Sub0ptimal

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Great movement. Simple graphics. The gun is a bit hard to aim when moving, most notable when grappling. Also possible to get softlocked in the "safe" room. 9/10 and a spot of tea lmao

A game with one of my favorite mechanics, graplinghooks, also wallrunning. It has a nice story, small but it's there. Portal, but more of a movement fps with puzzles (actually a box and large button). The game mechanic and levels has challenge and can be mastered. It even has a sandbox for just enjoying the grapling and running around, and an arena with that but also has enemies to shoot. Get it, play it a bit, and have fun. Thx Devs! And I've seen the dev room..

the voice actors delivery on the "w-watch out there might be lazers!!" line was phenomenal

Sub0ptimal is a really fast little FPS, and I liked how aggressively it focuses on movement. I play as a test subject thrown into a simulation where standing still basically means death, so the game immediately pushes me to run, grapple and shoot my way through the environment. The whole thing feels like a strange combination of a speedrun challenge and a compact action game. Movement is easily the strongest mechanic. Wall running, grappling and parkour give me plenty of ways to move through the levels, and I enjoyed learning how to combine them without losing momentum. The game feels much better once I stop thinking of it as a normal shooter and start treating movement as the main weapon. The gunplay is simple, but it fits the movement focused design. I am not expected to slowly clear rooms from a safe position. Instead, I am encouraged to stay mobile while dealing with enemies and moving toward the end of each stage. I liked that because the combat feels more energetic than a typical small indie FPS. The strange simulation setting also gives the game some personality. There is an underlying mystery about what is actually happening to the test subject, and I enjoyed picking up …

[quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop][b]Warning: AI Slop[/b][/url] This game is partially or completely made with talentless, soulless AI generated content, in this case text to speech.[/quote] "Sub0ptimal" is a student project self-published on Steam Direct. Student projects might look better than amateur shovelware (in this case it doesn't), but they aren't real games. This is just a glorified homework assignment. It lacks the depth and value you get from professionally developed product because it was made for a grade, not for players. Schools, colleges and universities shouldn't be using Steam to show off student projects. It might be fine for the school's marketing, but it clutters the Steam store with pollution... we have to sort past all these short student tech demos just so we can find real, full games from professional developers. This is a case of a game dev college putting its own interests before the interests of gamers. The students looked around at all the various games available on Steam, well over a hundred thousand games, and decided to make and publish one that is worse. This one blends the tired and overdone parkour grappling hook mechanic popu…