r/ArenaFPS • u/Enesy • 8d ago
I'm a competitive arena fps player, releasing my first Steam game, you can try the demo now
I am a competitive Quake and Diabotical player and i wanted to create something based on that type of aggressive fps gameplay. Its a single player roguelite.
You can try it out here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5172130/RENSE/
Would love some feedback.
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u/MagnusLudius 6d ago edited 6d ago
Played demo for a bit over an hour. Some preliminary feedback. Will add more when I've had more experience with the game.
QOL/controls/interface aspects:
- Any reason why you don't have higher FOV options? (at least up 130 is the norm for AFPS)
- Personal pet peeve: Would be appreciated if you added the option to bind MWHEELUP and MWHEELDOWN in the key bindings menu. It's not exactly uncommon in the AFPS community to use the mouse wheel for two separate inputs that aren't necessarily related to each other.
- I feel like there should be somewhere on the loadout screen that explains what item stats are. I have an attachment with "Lucky Strike" for example, and I have no idea what that means.
- Item containers glow the same color as the foliage and blend in. So you have a situation where making the game look good is contradictory to making the game feel good.
Gameplay:
1. Didn't feel there was enough incentive to use melee. Not enough reward for the risk of getting hit.
Some potential improvements:
- Add more types of enemies that are better suited to being attacked in melee. This is the biggest one, to be frank, melee is just inherently disadvantaged when all the enemies are flying orbs.
- Add inherent rewards for doing melee kills at a baseline such as health regen or making it recharge your dash.
- Give melee weapons inherent special abilities so doing melee kills is more like a way to charge up your ability rather than doing melee combat for its own sake. This also gives you space to design a wider variety of melee weapons.
2. Dash didn't feel useful enough.
In the typical Vampire Survivors style game, the dash lets you get far enough away to escape situations where you are being mobbed by enemies from all directions. The dash in this game doesn't really let you do that with how short it is and how quickly the enemies move. Additionally, precise dodging is also far more difficult in first person compared to a top down third person game, so I think any sort of dash ability here needs to be more generous compared to a 2D survivors-like even at a baseline.
Consider maybe replacing the dash with a "super jump" like in the Saxton Hale mod from Team Fortress 2. It serves the same purpose of escaping from a mob of enemies, and, in my experience, jumping "up and away" is just more synergistic with the nature of FPS combat compared to a horizontal dash.
3. Ground pound was completely useless.
I did not encounter a single situation where I felt the need to use this ability. And I would have preferred being able to just go directly into a slide from holding crouch in the air.
If you added the aforementioned super jump though, the ground pound would feel a lot better integrated into the gameplay loop.
4. Jump slide movement.
I get what you are going for with the jump + slide movement, but I think there's a big missed opportunity to have the sliding actually consider the terrain and give you more acceleration when sliding downhill, etc. TRIBES-style movement would feel awesome on the hilly terrain of the game's maps.
5. Progression pace issues.
I think the main problem here is that you need to decide on whether the game should lean more towards being a Survivors game or being an action roguelike, because right now it's at an awkward middle spot where the pace just feels sluggish no matter which the player is expecting.
For a traditional action roguelike (like Binding of Isaac or Nuclear Throne), the game should be beatable with even no meta progression as long as you are skilled enough, but the enemies here quickly get too bullet spongey for that.
For a Survivors game I feel like the rate of acquiring meta progression is too slow. The amount of meta progression I had after an hour was essentially neglible, and to be honest, I stopped playing because the game started feeling like I was just grinding for crystals. I just did the same thing every round: gathering loot from around the map until the enemies got too tanky and I got overwhelmed.
Although to be fair, the lack of enemy variety was probably the bigger culprit in the feeling of monotony, and I know that is not something that can be improved quickly or easily.
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u/Ok_Half_2662 7d ago
Hey I recognize your name I’ll check it out man I’m always looking for something new and fun to play
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u/calcasdasd 4d ago edited 4d ago
Enjoyed it, pretty neat Risk of Rain meets "KovaaKs" type game ! Played it for one session tho of 20min , was genuinely hooked to grind some more .
Didn't mind graphics , being dark map i guess works in favour of it , but will probably try to bring gamma to the max next time I play (maybe it's my monitor setting actually that needs to be adjusted as I think of it).
Would have loved to have more on mouse sensitivity settings front, to easily convert my quake live mouseaccel feeling (or anyone coming from other fps games to have easier time getting same mouse feel).
Was thinking if small pause on artifacts pickup would allow to read what it does more safely, as youre being swarn by enemies., but I was pleasantly surprised most of them don't cancel or block each other out (I suppose for some you have limited space in your inventory and once you pick them - you're set for the run to stick with them). But if main loading menu it had an easy wiki on some of those mechanics and explanation of artifacts as you discover them - would probably be handy (not sure if I've missed it).
In-game menu / ui looked pretty good, I liked how achievements give you currency to spend on skill tree (wonder if it's not an overkill in terms of those shards/pink currency - if you'll not be maxed out and have an abundance of them down the line after few sessions?). But UI also felt a bit tiny as in lots of unused/ empty space.
Not sure how steam badge / achievements work but I always love to get those (for perfect game library / cool badge to show off) if they are neat and challenging - but it's whole another part of releasing the game on steam and may be not very important in focusing on/ covering those).
Weapon animation - I felt it could be slightly improved in 1. Bobling / shaking 2. Not taking that much screen space on sides. But again, very nitpicky.
(Sorry for unstructured feedback, good luck on release day !)
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u/sydlex1c 3d ago
Sorry I don't have better / more structured feedback for you, but I did really enjoy RENSE. :)
Melee seemed useless and I didn't want to even get close enough to try it. (Guess I should next time something is in my face...)
Have only used the lightning gun so far, but have unlocked two more - I hope your game succeeds, and gets more weapons, maps, and enemies.
I'm not interested in crafting or making stuff, saw some UI elements for that. *shrug*
There seems to be a lot of 'stuff'... Too much IMHO: skill tree, weapon mods (these two reminded me of Arc Raiders and similar systems a bit), and crafting...
Your call on whether you want to put in all the effort to develop a rich skill tree, library of weapons mods and gems etc.
My humble advice: focus on the core: weapons, movement, enemies, maps - the core gameplay.
Make less work for yourself, just focus on the core - I think you'd need a team to also deliver skill tree, weapon mods and crafting at a high level as well. Just getting the core polished is a huge lift.
Had a lot of fun playing, thank you. :)
Lifelong Quake player (now Quake Champions with dips into Quake Live, don't play Kovaak's or aim trainers but I'd play/buy RENSE and have wish listed it.
Wish Diabotical hadn't died, I loved it's aesthetics and Quake/Quake Live gameplay.
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u/sydlex1c 3d ago
So perhaos I do have a thought / what may be valuable feedback for you:
I like the mechanic of levelling up weapons, health, movement abilities etc. while playing.
Those chests that you open/unlock (some free, others paid for, others dropped by enemies), when the contents come out, there is so much stuff going on typically in terms of fighting enemies that it is hard to spare a moment to see what dropped, it's hard enough to just pick up.
But I want to know what I'm getting so I'll typically end up pausing for a few fractions of a second and taking damage to read the popup card for the item.
I don't know how to solve this, but for me it felt grating: I don't want to stop and take damage, but I also want time to read about what things do before I pick them up.
Perhaps the game would benefit from a 'pause' feature where if you hit 'pause', all enemies and projectiles freeze, the player can't move or shoot, but they can look around, and pick up / interact with anything in reach (but not discharge power up crystals or something like that which is an intentional challenge). So all gameplay stops except for looking around, reading, and grabbing anything that is in grabbing distance, and changing weapons. So you can't take any gameplay altering actions outside of picking up items and changing weapons or equipping / unequipping anything else the player may have the ability to do.
I think this would also allow one to safely take a break from the frenetic pace and admire the map and enemies and bullet storm safely. :)
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u/peoplesmart 8d ago
bummed it's single player. reminds me of devil daggers.