Selaco demo playthrough (Nextfest June 2022)
0Finally, the wait for a playable demo of Selaco is over; I've been waiting for this since Realms Deep 2021. There have been a boatload of GZDoom-based games in development lately, but Selaco immediately stood above the rest in terms of just how far it pushes the engine.
In checking out the demo, Selaco had me sold halfway through the massive options menus before I even started playing the game. There are so many adjustable settings, including an entire accessibility submenu, that ALL game developers should take note of as the bar to measure themselves against. Too many times I see developers who clearly have no concept of accessibility whatsoever; the Selaco developers clearly get it, and have obviously put a LOT of time and attention to detail into making their game as widely enjoyable as possible - even to stream viewers.
I intentionally played this on the third difficulty (Commander, described as "hard"), in order to see the kinds of things the enemy AI was capable of, and I certainly got a run for my money. The AI will attempt to flank and will occasionally find tricky vantage points. This very much borders on being a cover-based shooter, much moreso than what folks are likely to be used to in most GZDoom-based games, and at higher difficulties you will absolutely be punished if you just run into a crowded room with guns blazing. After finishing my initial playthrough I started a new one on the second difficulty (Lieutenant), and it was clearly quite a bit more forgiving, as I intentionally did some irresponsible things and was able to get away with them.
There's a lot to be impressed by in this demo, but I did run into a few snags. The very beginning of the demo honestly gives a poor first impression, as you are completely unable to attack and have to quickly navigate to the correct place while being shot at from several directions, which can be extremely overwhelming and frustrating to have to retry multiple times, especially since there's several seconds of waiting at the start. There are a couple of times where you end up needing to find switches, and they can be easy to miss among all of the brightly lit screens and other accents in the environment (I'm all for a good switch hunt but they seemed surprising here and interrupted the flow). The pistol you obtain incurs a ridiculous amount of screen shake, seemingly disproportionate to its damage output, and the weapon feels worthless because it's practically impossible to take multiple shots in a row accurately unless you go into the options and turn weapon shake off entirely.
That all being said, just by looking at the changelog in the top right of the main menu, it's very clear that the developers have been working at a feverish pace even during Nextfest to adjust balance in various ways based on player reception, and based on all of the attention to detail so far, I have a lot of respect for and confidence in this dev team. I'm definitely looking forward to experiencing any expansions to the demo and eventually the full game.
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