Malwear

Bear in mind that I've played exactly one FPS, on console, so everything I'm saying could very well be a massive Skill Issue.

Thoughts from first few playthroughs:

• I think a lot of the mechanics are interesting, but there's a consistent information problem:
  • It's a totally valid design choice (even if a bit frustrating at first as an FPS-newbie) to always have to keep my head on a swivel and have good spatial awareness, but it wasn't clear where enemies could spawn from until I played a few games.
  • The dash mechanic is a cool idea that would be better utilized if there were more platforms/ranged enemies (though right now it's more of a jarring teleport), but I didn't have any indication of what restores my dash, or how soon it would return to me. Having this information would allow me to strategize my positioning and movement better.
  • Likewise, indicators about enemy health would be nice, or at least make it clearer when I actually hit a target.
  • I like having alternate weapons, but when I bought the Sniper Rifle and the Shotgun (separate playthroughs), it wasn't really clear if they were actually better. If anything, I noticed both of them had a slower fire rate than the default weapon, but I couldn't distinguish any range or power differences between it and the default weapon (which I couldn't switch back to).
  • Making enemies more visually distinct would change my mindset and in turn really play to the strengths of having different enemy types. But the gas enemy was a cool idea, playing to the
• Other thoughts:
  • Sometimes after dealing enough damage, only the enemy's weapon would disappear, but the enemy would stand in place with the same pose for a while after.
  • There was an area where I could jump past a wall to reach a sniper, but I couldn't go back to the original area without "buying the obstacle" nearby, so I just camped at the nearby slope and picked enemies off one by one until there were too many enemies. I was able to get much farther that way, and even if it's actually objectively less optimal, I found there was nothing really disincentivizing camping besides it being "less fun" (which isn't really enough in my opinion).
  • I really like having to buy more of the map to free up movement and escape routes, but there's a certain obstacle where buying it was just straight up throwing. The one that leads to closed off room in the beginning results in effectively a one-way dead end unless you have enough points to buy the other obstacle in the room. I ended up getting cornered, and I couldn't get enough points in time to buy the other obstacle.
  • E to dash is a little bit awkward, particularly if I want dash right or back. Perhaps Left Shift or Right Mouse Click instead?

Overall, I see there's a lot of great ideas here with room to expand! After polishing up some of the groundwork and fixing the information problems, these mechanics can really shine!