ADACA

The campaign is so much fun with a great setting & characters! The gunplay is good & the gravity arm gives you a lot of tactical options! It's really nice to have a canonically non-binary protagonist too ;3

ADACA is a very impressive game for a more or less solo developer. The campaign takes a lot of cues from Half-Life and it's quite well put together, and it also has another mode called Zone Patrol which is much more open, freeform, and Stalker inspired. In terms of things that apply to both modes, the gunplay is very tight, enemy and weapon variety is good, and the simple non-textured art style is put together surprisingly well. The sort of gravity gun arm you have is a fun addition as well. In terms of technical stuff, I did run into glitches a few times which caused some issues but usually just meant restarting the level. However, I have different things to say about each mode, so I'll split them up from here. Starting with the campaign, I'll say that I quite enjoyed it, but it didn't feel particularly remarkable. It takes you through many levels with lots of great variety of locations, enemies, weapons, and so on, and the gameplay feels really tight and fun. It's a bit of a thrill ride with some weird stuff going on, but good mixes of action and more tense thriller/horror stuff. The story, however, I found a bit hard to follow and not all that interesting. I enjoyed the story in Zone Patrol more, so it might be a case of not having enough lore understanding for the story, or that it's kind of delivered to me rather than piecing it together like in that mode. There were also a few encounters that felt poorly balanced, but they were rare and not that bad. On the whole it was a well-paced, fun, linear shooter experience with a somewhat unintriguing story. Zone Patrol is a much different beast opening up into a mode with lots of interconnected zones and hidden areas to explore, as well as quests to find and undertake, artifacts/secrets to find, and so on. You play as a different character (who's a supporting character in the campaign), and make a loadout before going into the titular zone. By collecting artifacts you can buy more gear to kit yourself out with, and there are a few vendors hidden in the zone that you can find and buy different stuff from as well. Quests will appear as you explore the zone, often when you find something interesting, and occasionally a quest will lead to a special briefing you can do for a bespoke quest from your hub area. It's a good design that unfolds naturally as you explore, and you really feel like you're making discoveries and are responsible for your own progress. So, the design is all rather cryptic, intentionally so. Unlike most modern games, which hold your hand a lot, Zone Patrol really wants you to explore and think about what you're doing and how you can puzzle things together and progress. Quests usually only hint at what to do or where to go, and you have to do the rest. Points of interest are rarely given to you on the map, and there's no "you are here" marker aside from knowing which area you're in. There's even a notetaking function for you to make your own notes about what's important. It's a refreshing design decision, and it made exploring more rewarding. That said, I think it goes a little too far since it applies to almost all quests and discoveries, and it's sometimes too obtuse. It was fun, but at times I found myself looking stuff up online that I couldn't figure out at all or was too much of a pain in the butt. I'm also rather frustrated after finishing this game, because I actually couldn't quite finish Zone Patrol, not really. I might have been able to get there, but I hit a point where I just gave up and watched the ending on YouTube. See, the final quest is very involved and requires you to do a lot of separate things before you can complete it. Using partly my own brain and partly looking stuff up online, I did everything I was supposed to, or at least I thought so. One thing I thought I did seemed to have been left undone, but I couldn't figure out how to get it done. The game wasn't going to tell me clearly, and unfortunately it's not a very well-known game so I couldn't find clear info online. It also could have just been a bug. So yes, sorry for all my complaining, but I feel a bit cheated that I had to watch the ending online. To sum up, I think ADACA is an impressive game for a solo dev, and well worth checking out if you like either Half-Life or Stalker. I enjoyed my time with it a lot, although I obviously still have my gripes. I intend to play the dev's next game, Project Silverfish, so I'm excited to see how their game design has evolved. And I really do like the hands off game design that respects the player's intelligence, I just wish there was a bit more guidance sometimes or a hint system when necessary.