Info about Mechajammer:

Official game description:
JOIN THE DISCORD
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About the Game
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**The definitive Mechajammer experience is here.** The Refracted Update brings with it new character portraits, vehicles, armour items, gang side quests, companion quests, an event log and a host of other improvements built off the back of months of updates and discussions with the community.  
If you’ve been waiting for the right time to jump into the grimy underworld of Calitana, **this is it.**  
A cyberpunk horror CRPG set on a grim future colony world. Mechajammer uses simultaneous turn-based combat to create real-time tactics with the precision of turn-based controls.  
Freely roam through the streets of an off-world cyberpunk city, the killer jungles outside its walls, and the occult syndicate hollows below.  
Recruit large squads of mercenaries, gang members, and thieves as companions. Issue commands to the whole squad to keep the turn-based combat fast and exciting.  
You and your crew of deserters have crashed onto a hostile jungle colony. To escape, you must gather rumors, bribe enemies, and earn trust through completing missions. In this immersive sim choose your path wisely, as your story options will shift with every choice.  
Deep and fully customizable character creation allows you to experiment and design your own playstyle.  
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**LIMITED TIME ONLY - EXCLUSIVE MP3 WITH EVERY DOWNLOAD**  
Download Mechajammer between now and March 1st 2022, and you’ll also get an exclusive MP3 of Ital Tek’s “Calitana’s Handshake”, the full length version of the thumping synthwave track used in the Mechajammer Launch trailer.

Release date: 2 Dec, 2021

Categories: RPG, Turn-based Combat, Real-time with Pause, Open-World Exploration, Squad Management, Character Customization, Choice-based Narrative, Investigative Gameplay


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Atmospheric world, unique art style (weight 0.75): The game's strongest aspect is its unique and immersive atmosphere, visuals, and audio. Reviewers consistently praise the distinct art style, detailed environments, and engaging music, which create a memorable and captivating world.
- Blends old and new RPG (weight 0.51): The game successfully blends old-school RPG mechanics with modern design elements, offering a refreshing and rewarding gameplay experience. It evokes a sense of nostalgia while providing something new and unique.
- Updates improve stability, content (weight 0.15): Recent updates and patches have addressed bugs and added content, significantly improving the game's stability and overall experience. The developers have actively worked to fix issues and expand the game's narrative.
- Encourages player problem-solving (weight 0.13): The game embraces a hands-off approach, encouraging player exploration, problem-solving, and immersion. The lack of hand-holding and quest markers promotes independent thinking and a deeper connection with the game world.
- Detailed, gritty cyberpunk world (weight 0.13): The game world is detailed and well-crafted, with distinct areas and a gritty cyberpunk aesthetic. The city design and atmosphere contribute to the immersive experience and demonstrate the harsh realities of the game's setting.
- Deep, impactful character creation (weight 0.09): The game features a rich character creation system with meaningful choices that impact gameplay. Players can customize their characters with various backgrounds, bonuses, and even negative traits, adding depth and replayability.
- Similar to classic RPGs (weight 0.07): The game evokes comparisons to classic RPGs like Fallout, Syndicate, and Kenshi, suggesting a similar feel and gameplay style.
- High freedom, customization options (weight 0.05): The game offers a high degree of freedom and customization, allowing for diverse strategies and creative problem-solving. The fully customizable squad mechanic adds another layer of depth and player agency.
- Vehicles and driving are fun (weight 0.04): Some reviewers found the vehicles and driving mechanics to be enjoyable.
- Detailed graphics with zoom (weight 0.04): The game's graphics feature two zoom levels, with a close-up view showcasing detailed scenes and lighting effects.
- Enjoyable music and soundtrack (weight 0.03): The game's music and soundtrack are generally well-received and enjoyable.

Common complaints:
- Game riddled with bugs (weight 0.97): The game is plagued with numerous bugs, including game-breaking issues like disappearing items/NPCs, broken quests, and malfunctioning mechanics. Many reviewers describe the game as unplayable or in an unacceptable state at launch, with some requesting refunds. This widespread issue significantly detracts from the overall experience.
- Poor UI, confusing navigation (weight 0.95): The game suffers from poor UI/UX design, including a confusing interface, cumbersome controls, and a nearly useless map. Reviewers found it difficult to navigate the environment, understand game mechanics, and manage inventory, leading to frustration and hindering overall enjoyment.
- Broken, frustrating tutorial (weight 0.93): The game's tutorial is reportedly broken, unhelpful, or even impossible to complete due to bugs and overpowered enemies. This creates a negative first impression and makes it difficult for new players to learn the game's mechanics.
- Frequent crashes, launch failures (weight 0.91): Many reviewers reported technical issues that prevented them from even launching or playing the game. These issues include crashes, freezes, and failures to progress beyond the main menu, indicating significant stability problems.
- Unfair, punishing difficulty (weight 0.89): The game is considered very difficult, unforgiving, and lacking in player guidance. Reviewers noted that the difficulty often feels unfair due to a lack of clear feedback and obtuse mechanics, rather than strategic challenge.
- Shallow, ineffective combat (weight 0.86): Combat lacks impact, depth, and balance, often feeling one-dimensional and ineffective. Ranged combat is particularly criticized for poor performance and limited ammo.
- Uninteresting, empty world (weight 0.84): The game world feels uninteresting due to slow movement, empty environments, uninspired NPCs, and a lack of lore. Reviewers found exploration to be tedious and unrewarding.
- Clunky, unintuitive controls (weight 0.83): The game suffers from clunky and unintuitive controls, including issues with mouse movement and inconsistent control schemes. This makes it difficult to control the character and navigate the environment.
- Tedious, repetitive looting (weight 0.81): Looting is repetitive and frustrating due to the same items appearing frequently and the lack of a button to highlight loot. The pixelated graphics also make items hard to see and interact with.
- Items disappearing from inventory (weight 0.33): Players report that items, including ammo, weapons, and money, frequently disappear from their inventory due to bugs. This issue disrupts gameplay progression and leads to frustration, as essential resources are lost without explanation.
- Poor skill/weapon balance (weight 0.18): The game's balance is flawed, with skills and weapons feeling ineffective or pointless. Reviewers noted that character builds are limited and that the game lacks meaningful progression, making it difficult to create viable characters.
- Uncontrollable character flaws (weight 0.15): Certain character flaws, particularly PTSD, cause uncontrollable panic and fleeing, leading to accidental enemy aggro and death. These flaws can severely hinder gameplay and remove player agency.
- Saves cause world state issues (weight 0.12): Loading a save file can cause enemies and doors to respawn, potentially trapping the player and preventing progress. Factions can also become hostile for no apparent reason after reloading the game, eliminating alliances.
- Buggy companion management (weight 0.09): Managing companions can be buggy, with companions disappearing or becoming unresponsive. Companion AI is also ineffective, making it difficult to utilize them in combat.
- Underdeveloped social skills (weight 0.06): Social skills are undermined because rumors aren't helpful and combat is easy to solo. Dialog is minimal, leading to simplistic decisions.
- Unrealistically low hit chance (weight 0.05): The chance of successfully hitting targets with guns feels unrealistically low. Even with the gun showing as loaded, the character would attempt to shoot but then give up.

Gameplay feedback:
- Tactical combat lacks transparency (weight 0.33): The game features a blend of real-time exploration and tactical turn-based combat, drawing comparisons to classic Fallout and 'Super Hot'.  However, the lack of transparency in combat mechanics, such as hit percentages, can make encounters feel like a coin flip, hindering strategic decision-making.
- Requires manual quest tracking (weight 0.25): The game embraces an old-school CRPG approach, minimizing hand-holding and requiring players to actively manage quests and clues.  This is facilitated by a built-in notepad, as the game lacks traditional quest markers, objectives, or an automatic quest log. This design choice emphasizes player agency and exploration, but may alienate players accustomed to more guided experiences.
- Complex character creation system (weight 0.24): Character creation involves trade-offs, such as picking bonuses and flaws, and assigning dice to stats and skills.  The system allows for character specialization and intentionally taking disadvantages. However, the character sheet can be unforgiving, potentially leading to severe mistakes if players are not careful with Virtues and Studies.
- Disco Elysium-like skill checks (weight 0.08): The game features a dialogue system with skill checks reminiscent of Disco Elysium. The skill check system uses dice rolls to represent character stats, which influence skill success. The game has no quests, but features characters, interactions, and group discussions.
- Open-ended exploration and puzzles (weight 0.07): The game features an open-ended structure with exploration and puzzles as core elements. The primary storytelling mechanism is environmental, with limited conversations with the crash-landed crew. The main quest involves finding a way off-world, with side quests presented as unmarked threads to follow.
- Unclear object interaction (weight 0.06): The game is difficult with little hand-holding, throwing you in without much guidance. All in-game elements are targeted with the same cursor, making it unclear which objects can be opened or destroyed, requiring the player to spam click.
- Vehicle combat and pedestrian interaction (weight 0.05): The game features vehicles, including motorcycles, that players can drive like in GTA. Players can run over pedestrians and engage in car combat, even performing sneak attacks using cars.
- Useless skills (weight 0.04): The lockpicking skill is useless because only quest doors are actually locked and require it; other doors can be broken down easily. The hacking skill is useless because it always fails.
- Companion recruitment and diverse builds (weight 0.04): The game allows recruiting a team of companions with different roles (tank, shooter, medic, support) to help in combat, hacking, and burglary. Players can choose different character builds (bulk brawler, sneaky looter, chemist/hacker, social character) to overcome obstacles.
- Repopulating enemies hinder strategy (weight 0.04): The game world repopulates enemies on loading or after time passes, preventing players from strategically managing encounters. Enemies are encountered randomly and killed without clear motivation or context.

Performance notes:
- Character locked in animation (weight 0.03): The player character can become locked into a permanent PTSD running animation. This is a specific and unusual bug that can be visually distracting and immersion-breaking.
- Low frame rates experienced (weight 0.02): Some players have experienced very low frame rates, impacting the game's performance and fluidity. This can detract from the overall experience, especially during graphically intensive scenes or combat.
- Inaccessible terminal files (weight 0.02): Files uploaded to the player's terminal may not be accessible or openable. This can prevent players from progressing or accessing important information.
- Ambient sound cuts out (weight 0.02): The game's ambient sound can sometimes cut out, leaving only the character's footsteps audible. This can break immersion and make the game world feel less alive.
- Civilians fail to spawn (weight 0.02): Civilians sometimes fail to spawn in the game world. This can make the game world feel empty and lifeless.
- Short ferry loading time (weight 0.02): Fast traveling with the ferry has a short loading time of a few seconds. This is a minor issue, but it can still be slightly annoying.

Recommendations:
- Wait for bug fixes (weight 0.8): Many reviewers recommend waiting for further patches and updates before purchasing due to the game's numerous bugs, lack of polish, and overall unstable state. Some even suggest considering it an early access title or waiting for a significant discount. A few reviewers refunded the game, expressing disappointment and frustration with its current condition.
- Unique, challenging RPG experience (weight 0.69): Despite the issues, some reviewers see potential in the game's unique style, cool systems, and engaging gameplay, particularly for fans of classic or challenging RPGs. They recommend it to players who enjoy atmospheric, sandboxy worlds with a high degree of player agency and are willing to persevere through the difficulty.
- Promising core, needs improvement (weight 0.05): Several reviewers mention the game's potential to become a great CRPG or even a cult hit with further development and minor improvements. The core game is seen as promising, but needs more work to realize its full potential.
- Unpleasant initial experience (weight 0.03): One reviewer recommends waiting for a full review before forming an opinion due to an unpleasant initial experience, while another requested a refund. This suggests a highly negative initial impression that warrants caution.
- Foreign language praise (weight 0.02): These points are in a foreign language and lack context, making it difficult to assess their meaning or importance. Therefore, they are given a low importance score.
- Homage to classic strategy (weight 0.02): The game is praised for paying homage to old-school strategy and stealth games while incorporating modern improvements. This suggests a blend of classic gameplay with contemporary design elements.
- Worth it at 75% off (weight 0.02): The game might be worth picking up at 75% off. This suggests that the game is not worth the full price, but might be worth it at a steep discount.

Other player notes:
- Unfulfilled potential despite ambition (weight 0.1): Many reviewers express disappointment, noting the game's potential and ambition are overshadowed by gameplay issues. There's a sense that players wanted to enjoy the game, but flaws hindered their experience. The developers' talent is recognized, and there are rumors of revisiting the game's concepts in a future project.
- Unreliable autosave system (weight 0.03): The game's autosave system can be unforgiving. Players should manually save frequently to avoid losing progress. This is a critical point for players to be aware of to mitigate frustration.
- Needs more QA/playtesting (weight 0.03): The game's mechanics and gameplay require significant QA time. This suggests that the game may suffer from bugs, balance issues, or other problems that could have been resolved with more testing.
- Brutal and gory style (weight 0.02): The game features a brutal and gory style. This may appeal to players who enjoy violent content, but could be a turn-off for others. It's a key element of the game's presentation.
- English language only (weight 0.02): The game is only available in English. This limits the audience and accessibility of the game for non-English speakers.
- Made by small indie team (weight 0.02): The game is made by a two person team with a penchant for earnest and quirky games. This provides context about the development team and their style.

Emotions:
No emotions}