• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

NeonXSZ - Descent + Diablo in a procedural open world

M

Messofanego

Banned
This game NeonXSZ ("Excesses") just came on my radar, and it looks cool. It still hasn't been greenlit on Steam, but has a free demo and is out for $10. Anyone played it?

http://www.neonxsz.com/

NeonXSZ is a homage to the 6DoF genre of FPS games like Descent combined with the frenetic adrenaline pumping feel and gameplay mechanics of old-school twitch shooters such as id software's Quake. Then add Diablo-like loot explosions, rpg elements, leveling up, procedurally generated environments and enemies. Finish it all off with truly open-world gameplay inside a micro ecosystem of up to one thousand unique little AI dudes buzzing around getting into fights and doing their own thing.​

2FItwJB.gif


I just wanted to ask why Volition hasn't just straight up made another one?

There have been others like Shattered Horizon and Miner Wars according to wiki, how have those been? What do people really like about these kind of games?
 
n3S9ifT.jpg

Site | Greenlight | Desura
Release Trailer | Weapons Trailer
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $9.99 (50% off)
Demo here
In NeonXSZ, you are injected into cyberspace to stake your place in a war of virus verses machine. During your journey you will fly dozens of spaceships with hundreds of upgrades allowing you to create totally unique spacecraft with which to wage war. Will you protect the operating system or join the infection to bring it down?
Click to expand...

Nov29th2013_002.jpg

NeonXSZ is a homage to the 6DoF genre of FPS games like Descent combined with the frenetic adrenaline pumping feel and gameplay mechanics of old-school twitch shooters such as id software's Quake. Then add Diablo-like loot explosions, rpg elements, leveling up, procedurally generated environments and enemies. Finish it all off with truly open-world gameplay inside a micro ecosystem of up to one thousand unique little AI dudes buzzing around getting into fights and doing their own thing.
Click to expand...

xkwoUKj.jpg



  • Genuine Open World - The game is totally open world and procedurally generated so that the player is never confronted with the same situation twice from one play session to the next. The game world is populated with up to one thousand uniquely generated enemies from four different factions - two friendly and two hostile at the start - that are free to roam the world and get into mischief both with the player and each other. The average game has around one thousand ships flying around fighting at their border areas and even penetrating deep into enemy space. What they do, where they assemble, and what happens, is different every time you start the game. This provides a highly dynamic gaming environment full of unexpected emergent gameplay moments.
  • Extensive procedurally generated content - Environments, faction locations, enemies types, artificial intelligence, upgrades - wherever possible it's procedurally generated so that no two games are the same. It's all done within strict controls to ensure fun but balanced gameplay.
  • Dozens of player/enemy usable ship types - Fighters, Missile fighters, Corvettes, Frigates, Scouts, and Destroyers are all available to loot and fly with the ability to upgrade them to suit your own unique play style. Want a super fast fighter. It's yours (right from the start). Want a hyper shielded destroyer with four overclocked lighting gun turrets? Done! (You will have to loot or buy it first though).
  • 80 levels of upgrades - Over 650 ship upgrades are already in the game. Many, many more are expected before final release. Mix and match upgrades to create whatever style of ship you want. Overclock upgrades, and duplicate upgrades to create unique designs with the power just where you want it.
  • Gadgets - Gadgets offer unique abilities like Blink (teleport), GyroShields, automated drones and deployable turrets that fight for you, immunity, Electrocute (collision damage), and Barrier (build walls wherever you want).
  • Interactive cockpit - Choose your weapons, activate your gadgets, and select your target from the interactive cockpit, or use hotkeys to control everything for uninterrupted game play.

VDBnxbS.jpg



  • Endless enemy types - Procedurally generated enemies have access to the exact same ships, weapons, missiles, upgrades and technology as the player meaning no two enemies are ever the same.
  • Loot explosions - Enemies explode with whatever upgrades they have installed. Collect their loot and install it in your own ships. Enemy ships work exactly like the players ship so if you can see it you can fly it, loot it and use it.
  • Docking Ports - Buy and sell the never ending loot you find at a range of upgrade shops, armories and hull dealerships. Teleport around the station using Quantum Teleporters.
  • Warring Factions - Build reputation with any of the four warring factions or go rogue and kill everything in sight.
  • User controlled difficulty settings - Change everything from enemy intelligence and the damage they do, to the cyberspacestation's enemy level range to make the perfect game to suit your skill level, and then beef up the difficulty to insane levels as you improve.You can even slow the game down to any level between 50% speed and 100% speed.
  • Replayability - Take your whole garage of ships and upgrades with you between different games to loot tech from ever stronger enemies, and unlock higher level arenas as you level up.
  • Physx - The game takes advantage of Unity's robust and super fast Physx sub system to create ships with a real sense of weight. You feel the impact of damage and kickback when you shoot. Ships move with genuine thrust from their engines.

ihkdBDy.jpg
 
I played about an hour and this game is great. Smooth controls, a lot of options and customization, cool Tron-esque visuals, but what I enjoy the most is the cockpit. Every screen has a function and it's fully interactive. You can rotate the digital map in the corner screen and change the secondary camera screen from front to rear view. Locking on to a target display their information on another screen. You can choose and change your weapons by selecting the icons on the center console. It's just cool and immersive

I feel like I haven't scratched the surface, there's a lot of content and depth here.
 
That description of Descent + Diablo peaked my interest like crazy, despite being fairly lousy at Descent. Then again, it's been ages since I've played it.
 
Can't get used to the inertia it (the demo) has. I don't recall Descent 1-3 continuously accelerating you into walls because those were Zero-G. Still, seems interesting. I'll have to give the demo a bit more time and adjust to it's quirks.
 
TheSeks said:
Can't get used to the inertia it (the demo) has. I don't recall Descent 1-3 continuously accelerating you into walls because those were Zero-G. Still, seems interesting. I'll have to give the demo a bit more time and adjust to it's quirks.
Click to expand...

Not only that, but hitting the walls damages you quite a bit more than it ever did in Descent. Trichording was a basic tactic for getting around faster, and it feels like you can't really do that effectively here unless you stay away from the walls all the time.

The few minutes I spent with the demo were really weird. I didn't know what my objective was besides "go to marker and kill things along the way." I spent half the time shooting things that turned out to be friendly (I guess I was supposed to know this because they were green?). And everything feels much less direct that in Descent--controls are floaty, you keep your inertia longer, the cloud of powerups is hard to catch versus the single powerups you'd get in Descent, and even keeping track of what weapons you have selected is difficult because of the crazy-ass cockpit view. And then there are the enemies, which take forever to kill and seem to respawn endlessly until you die.

I guess what I want is just another Descent, and it's unfair to expect this game to be that. But man, I just want another Descent. Will give this a try with a proper joystick later to see if that helps.
 
chrominance said:
The few minutes I spent with the demo were really weird. I didn't know what my objective was besides "go to marker and kill things along the way."
Click to expand...
Yeah that was my experience as well, although I got to the marker and nothing happened. I'll probably give it more of a go later.

Interested to see how this shapes up anyway, seems to only be in Alpha at the moment.
 
It has zero friction naturally but you can set it to auto-brake in the options so your ship uses its thrusters to simulate friction, like the IDS in Evochron. But keep in mind that you have fuel consumption and that obviously goes up if you autobrake all the time. IIRC pressing Ctrl brakes you manually.

I like it but it feels like the whole leveling conceit is kinda superfluous, like in Borderlands (because it only increases numbers and you then look for enemies with equally increased numbers so the balance of power remains the same) and there's currently no goal to the game AFAIK, just an endless leveling loop. So it does feel kinda pointless at times. The dev said that there are more and more combat options as you increase in level though, maybe I need to keep playing longer.

The core combat is very fun.
 
I'm Paul, the lead developer for NeonXSZ. I signed up to let you guys know that I'll be actively watching this thread. Thanks for the heads-up about the thread More_Badass.

We are trying to make the best 6DOF dogfighter we possibly can so your initial impressions on the demo (or full game) are really important to us.

I've already made a note on my job list to highlight the 'air brakes' hotkey to the player at the start of the game. Not knowing this key exists clearly causes players to struggle to control their ship in Zero-G. Simple things like that can make a massive difference to a players first impressions so thanks for that feedback TheSeks & chrominance.

To address other concerns:

Collision Damage
I'm surprised that you thought impact damage was high, chrominance . It's based on the speed of the collision and even at maximum it's only a few percent of your maximum shields. You should be able to fly around like a madman without ever really worrying about bumping into things.

Collecting Loot
The 'air brake' hotkey has already been mentioned and using this makes collecting loot balls really simple. Just brake to a stop and they all suck into you (like in the gif above). The uranium was deliberately left as a manual pickup as it adds an extra layer of skill to the combat. Loot degrades over time so grabbing the uranium loot quickly provides a bonus.

Lack of Direction
This was a deliberate design decision. The game is open-world and we wanted the player to feel free to do anything they wanted to do. It does cause an initial sense of confusion especially in todays climate of games that go out of their way to have objectives everywhere. We didn't want to spoil that 'sense of discovery' that is lacking in so many modern games.

The mysterious HUD marker
This is called the TLHUD marker. It points the player towards an area with enemies of a specific tech level. The player is able to control this marker. You can find full details about it in the Help menu. Look for the TLHUD marker topic in there.

Quote: "the whole leveling conceit is kinda superfluous"
Yes it's a glorified replacement for an experience bar, but it does offer other benefits. All upgrades have mass and different energy requirements. Mass slows any ship down. Higher level upgrades have more mass. So if you install a high level engine, and low level upgrades everywhere else, you will create a very fast ship for example. It does offer many advantages over a basic experience bar system.

There are many ways to tweak the effectiveness of a ship by your choices for the basic upgrades. This becomes more pronounced at higher difficulty levels. If the game is easy for you, your upgrade choices obviously have less meaning so bump up the difficulty.

Miscellaneous upgrades are totally seperate to this system though and allow you to dramatically alter and customize your ships. You will unlock many gadgets like:
  • GyroShield: A Physics based shield that swings around your ship.
  • Drones: automated tiny ships that you can launch to fight on your side
  • Electrocute: Think melee damage when ramming other ships.
  • Impunity: Temporary invulnerability.
  • Blink: The ability to teleport in any direction based on the speed of your ship.
  • Barrier: The ability to build energy walls anywhere to block weapons and even ships.
etc.

You also get to unlock many new weapons and 30+ different ships that you can fly from super fast fighters to tank like destroyers that all require different playstyles and upgrade loadouts.

Coming Soon
The next update is going to add 'Challenge Arenas'. These are all in unique new environments with scripted events that will seriously challenge the player in exchange for high level loot. Beating them will also allow you to take-over the area for a friendly faction. This will add a much better sense of progression to the game.

Feedback
Please let me know any ideas on how we might improve anything in the game and any issues you have with it.

NeonXSZ has a rabbit hole of depth to get lost in, so improving the opening guidance for the player (without telling them what to do) is something we are constantly improving. We also planned to appeal to Descent fans, without recreating the exact same experience, so any feedback on that front is always important to us.

Thanks for your support guys.
 
I like the sound of this, though the visuals seem pretty overwhelming from the screenshots and .gifs. :D

Bookmarked this thread to download the demo later.


edit: and welcome Paul, always cool to have the devs in the GAF thread themselves.
 
Looks fun and quite unique.

There was a game on PSX, it was called Forsaken. I never played the full version, but I loved the demo - this seems to strike a similar note, I'll check out the demo.
 
Haunted said:
I like the sound of this, though the visuals seem pretty overwhelming from the screenshots and .gifs. :D
Click to expand...

Thanks for the welcome Haunted.

Your point about the visuals came up early in alpha testing so we developed a unique system to put the look of the game in the hands of the player.

You can customize just about everything to do with the visuals. You can toggle all the SFX effects on and off, manually customize the color of your ship and cockpit, and even choose from a range of very different color schemes that alter the look of the entire game world.

Some players like the old-school, wireframe, Tron like look but others prefer more light and shadow available in some of the other color schemes. Currently there are six environment color schemes with different designs for each of the four factions.

@Evolved1: Try the demo. The game scales to work on just about any hardware. We've even had it running on some truly awful laptops with integrated intel graphics chips like the HD3000 and it still maintains 30fps. Don't assume your machine can't handle it: that's my point.
There is even a gameconfig.ini file where you could alter the number of ships that spawn in the world if you really need to try and squeeze out more performance and don't mind editing a text file.
 
Evolved1 said:
Looks pretty rad, but my PC sucks... :(
Click to expand...
So does mine but the game runs well for me

My specs are:
Windows 7 64-Bit
Intel Pentium B970, 2.4GHZ
Intel HD Graphics 2000

So if your specs are equal or better, you should run the game just fine. Luckily there's a demo so you could see how it performs
 
Nah, visuals aren't overwhelming once you're actually playing the game. It's pretty clear what's going on.

Paul F said:
Lack of Direction
This was a deliberate design decision. The game is open-world and we wanted the player to feel free to do anything they wanted to do. It does cause an initial sense of confusion especially in todays climate of games that go out of their way to have objectives everywhere. We didn't want to spoil that 'sense of discovery' that is lacking in so many modern games.
Click to expand...

Is this a Terraria style "there's stuff out there that you should do but we won't tell you so you can discover it yourself" lack of direction or simply a lack of objectives? So far I haven't discovered anything I could do beyond simply finding enemies of the right level and shooting them down. While the various rooms do look like they perform various roles that doesn't seem interactive ATM so you couldn't e.g. find a factory and blow it up to weaken a faction's units or even shift the territory boundaries. A design with an open world and "do anything" mentality requires that the player has the option to actually do a wide variety of things. If you look at Minecraft the whole world is interactive, you can take any block and use it for crafting or building and different kinds of blocks have to be looked for in different kinds of areas.
 
@KDR_11k - Initially we were hoping that the open-world, procedurally generated content, would create enough variety to keep the player constantly on their toes and interested.
Some players love that aspect of the game, but we are aware that others want something more tangible to achieve.

So this is why we are now spending the next few months adding Challenge Arenas. These give a much better sense of progression to the game. You will keep finding new arenas that are just a little too hard to beat, so you will go off into the emergent gameworld, level up a bit, and come back 30 minutes later to have another go. As you beat them you will have the option to swap them to a friendly faction. Take over the entire world and you will unlock the next station level with completely new challenge arenas.

The ability to unlock new station levels already exists in the game. The first challenge arenas are expected to appear in the next update. Four of them are already complete. This update is expected in 3-4 weeks.

Think of challenge arenas a bit like mini-dungeons in a normal RPG like WoW
 
Procedural generation is deceptive, billions of possibilities sound nice but most of these are extremely similar. E.g. having a different set of rooms along that multi-circle structure as well as different territory layouts does not really change anything because it does not do much to the gameplay. Only the room you are in matters for the gameplay and that seems to be chosen only from a fairly small palette and all it does is provide a different layout of walls. You won't fly through a tunnel and suddenly find gravity affecting your ship or time flowing differently or whatnot, after a while it feels like the most you can find in that unexplored land is a slightly different looking room filled with familiar entities. I'd say usually the amount of variety produced by a generator is roughly proportional to the number of generation rules it possesses.
 
I just wish the art direction wasn't so busy. Holy lack of contrast batman, if it werent for the health bars I wouldn't be able to follow/find any other ships.
 
Hey Paul, good to see you on GAF!

Paul F said:
I've already made a note on my job list to highlight the 'air brakes' hotkey to the player at the start of the game. Not knowing this key exists clearly causes players to struggle to control their ship in Zero-G. Simple things like that can make a massive difference to a players first impressions so thanks for that feedback TheSeks & chrominance.
Click to expand...

It's not so much that it makes the craft more difficult to control--I'm sure I could get used to it before too long--it's more that it makes the controls feel more floaty and indirect. But again, that might just be my old-school Descent bias showing.

Paul F said:
Collision Damage
I'm surprised that you thought impact damage was high, chrominance . It's based on the speed of the collision and even at maximum it's only a few percent of your maximum shields. You should be able to fly around like a madman without ever really worrying about bumping into things.
Click to expand...

I'd have to go back and double-check (I only played the demo for fifteen minutes or so!) but I think dragging your ship along walls causes constant collision damage. You're right in that it's only a small fraction of your shielding, and I think your shields recharge slowly over time, but that plus the red glow when you hit things kind of indicates to me that you shouldn't be dragging your ship along walls at all (which means no trichording). Maybe I'm wrong on that, though.

Paul F said:
Lack of Direction
This was a deliberate design decision. The game is open-world and we wanted the player to feel free to do anything they wanted to do. It does cause an initial sense of confusion especially in todays climate of games that go out of their way to have objectives everywhere. We didn't want to spoil that 'sense of discovery' that is lacking in so many modern games.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's just because it's a demo, but this is also weird to me. I'm all for open world and "do what you want" but right now it feels like a sandbox. Like, I don't even know why I'm in a ship or why I'm fighting robots (are they even robots?). Am I working towards a high score? Am I looking for a level boss? Is there a story I need to know about? Is it pure sandbox? It's not clear to me if I should be setting my own goals or if the game provides some goals for me that I can ignore.

Paul F said:
NeonXSZ has a rabbit hole of depth to get lost in, so improving the opening guidance for the player (without telling them what to do) is something we are constantly improving. We also planned to appeal to Descent fans, without recreating the exact same experience, so any feedback on that front is always important to us.

Thanks for your support guys.
Click to expand...

I think the biggest challenge to me (a Descent fan) is that Descent was, at its heart, a very simple game once you figured out the flight model. Ten weapons in total (twenty in D2/D3), shields and energy, and in D3 you could pick from one of three ships with obvious trade-offs (this one is fast and maneuverable but has low shields, this one is huge but has lots of shields). It was very action-oriented. NeonXSZ is grafting on a lot of extra systems onto the arcade base, which isn't necessarily bad but it's a lot to take in. Games like Diablo manage to ease you into the loot-a-thon system--Diablo III is especially good with this by highlighting the DPS number so it's easy to compare weapons for a beginner.

NeonXSZ kinda throws you in a cockpit with a bunch of numbers and it's like what is even going on omg. And then the first time you die, you get to look through the loot you've collected, except a ton of the bubbles you collected don't show up (I think they're to upgrade core ship systems, based on the message I saw during the pickup, but I'm not sure what half the systems even do yet) and the one or two that do talk about mechanics I'm only dimly aware of at the beginning.

Oh, one other random thing I'd maybe suggest: I don't know if this is just a matter of weapon power at the beginning, but enemies take a long time to kill and it feels like you have to be rather precise with your shots. It doesn't help that the targeting system requires you to basically pause the game, which again makes it less arcade-y and direct an experience, so I didn't really bother with it after a while. Dunno if that's the direction you want to take the game, though, and maybe there's a quick-target button I missed.

EDIT:

CrunchyFrog said:
I just wish the art direction wasn't so busy. Holy lack of contrast batman, if it werent for the health bars I wouldn't be able to follow/find any other ships.
Click to expand...

I'd +1 this too, actually! Very hard to distinguish maroon/red ships from the maroon/red walls.
 
@KDR_11k: Agree with you. All the challenge arenas are custom built, all totally unique, and have enviromental traps. Some of the rooms even change shape dramatically during the course of the battle. I think they will be the style of gameplay that you would prefer. Ideas like altered gravity, wind tunnels, etc are more than possible.

The biggest procedurally generated part of the game is not the environments but the enemies. They each have procedurally generated unique AI, and the factions and the Tech Level of the factions is different every time you load the game. Each opponent uses upgrades just like the player, and their choice of upgrades is different every time too. You will run into very powerful ships and can work out from their loot why they were so powerful because they drop parts of what they were using.

@CrunchyFrog: That is why fighters have HUD's :) Combat happens at large distances so enemies become small. We wanted to capture that element of modern day fighters, and their reliance on using a HUD for targeting.

@chrominance: Unfortunately I have to disappear now. I don't have time to make a proper reply. I will say there is no damage for scraping walls, only significant impacts. You do make your own objectives. Target hostile hotkey = T (very intelligent), no need to pause. Look in Options/Customize and change the colour of the gameworld and enemy ships to suit your taste. I'll do a proper reply when I get back home or tomorrow.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I will respond properly to all comments in time.
 
Paul F said:
@chrominance: Unfortunately I have to disappear now. I don't have time to make a proper reply. I will say there is no damage for scraping walls, only significant impacts. You do make your own objectives. Target hostile hotkey = T (very intelligent), no need to pause. Look in Options/Customize and change the colour of the gameworld and enemy ships to suit your taste. I'll do a proper reply when I get back home or tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Cool! I'll try to jump back into the demo later to do a more thorough playthrough. Thanks for the tips.
 
Paul F said:
Thanks for the welcome Haunted.

Your point about the visuals came up early in alpha testing so we developed a unique system to put the look of the game in the hands of the player.

You can customize just about everything to do with the visuals. You can toggle all the SFX effects on and off, manually customize the color of your ship and cockpit, and even choose from a range of very different color schemes that alter the look of the entire game world.

Some players like the old-school, wireframe, Tron like look but others prefer more light and shadow available in some of the other color schemes. Currently there are six environment color schemes with different designs for each of the four factions.
Click to expand...
That's very thoughtful!
 
Played the demo since I loved decent back in the day. Didn't really hold my interest. Maybe there's depth, but I didn't find it. Just kept flying past stuff and doing fly bys.
 
Fuck my eyes.

e: besides the contrast (or lack thereof), I'd like to see some better objectives and maybe some more vertical environments. Always up for a Descent-style game though!
 
Dual analogues is perfect for Descent type games, I can't wrap my head around why there haven't been at least a few clones it in recent gens.
 
Danneee said:
Dual analogues is perfect for Descent type games, I can't wrap my head around why there haven't been at least a few clones it in recent gens.
Click to expand...
Gyro aiming would be even better. Number of Descent type games on the WiiU/3DS ... yeah

I'll take what I can get though!
 
chrominance said:
Am I working towards a high score? Am I looking for a level boss? Is there a story I need to know about?
Click to expand...

You are working towards unlocking new ways to enjoy the core spaceship combat . The game was set up to capture the feel of playing a multiplayer game while still being single player so the combat is at the heart of the game.

We deliberately avoided a story, so that the player can imagine for themselves what is happening. We didn't want to break that illusion with a different story. We hope your adventure in NeonXSZ will be your own unique story.


chrominance said:
NeonXSZ kinda throws you in a cockpit with a bunch of numbers and it's like what is even going on omg
Click to expand...
This was intentional. Originally the player was given no guidance at all. They were meant to feel overwhelmed but in a good way so that they were excited to discover everything. This proved to be too extreme. Now the player gets some simple messages at the start of the game pointing them towards the ship's Operating Manual. This can be found in the help menu which is rather extensive.

We are still tweaking things to try and get the balance of this just right so that players feel just like you did initially, but hopefully very quickly finds all the information is at their finger tips if they just explore their ships systems. Tooltips are everywhere now. Hover the mouse over anything and it will tell you what it is.

We are desperately trying to avoid a boring tutorial. Time will tell if we can pull that off for such an unfamiliar style of game.

chrominance said:
I don't know if this is just a matter of weapon power at the beginning, but enemies take a long time to kill
Click to expand...
Only if you choose to fight higher level enemies. Enemies near your own level will die in a couple of seconds. Enemy level is displayed at the bottom of the targeting HUD and on the cockpit. Your level is shown at the bottom center of the cockpit.

CrunchyFrog said:
Holy lack of contrast batman, if it werent for the health bars I wouldn't be able to follow/find any other ships.
Click to expand...
Ships can travel in excess of 350km/h and frequently fight at distances of up to 300 metres away from each other. We've tried making ships super high contrast (there is even an option to make enemy ship skins full-bright) but it makes little difference . It's often hard to see them because of the distances involved but this was the style of combat we wanted and the HUD solves the visibility problem.

So yes, without the HUD you sometimes can't see what is going on, but with the HUD you know exactly what is going on. This allows for some epic battles without the player ever feeling out of control.

The mouse wheel also offers a zoom in function and there is a video feed on the cockpit that the player has the option to set to a forward zoom, or even a close up of their target.

KDR_11k said:
Also if you just start shooting someone your targeting will often switch to them.
Click to expand...
True: If you have no current target, whatever you shoot next will become your target.
Incidentally the auto target hotkey will ignore friendlies, and all data transporters. Data Transporters have no weapons,. You can however point your target reticle at ANY ship and press the auto target key to target it. Or you can click on it with the mouse, or even click on it's radar marker to select it.

JesseZao said:
Played the demo since I loved decent back in the day. Didn't really hold my interest. Maybe there's depth, but I didn't find it. Just kept flying past stuff and doing fly bys.
Click to expand...

ChosenPredator said:
didn't know what to do so i lost interest pretty rapidly
Click to expand...

NeonXSZ is not going to be for everyone, we know that. You are plopped into the world and left to do literally whatever you want. If you prefer a game that gives you a stream of fixed objectives you will probably struggle to discover what NeonXSZ is really all about. We believe the ability to do what you want to do, rather than what the game is telling you to do, offers a more personal and rewarding gaming experience.
There's a great fun game in there, but that's not much use if you lose interest before you find it. We'll work on tweaking the opening of the game to improve this.

Elfforkusu said:
I'd like to see some better objectives and maybe some more vertical environments. Always up for a Descent-style game though!
Click to expand...
Vertical environments that make you lose all sense of what is up and down are coming with the 'Challenge Arenas' in the next game update. We've already made one that will twist the player's head in to knots. Beating these arenas will also serve as another objective for the player.

Final Note: Rest assured that your feedback is heard and registered. Even though the game might already have a solution to an issue you have brought up, the very fact that you had an issue in the first place registers as a problem for us that will need some tweaks.

Thanks for helping us out and we'll make sure to incorporate your feedback in to the next build.
 
Between NaissanceE, snowstorms, and schoolwork, haven't been able to put as much time into this game as I'd like, but from what I have played, I'm really enjoying the depth of weapnry and customization. There are so many options and gear to add on to your ship, although I feel the hangar interface needs to be cleaner, less cluttered. Also getting used to the movement, which, like some said, I felt was kind of loose at first, but now I feel like I have better control and am able to maneuver better.

On one hand, I love exploration in games and just setting out without an objective. On the other, I feel like this game could use some more direction, at least in the beginning. The upcoming Arenas sound like they'll add some more structure, which should be great

Oh, and
ss_01807b284fe89f21d50cf4f3bbd148a72e7b154a.600x338.jpg
637x358.resizedimage
Click to expand...
 
More_Badass said:
.... but from what I have played, I'm really enjoying the depth of weapnry and customization. There are so many options and gear to add on to your ship, although I feel the hangar interface needs to be cleaner, less cluttered.
Click to expand...

Tip. There is a checkbox on the upgrade panel with a '?' next to it. This hides undiscovered upgrades and will unclutter it. There is also a Filter button right next to it while looking at miscellaneous upgrades.

More_Badass said:
Also getting used to the movement, which, like some said, I felt was kind of loose at first, but now I feel like I have better control and am able to maneuver better.
Click to expand...

The 'Shift' key (by default) will enable air brakes. This makes a huge difference to feeling in control of your ships. We are planning to draw the players attention to this key for the next build.

Also in Options/Gameplay there is an option to enable auto braking so your ship will automatically slow itself down when you stop thrusting. Some players prefer to enable it.

More_Badass said:
....
On one hand, I love exploration in games and just setting out without an objective. On the other, I feel like this game could use some more direction, at least in the beginning. The upcoming Arenas sound like they'll add some more structure, which should be great
Click to expand...

It's clear that we need to work on giving player's more direction and guidance early in the game. We will probably need to cave and create a short tutorial to help with this.

Help us to create the perfect small tutorial.
When this thread appeared last weekend we noticed a bunch of you went and downloaded the demo, and your feedback has been extremely useful, but too many felt like they didn't know what to do and lost interest. We want to fix that.

So imagine you are given the following tips early in the game.
  • Press 'Shift' to use your air-brakes.
  • Press 'T' to target the nearest hostile/armed enemy.
  • Green healthbar = friendly ship. Red healthbar = hostile enemy ship.
  • The number at the bottom of the targeting HUD shows your target's Tech Level. It is also color coded to show your targets threat level. It blends from green (easy) to red (lethal).
  • Kill enemies to loot their technology and install it into your own ship by docking at a garage.
  • Installing upgrades will increase your own ship's Tech Level and it's damage will increase proportionally.
  • For objectives and further training press the 'Esc' key and read the help topics marked with an exclamation mark.
Armed with this imaginary tutorial, if some of you would be willing to give the demo another blast and report back that would be a real help.
If we add a tutorial we want to keep it ultra compact. Is the above information enough to get you into the game or do we need to add more?
We may even give out a couple of free keys to those who give those most constructive and useful feedback.

Thanks guys, I keep saying 'we' but in reality I'm a solo developer so your help is seriously appreciated.
 
I'll give it another shot later today. I wanted to like it, but didn't know where I was or what were my options.

My fault for not figuring out how the Diablo part work with the tech upgrades and hangar, but I just wanted to get into the game first and try it. Those tips should help.
 
@JesseZao: Thanks. The fact that the game failed to grab you the first time makes your feedback really useful. It will help to fine tune what additional info the player needs to get started.

You will be needing to use a garage to upgrade. The services that docking bays offer each game are also procedurally generated. There are a number of services.

  • Garage: (Green Spanner Icon): Install and swap upgrades
  • Upgrade Shop: (Blue shopping basket icon): Buy and sell upgrades.
  • Armory: (Red missiles icon) Buy and sell weapons
  • Hull Dealerships: (Red Ship icon): Buy and sell hulls/ships
  • Quantum Teleporters: (Blue ship inside rings icon): Teleport to other locations, swap your hulls, set as your respawn homebase.

What they buy and sell is procedurally generated and different each game so sometimes you may have to look around for a shop that will buy or sell the thing you want.

The help button contains all of this information and much more in the Operating Manual.
 
So I've been playing this and I'm having a pretty good time - I haven't mastered all the systems yet, but I'm getting my head around the cockpit, map and stuff like that.

I'll email you soon Paul - got a couple of questions that I could do with clearing up (and one or two points)
 
That's cool moobabe, I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.
____________________

In previous replies here I've tried to highlight some of the depth in the game but it's easy to think that my opinion is biased. This morning I woke up to find a semi-review of the game from a player who bought the game and started out with a similar opinions to many here who tried the demo. Then he played some more....

You can read his review after 20 hours of play on our forums:
http://www.neonxsz.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=283
 
Saw this on Twitter:
WIP in-game screenshot of the new Sphere Core that will be arriving in the next update along with Challenge Arenas
Bg26QqKCIAA8AFE.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Media Molecule is working on an Open World game...
2
50
277
Spukc replied
That Descent II Soundtrack....
8
333
Darkmakaimura replied
O3 - Hollow Descent | Trailer
Trailer Indie 
1
166
Silentsphere replied
Just Cause Developer Avalanche Studios Working On New Open-World Game
11
331
DCDW replied
The next PixelJunk game is Yodelee Golf, an open-world cozy golf adventure
Trailer Indie 
0
95
IbizaPocholo replied
Top Bottom