Redshift Arena: Reloaded, a game I’ve been developing for the past two years, is finally in a state where I feel comfortable releasing it. Originally, I released it in late 2018, under the name simply titled “Redshift Arena” - that went well for a while, and the game flopped due to multiple overwhelming problems. I decided to go back to the drawing board and rework everything from the ground up from the core framework, to the backend scripts. The game is now much more optimized, and is ready to play on both PC and Mac. There’s a ton of maps and gamemodes included with this beta release, and I am super excited to share it with all of you!
Developers’ Social Media: TheRings0fSaturn - Lead developer, creator @Rings0fSaturn2k on Twitter Zombiefin - Lead scripter - @Zombiefin on Twitter McLyntree - Lead level designer - @McLyntree on Twitter
I remember playing the old game and enjoying it, so I have a good feeling about this one.
The trailer felt like it didn’t represent as much of the game as it could have. Making it longer and having more variety of features shown in the clips would be an improvement.
negatives:
The menu screen is nice, but for a while I was confused what the camera was pointed at (apparently menu camera is pointed at a random area on the map). I think if you had the camera moving around the map showing us different cutscenes of the map area it would look much better.
the menu screen UI has too much empty space on the left side.
(small thing) the buttons on the menu screen feel a bit boring when you hover/click them. Adding a button clicking noise and some hovering animations would improve the experience.
(big one) the gun fights feel like they go on for too long. My hits don’t feel satisfying because they dont do very much damage (it took me like 30 direct hits at a single guy and I didn’t kill him). I’d recommend making gun damage much higher.
the indicator for when you get shot feels too alarming for how damaged I actually was.
the “ow” noise when you get hit is distracting.
almost all of the menu options were unavailable. I know the game isn’t finished yet but the lack of options was still a bit disappointing.
some of the maps were too open and with not enough cover. adding more cover or adding vehicles to help cover the distance would help.
Positives:
the shooting itself (firing the gun) is very satisfying, and the particles are top notch.
killing someone also feels very satisfying.
the sound effects and music are very well done.
I really like the dynamic of picking up weapons and powerups on the fly, you are able to pull it off very well.
most of the maps were visually pleasing, but for some of them I was stuck with the melee sword and couldnt find any weapons.
the melee weapons are really hard to get hits with.
the game ran well on my desktop, with no lag.
Due to the nature of this game, I think running advertisements would go very well.
Since there were only ~2 players at any given time I didn’t get to see much action, but I will definitely give it another try when more players are on. Nice game!
I spent much more time looking for negatives, so don’t be too off-put by how many there were
Thank you for writing everything in list format! This will help a lot in making the game better.
As for being stuck with the melee sword, you were playing Infection - a gamemode where one person starts as a zombie and they have to infect everyone else - their only weapon is the energy sword!
