Close Order

I am 32 years old.

My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and we adopted our son together. Both are now 4 years old.

When we were going through our separation, I felt lost and unhappy. I was self-destructive. One day, I was so angry with everything spiraling out of control that I punched a concrete wall in a moment of overwhelming emotion. This resulted in breaking my fifth metacarpal in my right hand—the hand I worked with, played games with, and used to carry my children to bed—the hand I desperately needed to ensure I could continue providing.

Upon learning the severity of the self-inflicted damage, I became almost suicidal. Keep in mind that just a few months before this, I was the happiest man, with no history of depression or anxiety. I had never experienced anger outbursts, nor was I the type to break down and cry, but I was in a tough situation that truly prevented me from seeing the light on the other side.

With nothing better to do, I looked for a game I could play WITH ONE HAND while recovering. Somehow, I stumbled upon this game and read some of the comments. I decided it was worth a try... I must admit I didn't beat the game, nor did I play as much as some of you. In fact, I may have played this game for only a day or two. That being said, after doing so, I had a new joy and hope for life. I managed to leave behind the pain and suffering that had been thrust upon me. I could experience the joy and happiness of other people. I relaxed for 5 ♥♥♥♥ minutes listening to this music, long enough to realize that I would be okay.

After realizing this, I turned off the game and went back to work. My hand hurt a lot, but I was motivated. I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and became the father I needed to be at that moment, not the weak boy I was behaving like.

Today, I am close friends with the mother of my children. We don't fight, argue, or say hurtful things to each other. We are parents and friends.

Now I have 3 children. My third child is, wait, ALSO 4 YEARS OLD. The woman I am with was going through a very similar situation at the time of my separation, and we just unexpectedly stumbled into each other's lives. We have been dating for a year and are very happy together.

Moral of the story: you never know what life has in store for you, and if I had given up when all odds were against me, I wouldn't be where I am today. This silly little game helped me realize that.

Thank you.

Game can't even properly resize its HUD to resolutions higher than 1080p. With a heavy heart I had to decline the opportunity to undertake the grim task of saving this particular gaming universe.

Better luck next big bang.

The idea of Close Order, as near as I can tell: Grind up until you can build up an ungodly armada of wingmen of many types.
The execution: Well, there's only 8 stages, so after a bit of bashing my head against the first stage until I figured out how best to shoot down entire fleets, I won in under an hour just by going through all the stages in order quickly.

It's a neat concept, but it's kind of an ugly game, not very difficult once you understand what it wants from you, and very short once you get going. Maybe someday I'll play a version of this - a shooter where you build up either a custom super-ship or a fleet - that I actually enjoy, but so far every one I've played has been extremely flawed, and Close Order is no exception.

Not recommended for anyone, really.

(After winning, I noticed I only had one of the cards, so I left it idling while I went to sleep, hence the longer time played according to Steam. But I did finish the game in 59 minutes.)

This game is too complex for my understanding and I hate it when I mute the sound to farm trading cards quietly and the next time I launch the game the music starts blasting.

Fun idea but the UI is broken. The level select is unintuitive and right clicking while dragging a ship causes the game to bug out.

a promising game but unfortunatly buggy and not very polished. the premise is a bullet hell/third person fleet shooter. you start as a single ship and buy more and chose their fomration while trying to sirvive. unfortunatly the cutscenes leave artifacts as they progress, when dialogue or text happens it takes a significant portion of the screen starting at the lower left and makes it black. when you buy ships the game pauses and for some reason the only was to unpause the game is to bring up the pause menu. game play is best with a controller but trying to do anything in the menues is imposible due to the exreme sentivity setting that you can't change.

It's quite fun, very very simple but fun to play which is the important bit.

I bought this game bc all the heart that went into from the videos and dev blogs, and there are parts that shine, but there are parts that are just missing (sound effects, etc). I feel this is an incomplete game jam game and I'm sad to see it's out of Early Access.

Why am I recomending it then?
I bought the game on discount, and with games like SPAZ or Rebel Galaxy out there for 10.00 or Less, I have to say this is not a full price affair as of yet.
It does have a unique concept as far as game play that you could learn alot from.
It is the best and most fair bullet hell I've played as I'm usally not a fan of that genre.

It's a fun little arcade game with a interesting dose of creativity. Not really a "binge game" but something best played in short bursts like wating for a download or a study break.

The game is fun, and it's core mechanics easy to understand and implement. The story is simple, and I enjoyed the character's knowledge of how ludicrous what they were doing was. It was an interesting take on expected game mechanics (no one questions how 1 man in black ops can accomplish all the tasks he does, it's unrealistic but just accepted by the gamer) but the characters are almost self aware of this without having to do a Deadpool style of 4th wall breaking. An example of this was in the first story mission your briefing tells you that you are to escort a ship and that there will be people trying to attack the escort, and one of the crew members states something to the extent of, "A military mission when we're just explorers and have no idea how to fight? Let's dive in head first!." Subtle humor that I enjoyed. Humor aside you're always just in that believability spectrum, never too far serious or ludicrous. The author knew what kind of experience he wanted to give and he presented it well. This game's story will not lead you into a deeper understanding of humanity or anything like that, but it will give you enough to keep your attention to present to you an enjoyable time.

Visually it's a treat, I don't mean it's NEXT GENERATION GRAPHICS, but it's colorfull vistas and elements of the world backup the style the game is presenting.

I do wish that the way you upgraded your ship/fleet was more progression based, or unlockable I suppose. Not having practically all ship variants right of the start, and getting certain upgrades or new abilities after beating a level would of been nice. Not to say there isn't any progression, but it seems a bit underdeveloped in my humble opinion.

Unfortunately there are some bugs that will hinder your enjoyment of the game. A short gameplay session occurs before what is supposed to be the intro cutscene, and that gameplay segment is a tutorial that you must repeat after the cutscene. The one that caused me the most trouble is the bugged music. While the music itself is great and fitting, you have no ocntrol over the volume. You can try to turn in down using the enraging cursor that is used in menus, using buggy volume sliders, but even if you manage to get the volume to where you want it (which is unlikely since the first slider barley works, the second even less so, and the third is unusable) after a loading screen the volume goes back to max and if you try to change it after that the music will briefly go to the volume you stay and then quickly rise back to max. I point this out because it made it impossible to make a video of this game because the music was always overpowering my voice.

Bugs aside I recommend the game, and look forward to see what come out of the game creator next.

Well. To be honest. It's a fun game.
Is there room to improve? Yes
In the end, Close Order is a success as a game. It's fun
I r8 7/7. It's gr8 m8. Would bang again.

Lots of bugs. For example, when I started a new game there were no graphics, only a few words. I tried all sorted of graphical combinations and no luck. I then continued a game and it worked. Another bug is that some ships in the formation weren't there, but I couldn't replace them or remove them or anything. Oh, and I couldn't get back to the crossroads (essentially the menu) at the end of a mission.

It doesn't support anything above 1600 res, and you can't change the music and sound independently.

I wanted to like this as it's a pretty decent idea, but I can't recommend it.

For everyone who played during Alpha :)

PROS:

CONS:

REVISED Judgement 8/10!

The game shows much promise for its current state of development. While there are some balancing issues and other small glitches it’s what you would expect from an "early access" game. Overall the gameplay is entertaining in short play sessions but lacks incentive to keep playing. However, these are all thing that can be easily fixed as updates role out. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a casual arcade space shooter.

Update to Review:
The developers have shown true commitment to their customers and their own vision. The game has grown and now shines. It's not for everyone and the core concept might be alien to casual gamers but for those who are looking for something original and challenging will find warm & fuzzy feelings with Close Order. As an indie developer and a proponent of innovation in gaming I fully support this team. For $5 I think this is a great deal.

ORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW:
I am recommending to purchase the game only for those with patience and an interest in actually contributing to the development of a game. This game needs a lot of help from the community as the developer is capable but apparently inexperienced with game design. NOTED IMPROVEMENTS: tutorial is great now, the UI is improved and polished, the few bugs I encountered originally are all gone, the difficulty curve seems to have been smoothed out as well. Exceptional improvement IMHO. Well done Raconteur Games!

There are core design decisions in place that are interesting and could prove to be really fun with a lot of polish and refinement. Missions are currently disjointed and transitions are abrupt and break the fourth wall. Your "minions"(fleet) disappear suddenly and without reason or even explosive effect in one mission. If you skipped the conversation, as many shooter fans do, it is confusing. I kept spending my amassed fortune replacing those ships only to have them suddenly dissapear again. 3 times I did this until broke and finally understood that this mission forces you to go alone. Unfortunately this is the sort of unrefined gameplay I was mentioning. An experienced developer would know to remove player's ability to spend on new ships and when they attempt to do so, place an explanatory message on screen. It takes 10 minutes to code but without user feedback and direction, it will never happen.

The game is less than $5 and has tons of potential but don't buy it expecting others to fix it for you. It has a small user population and the forum is empty right now. Buy it and help out or stay clear until reviews at "final release".