I'm going to go ahead and say that the movement generally felt very smooth and comfortable on my machine. Perhaps there are framerate-dependent issues, but the framerate didn't vary here, so it wasn't an issue for me. That's not to say the bugs other people mentioned weren't there -- those were indeed bothersome, and I hope they aren't there in the final version.

I liked the visual style, but soon found myself wondering if it should've been abandoned on the grounds that it's impractical for the type of game it is. It is good design for a player to be able to tell one place from another at a glance. This helps them build a mental progression of rooms, which is particularly important when rooms need to be revisited. The visual style in GRUNTS is not conducive to such familiarity and exploration.

Also, the relative lack of variety may make it hard for some players to motivate themselves to keep exploring. For me, after finishing the first section and entering the second, I lost all motivation to find every key and shoot every enemy enough times to kill it (enemies seemed to take a lot of shots to kill). I didn't feel like I'd be rewarded with anything: no interesting narrative, no exciting locales, no new weapons or characters, no development of my own competitive ability -- not even the sense of accomplishment that many puzzle games rely on. With those things absent, the only thing left to consider is whether or not the gameplay itself is entertaining, and for me it wasn't.

Was ist deutsch für "That's just my two cents!"?

Jibb