So let me get this straight, this game claims to be a 90's shooter throwback and has:

-Roguelike elements
-Procedural Generation
-Blocky graphics (Retro just means blocky right?)

This really does smack of an indie dev who's trying to pander to a time period they never experienced and a fanbase they don't understand... while also making a rather ugly, unoriginal game that just makes GOG's boutique approach seem even more laughable.

Lul. No need to uplift the topic, it's meant to be used as a description of overkill.

Waiting for the game and going to buy it soon.

Not really since genocide still refers to people and homicide is only single number. Also since there are monsters homicide=/=murder so by play of the words holocaust=mass homicide here.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust is no play of words. It is one specific word for one specific historical event.

This might have the dumbest looking enemies and blood effects that I have seen, and by that, I mean not in an intentional way.

I don't think some of the criticism in this thread is really fair.

It's not some indie developer's weekend project, the game is a lot more polished than that. The music, level design, gore, graphics, and weapons are all very well thought out and generally work fairly well. The KS project showed the blocky graphics from day one, so it's not really a surprise how the game looks, they even released a demo for people to play with the Kickstarter and it more or less looked the same.

There are some cool mechanics in the game, like the ability to spray blood from enemies over acid pools to stop taking damage from them. There are a few polished little details like that that really make the game interesting to play and give you some creativity, but not much and not enough.

The way they did procedural generation actually works pretty well. They designed several rooms by hand that appear to link up randomly, which gives you some notion of what you are up against when you see a room after the 3rd or 4th time. This is a lot better than others I've played where you can have some really broken maps.

That said, I can't argue with the fact this isn't a 90's shooter in any way. It shares nearly no mechanics with shooters of that era and imposes artificial difficulty due to the limited health pickups, limited ammo pickups, few weapon choices, and an assortment of other reasons. I can't recall a 90's shooter that had procedural generation, limited ammo/health, a buildout that is more or less based around a single weapon, the previously mentioned ammo clip issue, no saving of any kind, and so many melee based enemies. It doesn't mean games of that era are flawless, so the question is whether or not STRAFE improves on that formula. IMO it does and it doesn't.

The way they manage weapons bothers me, especially. Unlike older games where your character progresses throughout the game with increasingly powerful weapons, which scales along with the enemies, STRAFE only gives you one to start with that can be modified throughout the game. The modifications are random, some are good and some really suck to use. You can pick up other weapons throughout the game, there tend to be 3-4 per level, if not more, but they are basic variants of the same 3 starting weapons and their modifications. The weapons you pick up cannot be reloaded and you cannot pick up new ammo for them, ONLY your starting weapon. In games like Doom and Quake, we had 9+ weapons to choose from, could pick up ammo for them, and manage them ourselves. STRAFE doesn't give you weapon load outs like that, probably because it would break the game balance.

I also really don't like roguelike shooters, especially when you get nothing out of death and start all over again. You spend most of your time in the first level until you oops I accidentally that grenade and have to start all over again. STRAFE gets around this by providing items you can assemble to start out in different zones, but you start out with the previously mentioned poor accuracy and no character development and on a more difficult zone. It gets repetitive and old very quickly playing the first 3 maps and then getting killed, having to start over again with nothing. It'd be one thing if it was like Immortal Redneck, where you start over with something from the prior run, but you start empty handed.

All in all, this just feels artificially difficult to me, in addition to repetitive. I'd rather we had 15 well designed maps (e.g. Doom) to play through with actual difficulties, the ability to save/restore where we are, and well balanced weapon loudouts and health/ammo pickups. Most FPS fans have played the classics over and over, despite knowing the levels like the back of their hand, so I don't buy the replayability argument here. Despite being done reasonably well, the permadeath and randomness just makes it repetitive to me. I could do with one or the other, but both just creates a situation where you end up playing the same thing over and over, even though it is mildly different.

Unfortunately, these are fundamental design choices that just can't be patched out.

I don't want to crap all over it. I like the game, it is fun, but it's not what it could have been and that's the biggest disappointment to me. I wanted to love it, but I just can't get over those few design decisions.

My impression was someone played too much minecraft, watched a Let's play video of doom, then created this game.

It's being used as a synonym and as a way to ge attention. pretty dumb, but time to stop crying about shit that happened a long time ago. I'm not crying about my whole family being sent to Siberia, am I?

Talk about the game, not about the shitty marketing/PR.

I'd rather be in 1889. :P

The game's price at $19.96 is incredible. Hahahaha.

I'll buy it when it's on sale, or when it emulates 999 AD.

It's on my wishlist despite it's (very many) marketing flaws. Genocidal comments and flawed view of the mid-90s aside (have they REALLY NOT played Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D on PCs or Virtua Cop in the arcades/Saturn or Resident Evil on consoles back then? Am I older than the developers?), as long as there's action, decent controls and the graphics don't inhibit gameplay, then I'll give it a chance. I do have to say though, that they've made so many marketing mistakes that it makes consumers like me stay on the fence asking ourselves if they even deserve our money - the "rewarding for bad behavior" argument.

I'll wait and see how sales and support looks; I might purchase it at the end of the month. There's over 50 other devs (looking at my wishlist) that seem more deserving of my money at the moment...

I can not do that. Germans get told EVERY SINGLE DAY how evil we are/were, either at school, or through TV programming. So, when someone uses this word to advertise their game I have to speak up.

Actually, holocaust being the persecutions and extermination of jews is only one definition of the word. Most definitions are related to religious sacrifices, usually by fire, and by Israelites.

http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/holocauste/40169
latin: holocaustum from greek holokaustos, holos = whole, kaustos = burned

I would bet actual real money on the developer NOT meaning the latter.

You might want to be careful. One-third of my ancesters were kicked out of their lands and sent into the desert because their land looked appealing; their water supply is about to be contaminated by oil. A second third of my ancestry was thrown on dirty, disease-ridden ships and whipped into doing others' work for over two-hundred years. We're STILL looked upon as jokes no matter what we do.

All I'm saying is that NO ONE should downplay the troubles and/or history of another race. The Holocaust WAS a freaking big deal, and so definitely was the mass exile of Russians and their neighbors into the foreboding eastern wilderness because they wouldn't kowtow to Alexander III/Nicholas II (and later the Bolshevik regime).

You ARE right about one thing - they DO need to be called out for such horrible marketing. I'll demonstrate by removing the game from my wishlist; in restrospect, they don't deserve my money.