Tunguska: The Visitation - top-down survival shooter inspired by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series

[Lyre Mors]

Just got a big update and is on a nice sale right now.



Grabbed it last night and got to play it for a couple hours. Went with the "Hardcore" mode. Really impressed with what I've seen so far, particularly from a one-man developed project. Will likely post some more impressions when I get a bit further in.

 

[ADL]

Saw this a couple days ago on GOG but didn't buy it since no one was talking about it. Impressions seem good and the hardcore mode looks interesting. Please post more when you've had a chance to play it.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Saw this a couple days ago on GOG but didn't buy it since no one was talking about it. Impressions seem good and the hardcore mode looks interesting. Please post more when you've had a chance to play it.

I got to play a few more hours. Hardcore mode is great, except for one thing: being only able to save at stationary beds, i.e. not with a sleeping bag you can carry in your inventory. For the first couple hours, this didn't seem like it'd be a big deal for me, but when you're going on certain quests that require you to travel a fair distance, end up having to stealth around certain areas, get in several combat encounters, activate generators, find switches, and sometimes wait for time to pass (if you want to try to infiltrate or bypass a location at night, for instance), dying and redoing all of these things can become rather time consuming. Mind you, this is my experience early game. I feel like you'll be able to survive longer when you have better armor, weapons, and healing options at your disposal, as well as a better grasp on which enemies you want dance with or not. That being said, the intensity of some of these travel attempts with Hardcore difficulty enabled have been truly great and memorable moments of gameplay, where every action has meaning, and every mistake can mean a quick death. I think it actually served as a way to get a quick helping of what the game truly has to offer with its breadth of approaches to different situations and player agency. I continue to be impressed by what I'm seeing. Sadly I think I might have to start over on the normal difficulty and maybe try Hardcore on a replay someday in the future.

Other small positive observations I've had are: I love the UI both functionally and aesthetically. Conversations are much more in-depth than what you'd expect to find here as well, working much more like a straight CRPG using keyword prompts, without any attribute based dialogue options of course. The atmosphere is great and I've enjoyed some of the early world and "level" design quite a lot. Combat is - as I hinted at before - very lethal, particularly in the beginning stages. Different types of enemies display different challenges too. You'll be lucky to stand toe to toe with a military man for more than a couple seconds if you're unprepared, but if you have the darkness of night and some cunning at your side, you can take down a good 3-4 bandit-type enemies with a pistol. And you can of course beat the shit out of a mindless ghoul mutant with a crowbar or machete as long as you play your cards right. But get a scratch from them and you're going to contract the T-Virus, which will cause you to become weaker and more susceptible to taking additional damage.

So far it seems like the isometric STALKER I never knew I wanted. Most everything I said above was positive, but I'm sure that's mainly because I'm early on. I have no doubt the game has some hidden flaws that have yet to reveal themselves, but I at least know at this point that I'm happy to have supported this game and having a great time with it. Really hope this guy is able to make more games in the same vein in the future.

 

[cyborgboy95]

New Free Gear, Improved Main Menu, Update on Dead Zone DLC
Dear Ghoul Hunters:

First of all, thank you everyone for the support! It's an honor for me to present this game to you, and I hope you get many hours of fun time from it

As a small token of gratitude, I'm releasing a free gear that you might find useful: a wooden shield. You can equip it on either of your primary/side arm slots, and when you pull up a melee weapon, the shield will be moved to your left arm. The shield will provide 100% protection from head-on melee attacks - if you keep it in good condition (and no it doesn't block bullets). Attacks from the side has some chance to be protected as well. It will definitely help when you tackle a group of Scythes!

You can find this shield at the barrel on the small pier by the Zernaskaya church (if you start a new playthrough), or buy it from any traders who sell melee weapons (except Sidor, his level is too low).


Also, I know many of you folks are eagerly waiting for the Dead Zone DLC. I apologize for the delay; I just had to fix some of the technical debt that got piled up. I'm almost done with making all the new weapons. I just have a couple of things left, such as the throwing knife - it's going to be the most realistic throwing knife you'll see in modern gaming, might even be as tricky as real throwing knives After this, I will start making some "boss ghouls" for the high challenge playthroughs.

Other changes included in this update:

- NPCs will sometimes loot dead bodies they see. Not all of them, which would be frustrating for you. They would equip the new weapon if it's better than their, and save the rest of the loot in their inventory, and put them on sale if you trade with them.

- The main menu now supports up/down arrow or Dpad navigation

- When you click on "Continue" in the main menu, it'll show a "load save game" page where you can choose which save to load.

- Balanced the sound effects in the main menu.

- Increased the F1 Grenade and Makeshift Landmine's damage drastically to make them more desirable and useful.

- A new icon for the potato bread so it's no longer confused with the Rye bread

- Fixed some issues with strangling with Garrotte. Hopefully now you will no longer encounter problem with your victim sliding away when you strangle them.

- Fixed a bug with NPCs detecting dead bodies even when they are out of their sight. This could cause your silent takedowns to go haywire when you kill one of them, and immediately the guards would notice the dead body

- Fixed a bug with Ashinaka sanatorium spawning human NPCs who just stand there like idiots

- Added a chest in the car in the army cordon level. Now you can find all three gasolines required in that level, not having to go back to town to get it.

- Sidor will try to remind you about Hans's detector project before you head to the train station

- Siren and mutant spawning sounds are cached, hopefully to reduce some micro-stuttering

- Added error handling of failure to connect to local database, which can be caused by putting the game file in a folder with special characters



As usual, whenever I add new features I tend to break stuff... Please feel free to let me know either in the Steam Community or Discord if you notice anything wrong.

Thank you!

 

[agris]

Grunker speaking of interesting-looking iso games like Seven, here's a FYI if you weren't aware.

I haven't played this one either, but it does pique my interest.

 

[mkultra]

Seems decent, but i think i will refund, i'm such a graphical whore unfortunately.

The assets used here belongs in games made some 20'ish years ago, makes very little sense. It reminds me of games like never winter nights 1 or so.

He could spend maybe $100-200 on modern stock assets to make the game look at least twice as good. Bet it would sell better and it could be advertised better with some pretty nice looking screens. I mean its not running on a 20 year old engine, Unity is capable of higher poly count than 800'ish for a tree and 20 for a rock..

 

[tred]

It is pretty good. I've finished it last year and really liked it.
It felt a lot like a 2D Stalker (SoC). Not as complex, of course, but good enough.

 

[Rean]

I actually have this game.
I gave up on Atom about 10 hours in or so, the lolsorandom humor, memes and silly portraits were getting too much. Is this any better?

 

[Rean]

yeah, at the very least it takes itself seriously for most of the time, so the ways it's shit are forgivable - unlike atom, which doesn't take itself seriously enough to begin with and whiffs everything by design

Cool. I'm reading there's a DLC in the works, so I'll probably wait for that. But the way the dev has been updating this is truly praiseworthy.

 

[Grim Monk]

Before opening the thread my imagination painted a rather different picture then what this actually is.


I had a vision a Stalker like set in alt-history version Tsarist Russia of 1910s where the Tunguska Area is a “Zone”. The perimeter being “Great War” style trenches, barb wire, and bunkers, struggling to contain the zone and the strange creatures spawned appearing in it. Soldiers on on the perimeter (and of course visitors to the Zone) carrying Gas Masks due to the zone due to the risk of "noxious fume clouds" originating and drifting out of the zone.
Those inhaling these vapors would be at risk of death or "highly unpleasant" mutations.

Rumors of artifacts and mysteries attracting scavengers, scientists, mystics and religious fanatics, representatives of the various revolutionaries groups active in the Empire, and agents of foreign powers outside Russia all seeking to obtain or unravel the Zones secrets for their own ends.

Failed expeditions to penetrate the zone left behind rusting Armed cars and Tsar or Mark V* style Tanks.
*(Lent "prototype" aid tech form Entente Allies in the West.)

Perimeter Soldiers and Zone Stalkers carrying bolt action and bayonet Berdan and Mosin rifles, Nagant and Mauser pistols, while more high level weapons would stuff like prototype Federov Avtomats issued to the Tunguska Perimeter Imperial Cossack elite forces.
Also exotic imported weapons would stuff such as the Mondragon Rifle or Lewis LMG.


But on clicking the thread turns out the developer went for a more generic Stalker Clone...

 

[Optimist]

Played it for an hour or so (just managed to get the gun for Sidor fixed after spending a bit too long with the Mad Mechanic) and must say I am generally positive about it. It's janky, but not unbearably so. I have a soft spot for tactical-ish top-down view gameplay. Melee feels odd. I contracted T-virus during my first crowbar fight with ghouls and decided to mostly stick to ranged weaponry. Yet when dealing with bandits at the farm trying to melee them seemed to break their AI for a bit, as they started to run around and shoot in the air.

The Legionnaire situation felt odd. When I tried paying them off to fuck off for a while they attacked me regardless - is there a way of dealing peacefully with them? I fully get that this could have been one of those "can't trust anyone in the zone, Stalker" situations, but this felt more like scripts going off the rails.

I don't mind the graphics. I'd say they are somewhere on the level of SS2. Far from pretty, but functional. I actually enjoyed how at times I wasn't sure whether what I was approaching was a big rock or some Tunguska-local shadebeast. It'd be interesting to see the author go with overdithering (e.g. Nobody Lives Under the Lighthouse) as the graphics crutch, as this could increase the horror factor while masking the shittiness of the graphics a bit.

 

[Fargus]

Looks interesting. I'll wait for sale.

 

[Fargus]

PMS Stalker

 

[Optimist]

Looks interesting. I'll wait for sale.

There's a sale on GoG right now.

 

[Fargus]

Looks interesting. I'll wait for sale.

There's a sale on GoG right now.

GOG doesn't want my blood money. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Nikanuur]

Wow, I just sank nine hours straight into this. Pleasantly surprised. A mini-review:

I'll start with the best part. The combat is terrific. In melee, position and timing are crucial, but generally, a hard hit followed by two faster hits means staggering and certain death to most unarmored targets. In shoot-outs, the PC has to land several hits with all the irl mechanics in place, such as: standing still gives greater accuracy but also poses a greater risk of being shot; moving or shooting in succession means poorer accuracy due to the spread and recoil; shooting behind the cover isn't going to do much, but at least you are in the cover. Weapons have different ranges, which you—or the enemy—can use to an advantage. Experimentation with approaches leads to fun and advanced solutions.

Shoot through as Rambo would or tactically gain better angles by running from cover to cover, lure the guards to mines by throwing rocks, choke them in stealth from behind, utilize night/day situations, throw grenades, wait around the corner to bludgeon someone incoming to death, carefully sneak under the opened window, erect and unload both sawed-off barrels into an unsuspecting enemy, and much more. Man, I've not had such fun with combat for quite some time.

Quests (likely) don't branch, but some exploration and thinking on your feet happens, so it's alright. Experiences come from quests, killing, and gathering. There are two exp bars: one for survival skills and one for combat skills. Crafting is present; you need to gather the ingredients, grow them, buy them, etc. Health healing is generally neither cheap nor quick; more often than not, you need to eat and sleep rather than crack a stimpak. I suppose, with all the above combined and differently invested skill points, one can go as far as calling it: "There are different builds."

I won't go into describing the graphics—they're there, they're alright, and they serve their purpose. I have to stop at sounds and music, though; those are perfect. Satisfying reloading clicks; telltale gunshots allowing you to recognize which weapon the enemy is using; bandits yelling profanities with heavy Russian accent; sparse, ominous tones during the exploration; traditional Russian songs heard by the campfires; the right kind of stressful radiation or anomaly tickings... An auditory heaven.

If you are a fan, the love letters to Roadside Picnic will make you smile, as they are on point and plentiful. Even if you are not, the atmosphere should seem solid to you; the game is just the right blend of sci-fi (ghouls, anomalies, weird science) and the brooding naturalism of Tunguska's 1980s (mostly realistic weaponry and equipment, contemporary environment, culture, and architecture, etc.). Fyi, people often compare it to the Stalker game, but let us be reminded that it all started with the book and not with the film or the game.

This is how an indie should look. Traditionally a bit rough around the edges, which can be referred to, depending on personal preference, as "adding to the charm" or "somewhat needlessly cumbersome," but all in all, the game is a neat treat in the "got heart and spirit" department and comes equipped with a combat system that hits the sweet spot of balancing realism and gaming liberties. If I were a red panda, I'd raise my sixth finger in a thumbs-up.

 

[Optimist]

- New ranged weapon: Ballistic Knife, which silently shoots a knife for a short range and can be paired with the Ballistic Shield.

I

what?

 

[Baron Dupek]

^
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_knife
saw it in some CoD game, probably one Cold War themed

 

[Optimist]

^
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_knife
saw it in some CoD game, probably one Cold War themed

The more you know!

 

[Fargus]

I grabbed this game on sale with two dlcs, excluding dead zone because it looks like tryhard shit. And so far... it's not garbage. Picked a burglar background and took down three militia men, didn't want to pay border guard. Game reminds me a bit of Cold Zero.

I also had to use shitty unity mod tools to change one of the character creation portraits because they all look too retarded and subhuman. Wish unity trash was easier to mod.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Time to Wishlist Shadow Master DLC! And A Small Update
Like usual, I always end up doing more work than I originally planned I found myself writing a whole "novel" for the Shadow Master DLC, and I really hope I can get everything done by 7/24. If not, may be a few days late. It didn't help that I also got strep throat and I've been feeling really sick these days.

Anyways, please check out the steam page for the DLC


Also a few updates in 1.69-7:

- Fixed a bug with motorcycle spawning far from the player in ravenwood

- Raised the point of aim when locking on to an enemy, while using ChaseCam and Gamepad control scheme

- Fixed the inaccurate aim of the crossbow

 

[Stavrophore]

I applaud the effort, but the game is pretty formulaic and barebones. The tedium of backtracking is also tiresome. I've killed legionnaries and pretty much up to this point the game was more of the same. The controls are pretty awful and i don't think the isometric alike view/top down camera is suitable for this kind of genre, especially with cover being a big factor in combat. Author also pretty much shamelessly copied rookie village from stalker.

 

[Nikanuur]

I applaud the effort, but the game is pretty formulaic and barebones. The tedium of backtracking is also tiresome. I've killed legionnaries and pretty much up to this point the game was more of the same. The controls are pretty awful and i don't think the isometric alike view/top down camera is suitable for this kind of genre, especially with cover being a big factor in combat. Author also pretty much shamelessly copied rookie village from stalker.

I think that's unkind in the same way as saying to a dog he isn't a lion. Sure, lion king of the savannah and all, but teh doggo is there for you, and he shouldn't be a lion same as octopuss shouldn't be a grasshopper.

 

[Rotorist]

The Legionnaire situation felt odd. When I tried paying them off to fuck off for a while they attacked me regardless - is there a way of dealing peacefully with them? I fully get that this could have been one of those "can't trust anyone in the zone, Stalker" situations, but this felt more like scripts going off the rails.

Spoiler

It used to be the case that you could pursue the paying them off path and they'd betray you immediately. There was no peaceful way about it, ultimately. Now it's supposed to be a valid way to complete not-Sidorovich' quest but they'll turn aggro later on. Could very well be bugged, who knows.

You can with a hidden dialogue branch. If you have 1000 rubles, you can pay them off and complete the mission peacefully, but they will not leave and will shoot you on sight the next time you are back there.

 

[Rotorist]

Seems decent, but i think i will refund, i'm such a graphical whore unfortunately.

The assets used here belongs in games made some 20'ish years ago, makes very little sense. It reminds me of games like never winter nights 1 or so.

He could spend maybe $100-200 on modern stock assets to make the game look at least twice as good. Bet it would sell better and it could be advertised better with some pretty nice looking screens. I mean its not running on a 20 year old engine, Unity is capable of higher poly count than 800'ish for a tree and 20 for a rock..

lol 200 dollars barely buys you a few car models. Besides, nobody makes post-apocalyptic soviet environments