Parasite, a modern-day survival horror roguelike

[infidel]

The cover image with the girl and the octopus-thing is great and together with the name of the game create a strong identity. The screenshots are a bit dark and bland in comparison.

Thanks, the ingame art is all abstract icons because that's the best solution I've found for making a game not look completely ugly with no budget and lack of drawing skills :D Well, ok, that's the second best solution, the best one is making a text-based game.

 

[Hag]

Gave it a quick try on the online itch.io version. My random thoughts :
- Idea feels nice and sound. I want the cute little parasite to succeed and am genuinely curious on what power can it develop later.
- UI is... unfriendly. You said you're working on it, so great, right now it's a bit awkward and confusing to use.
- Early game seems to boil down on the very same actions. Feels there is only one way to play, which is at odds with the roguelikes I know and their trial an error gameplay. I hope there is more approaches available later on.
- The art is minimal and serviceable, but maybe a bit too zoomed-in. Zooming out would make the game screen busier. Personal taste. Also the colors of the game and UI don't match the ones of the logo.
- The Evil Cult and Parasite logos and promotional art are very well done and memorable.

 

[infidel]

Gave it a quick try on the online itch.io version. My random thoughts :
- Idea feels nice and sound. I want the cute little parasite to succeed and am genuinely curious on what power can it develop later.
- UI is... unfriendly. You said you're working on it, so great, right now it's a bit awkward and confusing to use.
- Early game seems to boil down on the very same actions. Feels there is only one way to play, which is at odds with the roguelikes I know and their trial an error gameplay. I hope there is more approaches available later on.
- The art is minimal and serviceable, but maybe a bit too zoomed-in. Zooming out would make the game screen busier. Personal taste. Also the colors of the game and UI don't match the ones of the logo.
- The Evil Cult and Parasite logos and promotional art are very well done and memorable.

Thanks for trying it out! A couple of points on your feedback. UI is the main thing I'm working on right now (already done with this iteration, now a round of bugfixing before the pre-release). About the early game, did you get out to the city map? Everything up until point that is a tutorial of sorts. Zoom level is there in the options (map scale, maybe the name isn't too intiuitive). I'll send you a code when I'm ready so that you can check out the new version.

 

[Hag]

About the early game, did you get out to the city map? Everything up until point that is a tutorial of sorts.

Well I did not, I spent quite some time confused with what to do. Goals are not very visible.

So I played another game, managed to flee through the sewers, build a micro-habitat and find some info about my past. Then my host died in the sewers and I had to drag my feeble body way too long on concrete and died of exhaustion. Dammit. Game does get better indeed once you're on a roll and get the hang of host-hopping. What I missed was a clearer way of knowing the status of the host. Since there is a gauge for health and energy, why not for degradation ? Maybe it is by design to keep tension up, but I fount it frustrating.

Also maybe a bug : I evolved poison-spitting on a host A and then went side to side with human B. I hopped from A to B and found I had full control already of B with option to spit poison. Tried to spit on A but the log message was that A got punched. Then B died of degradation. Not really sure what happened.

 

[infidel]

Well I did not, I spent quite some time confused with what to do. Goals are not very visible.

They're not, how so? There's always a list of current goals visible in the hud. I'll also mark the ones that are optional later.

So I played another game, managed to flee through the sewers, build a micro-habitat and find some info about my past. Then my host died in the sewers and I had to drag my feeble body way too long on concrete and died of exhaustion. Dammit. Game does get better indeed once you're on a roll and get the hang of host-hopping. What I missed was a clearer way of knowing the status of the host. Since there is a gauge for health and energy, why not for degradation ? Maybe it is by design to keep tension up, but I fount it frustrating.

Died in the sewers, hmm. There's currently sort of a cheat that when you emerge from the sewers, there's always gonna be a dog spawned. I'm still undecided about that as a design decision (it makes survivability very predictable and easy) but it's there and I have no better idea ATM.

Well, firstly, there's a lot of hidden stuff that should be described in the manual, which currently does not exist. Secondly, it's all part of the core idea that you're learning about stuff and until you learn about something, it's hidden from you. In this case, there's damage going on to the host's randomly picked attributes. When any of these goes to zero, the host dies. You can see the attributes if you research better brain probe (level 3 I think). This'll also show the explanation of how do these behave.

Also maybe a bug : I evolved poison-spitting on a host A and then went side to side with human B. I hopped from A to B and found I had full control already of B with option to spit poison. Tried to spit on A but the log message was that A got punched. Then B died of degradation. Not really sure what happened.

Looks like when you hopped the mouse attack transformed from spit to punch like it should but the action list wasn't updated correctly. I'll fix this. As to why B died, were you researching something? That's the only reason that I can think of for degradation. But then again if the new host was fresh, this wouldn't be possible.

 

[Hag]

Ok, played a few rounds (a dozen or so) and things are getting clearer. I've died a lot during tutorial, usually around at the same time : trying my understanding of humans to 25% while developing mutations or research. Now I try to rush the sewers and deal with research later. Seems to work.
Game is hard but enjoyable. Kind of mixed on whether it is good or not to have to replay the same beginning each time. On one hand it is boring, on the other it goes quite fast when you know what to do.

They're not, how so? There's always a list of current goals visible in the hud. I'll also mark the ones that are optional later.

They actually are, I'm simply an idiot who can't look at his screen right.

There's currently sort of a cheat that when you emerge from the sewers, there's always gonna be a dog spawned. I'm still undecided about that as a design decision (it makes survivability very predictable and easy) but it's there and I have no better idea ATM.

I like the handy dog, but if your energy is too low to grab control death is assured, host or not. I probably fucked up and moved to much through the sewers before climbing up. That's the only reason I see, since I would have used any host around.

Looks like when you hopped the mouse attack transformed from spit to punch like it should but the action list wasn't updated correctly. I'll fix this. As to why B died, were you researching something? That's the only reason that I can think of for degradation. But then again if the new host was fresh, this wouldn't be possible.

Sorry, I don't remember much the details. Since it was an early game I was probably researching something at all time, but can't say much more.

Another weird thing : I built in my shelter both a crystal and the assimilation thing, but hosts energy still degrades with time, whatever I do, assimilated or not. I tried to wait on the crystal itself with an assimilated guy but no result. The parasite stats are refilled as expected. While assimilation does give a nice boon, I still can't grow mutation and keep the host alive. Maybe I'm fucking up something.

Few other remarks :

Spoiler

- Yeah you got me with the ambush. I fed a lot above my chamber and did notice a lot of those "Tango" guys, but wasn't expecting to have them at home. Managed to flee but forced my luck and found myself low on energy surrounded by cops.
- This "tango" shit makes you paranoid. Well done.
- Now that I've played the game I'm much less bothered by the simple art style. It kind of makes sense since as the parasite you don't understand what is going on. Not a big fan of the emoji-style character art, but it does it jobs. I like the city map and the parks, whatever they might be for.
- The story-telling is good. You're weak, against all, you need to grab clues and whatever you can to know more. The fact that you find documents laying around on the street feels artificial but the game is abstract enough to get away with it.
Will play again.

 

[infidel]

Ok, played a few rounds (a dozen or so) and things are getting clearer. I've died a lot during tutorial, usually around at the same time : trying my understanding of humans to 25% while developing mutations or research. Now I try to rush the sewers and deal with research later. Seems to work.
Game is hard but enjoyable. Kind of mixed on whether it is good or not to have to replay the same beginning each time. On one hand it is boring, on the other it goes quite fast when you know what to do.

I'm not against adding a "skip tutorial? yes/no" dialog at the beginning. Added to my notes. Another sorta hidden thing: you don't have to kill anyone while you're forced to stay in the starting area. Just drop the phone as soon as you get on top of a new host. So when you release them, they can't call the cops on you and have to just run away.

I like the handy dog, but if your energy is too low to grab control death is assured, host or not. I probably fucked up and moved to much through the sewers before climbing up. That's the only reason I see, since I would have used any host around.

Planning your host's death ahead of time is I'd say the most crucial thing the player has to learn to succeed. The other one is various "panic meters" management. Unfortunately, most of them are well hidden so either I'll have to put it all in the manual or add various indicators.

Another weird thing : I built in my shelter both a crystal and the assimilation thing, but hosts energy still degrades with time, whatever I do, assimilated or not. I tried to wait on the crystal itself with an assimilated guy but no result. The parasite stats are refilled as expected. While assimilation does give a nice boon, I still can't grow mutation and keep the host alive. Maybe I'm fucking up something.

Heh, you're not alone in that. I had the same problem yesterday and I'm the gamedev :D I'll make it so that when you stand on top of the biomineral, the log will explain what happens with the energy. Basically, level 1 mineral is +5 assimilated host/parasite energy, and, and... yeah, this could be a bug. Even looking at the code I don't understand what happens completely. Should just be +5. It does work with biomineral level 2 (+10).

Spoiler

- Yeah you got me with the ambush. I fed a lot above my chamber and did notice a lot of those "Tango" guys, but wasn't expecting to have them at home. Managed to flee but forced my luck and found myself low on energy surrounded by cops.
- This "tango" shit makes you paranoid. Well done.

All avoidable once you know the rules :D Well, not completely but your behaviour on top really prolongs the ambush. Reading about tango guys on top tells me that you're pretty indiscriminant in your feeding habits

- Now that I've played the game I'm much less bothered by the simple art style. It kind of makes sense since as the parasite you don't understand what is going on. Not a big fan of the emoji-style character art, but it does it jobs. I like the city map and the parks, whatever they might be for.

I think you're talking about the general "wilderness" areas. Right now it doesn't do much except having some distance between your targets surrounding the city while not being able to replace the host easily. Later on it might be requiring you to learn the various human travel ways.

- The story-telling is good. You're weak, against all, you need to grab clues and whatever you can to know more. The fact that you find documents laying around on the street feels artificial but the game is abstract enough to get away with it.
Will play again.

Yeah, I agree with that, it feels really "gamey" to me, too, but it'll work for now. There are two other sources of clues currently - computers and NPCs. I have some ideas on making it a bit more believable but that's for much later.

 

[Hag]

Another sorta hidden thing: you don't have to kill anyone while you're forced to stay in the starting area. Just drop the phone as soon as you get on top of a new host. So when you release them, they can't call the cops on you and have to just run away.

Oh that's a good one. Since the sound effect have them screaming, I thought they were calling cops out loud.

 

[infidel]

Another sorta hidden thing: you don't have to kill anyone while you're forced to stay in the starting area. Just drop the phone as soon as you get on top of a new host. So when you release them, they can't call the cops on you and have to just run away.

Oh that's a good one. Since the sound effect have them screaming, I thought they were calling cops out loud.

Oh yeah, that reminds me. The sound effects are emitted in some radius and they will alert nearby NPCs. So the screams will continue to work in that sense. Note to self: gag mutation for non-lethal walkthrough.

 

[lightbane]

Hopefully the full release adds the "save anywhere" feature.

 

[infidel]

Hopefully the full release adds the "save anywhere" feature.

Erm, I was hoping you'd forget about that But I admit I will stave off implementing save system until the last possible moment. And I'm not sure it'll be allowed anywhere, at least not unless you're playing on easy difficulty or something.

 

[infidel]

BTW if anyone wants pre-release keys to help me test the thing out, feel free to ask. If you pinkie promise to spend at least an hour playing the game and write your thoughts semi-coherently, you can have the game for free.

 

[lightbane]

Hopefully the full release adds the "save anywhere" feature.

Erm, I was hoping you'd forget about that But I admit I will stave off implementing save system until the last possible moment. And I'm not sure it'll be allowed anywhere, at least not unless you're playing on easy difficulty or something.

I'm fine with not being able to save during dangerous situations and the like. I would even accept an automated "save and quit" feature at worst, but nowadays I have less time than I used to, so I appreciate being able to save at any time more than ever.

 

[infidel]

I'm fine with not being able to save during dangerous situations and the like. I would even accept an automated "save and quit" feature at worst, but nowadays I have less time than I used to, so I appreciate being able to save at any time more than ever.

Yeah, I get that. There will be some kind of save system for sure.

 

[Hag]

So played a couple more games, and actually won the last one.

Complete review with spoilers :

Spoiler

The good :
- Game is unforgiving but quite fun. Most important is that the parasite and evolution mechanisms feel sound and play nicely. While the game lacks an amount of polish the base is there and is solid.
- I like the way story unfolds, recollecting memories and documents and slowly making the bigger picture appears. The fact that learning the story is the only way of figuring out what you are is nice and motivating. Made me curious and involved. I wanted to know more about some events and in particular the other parts of the pilot but I unexpectedly won the game so it will be for another time.
- The overall city map (sewers) is good looking.
- Soundscape is basic but gets the job done.
- I enjoyed reading about the "group" after they stormed my place. It was rewarding to get to learn more about some hidden mechanism. Quite the "in your face" wall of text but a nice change of pace after getting nearly squished down.
- The "photo" idea to recognize people in the street is nicely done.


The meh :
- Game difficulty starts high but the moment you have an assimilation mold and enough crystals to replenish the host's energy it becomes trivial. With the camouflage perk, as long as you keep an eye on energy level you are basically invisible and can do whatever you want. Only a change of host can bring you into trouble, and if you are careful it doesn't. It is not really a bad thing since you have to perform the same actions quite a few times but since there was no endgame challenge it felt a bit lacking.
- Yeah, the ending was far too quick and easy (maybe there are several, I got the abduction one). Go there, go find such person, go back there and voila, it's over. A bit the anticlimax after all the tension and the risks of the early game. Feels off to enter a research facility with a random host, walk around and visit the alien spaceship without anybody reacting. Feels good to win, but I would have appreciated some stats such as the number of people parasited or killed, or the % of storyline discovered.
- There seems to be only one way of playing the game. Stealth. Not bad in itself but it lowers replayability. I got very good at pistol shooting but never tried simply because I never had the need (nor want) to eliminate or scare anyone. Therefore many body mutations are useless. Why should I want to be stronger or to spit acid if the game never even gives me any incentive for fighting ? Researching new mutation means killing hosts and is always risky, but then most of the time the reward is not useful. Disappointing.
- I would have enjoyed some custom tiles for the research labs or the spaceship.


The bad :
- While certainly an improvement compared to the previous one, the new UI is still clunky. The "body" menu gets overcrowded fast and you need the mouse to scroll and select (the shortcuts are not very intuitive). Reversely, sometimes windows content overlaps the "close" button making the top of it unreachable by mouse :

Spoiler

So you are to use both shortcuts and mouse. Not fun.
- There is no way to zoom in/out or to pan the map around. When you are near a map boundary the interface gets in the way and you can't see what's there. This may be the single most infuriating point. All other criticism is about things that work but could work better. But the overlap of the UI with the map and no way to move it around is a game breaker.
- No way to resize the window. Changing tile size requires a restart (it shouldn't) which mean losing your progress since :
- There is no way t save.
- Game weights 170MB or so. Feels unwarranted for such minimal graphics.


Bugs :
The shortcuts and goals UI sometimes overlap :

- I got several popup during one game about the destruction of a former habitat. Don't know why, I get it's traumatic but each popup did not seem to have any in-game effect and was actually very confusing.
- Did not find any way to replenish the host's health. Maybe I should I looked harder, but even 2x lvl2 crystals did not do the trick.
- I have an azerty keyboard but the shortcuts are not remapped (if I press my "a" key it registers a "q" input). There is no way to customize shortcuts and the standard windows "alt+shift" shortcut to switch language is not recognized. Good thing I know my qwerty layout because otherwise I would have been stuck.

 

[infidel]

TLDR: I agree with pretty much everything you've said but I wanted to give explanations and clarifications for some points.

Spoiler

The good :
- Game is unforgiving but quite fun. Most important is that the parasite and evolution mechanisms feel sound and play nicely. While the game lacks an amount of polish the base is there and is solid.
- I like the way story unfolds, recollecting memories and documents and slowly making the bigger picture appears. The fact that learning the story is the only way of figuring out what you are is nice and motivating. Made me curious and involved. I wanted to know more about some events and in particular the other parts of the pilot but I unexpectedly won the game so it will be for another time.
- The overall city map (sewers) is good looking.
- Soundscape is basic but gets the job done.

Which difficulty(ies) did you win on and how long did it take you to do it?

Glad you liked the stuff that I feel is unique to the game. About the soundscape, the game only has one music track currently because I forgot to add the other three and when I remembered, I realized I'd need some platform work so it's better to merge it into the sound system rework task. At that time I'll probably add more sounds that the game lacks. I intend to rework the old music (and add some more), too, since now, three years later, I know a great deal more about mixing and have better tools available.

- I enjoyed reading about the "group" after they stormed my place. It was rewarding to get to learn more about some hidden mechanism. Quite the "in your face" wall of text but a nice change of pace after getting nearly squished down.

My plan currently is to make a full manual and then make that wall a part of it removing the "do you want to read the thing" dialog or just pointing to the ingame manual. This will happen later though. I'll also have to find the right balance between explaining everything in detail and leaving the exact details hidden for player to uncover.

- The "photo" idea to recognize people in the street is nicely done.

I'm half-tempted to add the photo graphics to the timeline window just for fun but this'll wait

The meh :
- Game difficulty starts high but the moment you have an assimilation mold and enough crystals to replenish the host's energy it becomes trivial. With the camouflage perk, as long as you keep an eye on energy level you are basically invisible and can do whatever you want. Only a change of host can bring you into trouble, and if you are careful it doesn't. It is not really a bad thing since you have to perform the same actions quite a few times but since there was no endgame challenge it felt a bit lacking.

I agree with that. There's a very comfy midgame currently (the group was added to add some midgame challenge, btw, it was even more of a slump earlier). I'll work some more on the plot tasks to make them more of a thing than they are now.

- Yeah, the ending was far too quick and easy (maybe there are several, I got the abduction one). Go there, go find such person, go back there and voila, it's over. A bit the anticlimax after all the tension and the risks of the early game. Feels off to enter a research facility with a random host, walk around and visit the alien spaceship without anybody reacting. Feels good to win, but I would have appreciated some stats such as the number of people parasited or killed, or the % of storyline discovered.

My approach was always to make a sketch of something and then carefully expand and add meat to where it's needed. So I've plenty of vectors for fleshing the late game out and I'll get to it at some point. For example, research/military facilities and other "special" areas will have to be reworked to add more flavor and gameplay challenges. That last task where you have to grab a named NPC will have them have two bodyguards most likely and maybe some more surprises. About the stats, added to my notes. Currently there's a sketch of a single scenario, I'm planning for more mission variations (kill/abduct/infiltrate/etc), a little bit of non-linearity and optional branches, and multiple scenarios much later on.

- There seems to be only one way of playing the game. Stealth. Not bad in itself but it lowers replayability. I got very good at pistol shooting but never tried simply because I never had the need (nor want) to eliminate or scare anyone. Therefore many body mutations are useless. Why should I want to be stronger or to spit acid if the game never even gives me any incentive for fighting ? Researching new mutation means killing hosts and is always risky, but then most of the time the reward is not useful. Disappointing.

I agree completely. Stealth was the main thing I've worked on so far and combat line with evolution revamp is high on the list. Another thing I want is non-lethal walkthrough but this one is somewhere lower.

- I would have enjoyed some custom tiles for the research labs or the spaceship.

Yup.

The bad :
- While certainly an improvement compared to the previous one, the new UI is still clunky. The "body" menu gets overcrowded fast and you need the mouse to scroll and select (the shortcuts are not very intuitive). Reversely, sometimes windows content overlaps the "close" button making the top of it unreachable by mouse :
So you are to use both shortcuts and mouse. Not fun.

They're not intuitive? i1 and b1 will select actions from inventory or body lists. The multi-window scrolling is a problem for the keyboard player, I agree. Heh, perhaps I should not have merged inventory, body and skills into a single window . But they looked SO EMPTY! I'll fix the close button.

- There is no way to zoom in/out or to pan the map around. When you are near a map boundary the interface gets in the way and you can't see what's there. This may be the single most infuriating point. All other criticism is about things that work but could work better. But the overlap of the UI with the map and no way to move it around is a game breaker.

Do you use the "space" key? It'll hide the HUD completely.

- No way to resize the window. Changing tile size requires a restart (it shouldn't) which mean losing your progress since :

You cannot resize the window by dragging the window corner? It works fine for me like with any windowed Windows application. Changing tile size on the fly had some limitations I think but I'll see if I can make it work.

- There is no way t save.

*sigh*

- Game weights 170MB or so. Feels unwarranted for such minimal graphics.

Well, that's mostly the platform, nothing I can do about it.

Bugs :
The shortcuts and goals UI sometimes overlap :

Hmm, I'll check the min/max width for the element. But you probably need to set the smaller font in the options anyway, the UI is too large for that resolution. Actually, that's probably why the body screen is such a mess for you.

- I got several popup during one game about the destruction of a former habitat. Don't know why, I get it's traumatic but each popup did not seem to have any in-game effect and was actually very confusing.

Ah, these are very important. Each time the habitat dies, the parasite's max energy is permanently lowered by 10 points. So you can't infinitely avoid the group, the game will become essentially unplayable at some point.

- Did not find any way to replenish the host's health. Maybe I should I looked harder, but even 2x lvl2 crystals did not do the trick.

The current design dogma is that all hosts eventually die unless you release them. Symbiosis is not achievable. But this might change in the future when I have more of an understanding of what I want from non-lethal walkthrough. Maybe there'll be something like the "single host" approach.

- I have an azerty keyboard but the shortcuts are not remapped (if I press my "a" key it registers a "q" input). There is no way to customize shortcuts and the standard windows "alt+shift" shortcut to switch language is not recognized. Good thing I know my qwerty layout because otherwise I would have been stuck.

Hmm, that's very curious. I'll have to investigate.

 

[infidel]

The game is now out on Steam!


Here's what has changed since the good old days and the current Itch version:

v0.7 - The first Steam release

This is the first release that is available to Steam players (pre-release at the moment of writing). The major focus has been on changing the underlying platform for easier development and on making the UI prettier.

• all HUD and windows UI elements converted to new system with background art added;
  
• full UI mouse support finally completed;
  
• previous inventory, knowledge and body windows have been merged into one "body" window with multiple toggleable segments;
  
• bitmapped font changed to vector;
  
• many small bugfixes and tweaks due to these changes;
  
• no changes in gameplay yet;

 

[Hag]

Glad to hear you have lot of ideas to add content to the game. I like its premises and believe with more challenge and content it would make a great roguelike.
To answer a few points :

Spoiler

Which difficulty(ies) did you win on and how long did it take you to do it?

Won on normal, took me maybe a solid hour or a bit more ? Did not check (could be another stat to have at the end ) but time flies when I'm playing this game. It has a strong "ok another game then I'll stop" addictive loop.

My plan currently is to make a full manual and then make that wall a part of it removing the "do you want to read the thing" dialog or just pointing to the ingame manual. This will happen later though. I'll also have to find the right balance between explaining everything in detail and leaving the exact details hidden for player to uncover.

Yeah, that's hard to balance. Or maybe you could learn it by brain probing members of the Group, something like that.

They're not intuitive? i1 and b1 will select actions from inventory or body lists. The multi-window scrolling is a problem for the keyboard player, I agree. Heh, perhaps I should not have merged inventory, body and skills into a single window . But they looked SO EMPTY! I'll fix the close button.

i1 and b1 are not very intuitive as shortcuts. ctrl+1 or shift+1 would look more familiar and save a keystroke.

Do you use the "space" key? It'll hide the HUD completely.

Stumbled on it once but since it also hides the stat screen and the precious energy gauge I toggled back quickly. I don't believe solving the "UI hides the screen" issue by toggling the UI is a good solution. At least make the screen stay centered on the player when he reaches the edges.

You cannot resize the window by dragging the window corner? It works fine for me like with any windowed Windows application. Changing tile size on the fly had some limitations I think but I'll see if I can make it work.

Yes, you totaly can and it works great. I'm not such a great tester am I ?

- I got several popup during one game about the destruction of a former habitat. Don't know why, I get it's traumatic but each popup did not seem to have any in-game effect and was actually very confusing.

Ah, these are very important. Each time the habitat dies, the parasite's max energy is permanently lowered by 10 points. So you can't infinitely avoid the group, the game will become essentially unplayable at some point.

Thing is I got it once after the habitat death, but then at least three other times about this same habitat later on.

 

[infidel]

I'm glad you're enjoying it. So far it looks like out of the people who took the time to write only two people managed to actually win the game.

Spoiler

Won on normal, took me maybe a solid hour or a bit more ? Did not check (could be another stat to have at the end ) but time flies when I'm playing this game. It has a strong "ok another game then I'll stop" addictive loop.

i1 and b1 are not very intuitive as shortcuts. ctrl+1 or shift+1 would look more familiar and save a keystroke.

I, er... I did not think of that :D Too much vim I guess. I'll do that. But to be pedantic, you're not saving a keystroke .

Stumbled on it once but since it also hides the stat screen and the precious energy gauge I toggled back quickly. I don't believe solving the "UI hides the screen" issue by toggling the UI is a good solution. At least make the screen stay centered on the player when he reaches the edges.

Well, I could make that an option but personally I like it the other way. Space was designed as a quick press, look, and press again, though, hence why it uses such a key.

Yes, you totaly can and it works great. I'm not such a great tester am I ?

Hehe, no worries. The gameplay issues are probably more important anyway.

Thing is I got it once after the habitat death, but then at least three other times about this same habitat later on.

Ok, written down as a bug. I'll look into it.

 

[infidel]

v0.7.1 is out!
This is a release focused on bugfixes with some changes to the difficulty settings. There is a new difficulty selection called survival. Important bugs with habitats dying multiple times and too many AIs on screen on high resolutions were fixed. Many visual bugs for UI windows were fixed, too. The game now has correct mouse cursors.

Changes:

• New difficulty setting - survival. ATM it makes the AI calling the law slower on easy setting and makes the calls interrupt when the parasite attaches to host. Normal and hard settings behave as previously.
  
• Evolution difficulty - slower host degradation when evolving on easy/normal setting. The current speed becomes hard setting.
  
• Evolution difficulty - now limits total amount of habitats per game. This number is visible in skills section of body window. Note that this number is decreased only when habitat is destroyed. When the last habitat is destroyed, the parasite dies.
  
• Group difficulty - more severe penalties for habitat destruction on hard, and less severe on easy setting.
  
• New formula for calculating max ai number on screen - the number is significantly lower for high resolutions and a little bit higher for low resolutions
  
• Console command for ai stats (dai)
  
• i1, b1 hotkeys were replaced with ctrl-1, shift-1 (old ones still available)
  
• Camera is now always centered (added config option for it, will add later to the options window)
  
• Uncaught exceptions are now logged and message about it was added to contact me
  
• Initial team timeout raised making the early game easier

Fixes:

• lots of UI fixes for low resolutions
  
• fix for one habitat being destroyed multiple times
  
• fixes for azerty keyboards
  
• mouse cursors fixed
  
• HUD toggling will be faster
  
• most of the visual bugs for borders fixed
  
• optional goals are now marked as such
  
• added bridge goal between main line and scenario
  
• arrow keys movement fixed
  
• disabled the ability for dogs to pick items up
  
• you cannot leave the habitat when the host is paralyzed now
  
• disabled inventory action hotkeys when inventory is not yet available
  
• automatic game over when the parasite has no energy and is attached to host
  
• actions count made smaller in the HUD
  
• evolution-related lines are removed from the HUD when there is no evolution happening

 

[Hag]

Gave it a quick shot. The azerty issue seems to be fixed. The new camera is good. Ran into a game-breaking problem : the body screen doesn't scale well anymore :

Spoiler

It is annoying in the first case, but really problematic in the second since you can't access the feature menu anymore to grow the assimilation mold. Shortcut works ok

Good job otherwise. Managed to research brain probe 3 effortlessly so yeah the game in Normal may be easier.

 

[Hag]

Not a bug, but when the control values reaches 100, the "1" shortcut becomes mind probing. Not a problem if you are paying attention, but confusing if you spam "1" like a madman. Maybe having "1" always increasing control, "2" always mind probing and so on would make more sense.

EDIT : bug ?

Spoiler

I receive the Grow Camouflage quest while I have already researched it (ok screenshot is not very good, but I had it lvl 2 on another host before) :

Also, I had the mission to visit the spot I remembered. While exploring around the map I decided out of curiosity to visit a military base, and got the popup "this is the location, look around for clues", while it wasn't the one with the "?" on the map. Well, there were clues there, so ok.

Got ambushed in my habitat while I was already in there. Now that was unexpected. Good job Group guys.

 

[infidel]

Gave it a quick shot. The azerty issue seems to be fixed. The new camera is good. Ran into a game-breaking problem : the body screen doesn't scale well anymore

Okay, gonna try to fix it.

Not a bug, but when the control values reaches 100, the "1" shortcut becomes mind probing. Not a problem if you are paying attention, but confusing if you spam "1" like a madman. Maybe having "1" always increasing control, "2" always mind probing and so on would make more sense.

I'll think about what to do with it. Always making them bound to 1,2, etc, goes against the idea of a fully contextual actions list. Perhaps I should bind the brain probe to A, for example?

Spoiler

I receive the Grow Camouflage quest while I have already researched it (ok screenshot is not very good, but I had it lvl 2 on another host before) :

Weird. Tell me more details. Did you manage to research it without a quest first? Did you somehow receive the camo imp at start of the game? Did it not complete when you've grown it for the first time?

Also, I had the mission to visit the spot I remembered. While exploring around the map I decided out of curiosity to visit a military base, and got the popup "this is the location, look around for clues", while it wasn't the one with the "?" on the map. Well, there were clues there, so ok.

Okay, will investigate.

Got ambushed in my habitat while I was already in there. Now that was unexpected. Good job Group guys.

 

[Hag]

Weird. Tell me more details. Did you manage to research it without a quest first? Did you somehow receive the camo imp at start of the game? Did it not complete when you've grown it for the first time?

As far as I remember I did get the quest under usual circumstances, and I researched it quickly, solving it. Then the quest came back after my long-time assimilated host died, but I don't remember exactly when. May try to reproduce later.

 

[Rean]

I wanted to leave some general feedback and ask some questions, even though I haven't managed to make it to the end yet. I also had someone else play it, but it wasn't her thing.

Parasite is tough . It's a frantic rush towards the final steps of evolution for something in a world where everything and everyone can present an instant problem to your survival. There was zero potential downtime (that I saw), it's all adrenaline, all the time. Overall, she likes more sandbox/exploration/open-ended games, so Parasite definitely doesn't scratch that itch. I find the linearity/rhythm of the loop interesting, but, yeah, it's not the kind of thing that's easily attractive to everyone.

It took a while to understand the overall premise, but the more you play, the more it makes sense for the parasite to be what and where it is. I like the concept of an alien intelligent organism growing through accumulating information through the hosts.

Another thing I appreciated was (naturally), the spooky music (although a couple more tracks wouldn't hurt). Combined with the ambience of crowds and passing cars, it really gave a nice immersive feeling of being in a big city. That being said, the following areas that you explore could also benefit from their own more specialized ambience. But I'm sure you're working on all this anyway, since sound is your thing.

I wanted to ask about the difficulty system, what made you decide to give the option to change it after evolution stages? Far as I could tell, it only changed parameters regarding to the next core evolution stage? I didn't see the point in it to be honest, I'd rather have one overarching difficulty setting set at the start. Or, even better, no difficulty setting at all?

Energy costs: unless I'm misunderstanding, there's energy costs for the parasite VS the host. Those need to be visibly and very obviously differentiated.
Oh, I wanted to ask what dropping items actually does, how deep does the interactivity go? I dropped money on the ground once while being chased, because I assumed they would attract attention and give me some breathing room, but I didn't have the chance to circle back to see if it worked.

The UI would benefit massively from some moving things around/context. GOAL/OPTIONS/LOG/EXIT shortcuts should always be placed last or completely separated and perhaps also have a different color code to signify they are not directly related to things you can do ingame. The message about having to restart / press enter should be clickable too.
Also, F being fullscreen is vital information!