Sui Generis: Exanima - Preview @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun

GothicGothicness said:

oooops, I didn't know this game would be about fighting drunks…. I was hoping it'd be a normal game with great physics….

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I said it here a week or so ago: Drunkards duking it out in some dungeon.
I haven't tried the game myself yet and it sure looks promising. Kinda on the fence with this one.

Spent about an hour in the arena of that game. Each fight takes about a minute or so…
So, yeah, I died ALOT. Only made it until the third opponent.
That said, it was quite fun. The movement may look a little bit drunk from time to time, especially when running around out of combat, stumbling over some wooden boards on the floor, but I guess, it's still the best in terms of physics simulation I have seen yet. The combats look really amazing.
However controlling that beast is a pain in the ass.

Imho they have to implement a completely different interface for that. Maybe making an interactive cursor. Where the cursor intelligently shows you which options make sense or what leads to what. I mean right now I can tell what is left and right, but thats basically it, and even to use that is hard.

I loved playing Die by the Sword back in the 90s, which had a similar combat mechanic where you freely swung your sword depending on mouse moves.
But the big advantage of that game was that you played from a third person perspective or shoulder perspective, and not isometric.
And with 3rd person, or even first person it would be much easier to tell, what you are actually aiming at. If you swing your mouse from left to right, that also is left to right. In an isometric view like in Exanima you kinda lose your feeling for that. It becomes much harder to make the strike you actually intend to make and of course that is the meat of the game. The combat system needs to be much more intuitive without loosing it's possibilities.

Played a half hour or so of this. The drunken analogy is fitting.

I didn't know about the different attacks so I'll have to try them out. Right now it really is pretty bare, rooms, halls, items and some roaming enemies.

I had more fun playing with the physics than playing the game but I'm intrigued to see where they can take it.

Maybe it looks like drunken fighting (which I mind a lot less than doing combat flips or rolling around to dodge attacks) because people still fight by spamming clicks? I wonder if it would still look the same if the attacks were more "reserved" or calculated

After playing the souls games I definitely don't spam clicks.

It's not just the looks. when swinging just a stick it feels like you character is swinging a 40 pound sledge. All the weapons even light ones swing as if they are heavy.

Walking into a crate or even over a plank can make you fall and do very strange looking contortions. It can be quite hilarious at times but probably wouldn't be if I were really trying to play the game through.

I don't really care right now though, I'm sure they will be doing plenty of tweaking. It is early access after all.

vurt said:

"boo-hoo-hoo! this indie game doesn't have the graphics i'm used to from multibillion-dollar productions on my Xbox… it's also much more complicated than CoD! Now i have to torture a kitten to get calm…"

go back to your caves..

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Grow up.

rjshae said:

Grow up.

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yeah because it's really mature to call gameplay and graphics shit, without any kind of constructive critisism..

The graphics are absolutely fine for an indie game, there are far worse examples, in games which had a much higher budget. Why even bother to come to the thread just to write hateful comments, if you're not even interested in the genre.. grow up.

It looks a bit better once you learn to move efficiently tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dSFtGGF8ms

And I don't care what y'all say, I think it looks great.

user404 said:

It looks a bit better once you learn to move efficiently tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dSFtGGF8ms

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Yeah, that does. I could tell when I missed around with the demo I was the problem. I may have looked a bit like a drunkard, but my opponent sure didn't. It was pretty clear to me I needed to learn how to do it right.

And it was good to hear someone mention Die by the Sword. There was a cool old game. That one took some practice, too, as I recall.

It does look a lot better in that video, if they can tweak it together I am absolutely not against such a game, in fact it would be very great if they could move physics in games forward. The initial coverage did not make it look so promising though given how high expectations where after their first presentation it looked like the game had gone nowhere, but as I understand they're still in early access and a lot of progress can be made before it is ready!

From the very first, this game smacked of arrogant and over-ambitious developers.

Maybe something will come of it, but I'll eat my hat, naked and dancing, if the final version is anything like they originally talked about.

There's just no way they'll get there.

I'll have a serious look at this not before we get a game instead of a tech demo (which imho has a great visuals and and an interesting combat approach).

DArtagnan said:

From the very first, this game smacked of arrogant and over-ambitious developers.

Maybe something will come of it, but I'll eat my hat, naked and dancing, if the final version is anything like they originally talked about.

There's just no way they'll get there.

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Do you mean Sui Generis perhaps? this is the prelude, and while it will implements many of it's big brother technologies, it is a standalone game with a different approach (roge-like dungeoneer, not open sandbox).

There is no ETA for SG so far, but i have been following it's development closely for a time now, and i can tell it looks really good! What part of their promises sounds impossible for you?

vurt said:

6,931 backers disagrees (which i would say is not bad for a game that was just shown in a short video)..

I'd say there are many people who are very interested in something that isnt just the same old diablo clone with the typical hero, who does his typical superhero moves.
I couldn't care less if it doesn't sell in Call of Duty quantities, and i'm not sure why you would care about that either.

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The issue is, Sui Generis got those backers not only on the strength of some beautiful screen shots and interesting combat animations, but also a litany of strong promises of open-world exploration, "deep" RPG gameplay, quests, dialogue, and so on. The team had demonstrated basically no experience or capability to deliver on this, but so it goes. Now, 2.5 years later, the team still hasn't delivered on even a subset of those promises; all they've released - in extremely early form on Early Access - is an attractive, deeply incomplete iteration on the features they already showed in the original Kickstarter proof-of-concept.

Because of this, I'd argue that the strength of the original backer list doesn't necessarily indicate support for Exanima as a project direction - and that backers have copious cause for concern re. Bare Mettle's ultimate ability to deliver a deep open-world RPG with sophisticated quest and narrative design. I really want the overall Sui Generis project to be successful, but all the reasons I chose not to back the KS campaign seem to be playing out as expected.

Well i think we all know that what a developer says and what a developer delivers are two entirely different things, it's really not very different from listening to commercials on the TV, it's lies (or rather things they wish to do) mixed with a bit of truth

Still, it's not true that people only want diablo clones or similar (someone complained the project is not aimed at the wider audience). There are many people who are interested in something different, especially when it comes to combat.. Like always i backed this project (since it seemed like it could do something different, maybe even ground breaking when it came to combat), but obviously without any expectations.

user404 said:

Do you mean Sui Generis perhaps? this is the prelude, and while it will implements many of it's big brother technologies, it is a standalone game with a different approach (roge-like dungeoneer, not open sandbox).

There is no ETA for SG so far, but i have been following it's development closely for a time now, and i can tell it looks really good! What part of their promises sounds impossible for you?

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Yes, I mean SG.

I don't really remember the details now. I've written it off my list of games to stay interested in, and as such I quickly forget about it.

After watching those combat videos, I think the combat needs to provide more visual "feedback" to player. I'm glad that they added those "bleeding effects", but for example visually the weapons are occasionally really difficult to separate from the backround. In particular if the environment itself is very dark, it can become somewhat straining for the eyes in the long run.

And when the weapon hits shield or armor, you don't see any visual effect. Or when weapons collide. Same thing. Not enough feedback.

I've spent countless hours on this game, playing around with physics, learning to fight well, beating the arena, challenging myself with using different weapons or fighting naked, doing speed runs and fighting with almost no health and honestly it's my dream game. People can say what they want about thinking it's bad or overly ambitious but this game is worth the money it's at right now and this is just the prequel. This game is gonna change the genera if they get it right which with the way they have been going, talking to their community, updating rather fast and getting good content out to us which means i think they will get it right.

Suggett said:

I've spent countless hours on this game, playing around with physics, learning to fight well, beating the arena, challenging myself with using different weapons or fighting naked, doing speed runs and fighting with almost no health and honestly it's my dream game. People can say what they want about thinking it's bad or overly ambitious but this game is worth the money it's at right now and this is just the prequel. This game is gonna change the genera if they get it right which with the way they have been going, talking to their community, updating rather fast and getting good content out to us which means i think they will get it right.

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Which Bare Mettle employee/family member are you

I backed it, but I'm kinda like Dart. I've lost any interest long ago.

Suggett said:

I've spent countless hours on this game, playing around with physics, learning to fight well, beating the arena, challenging myself with using different weapons or fighting naked, doing speed runs and fighting with almost no health and honestly it's my dream game. People can say what they want about thinking it's bad or overly ambitious but this game is worth the money it's at right now and this is just the prequel. This game is gonna change the genera if they get it right which with the way they have been going, talking to their community, updating rather fast and getting good content out to us which means i think they will get it right.

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They can talk the talk but can they walk the walk?
We don't think they can. The only walk we see is a drunken one.