VELONE Reviews

Does need some work. More graphics options and, definitely VOLUME CONTROL. Customizable UI would help too. But overall a good game.

The worst tutorial I have ever seen in a game and I have seen a lot. You do exactly what the tutorial tells You to do, but the game does not proceed as it obviously isn`t what is expected of You. The actions that are used during the "programming", are not explained and You need to guess what they do. That is not how tutorials work...

Sour milk like copy-paste of opus magnum, do not buy at least until polished,fixed,playable.

The game is reasonably fun except for a clunky interface and some bugs. In my case, the game froze twice and stopped "catching" thrown stones in certain circumstances. Opus Magnum is cleaner and more fun.

I'm very into these type of games and am very sorry to let this one go, This one has terrible UI with a number of problems. Zachtronics has a history of automation games that they had evolved with the requirements of the player base. This however dont have the tools to cope up with the complexity of whats to come on latter levels. The video trailer seemed really promising and enjoyable, but I could not endure the game till that point. This game lacks a serious amount of polish before getting a retry from me. Refunding, very sadly.

For games like this, it's important to be able to create and change your designs with as little friction as possible, but a rough control scheme and poorly tacked-on systems make doing anything a chore. Positives: - Puzzle mechanics feel like a natural expansion of Opus Magnum - Consistently great art & sound design Interface issues: - Text is extremely small & has poor contrast - Default keyboard & mouse hotkeys are obtuse with no options for rebinding - Poor use of screen space (parts palette covers half the board, no labeling on programming tray icons) - Hard to remove placed objects & instructions Game issues: - Tutorials do a poor job at teaching mechanics and interactions - Energy collection sequence serves no purpose other than to be annoying There is a legitimately great game underneath the UX disaster, and I'll certainly be following updates to see how it improves in the future, but I can't justify purchasing this in its current state.

Unpolished and confusing, I'm afraid, with tutorials that do not actually explain the game. Sins that could be forgiven, perhaps, were it not for the inclusion of advertising in the menu. Advertising! I paid money for this: I should not be beset with further demands for money within such a thing. Advertising, and the experience of the thing I am made to tolerate ads for is... simply not that good. Perhaps it would have been worthwhile to spend more time with Opus Magnum to truly understand what made it Work before making a version that... does not.

[b]TL;DR - Noooope. This thing isn't ready for release. Maybe come back in a few months.[/b] [i]To be completely honest, I haven't seen enough of Velone to write a proper review. As a huge fan of Zachtronics and Opus Magnum in particular, I was pretty excited when this popped up in my queue. I'm sad to say it's not living up to expectations. Here are a few notes from my ~2 hours' gameplay.[/i] --- - Ads on the main menu in a paid game, not a great look. This is probably the publisher's fault, but it's pretty distracting. - Art style is unsettling. Intentionally or not, the whole game feels cold and sterile. A little more color and detail in the core UI elements would go a long way. - Tutorials are vague and unhelpful. Mechanically deep games need to give the player time between lessons to practice and internalize what they've learned. Velone rushes you through a brief and incomplete description of its basic tools and then throws you to the wolves. - Programming is a serious chore. Despite containing an almost 1:1 copy of the Opus Magnum programming interface, Velone fails to recreate even half of the functionality. Instruction hotkeys (unlabeled, of course) require you to place your cursor over the desired program slot, making them practically useless. The only method of deletion is to drag things off-screen, which is tedious and unreliable. There's no visual feedback for invalid instructions or collisions between pieces. Honestly, it's all a mess in this department. - "The Palette" - this MONSTROUS menu contains all of the pieces the player needs to build their solutions. It's unlabeled, disorganized, and it takes up a whopping 1/3 of the screen, completely swallowing up anything on the board beneath it. Totally unnecessary. - Bugs, bugs, bugs. There's no way to manually save a design in progress, and backing out to the main menu (the only way to change settings, by the way) results in a deleted design about 50% of the time. Menus and game pieces are unresponsive, things get stuck on top of and under each other, and sometimes the entire UI just decides to call it quits. --- Velone is gonna need some major changes to pull me back in. I'm crossing my fingers that a few timely updates can bring it more in line with other games in the genre. For now, steer clear.

Oh no. This is not really inspired by Opus Magnum. This is what you get when you show someone a screenshot of Opus Magnum and say it's about puzzles, ask them to make it, then rush it out the door half finished. A very strong not recommend.

[i][b]Inspired by Opus Magnum[/b][/i] is a nice way of not admitting that you copied everything from Opus Magnum but just gave it a new aesthetic. Given how blatant a copy it it is, let us compare it with it's aforementioned 'inspiration': - First of all, advertising other games from your publisher leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I would expect it from a f2p game, but not from a game I paid money for. - Whilst Opus Magnum had a story, you could skip it and get straight to the puzzles. In Velone, I couldn't skip the opening dialogue that I could not care less about, given its godawful voice acting. - Tutorials are especially important in setting up a player to learn how to play a puzzle game. In Opus Magnum, it was done perfectly. You were given a partial solution and were shown how you could complete it. In Velone, your hand is completely held through the puzzles, telling you where to place parts and what commands to use. - Opus Magnum encourages you to attempt different forms of optimisation, be it using the least resources, least area, or ignoring both and going for the fastest solution, by allowing you to save several different solutions to a single level. There is built-in functionality to save a looping gif of your solution. There's a level editor and steam workshop integration. Velone doesn't have any of these features. - Velone simply feels far less intuitive compared to Opus Magnum. Even in the first level of Velone I could not figure out why my solution was not working. The arms were not releasing the stones despite being given the 'drop' command: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797707377 TL;DR: The lack of polish and QOL in Velone compared to Opus Magnum has made this a far more frustrating experience. If you're trying to copy a good formula, you have to do it better, not just slap on a different uglier aesthetic. Refunded. I'd rather go back and replay Opus Magnum