The Core Decay Announce Trailer has been out for a few days now, and I’m really excited to see the responses it has evoked! For those who have not seen it yet, check it out here:

It’s been really interesting reading all the feedback on the trailer on Twitter, Reddit and YouTube. Here’s a few observations I’ve made:

It conveyed the atmosphere well . . .

Right off the bat I received a lot of praise regarding the overall atmosphere, environments, and music, and I think the trailer ended up communicating the overall mood of the game in an effective manner.

Showing off the most complete aspects of the game – the level environments and overall aesthetics – I think was a good choice, and considering that the game itself is very much a vertical slice I think it managed to show a wide enough variety of locations and moods despite the small amount of assets currently completed.

. . . but the gameplay poorly

One reoccurring piece of feedback that this trailer has received is that the combat comes across as too slow-paced and not particularly interesting. This is of course a problem and I think the feedback itself is fair – it’s definitely an issue of the trailer miscommunicating the style of gameplay that the game actually contains.

This is a topic worthy of further analysis, so allow me to dig a bit deeper into how Core Decay handles combat:

Combat in Core Decay

When looking at older FPS games (and newer ones for that matter), there are two main directions that these games take in terms of combat:

Fast-paced, reflex-driven, player skill based combat as seen in games like Doom or Quake. In these games, the primary appeal of the combat is the excitement of making split-second decisions, use your innate skill at aiming, reacting and responding to changing threats, and just the overall exciting audiovisual experience of intense combat. This is certainly the most immediately recognizable approach, and more modern games such as Doom 2016 executes it with perfection. When done well, this can be a high-adrenaline experience like no other.

Slower-paced, methodical, resource-based combat more commonly seen in immersive sims such as Deus Ex or System Shock. In this case the appeal isn’t so much in reflexes or aim, but rather how you approach encounters before they have even begun. Player resources are limited – you rarely have as much ammo, health, armor etc. as you need – and the challenge is one of exploring the levels and making choices on how to approach things in a way that lets you complete the level without depleting these resources. Combat is just as frequently something you choose to avoid as something you choose to engage in, and the risk of losing a battle and having to retreat is also a risk of losing valuable ammunition or health.

It should be emphasized that this is a spectrum – most games apply a bit of each, with the extremes (e.g. Doom 2016 and Deus Ex) focusing more strictly on one or the other. Some games such as Unreal 1 or Descent lie somewhere in the middle – action-filled combat, yes, but also mixed up with longer periods of atmospheric exploration and making a mental picture of the levels as part of the gameplay challenge.

Among recent games that specifically market themselves as “retro shooters” or similar terms, virtually all of them have focused much more on the former, with a great emphasis on super fast-paced combat and adrenaline-filled experiences. This is not a bad thing, and a lot of these games do it super well and are a joy to play – but the reason I bring it up is that it shapes players’ expectations on what they will get out of these kind of games.

Core Decay, on the other hand, leans more towards the second approach. Resources are limited and finite, levels are sprawling and complex, and the core challenge of the game lies less in the combat difficulty and more in the strategy of how to make it through a level using limited tools at your disposal. Exploring the facilities, finding alternate access routes, sneaking up on enemies or finding ways to bypass encounters entirely are all a large part of the experience, and the overall game aesthetic and storyline also reinforce this focus on exploration over combat.

That’s not to say that combat is viewed as an oversight or in any way less important – but the role of it is as a tool to facilitate meaningful level-wide decisions rather than being the most prominent aspect of the game. As a result, combat is a bit slower paced, with a greater emphasis on pre-engagement strategizing (can I sneak up on these enemies first? Are there environmental hazards I can make use of? Could I bypass these enemies entirely?).

Which brings me to the point of all this…

A weakness of the Announce Trailer is that it did not show combat in this context at all. Given the presentation of the game, it’s assumed to be a high-octane, fast-paced shooter like most other similar-looking games out there, and so when the combat shown is fairly simplistic, it misrepresents the gameplay loop. Even knowing the premise of “the combat is supposed to be slower-paced” that doesn’t really say anything on its own and all it does is ask further questions of why the combat is slower-paced and what purpose it serves.

Of course the combat is still far more simplistic than the final product will be – it’s an alpha version after all – but even so it’s important to present things in the proper context.

When viewed within the other systems of the game – the level exploration, player cybernetic upgrades and leveling system, weapon upgrades, secret routes, storyline presentation and so on – the way the combat is presented is far more representative of what it’s trying to achieve. Unfortunately I realized after the case that the trailer doesn’t really do any of this.

It’s something I will definitely take to heart and future trailers will put a greater emphasis on presenting these systems rather than just show a few seconds of direct combat engagements.

Altogether, this trailer has been a great learning experience on how to frame things in the proper context and I’m very grateful for all the feedback I have received!

Until next time!