Seeking Feedback — Those Before Us

Help and Feedback Creations Feedback
, , ,
1

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for honest feedback on my demo: Those Before Us

The demo takes ~15-20 minutes to play, and you’ll get a feel for the game’s core elements.

Not mobile compatible

BirthdayThumbnail
BirthdayThumbnail1920×1080 170 KB

:thinking: Plot

Those Before Us is a first-person horror game set in Lucia, a country on the edge of war.

You awaken trapped in a coastal bunker. The only way out is to use your wits and unearth its past.

:hammer_and_wrench: Features and Mechanics

  • Story-rich, psychological horror
  • Custom-build, intuitive inventory system
  • Notes and hidden lore
  • Power and fuel system
  • Progression — enter new areas and find items that will aid your journey
  • Dynamic sanity system
  • Stamina system

:warning: Soon to Come

  • Further progression — new areas and items
  • Monster integration (custom pathfinding, patrol, and scripted scenes)
  • More “quests” (a quest I’m most excited to share is one in which you will have to load and fire artillery!)
  • Badges
  • Multiple endings

:information_source: What I’d like feedback on

  • Prominent or recurring bugs
  • Pacing and engagement
  • Sanity/Stamina balancing
  • Jumpscares (too tacky and predictable?)
  • Difficulty

Thanks for your time to read this post!

1 Like
2

image
image324×294 17.6 KB

2 Likes
3

:sweat_smile:

Thanks for pointing that out. Should be all sorted!

4

its still the same lol whyyyyyyy :sob:

5

Are you, by chance, trying to play on mobile?

The game isn’t mobile compatible for now, hence why you can’t access it on tablets and phones.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that in the post. Sorry!

2 Likes
6

oh mb ):< thought id try it and i (sorry 2 go off topic) hate the char limit on posts :sob:

7

Not sure if you’re still looking for feedback, but I saw that this game was updated pretty recently.

I’ll try to be as clear and specific as I can:

A few issues I found
1.) When I picked up the note at the beginning, it said to use the middle mouse-button to close it, but I’m on mac, and magic mouse doesn’t have a middle mouse-button (for whatever reason).

Maybe you could add another control, maybe on the keyboard, so that players don’t have to rely only on one button.

2.) When I move while crouching, it plays the walking animation.

3.) There’s no barrier to prevent you from going inside the sewage tank without interacting with the ladder.

Suggestions
–quality of life or just things that sound cool

1.) When an inventory tool is hovered over or TouchLongPressed, it displays a tool description.

2.) When you hover over an object that you can interact with, there is a tab that tells you the name of that object and what will happen if you touch it— pretty much like a tool description.

3.) Some stats bars (health, sanity, etc… you know what I mean), which you may already be working on.

4.) A cause of death on the death screen

5.) The ability to pace dialogue yourself. Basically: you can speed up the dialogue/finish it if you don’t want to wait for it to fill out; when a line is finished, you can continue at will; and you can also skip whole dialogue sequences if you haven’t played before.

That’s all I have for now!

2 Likes
8

My suggestions:

  • The intro dialogue on the top should be used as subtitles for a voiceover. Just generate AI lines for free online; it’s far superior to sitting through the “beep beep beep beep beep” for 5 minutes straight. It’ll also make the story sound better. I highly recommend doing voiceovers!
  • Add background music for the intro, or at least some noise in the background (like with the tank cut, have the engine running and leaves rustling or whatever; I like the noises you already do, like with the torpedos passing by, and I think adding environmental sounds like water muffling or wind while the jets fly would improve the cutscenes without a lot of work)
  • I use trackpad, so I can’t close pages. Lol!
  • Can’t really play the game once I open a page

This game looks interesting, and the introduction is good. I will play again further once the page issue is fixed. :slight_smile:

1 Like
9

@Aarreeyy_6 @ZurichBT

Thank you both for your detailed replies.

I’m still working on the demo - just working on the second gameplay extension - but life’s getting pretty busy!

Rest assured, I’ve taken your feedback onboard.

2 Likes
10

Substantial changes have been made to the demo based on the above feedback, such as bug fixes, improvements, sanity and stamina system intuitiveness.

See the updated OP for more information

11

Hi everyone!

I’ve been working on tweaking the game’s performance and would really love feedback.

If you experience any sudden lag spikes or frame drops, please let me know! It would also help if you provide a screenshot of the microprofiler.