Recent reviews by Ermacgerd

Unfortunately unplayable and not ready. Softlock after about 2,5 hours (of bad gameplay, with many bugs, errors, weirdness, and wild hitboxes), in the train section, the key to the floor compartment stopped spawning after each death/reload. Meaning - softlock. And what's even funnier - there is no way to manually restart some sections or anything. It's just "continue", meaning - I needed to restart the whole game from zero, just to get to the same point 2,5 hours later, and STILL have 0% certainty if the same thing with the key will happen again.

Besides that - horribly unoptimized on m RTX 3060, drops to 15-20 fps on one/two levels (1440p DLSS Performance), bad animations, bad visuals that definitely don't justify the optimization. Audio/voice overs are kind of meh, but then again - it's a pro, instead of a con, I guess.

2/10 is what I rated it, after having to ragequit because there was no way in hell I'd replay it from the beginning just to get stuck in the same place. Nopey nope.

Unfit for a commercial release, unplayable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnJW4yOuTBs&t=2895s - my longplay, or "longplay" as I wasn't able to finish the game, recording of my woes with the game, all visible for everyone to see.

)REVIEW AS OF NOVEMBER 2024) Gust of Wind might be a one man's project, but unfortunately it doesn't quite pass the threshold of being a playable game, it falls short.

Yeah, I get the enormous budget limitations, lack of time and what not... but no. Too many technical issues with collision, AI, hitboxes, falling under the map, weirdness with environments' textures. Granted, it can be indeed finished from start to the end, I did it in just over 3 hours, sure. But it was not a pleasant journey most of the time. Game consists of just about two ships, and two small islands + one big mine complex inside one of them. It just so happens to be a maze. It's... not a pretty level design, or good, or ambitious.

Story is pretty basic, and not very interesting so far. It ends with... we know you're a traitor, so I will have to come with you?... and you somehow won't kill me when I'm asleep?... Weird. There are moments on the Mine island where you will have to backtrack a few times, including rowing the boat far away. It all could have been honestly skipped. I guess it's more, or longer, content..

Graphics are quite bad and basic, the game runs like utter ♥♥♥♥♥ on High settings, on Medium it's bareable, but still varied. RTX 360 and i5 12400f can't handle this game at 1440p60 High settings at all, it seems. Models are a-okay, animations are bad mostly, there are a few that are interesting like the one for lighting up the lantern. Animations for opening doors might be interesting for a few first times, but each time later it becomes too long and annoying. Plus, it constantly changes the camer into FPP if you were in TPP before. It happens quite too often for my taste.

So - buggy, messy, visually not compelling, badly optimized, story also not too compelling so far, some interesting mechanics like the climbing system, basic combat with pretty bad hitboxes. Stealth itself sort of works most of the time, the light indicator works as it should, in FPP at least.

What this game needs - ironing out all the bugs, collisions, hitboxes, entirely. Fixing the optimization, maybe adding "custom" graphical options to choose from. An actual Town/City map, Thief-like, with lots of buildings to enter and steal from. Stop with the islands, stop with the mazes like the Mine complex. More ambitious, interesting level design. Oh, and forcing this game to be in FPP and optimizing the hitboxes and all the stuff for it might be the best choice for this game. Third Person really doesn't work here, only in the dark where TPP is a lot brighter than FPP for some reason.

Even for 10 USD or lower than that, this might be not good enough for release yet, for the overall gaming standards. For a one person job? Maybe quite a bit more, but lots of stuff to fix and expand on left, might take years.

This is just barely a recommendation, as I rated this 6/10 (for what it is) right after finishing it.

And so what is it? It's clearly a Mirror's Edge stylized game, visuals and world design wise, but only that - the gameplay is not any similar, except for jumping/platforming, that's what they share in common. And this game is just that - jumping on platforms, jumping off of platforms, being launched into platforms, and dodging various obstacles. There is no story, nothing really linear, it's just that.

So, what it actually does, it does pretty okay, all things considered. Movement feels okay, jumps mostly register correctly, although it's much worse when it comes to double jump, there is a sense of speed, the hitboxes/collisions are also quite okay most of the time. It's just that, okay. Except for the Slide ability, it's absolutely completely useless and it makes no sense to purchase it, ever. No obstacles ever requires it.

This game's main problem is that... there is nothing more than just jumping on platforms, and jumping overall. There is some exploration, finding hidden purple balls of power and all, some wild Dark Souls-like obstacles. But there is almost no variety, no sense of progression, the obstacles and paths don't get weirder, faster, harder, more complicated with time. They are all completely basic. And I guess, if you're into a chill FPP platforming games, want no stress, only chill, then you're good to go. Want anything more spectacular or ambitious? Any challenge? Nope, not here.

Optimization is at times pretty dire, the platforms with heating fans on them especially can cause your framerate to plummet for some reason, perhaps some issue with LOD system not working as intended (or actually not implemented at all, you can see the entire city and almost every small detail from the opposite end of the map, clearly an optimization nightmare). Visuals are pretty meh otherwise. Set reflections to medium or low or else you won't see a damn thing on the buildings, since High and Epic enables Ray Traced reflections that look like ♥♥♥♥, tank the framerate, and actually obscure the reflection/don't reflect anything at all. The art style of the city is pretty nice, definitely Mirror's Edge (1). Architecture is pretty basic when it comes to the sheer polygons and all. Basic-like is the main adjective I'd use for this game. Audio is okay, the music is very chill and atmospheric, it does its job.

Now, for my own recommendations to the author of this game, for the future -

- Sliding is purely useless, either remove so players dont waste power points on it, or integrate it into the gameplay, like having to pass an obstacle below, where you'd slide underneath it,
- Add actual animations for mantling the edges, together with making it seems like a parkour game. Meaning - actual climbing, actual animations for it, more of the character visible while running (the hands)/animations for landing,
- More, more, more variety when it comes to the obstacles, MUCH more variety, and with different difficulty levels to them.
- Some more of collectibles, more hidden and with special parts of the city made for them,
- Optimization, implementing some LOD system so the PC doesn't burn while looking at the distant buildings
- Some short introduction to the "story", or at least an objective. Maybe some wild lore notes near the Skill Points ATMs?
- Basically, much more content, and varied content. Try to transform it into something else than just jumping from one platform to another. Not close enough to Mirror's Edge, and too far from FPP Jump King. Bring depth to the game.

Extremely full of bugs, performance issues (like 10 second freezes, lots of stuttering, at times unplayable), bugs the type of the ammo magically disappears, can't be picked up. You just walk around with your fist since you can't pick up any ammo. Multum of falling bellow the map or out of bounds. Just overall a huge disappointment and this game should have never even been released in this state. Complete travesty. Avoid at all costs.