DELTARUNE : Chapter Rewritten~Scampton Game

this game SUCKS

Give us the actual game

Look. I'm going to assume this is a Real project that is being teased through this. This is quite a lot of effort for a throwaway tease and the title screen suggests that this is a "Demo".

I think that a Five Nights at Ice-E's is a concept that has a LOT of potential, and I think that the visuals at least are pretty well put together! I want to be clear I'm not trying to hate here and I am saying all of this because I legitimately want a Five Nights at Ice-E's game to be good. I am going to be harsh here, because I want to see this be the best it can be.

...Here's the thing. The actual gameplay... kind of blows. Like, conceptually, I think there's a lot of problems here that would need to be addressed for an actual game.

For starters- You can die during the phone call. In basically all FNAF Games, you're basically "safe" until at least a BIT into the Phone Call on Night 1. This is kind of important to how these games start because it gives the player time to acclimate themselves to the controls and get a feel for what exactly they're dealing with. The animatronics here are quite active, especially for a Night 1, and give you basically no time to do anything. I died several times before even getting to the end of the phone call, which amounted to having zero actual information in it. I assume in the "real" game there would be a more legitimate tutorial, but I cannot emphasize enough how important that "grace period" is to the feel of a game like this. Suddenly dying while you're still trying to figure out what your office even looks like and what tools you have doesn't feel fun at all.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly- The actual mechanics at play here just aren't very interesting. At its core, FNAF is a resource management game. In FNAF 1, this means managing your power. In FNAF 2, this means managing your flashlight battery, mask usage, and music box. In FNAF 3, this means managing your audio lures (you have a set number before it breaks!) and your maintenance tasks. In FNAF 4, there is no strict resource, but the game counterbalances this by functionally making your resource "time". It's a commitment to move up to a door in that game, and so going to a door when you don't need to is a waste of valuable time.

There is basically no resource in this game. It seems you have infinite flashlight power, meaning there is no reason to not constantly be checking everywhere. You have a door you can close, but you can close it at any* time, and there's no reason to not have it closed always as far as I could tell. You have a camera system, but there is quite literally no reason to ever use it as far as I could tell and given how fast the animatronics move to you, actually trying to track their movement is pointless. Even if you wanted to, all the animatronics are clearly visible in the office, and it's way easier to just react to their presence than it is to try and predict when they'll show up- Why predict when it won't help you?

It seemed to me there were three threats- One who acted like Foxy and needed to be flashed repeatedly, one who actually enters your office and must be warded off with the "mask", and one who attempts to enter through the right-hand door. The problem is that all 3 of these are reactionary threats and they generally do not interfere with each other. You can shine your light while covering your face, and it seems the only action you *can't* take while your hand is up is to close the door, but since you can always have the door closed, this doesn't really matter. The door occasionally does open up on its own but this is really just one more thing to occasionally "do".

I feel like the biggest overall issue I would highlight here is that in downtime there's nothing you "should" be doing- and it doesn't particularly feel tense to not be doing anything. You kind of just spend the entire night waiting for something to happen, and then you do one of the three responses.

Compare this to, say, FNAF 2- You have to constantly manage the Music Box, but this is risky because doing this requires you to be in your camera, which means you can't check the lights, which means Foxy could punish you for being in the cameras- Or any other animatronic could suddenly be in your office. But spending too much time in the office means you're not winding the box, so you have to manage both time in the cameras and time in the box.

(As a bit of a counterexample- FNAF 1 is weaker at this since you don't really need to do anything in the cameras beyond use them occasionally, but given how slow the animatronics are, and given that it's the first game in the series, the player is much more likely to "properly engage" with the camera mechanic, which means it gets away with this way more than it otherwise would.)

I thought "Oh it's a april fools joke" Then when the post came out i was like "No way! It's real!" Then I downloaded it and was like "Oh okay its fnaf but imma beat this anyway."

Fun fact! This joke was so funny that I’ve been laying motionless on my bed for thirty minutes.