Undertow Games Forum

So the abridged version of this post is: The tutorial is bad, you should feel bad for making it, and I feel bad for playing it. So please remove it.

Now the long story.

A friend showed me the download page for this nifty new game called Barotrauma. "Inspired by SS13? Oh this should be good." I thought as I went to the game's forum. "Wait. These are the guys that made containment breach?! Oh now I have to try this!" So knowing that the game's vision would be amazing, and the quality was assured. I downloaded it, installed it, updated it. And then ran the tutorial...

Darkness. Firstly the tutorial is very buggy at the start with 3/4ths of the time your character is trapped in perpetual darkness. Now. If a curious player such as myself is lucky enough to avoid this bug. Well, they're still stuck trying to get through a glitches, poorly executable ingame tutorial. It's not that the idea was bad! Lord knows games like these need a hand holder for new players. It's just.... It doesn't work with the engine. Especially when you don't understand it. Key points being trying to figure out how a diving mask works, placing oxygen tanks into the mini inventory slot, and placing it where your ear piece goes. All while drowning. Or! How the submarine inexplicably stops when the big baddie shows up. Only to start again once you've sealed off the navigation room. Leaving your submarine scrapping against rocks and flooding everything else.

Tutorials are like first impressions. and while frantically learning how a game works while everything falls to pieces is great youtube fodder. it doesn't do new players much good. I still haven't finished the tutorial, and with how miserably burnt out and disenfranchised it's made me. I probably never will. I still want to get to know the game and play it. But I'll use the wiki and the forums for all my learning needs. And, until the tutorial can be ironed out for a friendly greenhorn experience. I recommend it's removed and replaced with a link to said wiki.

Either way. I love the game's premise, the idea, the influences, and the men and women who are working to make all those a reality. So best of luck, hope to see you catch lightning in a bottle once again!

Tutorial seems to be a basic placeholder to me anyway and I doubt that it is finished.

Game is version 0.5.3.2. Does this look like finished to you?

If you have ever seen versions before, you will know this indicates a product still in development. Issues are bound to be found. I mean, yeah, the tutorial's a bit too hard right now, true. But this is an early product, and of course there will be issues.

Try playing singleplayer campaign or multiplayer whenever a server's up. The game will look better then.

Marios wrote:Game is version 0.5.3.2. Does this look like finished to you?

If you have ever seen versions before, you will know this indicates a product still in development. Issues are bound to be found. I mean, yeah, the tutorial's a bit too hard right now, true. But this is an early product, and of course there will be issues.

That doesn't mean he's not entitled to having a bad first impression. Being in alpha doesn't make a product immune to criticism.

Ya this tutorial is definitely bad, had to use the debug menu to "fix everything". See, when I finally ended that big bad's life and figured out how to remove the water from the sub, I was stuck because I could not repair the engine which was damaged, and even though I had the means to repair it, I apparently didn't have the skill set to do it. I used the debug menu to fix the engine, and when I finally reached the end tutorial I couldn't figure out how to end the tutorial proper...

The game works perfectly enough, and have only had a few glitches, the game however is very much unfinished, and I do believe the tutorial is a rough draft at best for what Undertow is trying to accomplish.

Finally, I cannot wait to see if a clown class is added to this game. XD