Selaco

Backtrack hell. There's a lot to like here but that is completely overwhelmed by two simple mistakes. First, you will backtrack. A lot. There are numerous things you'll miss that are quite deliberately difficult to find. So you'll spend most of your time wandering around not confident of where you are and where you should be going, searching in frustration. Second, they doubled down on the first mistake. You can get to the final level missing some cards which force you to go back to one or more levels to find them before you can finish. This can take hours which include no gameplay, no challenges, just annoying searching for carefully hidden pickups. In case you're wondering, this is a game and this mechanic is NOT FUN. These flaws undo the other good work and turn a nice shooter into a frustrating time waster where the wandering and searching dominates. To the devs: it's ok to have hidden secrets and bonuses. Ones that give extras to those who find them. But f you've let a player get to the final level they should have what they need, or at the very least it should have been abundantly clear ALONG THE WAY that they do not. If you truly are so bloody minded that no, you MUST HAVE THEM, then don't let a level be completed until they're found. And if they're mandatory make them easier to find; or give hints when people think they're finished a level, but aren't.

PRO Aesthetics Combat Music Sound Design CON Navigation Visual Clarity I played the game for around 14 hours and kept getting lost. Just following the green lights does not help at all, especially when you have to backtrack. Even with the GPS mod someone kindly made, I do not know where to go after a while. I Wound up stopping when I got to some cloning lab and had to find a blue key that I could not find. I came back after 3 months, tried again, gave up. I understand that it is the creator's prerogative to make the game more "hardcore" and avoid robust navigation systems, but for those like myself with cognitive and mental issues that make this torturous, it would be a nice addition to the game to have simple quest markers that point you in the right direction. I am not asking for a literal line to show me where to go, but a glowing dot in a sector would be nice. Cannot recommend due to not having good accessibility for cognitively disabled people.

I just dropped this for the third time because i guess i'm too dumb for it. I can never figure out where to go, no matter how many times i restart to see if i'm just losing a thread somewhere that i'll pick up with fresh eyes. It's all just boring white walls and blue light and infinite pointless useless interactables, none of which open any of the doors. Which, gloriously, are shown as open on the 'automap', whether they're open or not. So it's the world's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Metroidvania that constantly lies to you about big huge open doors you haven't walked through, and then you find out it's actually locked/fake door #9,412 I've tried three different times over like a year and i just can't make a go of it. i wish i could. Sorry, Civvie.

i want to love this game so bad, but constantly getting lost for direction in its huge levels makes this game unplayable for me.

This is what FPS games should have evolved into. Super interactive environments, emphasis on exploration and experimentation and fast gameplay with a great soundtrack. This isn't just a good boomer shooter, this is a fantastic FPS that combines elements from classic immersive sims and shooter form the past.

Since I was a kid, my favorite sci-fi shooter was Halo. It had everything; smart AI, challenging combat, cool guns, neat lore. Best Sci-fi FPS. Halo was made by teams of hundreds of people working tirelessly for years to pull that off. I played other sci-fi FPS games, but, if anyone asked what my favorite was, it was always Halo. I never thought I'd say this, but Halo is no longer my favorite sci-fi FPS: Selaco is. Listen, putting aside the monumental accomplishment it was to get this made on what, to my understanding, amounts to a shinier DOOM engine--and it *is* an accomplishment--this game is *so cool* Firstly, the bread-and-butter of FPS games: the guns. The guns are all beautifully-modeled pseudo-3D sprite work that's so detailed I genuinely refuse to believe that someone put that much effort into every frame of their animations--seriously, if I wasn't looking at it, I would assume they just used a 3D model with the way the muzzle flashes and other light sources bounce off them. All the guns are good. I could talk about them separately, but this is going on long enough: TL;DR: you're favorite gun class is in this game and it is near-perfect and comes with a cadre of upgrades and improvements to find. Shooting's a wonderful, loud, fast, dangerous-sounding dance with your enemies. And your enemies? Their AI perfectly-tuned to give the illusion of working together to flank and out-maneuver you, meaning you have to be on your toes and listening for call-out and footsteps at all time. All this is made better by the amount of destructibles in the environment "What's destructible?" Pretty much anything that isn't nailed down: Chairs, posters. plates, paper stacks, windows, pop cans, paint cans that spay paint everywhere. Oh, and the smoke and lighting effects? Don't even get me started on how good all of those look at all the time. And the levels? The levels are the large, intricately designed wonderfully detailed spaces that actually look like people lived there at some point before the invasion; they're filled with nooks and crannies that hold all kinds of secrets for those who like exploring. And the best part? The story's optional. No long cutscenes here, you wake up in a hospital and you have to survive and if that's all you want to know, that's all you need to know. But, if you want all the juicy story and lore bits, you can find them yourself in data logs, meaning that dedicated players can piece together what happened and even reveal other secrets by reading them. At the moment there's only the one chapter out, but that one chapter is about 18-20 hours of gameplay (18 base, 20 if you get the Secret Level) and I'm telling you it's worth the $25. It's so worth it I bought it twice. Selaco has everything; smart AI, challenging combat, cool guns, neat lore. Halo is no longer my favorite Sci-Fi FPS. And I have no idea how anything else is even going to measure up to this tiny indie game made by a handful of people.

Selaco is a bit of an odd mixture of elements from different games. It has combat encounters similar to F.E.A.R., but without the slow motion. The levels are large and sprawling, feeling more like something from a (unfinished) System Shock clone. There are also Resident Evil-style safe rooms and Half-Life-style puzzles. However, those elements don’t quite come together and it feel more like the designers were ticking off a checklist than creating a thoughtful experience. The trailers make it look like a fast-paced action experience, but in reality, you spend most of your time walking or backtracking through large (and often empty) levels, searching for keys and secrets instead of fighting enemies. Combat encounters make up maybe 20–30% of the game (though they become more frequent in later levels). The art style feels oddly sterile and lifeless. Honestly, it feels like a game made by someone who watches video essays about FPS games rather than actually playing them. It is an early access game, so things may change, but the design philosophy is just kind of odd.

Woke Developer. Uses Bluesky. These people deserve less than nothing. Do not buy this game. And thanks to those of you woke losers who are upset and giving me free points via the jester icons. Thanks. Indie FPS ‘Selaco’ Devs Would Rather Sell Less Copies Than Be Associated With Your Goofy Award Show https://www.vice.com/en/article/indie-fps-selaco-devs-would-rather-sell-less-copies-than-be-associated-with-your-goofy-award-show/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “We paid for nothing. I do not even know about this show,” “The more I’m looking into this the more I want to distance myself lmao.” “When it comes to potentially damaging the brand we built from nothing? Yes, absolutely – and that’s perfectly justifiable. There’s more to my life than making money, and I’ll gladly sell fewer copies if it means not being associated with a hateful individual.” Real Game Awards Causes MELTDOWNS, Selaco Dev Calls Craig A "Harassing Grifter" In Blatant Lie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZLzhWnSus