Operation E.C.H.O. (Demo)

Omg this looks and sound phenomenal! How did I not see this until now ? Keep it up, you got an incoming customer right here.

Is this still be worked on? Last update say Aug 2020 :(

Just stumbled upon the demo! Here are my thoughts:

+ Solid Gameplay and Aesthetics that put the man vs. army frantic feel of Metal Slug into the sci-fi trappings and adaptive strategy of Mega Man (as advertised) but with enough of its own flavor to feel like its own thing.

+ M16 feels like a rough and tumble little badass who is never out of options (with one possible exception, we'll come back to that) in a fight: I genuinely love how his primary weapon system and shields are tied to his energy supply but depleting it never means you're waiting for weapons to recharge to shoot again, nor does the shield just automatically drain by using it... and the bonus of the shield healing him at low health as well as deflecting projectiles is another welcome touch.

- I was a little disappointed that firing one of M16's secondary weapons halted the recharge of his primary systems: Since they can't be fired simultaneously their purpose (while still cool) the secondary weapons (shotgun and machine gun thus far?) feel a tad muted thanks to this as they don't seem to offer much appreciable gameplay enhancement.

- While I'm super glad the game is free of a life system, it is definitely quarter-munching tough even on Normal Difficulty to that point it can be just a touch grating: The enemies are just a little too unpredictable and fast to properly manage in swarms (there were definitely two points in the demo where it was a noticeable problem for me) and at least one enemy has a range and speed that require a level of timing that (I personally at least) found to be a little too much to tackle right now.

While some of that amounts to balancing polish, perhaps one of the things M16 would benefit from would be a melee strike or a shield burst to give him a little bit more breathing room for tactical retreats... even a strafing function that maintains his direction while he jumps and dashes might be useful.

Overall however I have to say that I'm excited to see what a full version of this game could look like: It shows incredible promise and even if the additions I mention weren't implemented Operation Echo could still be a blast!

How much progress since last year? :3

Hey! You should fix your "About" text, i think it should be "

Echo is Action platformer influenced by several side-scroll-games such as Metal Slug, Megaman, etc."

I'm really bad at reviewing, so i'll just say "nice work"
I can't wait to play the full version ;w;

Made a video

So. I gave it another go. And while the controls do feel quite a bit better, some new issues cropped up. First is that there's some crazy inconsistency in the world design that makes it really hard to tell if something is in the foreground or background, if it can be jumped on, or through or not, and if it's destructible or not. Adding that on top of the cardinal direction aiming, and limiting it to movement, I never felt like I could aim and move at the same time without walking face-first into whatever I wanted dead. All that and the shield just kinda feels like a cop out of making damage predictable and preventable. While I understand not every game needs to be dark souls in terms of it's damage avoidance, it felt like "Press X to survive." So yeah, better controls, but It might be getting to the point where I just have t take a step back and say this game just isn't for me.

Man I'm impressed you can do this with GZDoom. Criticisms:

- There may be some kind of input delay? I dunno but it feels off whenever I try to do jumps or shield, like it's taking long than it should. 

- The default controls are strange, the feel kind of unnatural with a controller. I'm still not certain what the support button does but I assume that came later in the demo. 

- The shield their face charging guys have a weird prompt, and overall feel janky. Like their charge doesn't feel smooth, the transition between face hit and shield is odd, etc.

- There's a huge difficulty curve after you go underground. And when you die the healthkit doesn't respawn when you go down there. There isn't enough space to move around and your jump isn't high enough to dodge both of them coming at you (they come out at different times)

- Love the animations and the graphics, though I saw that the bullets  go behind the background during the power on section and there's fire bursts. There should also be a prompt saying you can shield through those.

- Was the bullets being stronger when you're out of charge on purpose? 

- Dash jump feels really good to use. 

- There's a few typos in the demo parts, might want to re-look over that/

Really fun stuff overall, though I can't really get through that difficult ambush, lol.

Fantastic Start, Great Audio, Great Gameplay. Looks Good

wobblyfootgamer