Sanctuary: Shattered Sun Demo

FAF player here: I love the idea of this game and when my friends and I heard that they were dropping a demo, we were so hyped to try what they had. [strike]I understand its a demo, but we had quite aa rough experience that turned us off on the game. I can understand a lack of content or polish, but the lack of tooltips or really a coherent UI is a significant concern especially since they are saying they want a EA release in about a year-ish[/strike]. If that was all, I would be a little disappointed but still hopeful. However, the stretch goals are completely ridiculous. 300k for commander upgrades??? a undisclosed amount but 3 stretch goals ahead of the 300k commander upgrades to get naval units??? This seems to be a little extreme. I understand needing money to develop the game, but isnt part of early access improving the game to get to a full feature release? Why haves these dangling incentives to dump money into a game that doesnt really exist yet with waht seems like a threat saying "If we dont get x amount of money, then a potentially core part of the game just wont be there". It also makes me suspicious of the ordering. Why is a campaign before a whole section of units? Shouldn't the money be prioritized on basic game features first, and then nice to haves after? It feels a little pushy/scammy, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I really hope the game can live up to FAF, but these type of what I would call "anti-consumer" tactics just dont leave me feeling too great as a potential backer of the game. I understand the developers are in a hard postion (as I assume) they need more money to work on the game, but I still feel the way I feel about this as a consumer. Just my 2 cents. FYI: The developers make an announcement in the discord to leave positive reviews(as seen below), so just keep that in mind [code] Day 2 draws to a close and another stretch goal is nearly unlocked - you guys ROCK! If you don't mind could you please jump on steam and leave a positive review on steam using the link below? That will help a lot. I'm about to hit the magic button to email the demo release notification to 175k wishlisters and having a lot of positive reviews will help them make wise life choices [/code] Update 1: The single player experience is SIGNIFICANTLY more polished then the multiplayer one. The tooltips actually work but I still have the same gripes with the UI. My experience above was multiplayer with some friends. I am actually enjoying the game quite a bit. My gripes still stand with the business end of things though.

Remember that one meme with the old dude from the Ratatouille movie, who ate that one dish and who then remembered his jolly childhood days? That was me when I just played the campaign mission in the demo version. First impressions are 10/10. I've just backed them on Kickstarter too, so I'm really eager to see what the devs accomplish! The game really has the spirit & fresh ideas to become a fun, modern successor to Supreme Commander.

As massive fan of the OG Total Annihilation, and its spiritual sequels of the Supreme Commander series, if you're a fan of massive large scale RTS games, you NEED to PLAY this DEMO ASAP! Can't wait for the full product to be released!

I was prepared for a letdown, that it wouldn't live up to Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. But it does, the demo is nothing short of epic. This is a must by.

TLDR - Finally the supreme commander successor we've been waiting for. Watch this one closely, and support the project. Been following this game for about 4 years. As a longtime Supreme Commander FAF fan, this is the true successor we were waiting for. They nailed the economy, scale, vibe, tech, and the terrain alteration and destruction is sick. They have Chris Taylor's blessing (Original supreme commander's lead dev). Three factions, land, sea, and naval combat + experimental T4 units. It hits the same notes as supcom but more with environmental manipulation and battlefield map destruction. I sat through Planetary annihilations, beyond all reason, and other titles seeking to bring in the vibe, but none so much as perfectly catch it as this game. I felt as if I was playing a sequel game or a expansion not the original forged alliance. If you're a supreme commander enjoyer, keep an eye on this one.

It's a demo, and to have the PRIVILEGE of playing skirmish, in your DEMO, i have to PAY... Sure buddy, i see nothing wrong with that, also i see nothing wrong with locking unit types (air, naval) behind paywalls, that's the first time i see it used in such an egregious way. It's too bad because i was looking forward to try this game, so far it's basic with pretty graphics, and that's what you have to show for 5+ years of dev time, which may or may not be a lot depending on your assets and crew, but still, feels meh, especially the paywall thing, like... seriously ?

Tl;dr, this is a pretty big disappointment. Granted this is only a demo but I was expecting a lot better. There isn’t any one game breaking issue, but there are several smaller issues that add up to an overall not great experience. My biggest issue right now are the controls, and I haven't found a way to remap them. ---Camera movement is mouse or arrow keys, which I don’t care for. ---No pause keyboard button (that I have found), only a clickable menu icon. I understand that pause doesn’t exist in multiplayer, but in singleplayer I like to pause and think. ---Right click is action, left click deselects, unless I have selected a building to construct, then left click is action/build, right click is deselect, which feels unintuitive to me. ---There is also no unit patrol option. ---Default unit movement is to move without attacking. Alt+click is move and engage targets. Some other issues are: ---Sometimes units target what they want, even if a target is specified. ---No air or sea units. ---Performance load. My 1080ti reaches 100% utilization very quickly after starting a new game, even with minimum settings, but I will say the game never crashed. ---Some units have permanently visible attack ranges, other have no visible ranges. ---Hovering over a building icon in the build menu brings up the building text/description, but changes to the engineer if a building in queue finishes construction. Lastly are some miscellaneous items. ---5 unit tech levels. That sounds like too much to me, and I’m concerned it’s going to make the distinction between levels less distinct and make the all of the units too similar. Maybe it’s just me being a casual RTS gamer, but I would prefer a bit more simplicity. ---Lots of funding for not a lot of game. Enhearten Media has had pateron for some time now (not sure how long), and now they have a kick starter, and it just seem like a lot of money and promises with not a lot of game right now. I do see a lot of potential, and maybe I’m just being too harsh for what it is, but overall I’m not impressed. Things did get better the more I played it, but I still had to willpower myself to finish the demo as it wasn’t something I especially enjoyed. Right now it’s just a free demo, so you have nothing to lose by trying it out yourself, and hopefully the game improves as development continues, but at least for right now, I don’t recommend this game.

I would absolutely love for a modern supcom to exist. I have 100's of hours of FAF. BUT I cannot recommend this game because of the disgusting practices on Kickstarter. To me, the following is completely unacceptable: -150k stretch goal - "complete air units" - if the developers THEMSELVES call this complete, why does it not come with the complete base game???? -480k stretch goal - "complete naval units" - if the developers THEMSELVES call this complete, why does it not come with the complete base game???? -etc (freeze, shatter...). The Kickstarter stretch goals read like the brainchild of a PE junior associate rather than a developer wanting to make a good game.