Neon Echowave
A downloadable game
Neon Echowave is an immersive, cyberpunk-themed rhythm driving game that takes players on a mesmerizing journey through a neon-lit cityscape. Drive through a futuristic world as you collect pick-ups, each with the power to impact the dynamic synthwave soundtrack.
Explore alternate paths, take part in high-stakes delivery missions that require you to navigate the city, all while engaging with a seamless audiovisual synthesis.
Uncover the secrets of this cyberpunk realm as you immerse yourself in a narratively, soothing and adventurous experience where the city pulses to the rhythm of your move.
Trailer for the game we made during a few weeks during a school project. Enjoy.
Download
Install instructions
Unzip the folder to wherever you choose and run the "NeonEchowave3D" executable.
Comments
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The theme is really god damn cool and I love the aesthetic, music and art. But the game runs like a powerpoint slideshow, this is 99% inpart to the unnecessarily huge map with seemingly no LOD implemented or chunk system to load things.
Please notify me if there's a patch for these issues, I'd love to continue the game.
The low framerate also allowed me to get out of bounds. well, not allowed, more forced out bounds
I love the response, it made our day and helped us discover a few issues. We did a few bug fixes and tripled the framerate situation. So it should be playable and hopefully less of a slideshow. The game isn't without its bugs, but I fixed a few for now.
Love the feedback.
Have a fantastic day :)
Thank you!
I've unfortunately not been unable to replicate the out-of-bounds bug, and the FPS is still (understandably very dependent on my machine but (imo) the game doesn't seem to have high graphics to justify it being) very slow (but way better than last time).
Maybe chuck in things like Anti Aliasing or render distance, etc etc. into the settings so the problem could be narrowed down to the culprit.
Since we're here, a couple things I've noticed alongside some nitpicks (emphasis on nitpicks):
-Dialogue system is very awkward, a lot of times it'll not recognize a click and other times will recognize it twice, thus skipping a dialogue box.
-The dialogue system is very stilted and primitive.
I hate saying this (alongside any criticism because I really hate to hate(dislike)) but it is just two images and a textbox, a bit more polish, for example the UI being hoisted on a physical object that bobs or moves or hangs, could help bring life to it, the profiles being so static and the text just kinda popping into the next paragraph is meh.
-A lot of the same points but for the car.
It is very static, almost lifeless other than the bobbing, which seems less like the car's an object and more like the art sprite is moving 2 pixels down every 0.8 seconds before doing it again just upwards.
-The opening dialogue, once the driving starts, seems to imply Naynay has no idea on how to operate...cars, even though the introductory text read (also, introductory text reads (including the opening dialogue) are bad in general) says and implies that she's experienced.
-The game just has some amount of time between the end of the dialogue and the start of the first turn.
Hello, apologies we haven't gotten back to you sooner. We're currently in the middle of our education, so not much time has been allotted to polish.
Let me clear up some matters on some of the points mentioned.
- Dialogue
The system was originally intended to have a diegetic phone display pop-up, sort of how text messages work today, with the sender and receiver being on opposite sides to clarify who's speaking. And of course many other features such as appropriate VFX, SFX and even voice acting so the focus could remain on the road, rather than the top of the screen.
- Car
We were prohibited to create any 3D assets during this project, so we wanted to explore a different method of using 2D which gave us the current result. The artist that worked on the car went through a lot of iterations and we found the one in use to be rather charming.
As it stands, it's merely a prototype of what the end goal would be, and added frames and blending of the pixels would be added.
Final Notes:
We did go back recently to inspect why the performance is taking such a hit and found numerous causes. Unfortunately they are not resolvable as it stands for us right now and would require rewriting a large portion of the code.
However there's good news!
We did adjustments to the level for better fluidity with the gameplay, and majorly overhauled the colliders so you shouldn't be encountering an issue of going out-of-bounds, at least on the PC's we have currently at office.
Some adjustments were done to the dialogue as well.
Neon Echowave was our first attempt at making a game from scratch after a few months of being introduced to game development, and we were given a few weeks to put it together.
We're soon going to start on our second project, a 3D game that's still under pre-production.
We would be honored if you were to check it out when it appears here on Itch.io.
Thank you so much for the feedback, for it has given us many eureka moments and even cheered us on towards making more and better experiences.
I'll definitely be looking towards that game!
Good news! Our second game: Operation Failure is now officially out here on itch.io!
It's a couch-coop endless runner!
We've taken a heavy emphasis on performance this time around, please do check it out if/when you have time.
Would love some feedback.
Enjoy.