Echo Point Nova Demo Playthrough (Steam Next Fest Feb. 2024)
4Echo Point Nova is the next game by the developers of Severed Steel. I originally played this demo 2 Next Fests ago, but it apparently did not officially appear in that event, but rather coincided with it. How much has changed in 8 months? Plenty.
Nearly all of the things I had identified for improvement in the previous demo have been improved. Most of the HUD (and menus) has better contrast (i.e. you can now read HUD text even when it's overlaid against bright backgrounds). Turning off bloom no longer takes color information with it. The map is now zoomable and is arguably clearer now (though it takes some getting used to) and gives some idea of how many items can be found in each area. The player's head is actually visible in the loadout screen. Enemies now spawn in Severed-Steel-style with an animation and warning sound, so you're less likely to get stealth-killed from 5 steps behind you. Some parts of the map have been completely re-worked, resolving some parts with confusing pathing in the original demo. Moreover, the volcano is now reachable, and there is now a boss...
The demo is still tons of fun, just as it was last year. That being said, I have a new round of feedback where the new version of the demo also has room for improvement.
First of all, why the heck is interact bound to the same input as slowmo? It's not even called interact in the options - I only figured this out when I rebound slowmo and realized the button prompt for interact also changed. Someone else who I watched play this had rebound his keys, ended up with nothing bound to slowmo, and got completely stuck in the demo because of this. (Interactables are new to this version of the demo, so maybe this is a configuration oversight?)
I found the beginning of the demo to be very visually overwhelming compared to the previous version, between the more-detailed textures and the added reflectivity of surfaces. The first weapon is nearly invisible until after you pick it up when it becomes a "ghost" stylized more like ammo pickups, which are actually far more noticeable - at that rate, why not make weapons gold-ish ghosts just like ammo? For that matter, I had a really hard time aiming accurately with the new first weapon (the revolver); I find the other pistols far easier to aim with. (Maybe I should play with the simple aim option...)
I was unpleasantly surprised to find that double-jump now triggers both a ridiculous amount of screen-shake and the hoverboard's expanded FOV effect. Fortunately, both of those things can be turned off, but it seems particularly over-the-top to be applying them to double-jump in the first place.
There are still a couple of contrast issues: namely, the X's in the health part of the HUD don't stand out against dark backgrounds, and targeting reticles when aiming down scopes don't have any outline to contrast against bright backgrounds (as opposed to the non-ADS crosshair which does have an outline).
I found the reworked perks UI to be very annoying. It scrolls horizontally, which is typically far more obtuse than vertical scrolling. Moreover, anything that isn't currently active is faded out, making things unnecessarily hard to read until you hover/focus them. Why not keep the hover/focus style limited to an outline accent and keep the text readable at all times? It's also impossible to find new recently-acquired things - it'd be helpful to have some kind of indicator on those. (But also they might be easier to find in a list view that fits more items on-screen at once and scrolls more easily.)
The boss was quite interesting and not what I expected out of the game. It was kind of overwhelming at first, and the lasers with a multiple-area-code-wide splash radius that nearly one-shot you didn't help. When on top of the boss, there were a couple of areas where gravity and collision seemed to be having a moment, especially when on the wings which move up and down quite a lot.
Don't let the amount of feedback here fool you - I really like this game and really want to play the full version, and am excited seeing how much has been done with it since the last time I tried it. I also don't want to see the game held back by a handful of solvable flaws.
Check out Echo Point Nova for yourself on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/18...
(Note: I double-scaled this recording to prevent YouTube from completely obliterating its quality. Details and text might look a little fuzzier than they ordinarily would at true 1080p/1440p as a result.)
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