The review Steam didn't let me publish

[Toastmaster]

So, steam didn't let me share this because the game wasn't out yet, so I'll put it here.

 

((OPEN BETA REVIEW))

Okay, I can't say I didn't get hyped over a short teaser and childhood nostalgia, but christ this was a disappointment. This is not a parkour game. This is a platformer. An exceptionally floaty and frustrating to control platformer at that. But that aside, they plan to charge money for this, and it's got the familiar ******** of a free to play game. Yep, say it with me.

Lootboxes.

God. Damn. Lootboxes. 
Thankfully there's no competative element beyond leaderboards, but it smells of TF2 and its cosmetic system. If this takes off, it'll only be for the glorified stock trade of boxes and items, not for the half-assed precision platforming. 

But back to the actual game. 

Like I said, this is not a parkour game. And I've been practicing and training in real-world parkour for the last six years at Revolution Parkour, a gym in Beaverton, Oregon. That's enough experience to say that this isn't fun, it isn't intuitive, and it's just frustrating and waaaay too floaty. I'm supposed to be a child, not a member of the moon landing. And from the perspective of a game compared to other games, it's not fun. You can't climb up things, you can't vault over things, the closest it gets to the line between parkour game and minecraft platforming map is the ability to swing from pipes and ropes, but good luck consistently achieving that if you don't line it up just right, and how CAN you line it up when it's SO DAMN F L O A T Y. Don't buy this, don't even play the beta, it's not worth it. Just buy Mirror's Edge or Dying Light, at least they're fun, and Mirror's Edge, a game from 2008, looks so much nicer. This just looks sorta generic, really. I mean, the lava rendering is very nice, and I LOVE the promo art and 80's/90's cartoon show stuff. I might follow this game for the art alone, but not the game.

 

Sorry for the negativity but goddamn, this just isn't a very enjoyable game. I mean, I like being able to crank the FOV up to 140, I had to hack in keybindings to do that in Mirror's Edge, but still, this was just disappointing. At least I didn't have to pay to find out, I guess. Works fine, surprisingly good performance. Y'all have a solid engine.

[Hekateras]

Yeah, that's kind of how I feel right now. I was cautiously excited for it despite platformers not really being my thing, but... ok so it's a jumping simulator. I had more fun in jumping in Mirror's Edge and any of the Assassin's Creed games. Which is disappointing seeing as I *did* pay for this game. Oh well.

[MeridianExplore]

I feel that, instead of judging the game on its own, you're trying to judge it for not being a parkour game. Which it isn't. And doesn't try to be.

And while you may not like the art direction and/or art style, the graphics are really fine. They're not dated; Just cartoonish.

There are lootboxes that can be obtained by completing levels and challenges; Yeah. Only through those. And said lootboxes contain items that are purely cosmetic. Now, let's abstract it for a second and imagine there are no lootboxes - just 'random loot drops after completing a challenge' - does that sound better? Because it's literally the same. You can't buy lootboxes for real money even if you want. So I don't understand how their existence is bad. Don't like cosmetics? Um, that's fine. Don't collect them. They're not even tradable. They couldn't affect you or the game any less.

Saying Hot Lava looks bad compared to 'a 2008 game' is as absurd as saying 'any pixel-graphics game that was released after 1990 looks horrible'. It's like saying ME is a dud compared to Bioshock. That's not how comparisons work.

Quote

Like I said, this is not a parkour game.

Exactly. I don't understand why there's any continuation beyond that point.

On 14/06/2018 at 2:01 AM, Toastmaster said:

And I've been practicing and training in real-world parkour for the last six years at Revolution Parkour, a gym in Beaverton, Oregon

Which is awesome, because it means you can critique parkour games, like Dying Light or Mirror's Edge.

On 14/06/2018 at 2:01 AM, Toastmaster said:

And from the perspective of a game compared to other games

What other games? Are there any other bunny-hop platformers out there?

But as you said...

On 14/06/2018 at 2:01 AM, Toastmaster said:

this is not a parkour game

So... please don't judge it as one.

/thread

[JoeW]

Thanks for your feedback. It could have been a little less... abrasive, but it's appreciated all the same. 

That being said, there is a reason that it's not in early access yet. We still have a lot of content, a lot of adjusting and a lot of tweaking to do before we feel it's ready to be early access. 

The way we handle this process (and the way we have handled it for the past 4 years across several games), is we try to make a game available as early as possible to players so we can gather feedback to help achieve the goals we are trying to achieve for a game. Early access is when we believe we are accurately representing what a game is and that it stands on it's own enough to give players a good sense of how the game will end up. We're not there yet, so we need feedback such as yours to help us get there.

We put our best effort at making sure this was very out in the open on the store page, but the game isn't done and shouldn't be played unless you're willing to play a game in it's very earliest public version. Ideally you should have purchased the game because you wanted to help us shape the game into something great. But if that's not your thing you should really consider a refund, because it's gonna be a while before it's in a proper review worthy shape. 

Maybe you haven't played any of our other games, and that's fine.. but we have done this a few times and while sometimes it hurts a bit when people don't see the game in the long term it really does help us adjust the game to help get us where we want to be. 

Oh and the boxes. They are just cosmetics that we deliver in a box, they can't be purchased for money and they never will be. We do this in DST too, people like it and we like to make fun stuff to add to the game. Sorry you don't like that part but we enjoy it and it gives us cool ways to reward players and allows them to express themselves. 

Hopefully you still have time to get a refund, maybe you can swing back and check it out on release. 

[Mr.Tarunio]

On 7/17/2018 at 4:27 PM, JoeW said:

But if that's not your thing you should really consider a refund, because it's gonna be a while before it's in a proper review worthy shape. 

Spoiler