beginning. Besides that I have no real desire to play the full game now if I could just play Blood which as of now is the better game. I have so many complaints about how the game looks with the most baffling being the low enemy rotation frames. Yes it is more authentic to 90s shooters but that was a technological limitation. Ion Fury doesn't have that problem and that game runs on Build so why should a modern Unity game have low movement frames. One more thing, the TNT sucks.
 
Unwanted
Dumbfuck
Joined
Oct 29, 2020
Messages
999
Location
Free Market Paradise
So what if it rips off Blood? Is that necessarily a bad thing?
You don't want to make Battle Beyond The Stars when everyone has already seen Star Wars.

If there already is a game with cultists that are iconic then if you make yours basic bitch ones then why would anyone want to play your game? Going from Caleb to some mute faggot and shit.



If you are going to copy something either do something new with it or surpass what came before. Like Blood did. Like Doom did. Like any classic shooter did. There is a reason nobody talks about In Pursuit of Greed anymore. Cultic is one of those games. The kind of game that will be forgotten a couple of months after release.
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,226
Environment looks p. good, weapons and maybe enemy sprites need a second pass though.
 

A horse of course

Guest
Boomers really have pathetically low standards. If this art were used for some metroidvania indie crap you old coots would be sneering so hard your pacemakers broke.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
The weapons are okay and the shooting seems functional but the level design... looks suspiciously linear. Sorry, not interested into popamole linear shooters, adding a retro filter into it wont change its nature.
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,226
The weapons are okay and the shooting seems functional but the level design... looks suspiciously linear. Sorry, not interested into popamole linear shooters, adding a retro filter into it wont change its nature.

Reminder that the first THREE levels in Blood were rather linear too. It's pretty standard practice to have opening levels more linear than later ones.
 

Siveon

Bot
Joined
Jul 13, 2013
Messages
4,509
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Blood inspired? More like Blood ripoff. Weapons are the same as Blood. Enemies are the same, color palette is the same.

Shameful lack of originality.
This is stupid.
Yeah there's a shotgun and dynamite. There's no flare gun though, there's no pitch fork, the shotgun works completely different and the other guns work different too. You fight cultists and it's brown.

It's Blood-inspired definitely but if you play it the differences are immediately obvious. From the fact that the protag makes long winded observations on the environment (not voiced), to the slower movement, the longer range, higher accuracy. The tone is trying to be more lovecraft investigator with some Blood undertones. But it doesn't nearly try to do the cheesy horror shtick like Blood did.

I feel like the storefront is marketing this game all wrong since a lot of the gameplay feels more deliberate than the action John Wu flip fest that was Blood. And the fact people here are whining that this isn't Blood (while not playing the excellent Blood fan made stuff people are making instead). Pacing wise it feels more like Return to Castle Wolfenstein to me. But you can crouch to avoid shots.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
The weapons are okay and the shooting seems functional but the level design... looks suspiciously linear. Sorry, not interested into popamole linear shooters, adding a retro filter into it wont change its nature.

Reminder that the first THREE levels in Blood were rather linear too. It's pretty standard practice to have opening levels more linear than later ones.
I'm talking more of braindead linear levels, where you are literally on a railroad line, the type of shit that console shooters like Halo love, even those first three Blood levels that are simple, dont reach the level of literally only being on a railroad line that only moves forward, this type of level design is cancer, I've seen tight caves, paths with trees conveniently blocking both sides, paths with what seems like hills on both sides. This trailer and the fact that many developers on steam only remember of old School shooters when it is time to do the marketing campaign of the game makes me very, very suspicious.

As I said, the guns seem to work okay but I truly hope those levels arent like the trailer lead me to suspect on the final game because if their whole game is like that, I wont bother with it.
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
the type of shit that console shooters like Halo love

IIRC the first Halo didn't have a railroady linear design, there are cases where you get different outcomes depending on if you succeeded or failed an objective (nothing big, but still it isn't something you'd describe as railroaded) and it lets you achieve some objectives in any order you want, with the game acknowledging that.
 

Morenatsu.

Liturgist
Joined
May 6, 2016
Messages
2,576
Location
The Centre of the World
the type of shit that console shooters like Halo love

IIRC the first Halo didn't have a railroady linear design, there are cases where you get different outcomes depending on if you succeeded or failed an objective (nothing big, but still it isn't something you'd describe as railroaded) and it lets you achieve some objectives in any order you want, with the game acknowledging that.
Yes, it wasn't really any more linear than other shooters, it just had horribly obvious copy-paste environments. The vehicles were the best part, also.
 

Grim Monk

Arcane
Joined
Nov 7, 2011
Messages
1,217
I originally found news about this game months ago and posted about it in the main Blood Mods and News thread.
Thought it was pretty cool that some dude was trying a Blood homage...

That post now got split off and become this threads OP with the Trailer and Steam links added.
 
Last edited:

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom