Spy DNA alpha demo available to download

[shysnake]

The free alpha demo is now available to download via https://rpgmaker.net/games/8985/

Spy DNA is a tactical squad RPG that combines turn-based game mechanics with realistic combat simulation.

The game plays about 70 years in the future, and the player controls a squad of genetically-enhanced superspies  with unique talents.

When the genetic enhancement research is stolen from the lab, it is your character's task to recover it and prevent a rogue nation from creating an army of super-soldiers. In the course of the game, you will face a variety of baddies, such as endangered animal traffickers, unethical researchers, and rogue military organizations.

We are greatly inspired by the great RPGs of the past that made the genre popular in the first place, such as XCOM and Jagged Alliance.

Please try our game and let us know what you think!

-- Alex and Jason

[Jubal]

Just downloaded and had a first look

It's very pretty stuff, the backstory is well presented which wins a lot of points from me, the dialogue trees are all good, and I'll definitely have another look and try to get more used to it later. I really like the quiz-based character generation system, and everything has a neat and consistent look and feel, so good job

Initial feedback thoughts: the game was quite demanding on my laptop (1yr old mid-range HP gaming laptop, so it should be able to handle most modern games) - it took a while to load, the fan was working overtime, and a lot of things like camera movement were a tad slow rather than smooth. Pathfinding seemed to be taking a while to optimise and my character did spend some time walking into boxes. Also for whatever reason the fullscreen didn't seem to remove the bottom windows bar on my machine which cut off part of the interface a bit awkwardly. Other than that, I felt the main thing was needing to walk the player through a lot of it.  I guess maybe partly I'm just not all that familiar with the genre so I might not have known things or controls that were meant to be obvious, but I felt like I was blundering around rather at the start, and when I tried a first easy mission (the Oxalana one) I was really lost, found two guys, punched them, and then kept wandering around in confusion until I gave up. How to cancel move orders (if say I accidentally clicked in the wrong place), and how to work out combat, weren't obvious. Maybe stop players starting real missions until they've done more walked-through tutorial stuff?

[shysnake]

Thank you for downloading and trying the demo Jubal!

First things first, we really appreciate your constructive and clear feedback! This is what makes our dev hearts all warm

Also glad you like the look-and-feel. Being a two-person team, we've had to buy a lot of off-the-shelf assets, and also make a few ourselves, and we did our best to make it all look consistent.

We understand that the game is not yet optimized, and we haven't yet built all the settings to help with performance yet. It is definitely on our to-do list, and soon!

We'll be putting newer versions of the demo into the same Google Drive folder, so if you like you can bookmark it We'll be including the packaging date in the name of the ZIP file.

• Frame-rate issues will be helped if you turn off the body-cam (lower left corner of screen) -- Hit Ctrl+Tab for that
• You can also set resolution and/or quality a bit lower in the "Settings" menu accessible from the main loading screen.
• Pathfinding/nav: The demo uses UE4's native pathfinding, but we'll be improving on that over the next few weeks. This should help both with the nav building times, and with the characters running into things.
• Windows task bar: While it's not obvious, the game is running in windowed mode. In the main menu (when you first load the game), click on "Settings" and make sure that "Fullscreen" is checked. Click "Apply" and that should resolve this. I will add this to the known issues list http://shysnake.boards.net/thread/5/demo-issues-read-before-reporting.

Camera controls, pause, and combat are fairly complex, so I made a video to show how they work:

We'll be working on making both the tutorial and the first missions more clear. In particular, we're already working on highlighting quest items and locations, so that you know where to go once you have completed your quest (if getting to a particular location is part of the mission). In Oxalana's map you're supposed to get her and yourself to the blue SUV.

Anyways, keep your feedback coming, so we can make Spy DNA into an awesome game!
Thank you,
Alex

[Jubal]

Great I'll see if I can play with the settings more at the weekend maybe.

Also, this thread has been featured in Exilian's lil' monthly newsletter which we're tweeting out & putting on FB at the moment!
http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5082

[shysnake]

"In an immersive, beautifully rendered setting" -- I'm blushing. Thank you!

And thank you for including us in the newsletter. We're super-invested in making this game as good as possible, so feedback is very important.

[Jubal]

No problem! We're always happy to put things in the newsletter, when the whole thing runs a bit more smoothly I can look into talking to our twitch-streaming team too - basically for social media plugs and stuff we just operate on the principle of sharing what people post (and generally sharing them more the more they stick around), we avoid putting any projects in the newsletter in consecutive months to ensure everyone gets space but other than that we try and get people's latest dev updates in

[shysnake]

So, we've just flipped the switch on our Greenlight page. I started a new thread for that, because that seemed like a big enough deal. I won't be making new threads until Early Access, and then later the Full release. Hope this is okay.

Here are our trailers:

We're already ten percent there, so every vote helps.

[Jubal]

Upvote given!

[Wishart]

Now that we're through Steam Greenlight, we're working on the Early Access release, which will include more characters and missions.

Spy DNA looks like a project. I hope it all goes well and can be developed into a full game.

[shysnake]

Now that we're through Steam Greenlight, we're working on the Early Access release, which will include more characters and missions.

[Jubal]

Great stuff Are you mostly working on building up assets rather than engine/gameplay stuff at the moment then, or developing both in tandem?

[shysnake]

Both:

• Working with freelancers on asset creation and voice acting
• Transferring dialog into the game from the script for the missions to be included in Early Access
• Working on code for procedural mission generation
• And miscellaneous game engine improvements all over the place

[Jubal]

Awesome If you want any freelance proofreading, text editing, or any voice acting with a southern English accent, give me a shout, I'm currently available for freelance work!

[joelwilliams]

Now that we're through Steam Greenlight, we're working on the Early Access to crazy bulk anvarol https://www.fitnessdonkey.com/....anvarol-anavar-review release, which will include more characters and missions.

Spy DNA looks like a project. I hope it all goes well and can be developed into a full game.

I just played the game on steam greenlight and the graphics are awesome. Just wanted to have a look at the demo version too.

[vindaksi]

Now that we're through Steam Greenlight, we're working on the Early Access to crazy bulk https://diets-usa.com/crazy-bulk-reviews/ release, which will include more characters and missions.

Spy DNA looks like a project. I hope it all goes well and can be developed into a full game.

Spy DNA is a great project!