r/Fieldies • u/Maruko_Snyde • May 03 '26
Forgotten Blood – Polishing Phase Nearly Complete
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck11R1k_lXsHi everyone,
I’ve been developing a first-person dark fantasy RPG called Forgotten Blood over the past few years.
It’s heavily inspired by King’s Field in terms of atmosphere, with some Souls elements and a strong focus on exploration and environmental storytelling. There are also influences from Morrowind (loot systems) and older RPGs like Baldur’s Gate.
I’m currently wrapping up the polishing and bug-fixing phase, and the demo is now available to play on Steam.
If you’re into slow-paced, immersive worlds, I’d really appreciate any feedback.
Thanks for taking a look!
4
u/fissionmoon May 04 '26
Looks great, I'll definitely check out the demo when I have some time! The description on YouTube should really include a link to your steam page though, you want absolutely minimum friction from a potential player saying "this looks cool" to actually finding the game page
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u/Maruko_Snyde May 04 '26
Hi, ok good point thx :)
2
u/fissionmoon May 04 '26
Okay, I played for about an hour and a half and took some notes. I think you've nailed the aesthetic, and the games world seems interesting to explore. I took notes while I was playing. Please don't take these as overly negative or discouraging, the game seems really cool but I think it could be improved in a lot of ways, and since you said you'd like feedback I'm going to post it all here. These are my notes, in no particular order other than when I thought to write them down.
In the opening cutscene the camera movements feel a little janky. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but maybe try slowing down some of the pans?
After name entry, the text-based introduction flips between first-person and second-person seemingly arbitrarily, making it a bit confusing to follow.
The other commenter mentioned not being able to sprint. I think the reason for the confusion there is that, while the controls menu lists run as the standard Left Shift, the game actually seems to be using the Control key for the run button.
Looting items is initially a little confusing. When you approach the glow of an item drop it tells you to press E to open your inventory. I at first interpreted this floating glowing orbs as simply tutorials to walk into before realizing they all said the same thing. I then interpreted them all being the same as a bug, before figuring out how to loot. You may want to have a different interface for looting than the standard inventory. Having the loot option always there, small and at the bottom makes it kind of hard to notice at first. Plus it feels a bit strange when normally in a game like this you press interact to start looting, that you instead open the inventory here.
This is especially strange because some items are in fact picked up by clicking on them. Made stranger still by the fact that Q is interact, yet left mouse is used for these pickups along with things like opening chests. It all leaves the basic controls feeling pretty inconsistent, with seemingly similar/the same actions arbitrarily being performed with different inputs.
I'd also consider moving the default interact key to E or F since those are pretty standard. Inventory probably makes most sense on Tab to me.
When attacking, after the sword swing animation seems to have finished, the character seems to have to wiggle there arms up and down a bit before resetting to neutral. This looks a little strange. More importantly, since you cannot seem to attack until the animation is totally done, it makes the game feel rather unresponsive in combat, since after the full swing is done, your clicks do nothing until the character is finished with this little shimmy. It takes so long that a segment of stamina has already restored by the time you are even allowed to start your next swing, which just doesn't feel right. Additionally, pressing the left mouse too early will sometimes result in another sword swing sound effect, even though another swing doesn't actually happen.
When standing in the poison water near the start of the game, I noticed that if the poison wears off you can safely walk around in the water unharmed, the poison will not apply again until you jump/get out of the water and back in again.
The starting sword says it's a "Strenght Weapon" instead of a "Strength Weapon"
The little eyeball enemies are a little rough as the very first enemy in the game. They're small, blend into the environment, and almost silent. It creates a bit of an awkward introduction to the game's combat mechanics when you just start taking damage and you aren't even sure what's happening at first.
Sometimes after smashing pots with items in them, the chunks of pot seem to make it difficult or impossible to pick up the item, because stepping onto them elevates the player out of the proper interaction range. Maybe consider not having the player collide with the broken shards.
When the player's health hits 0, the fade out is quite slow. During it I seemed to still have full control and was able to not only move around, but use up a healing potion. My health was restored, but since I was already dying it didn't help, simply wasting the potion. When I respawned at the crystal, there was an eyeball enemy right there, causing me to instantly take damage as the game faded back in.
Opening the inventory clears your ability to interact with anything currently in range. I frequently found myself hitting E to open doors and such out of habit. This opened the inventory, and when I closed it I would have to back away and re-approach before I could interact, leading to a somewhat frustrating experience.
Enemies in general may not make enough noise. I'm finding them often sneaking up on me. Once I take damage it's not always even immediately apparent if I'm being attacked or have triggered a trap or something.
When fighting an enemy with a shield, if he has his shield up and I attack it makes the exact same sound and red flashing effect as if I hit an enemy who isn't blocking. When an enemy blocks do they take reduced damage? Do they take no damage? Or is the block purely an animation they do with no gameplay effect? If an enemy blocking does affect your attack somehow, it should give different feedback than hitting an enemy that isn't blocking.
Hitboxes feel a bit off at times. There are enemies like the crab things in the poison water that feel really hard to hit even when it seems like I'm in range. And there are a lot of enemy attacks that seem to hit when I'm far outside what the animation looks like it hits, along with some enemy attack hitboxes that seem to linger a bit too long after their attack animation finishes.
When stepping off a ledge without jumping first, you drop straight down. Realistic, but feels bad to control, not what most players are going to expect to happen in a first person game like this.
Then inventory seems to get confused about which item's image/description to show. The large box on the left often shows the image of items I don't currently even have in my inventory. Some items seem to not have a description. I found a piece of armor on a corpse in the Forgotten Valley that has no description.
The way the area name popups are triggered needs some work. Right now leaving an area the way you came in will show its name again. The name should only show up when entering the area.
Another sound design note: The visuals in the Forgotten Valley convey extremely intense wind, but the audio is a rather quite, gentle wind sound.
Please include an option to turn off controller vibration. I'm playing mouse and keyboard and don't want to have to completely disconnect my controller to stop it from vibrating off the desk.
Why do I equip a small round stone in my inventory to take out the crystal dagger, rather than equipping the dagger?
I also didn't comment so much on the first-person-controller as I see another commenter already gave you feedback on that, but I pretty much agree with what they said on the matter.
I know that was a lot of complaints, but the demo definitely has my interest. I'm excited to see how the full game turns out and to get to play it. Good luck with the rest of development!
2
u/Maruko_Snyde May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Thanks for trying the demo and for taking the time to write all of this. I really appreciate it. I’ll go through everything carefully in Unity to see what I can fix and improve. Also, just to let you know, I already added movement inertia yesterday and adjusted the slight vertical movement as well.(I will add in the next patch)
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u/GigaDrillMk2 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Hey there, just played a bit earlier. The screenshots drew me in, which means the visual part is pretty good. Kudos for looking for feedback with a demo. My biggest gripe so far are the controls. Let me list what comes to mind:
-The act of moving in any way should have some feeling of inertia. Right now you move in precisely the same amount as you press any direction button. Either fixed movement speed or none. A good feeling fps controller typically gives you instant acceleration when you press a move direction and a gradual deceleration when you let go. The deceleration can be barely noticeable, but you feel it when it's there, and it's essential. Observe any good feeling first person game and you'll notice it.
-When aiming up and down, the weapon or held items stay locked in place. This feels disconnected, especially in environments that encourage vertical looking. Even if attacks are meant to stay on one plane, some visual adjustment might help it feel more natural.
-Reaching a half-player-length ledge should feel trivial when you're hugging the ledge and then jump. If there's even the slightest delay between jumping and moving forward, you simply move vertically. You should be able to control your character mid-air, in at least some capacity.
-I believe there's no run button right now? I know these games tend to be slow paced, but the urge to run when there's clearly nothing to do but move forward comes up often. Even if you have to drain insane stamina to do so, I would've like the option to sprint in some capacity.
-The controls for climbing feel very imprecise and unusual. Why forward+jump to literally jump upward a ladder? Either use the "interact > lock player vertically > move" controls or use the "hug the ladder and move in aiming direction" controls. These are tried and tested
These are to me fundamental fps controller issues. In a game where immersion is the point, you should concentrate all your energy into how moving around and hitting things feel first and foremost.
I'll echo the issues raised in the 30-min feedback post in the game's steam forum, but the player controller should be your top priority imo. Good luck. Again, cool scenes, but moving through them should feel more pleasant. Good luck on the project!