My Initial Feedback

[ducttape12]

First, let me say thanks for letting me check out your game!  I still consider Mirror's Edge to be one of my favorite games of all time, so when I learned about Hot Lava I knew I had to give it a try!

With that, I've played the game for about an hour, and I thought I'd share some of my initial feedback:

The Good

• On a GTX 970 the performance is pretty much rock solid at 1080p Ultra!
• I really like the art style, the atmosphere, and the characters.  It feels like a good universe to be in!
• For the most part, check points feel spot on.  It's a hard balance to strike; a check point should be at a point where you've proven you can accomplish what's behind you.  I think they were all in really good spots.
• Levels did a good job guiding me through them, but still making me think.  The green highlighting and seeing checkpoints through walls was just enough to push me in the right direction without holding my hand too much.  I think the puzzle aspect of the game is spot on!
• First person platforming is really, really hard to get right.  Hot Lava feels right.  For the most part, it's easy to land and walk on things that you think you should be able to.  (However, some of the more advanced things, like moving around obstacles midair could use some refinement - but hey, it's a beta, I get that!)

The Bad

• The intro is really long, and doesn't really have anything to do with the game.
• I'd like to see the intro after the title screen, and after I've had an opportunity to set up my resolution, controls, etc.
• I like the idea of playing with friends, but I'm not sure I like the idea of seeing other people in my game.  As I'm trying to figure out the "puzzle" of how to get from here to there, and then I see some random person run in front of me and spoil the puzzle isn't fun.
• I really wish I could look around while climbing pipes.  If I'm racing against the clock, looking while moving is a good way to save time.
• I want to be able to climb more things.  Like, in real life I know I could get up on a table, but it's just a bit too high to jump to so, oh well, out of luck.
• There's something disturbing about a child being crushed by the metal squashers in the HVAC system or being chopped to bits in the huge fans in the HVAC system.  Or maybe I'm just over thinking it

The Ugly

• Loot boxes.  Really?  This game takes place in the 90's.  You know, when you unlocked things by playing the game, not by playing a slot machine
• You spend all this time setting up these characters in the overly long intro video, and then you go through your house and run into the big lava dude... and then it's just time trials in a school.  Where's the story?  You're playing as a kid with a vivid imagination; why can't he or she imagine some awesome story?  Like I said, Mirror's Edge is one of my favorite games, but not because of the time trials (which most people think is the best part of the game).  I love that game because it had an awesome world created around awesome free running gameplay.  You have all the building blocks for this, but instead of creating an amazing, memorable single player experience, I feel like you're just trying to turn it into the next Overwatch, where people keep playing the game for years (and buying loot boxes in the process).  (Modern gaming makes me sad )

Bugs

• The game started out at 1024x768.  Does anyone actually game at this resolution anymore?  I feel like in 2018, there should be a check that if the resolution defaults to 1024x768, then the game knows it did it wrong.
• When I resized the resolution to 1080p, it bounded the mouse to 4:3 rather than 16:9
• So I exited the game and reloaded it.  Then it was really hard to find the tutorial level again (I finally found it buried in the settings menu)
• The game froze for a few seconds when some random person in my game died.
• Not exactly a bug, but in the last leg of Middle School Mischief (where you're jumping on the ends of 2x4 sticking up from the lava), holy cow that's a bump in difficulty.  You may want to tone that down a bit.

Anyway, that's my thoughts from playing for the first 60 minutes.  Will I play more?  I'll probably play some more, but I'm already having motivation problems.  Like, how many more hours do I want to play time trials just to get more tickets for loot boxes?  I would rather see you drop the time trial approach and instead put some sort of story around it.  Leave the time trials for after the game, like the original Mirror's Edge.

[VYKTOR KRUM]

Only 2 things against this (just from my view):

1.) Lootboxes. I think they're pretty good, bcuz look, you don't need to pay some money for cosmetics, you can play to get them. And these cosmetics doesn't any disrupt gameplay. And if it is all about luck... That's nice, bcuz you must play more to get it and probably you'll be more happy from this item.

2.) Story/Intro - You have true, this intro is so long. But i think this game have good story. Not Excellent, but not bad. You can get to know more about all characters and yeah, developers can maybe say more about the story (they can maybe add some Story Line), but this is decent enough. However i think this isn't much story game, but more arcade. 

 

[ducttape12]

Well, in fairness, my opinions about lootboxes isn't limited to this game.  imo, it's a concerning trend in the industry that I think is driven by dollars rather than with creating a better player experience.  But, on the other hand, if people want to pay for stuff that should be included in the base game, I guess go right ahead and subsidize my experience so I can buy a game for like $2 on a steam sale.

And yeah, having it as more of an arcade experience is fine; just after the long intro and setting up all these characters, it was a bit of a let down to not have a story mode.  However, keep in mind I'm not knocking the gameplay - I think it's really good!  I'd just like to see more