I love the art in this game, all of it. And some of the deliberate "de-make" technical stuff such as the vertex swimming on the models.

But the game itself doesn't interest me at all. I really hope they consider a title with the same artists but actual proper levels.

The art tho. 

Incredible art style, I love the sound design. I really just wish it was a different type of game but I don't know if that's very fair. It's basically robotron with skeleton horrors.

I'm not 100% sure the FPS aspect does the game any favours. Usually if you die it's because something crept up behind you, this doesn't happen with the top-down shooters in the same genre. At least, it doesn't feel unfair if it does because you can always see around you.

I think flat plane does it a great disservice really, even if they had designed some random generated arenas it would have added a lot more IMO.

Oh well, 3.99 is hardly breaking the bank for the game. 

I reached 69k and can't get over this point. 90% of deaths are from behind, because all enemies are faster than you. I need to try "rocket" jumping maybe it helps in escaping.
For me game is unfair and not rewarding. You need lots of luck and get used to specific "weapons".
I'll give it a try few more times, but I'm not happy with my purchase ;) 

And even then I'd feel ripped off. 

Buy it 

what I'm getting from these videos and commentary in this thread, is that this is just about the worst possible game to do in first-person. 

when i watch videos of it, it looks like my box maps i make when i'm testing a new monster. good for 5 minutes... is anyone really enjoying this? 

Journalists are really loving this game, it's getting a lot of high praise from main gaming sites like polygon, eurogamer and kotaku.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRnklklMl48 

It's also got a 95% positive rating on steam out of 400+ reviews. 

I think the flat plane "level" actually supports this game's core experience. There is no exploration aspect whatsoever, cover doesn't enter into the equation, you're under attack all the time, so why have architecture.

I think the world is largely created by the swarms of monsters and the sounds everything makes. Pretty clever.

This might single handedly debunk this idea that you need sprawling interconnected levels to create a great shooter. You could argue that a flat plane without walls in between guarantees 100% interconnectivity and nonlinearity. The player chooses the path with 100% freedom. It is reminescent of boss fight arenas, although those usually have cover or choke points which are simply omitted here.

While this won't do away with level design forever, I believe it proves a point. 

Robotron is a great shooter, so we already knew that this kind of thing worked. Adding real levels creates another variable for gameplay to be interesting, but it is not required for the core shooting gameplay. I think the greater value of having real levels is that it adds exploration and traversal as secondary activities to do when you are not shooting.

For me, games that have only a single core activity with no breaks or pace changers get tiring, even if I like them a lot there's a limit to how long I want to play in a single session. 

I think the greater value of having real levels is that it adds exploration and traversal as secondary activities to do when you are not shooting.

Agree. 

I'm glad we've finally cleared up the great debate over whether it's best to have an FPS with actual levels vs one with nothing but a flat plane to run around on.

That one was a right headscratcher. 

The game design term is fatigue - if you do one single thing for too long then you don't want to do it anymore. 

That's one of the great things when you dig into Half-Life a little ... Valve has a great design cadence of combat, rest, puzzle, repeat. That sort of thing. Beats of different flavors and intensities. 

Kinn is pretty much winning #func at the moment :D 

 

The game is a one trick pony, but it's a pretty cool trick in my view. I can say that it was worth its price for me, but I can imagine many people don't see the point of playing it at all. To each their own.

You can imagine it would offer more if there were different arenas, more enemy and weapon variety and tools for custom content. I think the developer didn't have the resources to implement all of this well enough, so he went for the game doing its one thing as well as possible.

If you don't think it's worth playing yourself, you can watch DraQu_ on Twitch (videos also on Youtube) suffer through the game for you. At the time I write this, he holds #1 on the leaderboards. 

Love the audio and visuals. Fun to play in short bursts. It's worth the $4. The real cost is not your pennies, but your time.