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[Armageddon]

Just launched on Steam what do you guys think about it? I feel like I've been waiting for years and now it's just out all of a sudden.

Still love the art and the AI is neat in that people just live and you can follow them around and stuff. The clunky camera and movement certainly damper the experience though along with the sometimes excruciating load times between individual tiny empty rooms. The game also feels very silent for long portions, not like a living city at all. But when there is music it's really very chill and cool.

Would recommend but not sure I'll ever finish it. Certainly doesn't feel like a $25 game. I do think the title will give it a hard time with search engines and writing about it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/400110

[rj]

all i know about it is i was a dick to the devs when they posted it a while back and though i feel bad about that i still think that the font choice is really not great if it hasn't changed from that

anyway people seem to dig it, i've heard Buzz and will check it out when it hits a sale probably

[Mr Speaker]

I didn't know about it until this thread... just snagged it - I'm hooked on the premise, and can't wait to check it out!

[brimby]

I do think the title will give it a hard time with search engines and writing about it.

I like that the name is a wink to programmers, and I just tried searching for "else heart break" and Google had no problem knowing what I was talking about.

[s0]

I do think the title will give it a hard time with search engines and writing about it.

and I just tried searching for "else heart break" and Google had no problem knowing what I was talking about.

same. it's the first result for me. it's a fairly unique name so on the contrary, it's very easy to google.

[ProgramGamer]

I think he was talking about the punctuation?

[s0]

i don't understand how that would make it hard to google tho lol

[jamesprimate]

thought this was a very interesting review: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/09/30/else-heart-break-impressions/

[Armageddon]

thought this was a very interesting review: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/09/30/else-heart-break-impressions/

That's pretty much exactly how I feel about the game.

[s0]

thought this was a very interesting review: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/09/30/else-heart-break-impressions/

sounds amazing. wasn't on my radar previously, now it is. i have almost never had problems with games ppl said had "camera issues" so idc about that. i grew up with a N64 so controlling awkward cameras is second nature to me.

EDIT: aaaaand i just bought it.

[shinygerbil]

There's definitely a lot to be taken from this game, the high points are great - when the modification stuff really kicks in and you start to realise the full potential of what you can do you will be very excited. I definitely wish it was bigger/there was more to discover, in the best possible way. If you want some **massive** spoilers, here is a sample of what's possible - someone has coded this whole thing *in-game*: http://pastebin.com/JDhSM9Lv

Let down by the fact that the story is not particularly involved or easy to progress - 90% of the time NPCs will have nothing to say to you because they are waiting for you to figure something out for yourself, but rather than having some incidental dialogue they will just ignore you. Also I found a teleporting device which enabled me to complete the game without figuring out half the puzzles, which is annoying but also kinda interesting that you can just, well, hack your way to a solution with whatever tools you have been given. Trouble is once you have certain tools the whole game is open to you, leaving little to the imagination.

It's pretty hard to implement some kind of rigid progression, for example "now you can hack basic stuff" -> "now you can hack some more stuff" -> "now you can reach this area" -> "now you can Slurp()" -> "now you can hack all the things" in a game like this, where pretty early on you can go "do this one simple hack to enable ALL the hacks". I suppose it is a good thing that there are very few hard-coded limits as it would ruin the feel of being able to hack into anything - you'd just feel like you were following the game's progression by the numbers, rather than carving your own path.

One way to do it could have been limiting certain APIs/having the Ministry "invent" later APIs at certain points, maybe, but that would be frustrating in its own right. It is just in the nature of the game that those who can grasp its underlying mechanisms may exhaust the possibilities very quickly.

I wish load times were better. The title screen loads very very quickly, which is expected from an SSD, but in game load times are atrocious. Performance in general is also not amazing, but I have an old PC and I know very well that "retro graphics" does not equal "easy to render" so that's a minor niggle really.

The game is Super Exciting! but now I've finished it I will probably not dip in much again, maybe go through it once more to see what's possible story-wise. In the same vein I'd be hard pressed to recommend it to many people unless I know they will ""get it"" I suppose, but for certain people I would say YOU MUST PLAY THIS OMGAD