Because if you do you should check this out.

http://www.wrackgame.com/

I'm a bit hesitant about the price at the moment, it looks like its going to be $10 pre-order price (probably $15ish for final game) and has a similar release model to MineCraft, you can play it as its being developed when you pre-order.

But the thing that gets me is the pre-order price of $10 and it looks like there is only going to be one 10 level episode in the final version, with a planned 3 episode total. This means you are basically paying $1 a level. I am not sure its going to be quite good enough to justify that price, but damn if it doesn't look fun.

Their forum looks pretty lonely, you guys oughta join up and inspire them!

Also Bobby Prince, the guy that did the sound track to Doom 1 and 2 is also totalyl doing the soundtrack to this game!

I personally don't like wrack from what I see...

But that might aswell be a biased opionion because you said it was like doom... And I dislike Doom... O_o

Hmm, I heard about this a while back. I don't know, I can see how it might seem like it has some doom features, but it just doesn't really seem like it has the Doom things I want. The art style just looks too plain and where's the evil? Doom with robots? I liked the demons...
Still looks like it could be cool game.

That's terrible logic. How do you put a price on something that could be a game you enjoy for years? How much would you value each page in your favorite book? If it's something that you really enjoy and keep coming back to, how many copies of "BattleOps: War Figher" is it worth?
Will it give you more enjoyment than $10 worth of pizza?

Why you little!
Ok, jokes aside, why don't you like Doom? I'm not trying to say you're wrong, I honestly would like to know what is wrong with it.
This is because I do like Doom and have invested a lot in similar designs, so I am eager hear what could be wrong. I want to see if I am overlooking something obvious and someone who isn't biased towards Doom could have a useful perspective. So, let's have it!

Ooooh Myyyyy Gooood!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, its a small team, self published. Content is lacking probably due to that. Their focus is core game play though rather than art I guess. It does leave something to be desired though.



That's the very question DC. Its $10 and there isn't a whole lot to it. The price I put on something I enjoy for years is exactly what I can buy it for. Its not like I could or would sell that enjoyment back, so that has no monetary value. However I do know how much money I put into it and I know I wouldn't have the chance of enjoyment from it if I didn't pay that very real price of the game.

I have nothing solid to really judge it by (other than Price vs. Content). And this is speculation anyways, you focus on how its poor logic under the assumption that it will be great, I focus on if my $10 is going to be well spent.

It could be the damn best 10 levels I ever played and totally worth $10. Or it could be a piece of crap better spent on a damn tasty pizza. I don't know. I personally think it will be great, and either way I will buy it when the pre-orders are available (May 25th btw).

But those 10 levels better be damn good for the price. Or it has a great modding community and is something I can really get into modding to offset the rather high price for relatively lean content.

It's not your fault, or any Doom players fault, it's just that I dislike the style. I know, back then it was the most awesome available but nowadays I personally just find it ugly. No real 3D, pixelated, ... I'm just not into retro-gaming. That's all.
And keep in mind that I just state my opinion, I'm not saying that everyone should be the same opinion.


I might be wrong, but to my experience overpriced games (1$ for each level is probably slightly overpriced... xD) show that their producers just care for the money and not for the community.
And it might be the case that Wrack never really gets a solid community and ends up like SPORE or Paraworld (<- I doubt you ever heard of that awesome game lol), with the developers going bankrupt and the company being gobbled up by one of the giants of the branch. Then, a few years after you will probably find this game on a bargain table for 1$ as the video game store tries to make as much money off those copies that they invested money in they can't get back now because the game didn't sell well...

But this is just a worst-case scenario, it might aswell get a huge community! I mean, who knows?

I just doubt it attracts enough players from the Doom scene to get as well known as Doom itself.

So, I support Xavious' approach to value something - and games in particular - to how the money will be spent. Who would want to give money to rogues, even if they can produce an awesome game? If you'd know they engaged in drug affairs using your very money, I'm sure you wouldn't want to buy a game by them, no matter how awesome it is. (<- blatant example just for pointing out the argument)

Wrack seems a bit of a odd one to me. On one side, a Doom style game! On the other, the theme/setting and art is not what i'd go for. Often times, when people talk about how great Doom was/is, they neglect the content (Demons, cybernetic mutations, the tech vs gothic architecture, etc). That made Doom really great, and it's one of the few things that can still be taken away from it today.

@Baryonyx: Did you ever play Doom when it came out, or at least around the time? I can definitely see why you wouldn't want to play it now (I could never play a game now that was released 20 years ago that I didn't play then.. mostly)

I greatly enjoyed Doom back in the day and it certainly is still one of the best and most unique art styles you'll find, so it's good, but to me, it's no longer great...

These days I like games with depth, Doom was fun hacking and slashing and good gameplay, but it lacked depth, you would do the same things over and over and over, and nothing would really change as you went...

I think I could only enjoy it in co-op these days, much like Left4Dead is the same, call me crazy but I'm not much of a fan of repetitive singleplayer games anymore, the gameplay needs to be more varied I think...

I don't think the game is vastly overpriced, and particularly not to the point where I would think the developers are in it only for the money. This is made by the guy that made Skulltag after all, which has an incredibly strong community for Doom MP. He just wants to be able to eat.

I think the lack of multiplayer means there won't be a huge amount of Doom players (or more specifically Skulltag) that will migrate to Wrack, but I don't think there was ever any illusion that it'd be as immensely popular as Doom. That's a high bar to reach.



Er...what? I don't care what they do with my money, but considering this is a preorder I will be getting, its safe to assume the money will be put into developement of the game. I am only concerned that my money will be well spent on a quality product.

Err... I probably have misunderstood something there... anyways, I would not say that this pre-order price makes it obvious that the money will be spent on developing. I understand that they have to put the price high at the beginning for they don't know how much will be bought to finance their company... Still, if they would put more effort into development, like creating more levels, deeper gameplay aspects and stuff (-> black eagles argument) which would attract more fans. Just putting an editor into it and write "Unlimited possibilities!" on it just does not do the job to my opinion.



That is probably the reason...

I got a response from the guy and he is going to figure out some way for preorder customers to get a discount or compensation for the 2 other episodes, so that's a bit of reassurance to me.

But honestly I would hate to see them add more to the gameplay just so it has more depth. As long as the combat they got is solid, even if simple and reptitive, there's a good chance I will enjoy it. I play Doom still because I love its simplicity and the actual combat. I will replay the same levels over and over again because it just had that right formula that prevents it from getting boring on me.

But yeah, throwing in an editor and the promise of lots of user made mods and maps is not a very good tactic. The forums are not actuve despite the fact that people will be able to play the preorder later this month. Not a very good outlook for a modding community.

But still, I am optimistic.

For those of you who like Doom, I recommend playing a little bit of this.

http://wolfenstein.bethsoft.com/game_NA.php

IIRC, Wolfenstein 3D is still forbidden in Germany... O_o

I was never fan of wolf 3d, the first FPS that bought me in the genre was doom, who have a lot more complex level design and then Duke Nukem 3D who brought the right formula for single player first person shooters in the table.

Ok, I see. I guess it depends on how much of a risk $10 is to the individual person, especially when you know nothing about the product and it's a pre-order.

I suppose I'm just responding to the seemingly pervasive notion that games should all be $1 or something stupid. I don't want a world where everybody just makes $1 iphone games. I want people to make games that are worth $50.

Oh, that's good. I wouldn't really consider the pixelation and ancient engine part of what I think is Doom's style. I haven't played it with the original renderer in more than 10 years. I run it with a much more modern engine so it has proper controls and mouselook and a modern renderer. What I liked was the demonic and tech themes and the cool monsters and weapons. I liked that it isn't too serious and they put in things that would make a fun game instead of sticking to more realistic designs.
The game design we have been working on is somewhat inspired by Doom's dark, demonic, sci-fi themes and action heavy combat, but will use all the modern advancement you'd expect. What it won't use is the modern ideas of hand-holding gameplay and cardboard pop-ups with AKs for enemies.

I'm not saying you have a wrong opinion, I just wanted to understand your opinion in greater depth because it is relevant to my game design understanding.

What is this "depth" of which you speak? You surely can't mean depth in combat because few modern games have even the depth of Doom's combat.

Yeah, that's all I'm saying. I personally think it will be worth $10, but I still have some reservations. I will be getting it as soon as I can though.



Nah, not that at all. A game with ten levels can be worth $10, but generally speaking it has to polish those ten levels a hell of a lot harder than if it cost like $5.



The only game I thought to have more combat depth than Doom is Brutal Doom. Its got all sorts of elements to it, yet it has that certain amount of simplicity to make it all work as one smooth, streamlined, almost natural feeling combat.

The thing is that due to the modern "free-stuff for all" - mentality a game that wants to be sold for 50$ got to offer A LOT. Otherwise players will find it too expensive and you'll soon find it cracked on sites offering pirated stuff. In my opinion, 45$/€ should be the absolute top if you aren't having some uber-revolutionary stuff of awesomeness in your game.


I have nothing against the design, but I demand a certain standard concerning graphics. Something looking like (the original) Doom is just too ugly and boring for me to watch or even play for long so I wouldn't want to analyse the style either...

And as a result, we get a million games that cost $1 and are worth $0 or less.

Yes, that stuff, lets have that stuff.

I agree. I guess I was lucky to see Doom when it was the best looking thing there was so I got to see it a bit deeper. Heh, it's lucky we can revive these crazy old ideas like "challenging gameplay" and modern gamers will think it's new and revolutionary.

No, the combat is fine, and as you say full of depth in it's mechanics, but the rest of the game isn't, it's about little more than constantly dodging and shooting enemies in level after level that don't REALLY change much, I just think the game would be better with more to it, like some puzzles, or maybe some sort of more varied mechanics outside of combat...

Think how much more depth Diablo has than Doom, Diablo has 4 wildly different acts, each changes a lot during it, the monsters change a lot, there are more choices, the maps are random, there are characters to hear stuff from, special bosses, crazy goings on(like the Cairn stones), and there are things to collect... That's what I consider depth, more than meets the eye within the first 2 levels of play...

However doom isn't meant to be a game with 'Depth' as I see it, that's what makes it great at what it does, it's just not the kind of game I generally go for anymore, I'm not much into, ooh combat mechanics this, and mechanics that, and how many enemies you have to dodge at once. Some sort of time to take in the more artistic and leisurely side of a game would be good...

It really depends about what we are talking about here
Most FPS nowadays doesn't have any kind of melee combat, it's just press a button when you reach the correct distance and the enemy is dead.
However gun shooting have evolved a bit more positively, your guns reload in various ways, the accuracy is determined by recoil and movement / posture, projectiles can have realistic balistics at some point and even wall penetration is managed, even if it's not common, explosives can destroy parts of the environment, mostly in more recent games.
Player movement have somewhat evolved positively even if I blame the developers to make the falling damage being often too high and the lack of jumping in certain games ... but actually some games took example from mirror's edge which is positive IMO.
Damage system is often better with better hitboxes and at least damage bonus for hitting the head.
The only thing I blame actually is the abuse of using regenerating health in most games which simplifies too much the health management and force people to poo behind crates instead of forcing a bit more of creativity.
The last thing and is that the level design is too much lazy and made of a corridor to force completely the player to follow that damn route and give no other option to the player than that.
Providing no gameplay at all.
I could complain about games like wolf 3d or even corridor 7 for having some kind of confusing level design, but at least they had alternate routes and paths to explore, and its certainly more interesting than following a boring line.

On a completely tangental topic, I'd like to say that I certainly like Quake. I've been playing through it again this week and I forgot how much fun it was. Those darn jumpy guys and lightning guys are a pain to kill though.

I've been having a lot more fun dodging lightning bolts and firing away with my rocket launcher than I have popping out of cover to shoot terrorists in the Middle East.

Hahaha, I'm not surprised, terrorists answering to their 'call of duty' are so overdone, whereas jumping away from lightning bolts with a rocket launcher is not..

Exploding your enemies with explosives never gets old

It did have a few things outside of combat, like navigation, secrets and exploring, resource management (more-so than the facade of resources management in most RPGs) and it had tactics. Your input and thinking in the game actually matters. Of course Doom is ancient, so much of this stuff is diluted by the ease of the game now. You should give the ZPack and BrutalDoom a go, that has levels that change a lot and a real challenge.
Doom's monsters also have more color (not necessarily visual, but that too) than most modern game monsters, I mean remember the Pain Elemental, the Cacaodemon, the Archvile, the Arachnotron, the Mancubus and of course the Cyberdemon and Siperdemon.

Ok, Diablo did have lots of good atmosphere and four awesome different locations and some awesome graphics like you'd expect from a much newer game. I guess there being a few story events as you went did help add to the world building, they just didn't really change anything.
Beyond that, I don't think it had that much depth. It was extremely repetitive, much more than Doom, and there was very little input involved. Your fate is mostly in the hands of the numbers and has much less to do with tactics or your input. Despite there being many different monsters, they all behave the same. Your tactics for fighting them never change.
There are choices in Diablo? Granted, Doom didn't have many big choices either.
I'm less decided on Diablo 2's loot system. It is nice to find something more powerful and the lure of there potentially being something out there, but the churn of the loot sell, repeat cycle has been distilled so much that it feels too much like an exploited mechanic and not part of the world or atmosphere.
The NPCs / characters were mostly quite boring, listening to Cain drone on and on and on wasn't too much fun. The characters never did anything and certainly didn't have much depth, neither mechanically or character wise. Some were cool, like Gheed, Geglash, Hratli and Alkor, but most of the rest were unconvincing sign posts that talked. I'm not saying it was bad, just there wasn't much to it. Most other RPGs are much worse. Diablo 2 is still one of my favorite games.

I do love the art and content in games (that's also a massive reason why i liked Doom), but I guess I'm also looking for something with a bit of intensity, where the player's input (button pressing, but especially mental) has an impact.

Doom does lack a lot of things, especially in the modern context, but I do see that it still contains the sparks of a few forgotten things that, if revived, redone and developed, could be really awesome in a new game! Particularly if mixed with a few concepts from games like Diablo and the many others that have come since.

I agree Diablo 2 didn't have that much outside of simply hacking and slashing, so I shall put forth Dungeon Siege 2 as a better example, again, Doom's combat for an FPS is excellent, and although there are some secrets and some slight changes in the levels and art styles, it doesn't do enough different things to say it has 'Depth', at least in my opinion..

Dungeon siege 2, combat was decent(when you could get the mouse on the target you wanted), but the rest of the game is what I really liked, it had lots of proper secrets, mysteries, PUZZLES!, and some interesting characters, although I didn't care much for most of them.. But it's hard to pin this down...

FYI guys, Wrack is a hell of a lot of fun. Buy it now. Er, buy it Friday. And love it. Or else?

Hey guys, WRACK IS OUT NOW!

This game is fun. You should all buy 5 copies of it. Right. Now.