KickStarter Mechajammer (formerly Copper Dreams) - cyberpunk RPG from Whalenought Studios

[Fowyr]

You people are insane. Ken Levine makes a lighthearted parody of America as a city in the clouds and Sykar says it sucks because there isn't plenty of use of the n-word.

Every game that has niggers could be improved with a "nigger" word. And by the coon songs, if it's appropriate.

Nigger loves his possum sizzling in the pan
Nigger must have corn juice, steal it if he can.
Ain't no use of talking, nigger through and through,
Loves his watermelon, 'deed he do do do.

 

[Diggfinger]

Seems our boy Dhaze got some competition from good ol' Matt Barton.

He's given Mechajammer a try, clocking in at over 2 hours...

 

[samuraigaiden]

The only thing I saw if this game was the first hour of Matt's video. It looks interesting. Makes me wonder if it's as shit as people say.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Makes me wonder if it's as shit as people say.

Matt is a good natured fellow who generally give all RPGs the benefit of the doubt, almost to a fault. Also, the game doesn't really start to fall apart until a few hours in.

Go ahead and give it a shot! Make sure to report back with your findings (that it is indeed as flawed as the few here with the patience to play it have illustrated).

 

[AdolfSatan]

Yeah, the game looks cool when someone else is playing it because you don't have to deal with the bullshit, but it wears you down after a while.

 

[Dhaze]

Seems our boy Dhaze got some competition from good ol' Matt Barton.

He's given Mechajammer a try, clocking in at over 2 hours...

"I think there's a lot more positive here than negative," he says at the 2:18:57 mark. Play some more, monsieur Barton, play some more...

The only thing I saw if this game was the first hour of Matt's video. It looks interesting. Makes me wonder if it's as shit as people say.

It really is. It really, really, really, really is. In thirty years of playing, only a mere handful of games made me regret even looking at them with interest—and Mechajammer sits at the top, forever enthroned in horridness.

Look on youtube. The game has been out for over six months, yet to this day there's still not a single full playthrough of the game available on Youtube. Incredibly, my short videos—bathed in bile and rancor—are still the only ones showing bits of the game beyond what is basically the tutorial portion. Beyond that? Beyond that people stop playing the game because once you dig deeper than a couple of hours, the stench of rot invades your nostrils.

I'll provide a short list of issues (there are many, many more). Do note that a high number of these have been noted as 'fixed' in previous patches, sometimes repeatedly, yet are still there in the game.

– A profound misunderstanding of basic maths serves as foundation for the character's progress and combat; and if you wonder "How can someone code a whole game yet be bad at math?" in disbelief, trust me, it confounds everyone who learns of it.
– Braindead A.I.
– Items disappear from your inventory at random, often for good.
– Items reappear in your inventory, often erasing other items or superimposed on these making them forever uninteractable.
– Items (especially ammo stacks) duplicate themselves in your inventory, and are sometimes usable, but sometimes not, and sometimes disappear, but sometimes don't.
– Inventory randomly reorganizes itself, leading to more bugs, more uninteractable items clogging your already small inventory.
– Equipping or unequipping a helmet loads or unloads your gun (I'm not even fucking kidding)
– Some items have the wrong flag; want to wear your dog tags while wielding a spear, well you can't, because the dog tags are flagged as a shield for some reason
– Throwing a grenade on the ground causes it to explode, which is normal; but throwing a grenade straight into an enemy's face causes it to not explode, and rather inflict something like 1d3 damage.
– NPCs who are supposed to be there, are not.
– Named NPCs you can hire can duplicate themselves, being simultaneously in your party and where you can recruit them; and you can recruit them again and again and again, ad nauseam.
– Some doorways, though wide open and unobstructed, are impassable one way but not the other.
– Likewise, the game is extremely confused in some areas with different heights, as it lets you go down a flight of stairs but not go back up.
– Factions randomly become hostile towards you, sometimes a literal second after they've given you an assignement to gain their loyalty (I have been assured this is not a bug, but a feature—and it is retarded beyond belief)
– Factions loyal to you can be called upon for reinforcements; but doing so can spawn in guys from another faction, even one not loyal to you, or even from a faction you've not even encountered yet
– Enemies become glitched, and are painted in one or two flat colors.
– Sneaking around in shadows is supposed to be a big part of the gameplay, but areas of shadows and light are so poorly and wrongly delineated and communicated to the player it is laughable (look at this wonderful example: I'm the rightmost character, crouching with a spear, and I'm in the shadows despite clearly being in the light and periodically illumined by the lighthouse, and so are three out of four enemies)
– You can become stuck in multiple places, forever unable to get out of, say, a sewer or a hacker's den.
– You can enter certain places and be spawned in an entirely different, unrelated place.
– Breaking a crate or a wall causes pieces of it to shatter and fly in all direction, which is normal; but this somehow remains in the game's memory so that subsequent attacks—even five miles away against an enemy—will cause the same effect to take occur at some random place on the screen (this has supposedly been 'fixed' in a couple of patches, yet still happens constantly)
– The simple act of traversing the city and its surroundings quickly becomes infuriating, as the controls tend to simply not respond to your inputs; you can click as much as you want, but sometimes the game will completely ignore those clicks.
– You can jump through windows; but sometimes the game won't let you do that.
– You can jump from heights; but sometimes the game won't let you do that.
– Small areas (a few meters wide) randomly become un-walkable before becoming walkable anew; sometimes you are forced to jump your way through such areas.

All of this, the devs know. All of it. Everything has been reported numerous times. At the end of March they pushed the Refracted Update. It "finishes our roadmap and aims to bring you the complete Mechajammer experience," and "We expect this to be the last major update to Mechajammer," they said. Now, two and half months after the Refracted Update, all the bugs remain—and at best the game feels like a pre-alpha version.

The music is fantastic, and there's a nice puzzle to be solved. After playing it to completion, these two are the only good things I can say about the game.

No, dont buy this game. If you have twenty bucks burning a hole in your pocket, go hire an AIDS-riddled prostitute who will freak the fuck out and stab you with a rusty shiv; that's a better way to spend your money.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I'll provide a short list of issues (there are many, many more).

I swear this gets funnier every time you write about it. However, I feel compelled to address a number of misunderstandings and falsehoods in your account. *ahem*

– Equipping or unequipping a helmet loads or unloads your gun

Sweet, they implemented the gun-reloading cyberears!

– Some items have the wrong flag; want to wear your dog tags while wielding a spear, well you can't, because the dog tags are flagged as a shield for some reason

They have a 0.00001% chance of deflecting a fatal bullet, as per the trope used in some books and films.

– Throwing a grenade on the ground causes it to explode, which is normal; but throwing a grenade straight into an enemy's face causes it to not explode, and rather inflict something like 1d3 damage.

Sweet! Finally a game that acknowledges that sometimes you want to blow up your enemies, other times you're just hurling it like a rock without pulling the pin. A warning grenade, if you will.

– Named NPCs you can hire can duplicate themselves, being simultaneously in your party and where you can recruit them; and you can recruit them again and again and again, ad nauseam.

That's part of the multiverse subplot. It probably went over your head.

– Factions randomly become hostile towards you, sometimes a literal second after they've given you an assignement to gain their loyalty (I have been assured this is not a bug, but a feature—and it is retarded beyond belief)
– Factions loyal to you can be called upon for reinforcements; but doing so can spawn in guys from another faction, even one not loyal to you, or even from a faction you've not even encountered yet
– Enemies become glitched, and are painted in one or two flat colors.

See above re: multiverse. How many quests did you miss?

– You can become stuck in multiple places, forever unable to get out of, say, a sewer or a hacker's den.

Did you remember to do regular maintenance on your cyberlegs?

– You can enter certain places and be spawned in an entirely different, unrelated place.
– Breaking a crate or a wall causes pieces of it to shatter and fly in all direction, which is normal; but this somehow remains in the game's memory so that subsequent attacks—even five miles away against an enemy—will cause the same effect to take occur at some random place on the screen (this has supposedly been 'fixed' in a couple of patches, yet still happens constantly)

Multiverse.

– The simple act of traversing the city and its surroundings quickly becomes infuriating, as the controls tend to simply not respond to your inputs; you can click as much as you want, but sometimes the game will completely ignore those clicks.

Hostile hacker taking over your cyberbrain.

– You can jump through windows; but sometimes the game won't let you do that.

Genius implementation of Unbreakium™ cyberwindows.

– You can jump from heights; but sometimes the game won't let you do that.

That would violate the Prime Directive.

– Small areas (a few meters wide) randomly become un-walkable before becoming walkable anew; sometimes you are forced to jump your way through such areas.

The dreaded ants in your pants random encounter!

I hope the preceding explanations have proved illuminating.

 

[Dhaze]

And I looked, and beheld an incredible tale: and lo! his pseudonym that weaved it was mediocrepoet, spin doctor extraordinaire.

Rumor has it EA recently hired him to redeem Command & Conquer 4; join him this friday (4 a.m. Eastern time) for an A.M.A. on Reddit, wherein he will prove without the faintest shadow of a doubt that C&C4 has deeper lore than Myth, deeper gameplay than Total Annihilation, and penis-enhancing properties.

Did you remember to do regular maintenance on your cyberlegs?

I wanted to, but the brouzouf cost was too high.

Hostile hacker taking over your cyberbrain.

Noooooooo! The accuracy of my beloved HS010 Croon is already so low; now I'm really not gonna hit anything anymore!

 

[Darth Canoli]

No, dont buy this game. If you have twenty bucks burning a hole in your pocket, go hire an AIDS-riddled prostitute who will freak the fuck out and stab you with a rusty shiv; that's a better way to spend your money.

Thanks for the advice but I'd rather buy a shit game.
Or maybe hire the prostitute for someone else ...

i presume that there is no way to estimate how many copies this game sold so far?

Isn't the formula approximately reviews x 20 ?
It'd make for around 3K copies sold on steam.
Well, with such a low rating, there's probably a lot of refunds so maybe 1.5/2K copies sold on steam?

 

[Feyd Rautha]

game sits at 51% positive reviews, if what dhaze says is true why so high %?

I gave a positive review to be kind to Hannah & Joe.

 

[True Ukrainian]

game sits at 51% positive reviews, if what dhaze says is true why so high %?

Probably because the game gives a good first impression.

 

[Urthor]

Seems our boy Dhaze got some competition from good ol' Matt Barton.

He's given Mechajammer a try, clocking in at over 2 hours...

"I think there's a lot more positive here than negative," he says at the 2:18:57 mark. Play some more, monsieur Barton, play some more...

The only thing I saw if this game was the first hour of Matt's video. It looks interesting. Makes me wonder if it's as shit as people say.

It really is. It really, really, really, really is. In thirty years of playing, only a mere handful of games made me regret even looking at them with interest—and Mechajammer sits at the top, forever enthroned in horridness.

**Many complaints**

Curious, what do you think the odds are of this game pulling a "Pathfinder Kingmaker."

ie, if the game was patched 18 months later and wasn't as buggy as Pathfinder Kingmaker was on release, would it be a good game?

 

[Ninjerk]

I completely forgot about this game.

 

[ArchAngel]

Seems our boy Dhaze got some competition from good ol' Matt Barton.

He's given Mechajammer a try, clocking in at over 2 hours...

"I think there's a lot more positive here than negative," he says at the 2:18:57 mark. Play some more, monsieur Barton, play some more...

The only thing I saw if this game was the first hour of Matt's video. It looks interesting. Makes me wonder if it's as shit as people say.

It really is. It really, really, really, really is. In thirty years of playing, only a mere handful of games made me regret even looking at them with interest—and Mechajammer sits at the top, forever enthroned in horridness.

**Many complaints**

Curious, what do you think the odds are of this game pulling a "Pathfinder Kingmaker."

ie, if the game was patched 18 months later and wasn't as buggy as Pathfinder Kingmaker was on release, would it be a good game?

Pointless question since they gave up on it and are no longer patching it. They might as well delete it from existence.

 

[Fireblade]

Pointless question since they gave up on it and are no longer patching it. They might as well delete it from existence.

They did delete its existence from Whalenought's Twitter bio. Used to be there, now gone.

 

[Falksi]

Hopefully this whole Mechjammer experience will serve as a good lesson for them, and see any sequel to Serpent in The Staglands turn out better for it.

All they have to do is take the original game's foundation, add some more genuine substance and variety to the world and make the combat more dynamic, and they'll have a corker on their hands.

 

[Diggfinger]

Hopefully this whole Mechjammer experience will serve as a good lesson for them, and see any sequel to Serpent in The Staglands turn out better for it.

All they have to do is take the original game's foundation, add some more genuine substance and variety to the world and make the combat more dynamic, and they'll have a corker on their hands.

That's dumb.

Do you think there even will be a SitS 2?
This is their livelihood, show some respect man

 

[thesheeep]

I completely forgot about this game.

Same.

But then this thread pops up and I'm back at this:

 

[Falksi]

Hopefully this whole Mechjammer experience will serve as a good lesson for them, and see any sequel to Serpent in The Staglands turn out better for it.

All they have to do is take the original game's foundation, add some more genuine substance and variety to the world and make the combat more dynamic, and they'll have a corker on their hands.

That's dumb.

Do you think there even will be a SitS 2?
This is their livelihood, show some respect man

Joseph had a conversation with me via e-mail a few months back and said he intends to at some point, so I think there may.

 

[grimace]

Send your complaints to:
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Any man working on a game today does not need a publisher to breath down his neck and force him to release an untested game.

If the publisher promises to help with testing and bug reports expect them to seek free labour from fans in exchange for access to discord emojis.

Modern Wolf does not know what incline looks like.

 

[ArchAngel]

Hopefully this whole Mechjammer experience will serve as a good lesson for them, and see any sequel to Serpent in The Staglands turn out better for it.

All they have to do is take the original game's foundation, add some more genuine substance and variety to the world and make the combat more dynamic, and they'll have a corker on their hands.

Hopefully they quit developing games and go do something where they don't have to sell their house and then never finish it.

 

[getter77]

A direly poignant something that the title for the next SitS chunk, IIRC, was Banquet of Fools.

 

[CyberWhale]

Hopefully they quit developing games and go do something where they don't have to sell their house and then never finish it.

They didn't need to sell their house the first time around either, just develop the game they presented in the Kickstarter. But alas, they were smarter than (most) us, and look how that ended up.

 

[grimace]

Hopefully this whole Mechjammer experience will serve as a good lesson for them, and see any sequel to Serpent in The Staglands turn out better for it.

All they have to do is take the original game's foundation, add some more genuine substance and variety to the world and make the combat more dynamic, and they'll have a corker on their hands.

Hopefully they quit developing games and go do something where they don't have to sell their house and then never finish it.

Flipping houses and making art games.

The real estate price swings to pay for the experiment art games.

Modern Wolf is the bad guy. EA is the bad guy. Publishers like Robert Sirotek are the bad guy!!!

 

[gaussgunner]

Is that true that Joseph and Hannah are jews?

I believe so, but they're not very effective merchants.