Foxus

bought the game for Rp 14.624 at discounted price back in the day around October 2018, only to see the game has relisted but with the price of Rp 449.999 ...... so I would like to say WHAT THE HELL???

The controls seem really messed up.
The graphics are not bad at all. I actually enjoy them.
When starting seems confusing but once you get to understanding it, it isn't too bad.
If they fix the controls and update it to be less confusing. I would recommend.

Don't buy this game.

I was hyped about this one (back in the old day I greenlit it even) but trying it out is a horrible control-wise the way camera moves when I am turning while running literally giving me nausicae feeling and makes me feel literally sick so I tried to force walk my way around but it is still feels wrong and lack of actual content.
Sadly my gametime literally less then 10 minutes as that is how much I could tolerate without feeling sick of it so my vote is nope even if there is a fox inside to play as.

I've been waiting for this game to be done for like half a year and when it came out, i've bought it immediately.
I wanted it to be good so much.
BUT
-the camera sensitivity is awful, no matter how i adjust it
-the game starts too slowly (even if i installed it on the ssd)
-still too many glitches

No absolutely not this is a broken mess that Vladamir should be actively embarassed to have released in this state. From moment of launch this broken game was terrible to control, over senesative camera and when you turn the sensativity down it just stops working completely. I could barely move fluidly down any path, camera all over the place was not a "relaxing" experience. Putting one design on a fox in different colors does not add much variety and you need to STAY AWAY from this game. It's an absolute embarassment, should not be on steam in this state. Holy shit.

So, this game looks gorgeous. It really does. The animation is great, the fox looks damn well incredible. But putting so much effort in the background, the fox and not the ennemies or the controls was a bad idea. A bit like someone who decided to make a big ambiance open world but lacked budget and resolved into small areas filled with half-baked animated ennemis and collectibles.

The controls aren't great neither and I never found any way to get a checkpoint of any sort. Some ennemies were impossible to defeat and to program a realistic jump on the fox that's supposed to kill ennemis by jumping on them...Let me say that it was pretty sketchy to do.

Don't get me wrong, I admire the work done here but this game would've won my heart if it would have been an open world adventure type. The animation, the designs and the style was there but this game lacked the opportunity to do something incredible. Sorry, I really tried to enjoy it but couldn't.

Original Review: March 10, 2018

I really wanted to like this game, but so far I haven't been able to. It has been released way, way too early and is not ready to be sold as a finished product.

When creating your fox, the UI overlaps a bunch of options, making them impossible to pick.

The "Settings" screen has the same problem. I have no idea if there's more on that screen either; are there more options? Who knows; there's no indication that says there are or arent, but they fade off at the bottom like there might be.

This is basic UI, and any designer should say, "Can I create my character properly?" If the answer is no, maybe the game isn't ready for relase.

When you start the game, you get one brief look at a screen of controls. No visible way to change those controls or to bring the list back. If you missed one, too bad!

I HATE games that don't allow you to remap the controls. Again, this is basic game functionality. Using "space" for jump means that, on my keyboard, there's one key way off on the other side of the keyboard by itself. Allowing me to map that makes everyone happy.

And then, when you begin playing, apparently those keys don't all work. And, if you happen to have a controller, there's a bunch of extra things you can do with the buttons on it.

Even being willing to overlook all of that - which is hard, as you can't really create a character or move around - the game's been crashing every five minutes on me. It becomes very difficult to know how the game works if it won't actually run.

What I saw is bright and cheery, and the colors and music are nice. The animations of the fox moving are pretty good, too. I want to know more about the world and what all these little things are, and if they're friend or foe and what you do with floating strawberries.

But I can't, until the program will run long enough to let me explore. And until the controls work, or I can at least see what they are.

I'm going to come back and review this again in six months. Maybe they'll have fixed the bugs and it'll be a charming little thing. I hope so! I'll change my review then, if so.

Update: November 29, 2018

The developers have not fixed the UI issues, but I have found a work-around; when starting the game, pick a 4:3 aspect ratio sized window. This makes the screen tall enough to see all the menus and start the game. Really foolish that the user has to figure this out.

The controls they show you seem to be wrong. The control list says "E" is for "Interact". When you get up to something it says, "Press B". Which is really E. It might be B on the controller the game is insisting I don't have. (I do, and it works elsewhere, just Foxus won't see it.)

The crashes have stopped. That's good! I was able to play for more than thirty seconds.

Sadly, I didn't care much. The jump mechanism is cute but hideous to aim, the camera swings around wildly, and grass appears and dissapears in front of you like you're drunk and seeing double sometimes. The draw distance is incredibly short and things appear in front of you. Considering the quality is set as high as it goes and I've got a nice video card, that's just silly.

The map is also frustrating because there's a bunch of invisible walls that mean you can't walk to places you can see. You can often get there by walking around the long way, so why no tlet me walk straight there? Also, sometimes you can jump over low barriers like fences... and sometimes you can't.

Then it's fiddly "jump on the monsters" and you can't tell if you died or they died, and lots of fetch quests. Cute ones, but that's all you get.

By my choosing the right screen size, I got in to play! That's better! But it's still not a very good game.

Everytime i create my fox, loading a new game always freezes. Please fix or give a refund.

Review Update 22/06:
It's been a while but I'm back with the latest update: The Wild Lands Update.
I'm sorry for the bad quality of the video, still looking for the best preset on OBS for my machine.
Sadly, the update feels empty, with "easy" achievements. Guess the developer is still working on it, but my suggestion is quality over quantity.
Don't take my wrong, I understand that develop a game is hard (I do it on my weekends) but maybe you (the developer) should focus on the first thing.
https://youtu.be/GSUpKbnkukY


Review Update 21/04:
Just a little gameplay of the game. Probably the best part is at 2:26
https://youtu.be/uqWOxdcjinQ


Original review:

Wait...A game where you can play as a Fox? That's great, dude!
Foxes are my favourite animals, that's why the game caught my attention on the first place. The graphics are nice (personally, I like the poly style).
Had this game on wishlist for a while, saw that it came out and add to my cart.

Sadly, on the current status, it's dissapointing. Nothing against the developer, just my opinion.
Barely played for a few minutes and wasn't able to force myself to keep playing: the camera is bad, the controls doesn't have any sense, you can jump through rocks, map dissapears, sounds are only music and pick objects.

I could ask for a refund but the developer needs the chance to show his love for the game. My review can be updated and changed to positive if things goes nice.

So this, uh, this Foxus game? It's not good.

I didn't have the highest expectations going in, I was mainly just excited by the thought of getting a game where I could play as a fox. That's something I like a lot, and normally I could overlook flaws in fox-based games because, uh, I really like foxes
Alas, not the case here. Foxus is a very brief, featureless game that purportedly sells itself on "atmosphere". Don't be fooled, though - this is not anywhere up to the level of Abzu or Proteus.
The game's aesthetic is a mixed bag. On the face of it, it's something I really love: bright, blocky colours and less focus on realism. Indeed, the promotional screenshots look pretty appealing. However, once you actually hop into the game (and after it finally loads) you'll realise that there's quite a few inconsistencies. The fox playermodel is the only thing in the game that is expressed in those low-poly blocks, every other character just looks like abandoned assets from some Wii shovelware title. There's a weird contrast between the cartoonish fantasy of the enemies (which don't actually hurt you) and the more realistically designed player model and landscape. This kind of jarring difference isn't really the worst thing, mind you.

That would be the camera and controls. These are awful. The fox does, I suppose, move in a realistic way - with almost tank controls that makes you feel like you're driving it around. This might have been acceptable if it weren't for how loose and inaccurate the keyboard controls are, with each button press twisting you round a solid 45 degrees. You charge randomly around this grassy field, using a fixed-distance jump to try and land on moving targets and it's painful. The pain is only exacerbated by the abysmal camera, which isn't connected to your motion at all. Instead you can freely rotate independent of movement, which means you have to actively follow your fox with the mouse if you want to see where you're going. The camera also stutters awfully, even with mouse smoothing enabled, meaning that you'll want to try and move in a straight line as much as possible to avoid having to turn and look around.

These control issues are Foxus' fundamental flaws. The rest of the game is mediocre Unity gameplay that you might expect from a solo developer, but that could be forgivable if the core of the game, i.e. walking around and looking at things, wasn't such an uncomfortable experience. The dialogue and story (because yes, this game actually has some of that for some reason) is not paticularly important or interesting, with most conversations with the pink Pikachu thing boiling down to: "walk here and get this thing and talk to me again." There's really nothing fulfilling here, folks.

There are a couple of things I can praise, mind you. The soundtrack is nice, borrowing from the Breath Of The Wild school of gentle piano melodies interspersed between nature sound effects. When you're stood still and not looking around, it's almost atmopheric. The fox's animations are also really nice, looking really smooth and realistic; and it feels like more time was spent on animating the player model than was spent on making the rest of the game. It feels like such a waste.

And that brings me back to what ruins this game for me. All the finer details missing, like an interesting story or deeper gameplay, would be completely fine by me if it were just enjoyable to walk around a landscape, being a fox and soaking up the atmosphere. Sadly what little charm this game has is occluded by its clumsy controls and almost-nauseating camera. 2/10

i love this game and i can foresee that this game can be extermly good.
Only problem is that it
doesnt specify if it it needs a controller or not
doesnt specify what some of the screening mean like Fantasy - Beautiful in the settings
camra angle make it almost impossible to play the slightest touch can throw it out of wack

The only good parts of the game is the nice relaxing songs and nice art
the things they could fix were already said since i only played about 4 minutes after 3 times of restarting it due to it freezing and stopping every time i load it up i would only recocommend this game if you dont mind the controls and if this game can improve on the camra angels and get rid of the lag its fine for the begining but not when it freezes up because that makes me expect its going to be amazing if it's taking so long for it to get it started which made me dissappointed in this game the whole 4 minutes of playing it but i still love it just wish it wouldnt lag so much and the camra angles wouldn't be extermly sensitive

The game looks very nice and cute, the fox movements are well animated and the music is pleasant.

But I can't recommend this game simply because you will finish it in under 30 minutes.
The gameplay is very simple and offers no challenge. It feels like its aimed at very young players.

The controls feel somewhat clunky as well - the keyboard controls direction and movement, mouse just changes the camera view. It would work better if mouse controlled direction rather than the left/right keys.

So in short, offers a short pleasant distraction but its not something you should buy unless its on sale and heavily discounted.
Which is a pity, as there's obviously the start of a decent game here - it just needs a LOT more content and more polish.

Played it - liked it.

Now for some more detailed critics.

PRO:

The art style is okay, what you'd expect from low-poly. The fox's animations though are splendid. Loving them. A little hacky here and there (turning to the sides could be smoother, same for attacking) but otherwise fine.

Interesting that a fox collects strawberries and stars. Maybe in the future we'll learn what that's about.

The music is relaxing, even if scarcely used. There could - and should - be more of it while you play. Some levels are completely silent.



CONTRA:

About the camera; this really needs improvement. It goes below the ground whenever the fox - for some reason - looks up. Also, when changing levels, it reverts to manual mode despite being set to follow.

Collisions really suck. You need to be able to jump over fences and rocks and run past trees without an invisible wall blocking your way. The use of mesh colliders and capsule colliders would help a big deal (if the latter is already in place, please lower the radius, thanks!). In the first level, about west from the npc, you find a rock you can walk right into. This shouldn't happen either!


AFTERTHOUGHT:

I won't comment on the content at this point, realising the game's still in early developement. Seen worse so far, even "The Forest" started out as a small game, so I expect some serious growth in the future :)

More NPC variations and especially a proper AI for the endboss should be obvious.

Also, bigger levels, more to do in them and please.. please! ... replace the particles. While they may be meant as stylish, they strike me as textureless. Even Unity's default particle would do better.

Unfortunately, not enough content to warrant a $7.99 price tag, much less the $9.99 regular price. Has a lot of promise, and hopefully they will be able to expand it to take more than 30 minutes to complete. If more content becomes available, I would be willing to re-evaluate.

In addition, it needs a lot of help with controls. First, the mouse kept leaving the window and going to one of my other screens, and I couldn't get it to lock into the game. So most of the time I clicked to lunge, it took the focus from the window, and even clicked links on pages I didn't want clicked. Aside from that, having free mouse look, but having to use A and D to actually turn the character goes against every 3rd person game I've played.

Where is the rest of this game? It literally takes you about 15-20 minutes to beat it. The game really feels more like a tech demo on what they have in store for a real 1.0 release. There are numerous problems with camera collision on objects, invisible walls that do not make sense, poorly design control scheme (that is incorrect in the launcher and there is none in the game's menu). You will also hate that you want to hit Escape to lead to a menu system, but it leads back to the Main Menu and Continue from there relaunches the level. There is nothing stopping the user, or telling them, that they are doing a destructive option. Any strawberries you collect are gone and the counter resets to 0. What are the Strawberries for? Some are even lodged into the ground and you have to jump and attack around the object to collect it. The developer could really use an audio guy as there are basically no sounds for anything, sure you have amience here and there, there is something you could call a soundtrack, but there are no other sounds.

The game has the possibility of being more and that interests me, but I can in no way recommend what is not a full 1.0 (or even 1.01) release. This game is barely passed an Alpha phase and lays at something that could be accepted as a pre-Beta.

Don't waste your money.

I love the fox movements, and the general atmosphere is very pleasant. However, the game itself seems like a prototype; more a demo than an actual game. Playing with an XBox controller you can't move the camera at all (right stick doesn't work - hopefully a bug and not just negligence), and regardless the in-game camera jumps all over the place and through objects.

Overall seems like it has potential if this is the beginning of development, because I love the fox character, but it's not something worth paying for, in its current form. I hope the developers make this into something great, because there's a dearth of animal games of this kind.

The game is super buggy at the moment, especially the movement and camera, but the designs are really cute and the animations for the fox are really impressive! I'm excited to see future improvements. :>

Many problems with controls using xbox one controller.

I feel really bad about leaving this review, but I honestly regret buying this. The Fox is really cool looking and realistic, that being said, it’s dropped into a game with essentially Pokémon, which is a little strange to me. There isn’t really much to do either, the story is really short, and it leads you to everything making it so that you don’t have to explore any of these cool areas. I see a lot of potential in this game though

I really love the graphics and look forward to playing more of this game. However, the lag makes it unplayable for me and I am going to have to wait until that is resolved. I even put it on lowest settings and the lag is just awful which is disappointing because I really do want to play!

I did do the first couple quests and tried to play through lag but I just can't, it makes me nauseous.

Hope it gets fixed soon, because I waant to play!