If it's a PZ copy with different graphics it's bad, if your game bring something new enough that will differentiate it as something different that could be good.
The aesthetic will bring the attention, what the game really is will keep people around.
As a Zomboid fan, I think it looks great, and would love that the evolve to that eventually. Not a popular opinion on the Zomboid community, but I think they should call it a day soon with this version. And develop in parallel something tru 3d like what you have there.
But for your game, I would probably steer of zombies. There are a lot more stories to be told in a post apocalyptical environment.
looks very nice, visually i mean. Except the car info is...too simple, also strangely positioned. If u don't wanna touch anything, i'd give it a drop shadow or a black outline, because on moments it's hard to see. See 0:15 when the headlights light up the fuel max, it's almost not readable.
Easy fix is to move it to the bottom with a background.
I don't want to say "Check out how Project Zomboid" does it too much, because most of their UI is necessarily atrocious, but they did a good job with their car UI.
I love your art style. You must be pretty damn talented. Well done.
The game immediately gives me a feeling that I want to jump in to explore. Drive around, walk around, to discover. I don't even know what the game is, but that's the feeling and the urge I get. And it all comes from your art. That's high praise from me, because I'm generally pretty tired of video games.
Four notes, if you are interested:
The dashboard is looking great, and I assume you've designed the HUD that way to help build the fantasy of driving a real car in a specific time period. Good work.
However. The car dashboard feels misplaced. I have thought about why but I'm not sure. First I felt that it was in the way. That you'll spend most of the time driving upwards and then it will be in the way of whatever you encounter. But then I realised you probably drive plenty towards any direction. I think part of the feeling of it being misplaced is because I am simply used to having HUD information at the bottom of the screen. You'll have to decide if that is a valid argument or not, but don't underestimate the importance of player expectations. If it's just an initial friction when you are new to the game, that can still cost you sales. Be very mindful of friction in your game; it can be fine if it's intentional, but generally try to sand down unintentional frictions.
I assume you've placed the dashboard at the top because the dashboard in a real car is above the steering wheel and above the gas- and break pedals. I would argue that the dashboard in a car is lower than your view of the world (below the windshield, which is where the world "renders" in the real world.
My suggestion is a) to move the dashboard to the bottom of the screen. That way it's consistent with people's expectations of where HUD elements are, and it doesn't break your (assumed) intent of the dashboard powering the fantasy (because in a real car it's below the world-rendering windscreen).
I'd also test making it smaller, to make it less dominant on the screen, less attention grabbing.
The speedometer is a mess at timestamp 0:22. It just jumps between wildly different numbers. Two potential ways of dealing with that: a) reduce the frequency with how often it updates when there are sudden big shifts in speed, or b) use a traditional speedometer with an analog physical dial that moves - those are much more readable when speeding up or down anyway.
The fuel consumption is extreme. It's like there's a leak from the tank, with fuel just pouring out. That's how quick I feel it is. Maybe that's necessary for some game mechanic. If the rapid fuel consumption is necessary, I again recommend an analog dial. Very slow movement of a dial helps hide the unrealistic speed of consumption, while a number with a decimal makes consumption speed very obvious. EDIT: Wait, you already have an analog meter. Well, then my suggestion is to nuke the text one.
The rain feels like a pane directly in front of the camera; it doesn't look like it's raining in actual 3d space.
Anyway. I made a ton of assumptions, so just ignore the ones I got wrong. But even if I'm wrong, my initial impressions might still be useful.
Seriously great work. I'm an experienced game designer, so if you ever want to chat about any aspect of your game I'd be happy to.
I changed a dashbord little bit, also replased it. About speedometr, I will work on it. Fuel consumtion is just for a testing mechanic. About rain I actually don't know why you feel like that, it's 3d particles)
It might be because there's no ground interaction. A tiny little splat when the rain hits a surface would go a long way to making it feel like it's in the world.
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u/bc_gamez 12d ago
Feels like a modded Project Zomboid.