"Defunct" by Freshly Squeezed

[Dr. BUGMAN]

https://youtu.be/NSZKbJ6BFao

https://youtu.be/KylUnc73ujE

Colorful, charming platformer with fast, tight momentum-based physics and branching tiered level design! It's the 3D game Sonic Team has been struggling for 17 years to make! It's on the short side but considering it's by a small indie developer of about a half dozen people(!) within the span of two months(!!!), I think we can cut it some slack.

Holy guacamole.

[Jingles]

Wow, those aesthetics are abysmal! I get that the low-poly look is "in" for indies right now (probably because it is very cheap & easy for small teams) but would it kill them to use some cool colours every now and again!?

The game itself doesn't really do anything to impress me... turning looks like an absolute chore and there's not really any platforming to be seen, is there?

[Wombatwarlord777]

It does look pretty fun it doesn't really resemble what I want Sonic to be. The thing that I like the best about Sonic games isn't necessarily their speed but rather the control the main character, not just in a forward motion but also in all directions. I know I'm going to sound like an old stick-in-the-mud but in my opinion the first Adventure game is what I think of when I imagine my ideal Sonic game, because I think there's a really nice balance between speed, maneuverability and the player being able to control precisely where they want Sonic to go.

That's not to say that this game isn't impressive. It looks like it handles fast motion in a forward direction extremely well. And while the aesthetics are rather simple, I don't think that at the speeds the game runs, detailed graphics are an efficient use of development time. I think the shading and colors are just fine and do a good enough job of indicating where exactly the player is and where they are heading in the stage.

One thing I did notice that I really, really like is that even though the game is mostly stuck in forward motion, the width of the courses are really nice and do allow for a lot of natural terrain. I think that if the Sonic games are going to stick with the old boost formula, it'd be nice for the levels to be modeled more on this, where the action isn't necessarily restricted to usually a very small hallway.

Sorry if this is rambling but I'm trying this with voice recognition technology.

[Neo]

It does look pretty fun it doesn't really resemble what I want Sonic to be.

I think this about sums up the problem this series has been tackling for the past 15-20 years.