Slak : Mech Trekking

I'm writing this review/critique in with the perspective that this a dev's first attempt at making a beginner project game for their benefit.. Not bad, not great. It could definitely shape into a promising game given more time and effort: Overall, it's a broken but ok first attempt at a game of this scale. UI: pretty bare bones, but it's functional and gets the job done. Nothing special, no pizazz, just a functional UI. It doesn't feel clunky, overbearing, or unnecessary. I would have liked to have been able to turn off screen shake. The "slider" for the frame rate adjustment isn't a slider at all, or at least it wasn't for me. A bug perhaps? I could manually type in the frame rate, but I was not able to slide it like the interface design language implied to me. I would definitely make the tutorial level optional. I'm also not sure if the mission select screen is bugged or not. I think there is only one mission per stage, and if that's the case, then the mission select screen is bugged and will only show up to stage 3 for me and I have to play through all missions from that point forward even if I've beaten them. The layout seemed very on-par for a mech game, but it lacked any …

If I just have one thing to say about this one is that it feels like the McDonalds toy version of MechWarrior. This would be one of the most intriguing titles for a game that would randomly appear on my screen while scouring the 'mech' section on Steam, 'Slak: Mech Trekking.' Whenever my internal monologue reads this one it takes on the voice of an aging and gruff southern trucker. SLAK MECH TREKKIN'. Now I'm not quite too sure what exactly a SLAK is at this point but because mech media really doesn't like to use the term mech in universe I'm running on the assumption that these big machines of war are called SLAKs. Like the pants. Maybe because they have legs instead of wheels. The game boots to an ominously silent main menu. Simple boops establish button presses as the dark light of the background is filtered through your cornea, preparing the brain behind for some sort of action packed future sequences. We make our way through the settings menu to establish confirmation that this game understands that our hardware is ready for ultra graphics settings. The sound settings are checked but the input menu is only glanced at as we can't hold back the anticipation to start. Level 1. T…

For $3.89 CAD, I'm not gonna complain, I pay more for coffees. But man this is spare. It could use "more" in just about every department, but again, for this price tag it's juuuust about fair. Gets a thumbs up as encouragement to the dev. Players: just be aware this is TOTALLY barebones.

I hate to give someone's first attempt at a game a negative review, but I can't recommend this game. Let's start with the lesser of my gripes. There is no reason to run any weapon setup other than four gatling guns. They deal the most damage, have infinite ammo, and do not overheat. Given that this is a single-player game, I could forgive the complete lack of balance if that was the only flaw. Unfortunately, it's not. You literally cannot progress past mission 10. There are 2 turrets that do not count towards mission progress when destroyed. Since the Steam page lists 15 missions, that means that the last 1/3 of the game is unplayable. If the dev fixes it so that the game can actually be completed, I will happily change my review to positive. What I could play of it was fun.