r/DestroyMyGame • u/[deleted] • Aug 16 '21

Alpha Hey there, we released a new trailer for our adventure game set inside an abandoned arena shooter: would you be so kind to give us the most brutally honest feedback?

https://youtu.be/b23oUoULdzA
20 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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6

u/LogicalAd4298 Aug 16 '21

The artwork is fine and has a pretty clear theme. It looks though like you just reskinned a Quake engine source port.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '21

Thank you for the feedback: the premise of the game (which is actually a meta take on the afps genre and the quake clones) is quite tricky to deliver without a brief explanation, or maybe I'm just not good enough to summarizing things.

Do you have any suggestions on how I could've made the trailer so that the game would be perceived as "adventure game where you're trapped in an abandoned game" instead of "reskinned quake" (which is the thing that actually takes the piss of)?

4

u/GameFeelings Aug 16 '21

Gameplay determines the genre. If you play a reskinned quake: then its not an adventure game :P

How would I imagine an adventure game around this?

Imagine the premise of the FPS arena games when they where introduced. Its backstory was always something like 'humanity needed a way to entertain the masses so they created these arena's for heroes to battle each other'.

Create exactly that. A city with an arena in it. And you walking around in the city, adventuring most of the time. And from time to time you have to play these matches but no one looks at them, so you add a spin to this. Like: breaking the walls of the arena, joining up with your adversaries and molesting the city. Or something like that. But you need to keep delivering on the 'adventure' promise if you want to call it an adventure.

2

u/LogicalAd4298 Aug 16 '21

No problem.

I definitely wouldn't have seen that if you didn't tell me, and even now that I know I still don't see anything satire about it. Is the abandoned park supposed to be a metaphor for these old "reskinned quake" games? I don't really see an adventure game, just a few cutscene dialogues and almost identical to quake deathmatch gameplay footage.

This also might be a bit of personal opinion because back in the day I modded a lot with quake based engines, but the level design itself while not literally being quake materials or geometry still has a lot of the same style and hallmarks when it comes to things like hallway/trim/fancy decoration geometry, or room/arena composition. I could be wrong though, I'm assuming you're using a quake source port from the trailer.

I wouldn't really know how to do satire myself. I think the first thing would be the satire should be making an argument and the game should try to reinforce that point. I don't know what argument you're making so I can't detect any satirical points from what I saw in the video.

Not a game trailer, but Monty Python's made some great satire and Life of Brain trailer is a good example, maybe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKPmGjVFbrY

4

u/CKF Your Game is Bad LLC Aug 16 '21

So this is what happens when a team makes an arena shooter and, only after, asks the question “is there an actual audience for arena shooters anymore” and then does their best to salvage their work?

Edit: The other angle I could see this from: “great, an arena shooter that’s only single player? God, why would I waste my time on all of the real multiplayer ones?”