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[askovdk]

Deadnaut
http://deadnaut.com/


From Skewfly Studios, maker of Zafehouse Diaries (that Pnx made a masterwork LP about here at Bay12).
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118314.msg3735964#msg3735964

This game flew completely below my radar until it was released on Steam yesterday.
Zafehouse is a game I keep coming back to, so Deadnaut was promptly bought, but not yet played much due to working hours.
So I can't yet review it, but I can already see that it is worth a topic due to its unique nature.

Like in Zafehouse the developers have overcome the needs for advanced graphics by removing the player from the 'real' action.
In this case the player is sitting at the monitors in the mothership while a squad of 5 is breaching a derelict spaceship, and this seems to work very well.
It is the kind of 'total immersion' I first encountered with Introversions Uplink, where what you seen on your computer screen is everything there would be to see for the character you play. This illusion is strengthen by corrupting even the little you can see depending on how much electronic warfare your squad encounters. 

Will it work as a game? That is what I will find out the coming days and let you know, but everyone here should be aware of this possible gem.

There is no tutorial, so my first game was WTF, WTF, argh, dead.
I then found the manual that have a good introduction to the basics (and the game in general).
http://deadnaut.com/manual/01_a_quickstart.html

[ThtblovesDF]

The prospect is good, but Zafehouse had so many frustrating design choices that it turned me off to Skewfly for a while...

[Majestic7]

Bought and played on a whim, because I want to support new developers and yadda yadda.

At first glance the game is very difficult, at least playing a combat group. When I've lived through the first ship, I've lost a guy or two. Cloning them takes all my money, leaving none to buy new equipment. This is frustrating. I have to see if creating more defense and cohesion guys helps. Many of my 'nauts die to friendly fire. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature - it is possible they are intentional frags with people hating each other taking the opportunity to murder their rivals.

Considering the limited resources, four missions seems like a pretty short run for a campaign though. Personally I'd prefer longer campaigns with a difficulty curve not quite so steep.

[BishopX]

Bought the game. Read the manual. Tried to play. Opened the first door and everyone died horribly from ethereal tentacle beasts. I love this game.

[Majestic7]

So I played a little more and won a campaign for the first time. It was surprisingly easy. My party was combat heavy with one defender. As it happens, enemies were mostly melee and I encountered no turrets. I was able to slice through the hordes with surprising ease. In the end all my guys wore medium shield suits with a passive blast or melee shield, minimizing damage.

This leads me to believe the ease or difficulty of the game is heavily dependent on luck. If you have a tech party against ye good olde zerg rush, you are going to have a bad time. Likewise an assault squad would get shred to pieces by turret-heavy ships. (Seems to me the smart way to deal with those is hacking.) This limits the versatility of your tactical choices and emphasizes the whims of RNG god.

I hope the game widens the available options in the future while giving us a better storyline, including what-happened-to-the-members-of-the-squad in the rare instance of winning the game. Solving the campaign was now pretty unsatisfactory. We need an epilogue!

[Retropunch]

This looks really awesome, although I'm not a fan of 'short and light' campaigns. It's not that every game needs an 'endless' mode, but I do get annoyed with *just* getting into my squad and getting it all whisked away from me.

Even if it was just being able to take the same squad into another campaign (to see how many you could get through) or some sort of challenge levels you could take them on afterwards.

(admittedly, I've not played this game, so it could be that 4 levels is completely enough!)

[Majestic7]

Yeah, rolling through the campaign took me less than an hour since I encountered no major difficulties or hard choices. You can easily spend hours creating characters etc though.

[Cthulhu]

When I finally got the game to work (unity issues) I cleared the first mission with no casualties or challenge.  Lots of tense moving through the derelict and trying to puzzle together what happened though, which was fun.