You must keep in mind that the best way to play your game will always be with an arcade stick, and there's a limit to what feels good and natural with one of these and a genre like this. I could count at least 4 action buttons - punch, jump/slide, zipline, weapon change (I'm assuming the zipline action is not assigned to the jump button given that there's a double jump action). I hope you don't mind me expressing myself as directly as I can and as if the game still were in an early stage of production. The stage boss is also well thought-out and it shows there's potentially a good -at least- game here.īeyond my own views on the subgenre, mechanics-wise, my worries reside in the controls, though.

Variety in a game like this is imperative, but more on that later. If that's not the case -or even if it is, for that matter-, I'd really miss that the game didn't make a turn-over for some stages and changed the short-range action with Metal Slug-style -even Contra-style- mechanics - the sprite size and the game's setting and presentation are almost crying for that. You've understood well that a too-basic move set wouldn't work these days especially for a game with this flow and the zipline mechanics, together with the sliding and double-jump techiques, looks fun and deep enough, though it kind of needs something else which hopefully comes later in the form of power-ups or temporary weapons - attack abilities seem to be too few. What you're doing is not an easy task at all, in the context of 2-D action games itself. I get the feel that it's a bit too slow and deliberate and formulaic, and the screen, a bit too empty too often for my tastes, or for how the genre evolved. It resembles a lot that breed of action game, which obviously is what you're aiming for, and, in that regard, you really nailed it. Natsume was likely one of the best to understand and overcome this, but still, arcade games from the same years were usually much better options, if you ask me. Not to mention the hardware's limitations - the action would be confined to a small number of on-screen sprites, to a not-too-high in-game speed and to input lag figures which weren't always as low as one would hope for. Not sure that Natsume's FC/NES games and the likes are the best models for that, though - on the one hand, they had to deal with the ROM limitations, which prevented them from creating truly elaborated worlds and highly detailed visuals, and on the other, they had to think in their target public, a consumer who already by those years didn't want short, tight experiences anymore like those of the arcade games, so they had to artificially enlarge the stages' duration and mess with the game-over ruleset. If we leave shooting games apart, not even stuff like Kraut Buster or Cuphead seem to endorse a concept like this, so I'm glad you guys had the guts to openly expose your intentions and didn't change your principles after all this time no matter how unpopular they are. The ultimate goal is to clear it in one credit, and the total length on a perfect playthrough will probably be around 25-30 minutes however, getting to that perfect playthrough will take hours. What that means is tight length, tight design, and high difficulty.

Steel Assault is aiming to be an arcade-style game. Thanks for your time, and I hope this message finds you well.

That's the type of person whose feedback I could really use myself as I told zinger recently, it's hard to take the enthusiasm of some of the game's fans seriously when you see they're enthusiastic about literally anything with blocky pixels!

You seem to really appreciate the nuances of classic Japanese 2D games and of 'dot art', and are also eloquent enough to speak about them. I'd be incredibly interested in hearing any further thoughts you have on the game, whether positive or negative. still, I remember using your SFC Akumajou Dracula review as translation practice before a test back in 12th grade, haha!) (Unfortunately, my Spanish is very weak and I haven't practiced it since high school, so I haven't been able to properly read the majority of your reviews or articles. There are some very cool games I would have never known about if not for your reviews (Magical Taluluto-kun or the GBA Steel Empire, to give two examples), and the scanline filter I am using in my game is even adapted from one of ronan's posts in the English section of the forum. I've been a fan of your site for a while, ever since I was introduced to it through Insomnia about 5 years ago. Hey Recap! I'm the director and lead developer of Steel Assault.

Steel assault ps4