Phobolis: Demo Test III
A downloadable game
Phobolis.
A city of nightmares. A structure formed from the traumas of millions of immortal lost souls, adrift in a space beneath hell. Neither alive nor dead, the wanderers lose themselves to the madness, or...
She has called you into being, and you are choosing to follow now, by leading. No fear of the witness. Her halo has come again.
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My juicy-but-dated desktop PC is currently in stasis, and I'm using a laptop. Unfortunately, the massive load of shaders is making this game an un-playable slideshow. If there were some hotkeys for switching full screen filters and switching ambient occlusion off, I think it would be very helpful. Maybe a rendering resolution hotkey would also help. It's so slow that I could barely input in the debug console. Thanks for sharing your work. I am very intrigued and enticed by this artistic vision.
This game nails the style of how FPS games looked in the late PS1 / 3DO era in your memory so much. Please also get this out on GOG and maybe Steam if possible! This has gotten too far to remain on Itch only. ❤️
This game looks REALLY promising! Although I have one question: Is it on pourpose that you can’t pickup health items if you’re over 90 of health? Although this made me intrigued, the gameplay itself feels really solid and its portal structures made me go “whoa” on some places.
The goldeneye aiming felt interesting and it could be nice to use puzzles with that mechanic, as someone said before me.
I’m really looking forward for this game! Congratulations!
that health is a bug on my part :) but the fix might make you even more irked, lol.
Oh boy, I’m waiting for it LOL
Really excited to see the return of this project, it looks good as fuck.
Several things, though:
> I'm pretty sure you can softlock yourself by falling into the aqueduct because you can't jump high enough to get back on the elevator
> The mouse sensitivity is crazy high (I mean, manageable at least; I could still finish the game)
> Is the game always gonna give you fuckloads of ammo? Because at this point I think you could pull an Ultrakill and make ammo infinite.
Everything else was great. Love the atmosphere, love the weird Goldeneye-style aiming mechanics for long ranges, love the weapons, game might be a *little* too open, but the long ranges with the hitscanners still incentivize using the aiming mechanics.
> Oh, right. Get rid of the bounding boxes on the bushes. Sucks to try and navigate them for no particular reason.
Also, I appreciate an accurate shotgun, but I think you may want to make it slower or give it more spread or something, because right now just the base version trumps your other weapons not just at close range and in hipfire, but at long range with dps too. It's reliable but TOO reliable.
great notes! i was really generous with ammo because I'd rather risk over-feeding than starving. I'll definitely wrangle it in and calm the shotgun down a little.
As for the mouse settings, I think I have my own DPI a little low, so I'll balance it out in the update on our way to a menu with an actual sensitivity slider.
Someone else mentioned creating some puzzles to make use of the goldeneye aiming, they make a really good point. we're going to try out some fun stuff on our way to the steam page, so stay tuned and thank you
I can't get over how great the environment design is. It retains that same feeling I got from the first Alpha test, where I feel constantly rewarded for poking around. Because even if there's "nothing" there in all corners of the map, the environment is staged so I'm always treated to some sort of evocative sight or POV that feels sculpted and intentional. I'm so happy to see development is continuing with this, nothing feels quite like it.
I really dug what was on display here, the visuals, the lighting and colour work and the atmosphere. The guns and the sorta Goldeneye-esque aiming was cool, the shotgun had a nice little knock back. Appreciated the audio logs that didn't needlessly stop you in your tracks. There was one spot that I got stuck in however on my first run of the demo, when you first walk out where the metal sheet bridge is there's some arrangement of boxes below you, you can easily fall behind one of them and there's no way to get out.
I totally forgot about that, but you're right. I've been caught there too. Added to the patch list - thank you, and thank you for all the awesome feedback!
the first phobolis alpha was way better than this, why change everything that made the first better?
We couldn't continue with the original version when Unity changed their revenue-sharing policies. Despite reverting them back, the trust was broken.
I'm sad to hear we missed the mark for you though, we really wanted to capture the best of the original one. I'm interested to know specifically what was lost in translation for you?
-A
the change in engine is more than understandable, sucks you guys had to essentially rebuild the game because of unity being a greedy sunovabitch, my deepest apologies for sounding rude in my previous reply.
about what I didn't like... firstly this build is clearly way more unfinished and less polished than the first alpha, the game runs worse and theres no way to tone down the motion blur, or the excessive bloom, nor does it go fullscreen like the previous alpha.
the goldeneye-esque aiming is cool, but is useless if the player gets swarmed by enemies (they dont even react differenty based on where you shoot them), the previous alpha had a more quake-vibe going, why change that?
personally, the modeling and texturing was more charming in the previous alpha, from the weapons to the characters, hell even the hud looked better in the previous alpha. in this alpha everything feels almost more... highpoly? idk
the level design isnt bad, but small things like the statue giving you guns, the room setpiece near the end of the first alpha, and other stuff are all just missing.
overall I was a little disappointed by this one, I hope I didn't come off as pretentious, but I've got high hopes for this game and I really do wanna see it bloom into something awesome
Not at all! Polite criticism is great. We make our to-do lists from gripes we think we can address. You make some good points to take into consideration.
UE has been a steep engine for me to adapt to, but the past few months has been a lot coming together. Our next milestone we'll be focusing heavily on the GUI (menus, screen settings). In the meantime, stay tuned for updates to this version.
We'll be providing patches to fill out things we only just got functional before release, so stay tuned for updates.
Thanks again
-A
After the second time I see the white figure and try to follow her through a hallway, the game moves my view towards the ground and becomes unresponsive. It's happened to me twice now. Is that where the demo's supposed to end, or is this a bug?
the demo is supposed to end with falling into a spiked pit - yes, but if the game isnt cutting to credits then there might be a bug. thanks for letting us know
Welcome back!
Thank you!! It feels good to have survived!
Nice. Been a fan since 2022. I'm sort of intrigued by your older stuff before getting my chance to play Phobolis Alpha Test 2 for the first time. Anyhow, I hope you're doing well in your end!