Hello, I just wanted to post here to let you all know that I submitted this morning the final release version of WASTELAND! to the App Store for review. Thanks to all for the nice comments and positive feedback. I hope you like the game! Jonathan
All set for the release on Monday. I will be sharing some redeemable codes on that day on this thread. Here's a quick look of one of the missions in which you can drive a jeep: https://twitter.com/jbencof/status/1365552222017355777?s=20 Sorry for the video quality - that's Twitter's fault. Cheers
Hello @AltsKev I just checked and I think I missed your previous message. I am not sure what you mean exactly by roguelike elements in the game? The game is a first person shooter, and some missions are harder to pass than others. The game can be replayed for sure to explore missing areas of the map or just to play a mission again as they are quite different from each other. I hope this answers to your question - thanks for the interest on the game!
OMG!!! I saw the video! Driving vehicles! It’s gorgeous! Did you plan to add other vehicles such as a pickup?
Hi @Truncana thanks!! No, at the moment there’s just that one Jeep to be driven around some areas of the map .. perhaps on a future update new vehicles can be added? It’s a good idea!
The game is out now in some parts of the world so I guess it is a good time to share some promo codes. 4K6TWRM4JWWH 67MJNMXKP3L9 9JK9T7R7AKAR 99XLWMNT7ATM 3JTP9MRP6MTL Thanks for playing!
Just grabbed 4K6TWRM4JWWH, many thanks! First 5 minutes feedback: Great style. Graphics, motion blur, theme, all sweet. Hits the spot IMHO. I like the fact that it's in portrait orientation. I kinda got used to the control scheme, although I'm still wishing that I can walk backwards.
There’s a lot I like about this game: the setting and gameplay has a bit of the mindless fun of Earth Defense Force, combined with cell-shade style graphics that remind me of XIII (the original, not the crappy remake). The mission-based structure is right up my ally and, for a simple game, they’d paid a lot of attention to weapon variety — from what I’ve see in the tutorial, each has its own feel and effect. Now, what follows is going to get a little ranty, so if you’re fully onboard with the game, please feel free to ignore it. For a little perspective, this comes from someone who has been playing mobile touch-screen games for over a decade and who’s perfectly comfortable with fast-paced shooters like COD on the platform. In other words, I’m not neutral when it comes to game controls, so take my perspective with a grain of salt. What we have with this game is what I’ve come to call “pointless touch-screen innovation.” It usually comes from developers who are new to the platform and find traditional touch controls to be awkward or unwieldy. There’s a very tempting UX fallacy that drives this kind of innovation: it’s a bad thing for touch controls to imitate the functionality of physical controls. It’s a fallacy that leads clever developers to bravely take on the task of “solving” the touch control problem. Unfortunately, with very few exceptions, the solution ends up much worse than the common sense approach that they find so objectionable. Case in point #1. Wasteland adopts a simplified control scheme with unidirectional single-touch movement — basically, you press on the left side to move forward and slide on the right hand side to turn left of right. The trigger is a big button on the left hand side. Now, this must have seemed like a brilliant simplification of FPS controls to the designers. The problems becomes obvious the first time you encounter an enemy: with these controls you can’t move and shoot, you can’t back away from an enemy, and you can’t strafe. I don’t about you, but when I’m playing an FPS, I spend about 80% of the time doing those three things. Here you literally have to turn away from your enemy if you want to avoid taking damage, then turn around again and hope that your are now far away enough to shoot. It’s immensely frustrating and, well, pointless. A fully functional swipe movement mechanic (in other words, a virtual stick) works just fine — it just takes some time to master. And putting camera movement and shooting on the right makes it possible to aim and shoot at the same time (you could even add auto shooting when on target to make things easier). Case in point #2. Wasteland offers portrait orientation as one of its main innovation. And it makes sense: phones are designed to be held in portrait mode. The problem is that in a game that requires both hands to play, all that portrait mode does is crowd the control area, particularly for folks like me who have big thumbs. Worse still, Wasteland plays like old-school Wolfenstein and Doom, with the camera moving only horizontally. What’s the point, then, of giving the player all that vertical real estate in portrait mode, since you can’t shoot upwards. And, of course, portrait mode also limits your horizontal field of view, which makes it more difficult to spot enemies as you move. Landscape view would have taken care of both issues easily — though it does take a bit of time to get used to holding a phone that way. Here’s the thing: I wish developers would take all the time and effort they spend trying to innovate touch screen controls and put it instead on gameplay, storytelling, responsiveness, visuals, etc. I’m not saying that there’s no room to make the touch screen experience better. But a basic fallacy seems like a bad starting point. In any event, good luck with the game. There may be an audience for this kind of UI, but it’s definitely not me.
First five minutes of play: GORGEOUS! I like a lot portrait mode! Things I would like to see in next updates: more vehicles to drive (like a pickup) and some sort of character customisation like armors, helmets, gas masks, etc... Keep up the good work!
Hey @squarezero thanks for taking the time to playing and for the extensive feedback, I am glad you like all those things about the game... Regarding the controls: I’m aware this is not the traditional way of controlling the character on a mobile FPS, but that is precisely what I am trying to do differently here. I feel that the virtual joystick approach is overused. There are already so many games that do the controllers in that way that I personally don’t see the point of releasing a game with those exact same controllers.. the game and the whole story is designed around the controllers and the way they work is not an impediment to finish and enjoy the game. Anyway thanks a lot for taking the time of playing the game and for your feedback.
Hey Bencomo. I definitely get and appreciate that you are trying something different. As I wrote, that was a bit of a rant and should be take with a grain of salt. All I would add is that the non-control aspects of the game are, on their own, worth it. If you were at some point to add traditional controls and a landscape option to this game, it would still be a distinctive experience.
