HAWKER

I really enjoyed the vast majority of my time with Hawker. The presentation is excellent, movement feels great, combat is enjoyable, the atmosphere works well and the opening cinematic in particular is phenomenal. These are only a few parts of the game that already feel extremely polished, even for a demo.

The areas where I felt there was more room for improvement were the sense of exploration, some of the world building, and how the core loop came together during my playthrough. I enjoyed the individual parts of that loop, particularly the movement, combat and scavenging, but I did not always feel like I was setting out on the kind of adventure I had expected. Most days involved leaving Eoran, travelling a relatively short distance, scavenging some items and returning to sell them. I was hoping to uncover more meaningful POIs. The selling side of the loop also did not appeal to me as much as the exploration and combat.

My perspective on the size of the world changed after finishing the demo. I reloaded my completed save, which returned me to Day 1, and deliberately travelled much further from Eoran. This generated a substantially larger exterior with many more enemies, and I also discovered the portals that I had never encountered during my initial playthrough. There was clearly much more available than I originally realised. For that reason, I would retrospectively change my criticism of the world being too small. I think the issue for me was more that my initial playthrough did not encourage me to discover just how much was actually out there, or how far beyond the immediate compound area I could go.

Overall, if you were to ask me as a player whether I would continue with Hawker upon release, the answer is yes. There is a lot here that I enjoyed, there are enough interesting ideas to make me want to see more, and I am interested in where the world and central premise go from here. The main area that would currently make me less enthusiastic about continuing is the NPC dialogue, which did not resonate with me in its current form. I will go into the reasons for that in more detail later in the review.

I’m giving this its own section, because the opening sequence was easily one of the highlights of the demo. The voice acting is phenomenal. Whoever you got to do the voice work for that scene is incredibly talented, and that combined with the artwork and cinematic direction, it immediately gave me extremely high expectations for the rest of the game.

The layered 2D parallax presentation works beautifully with the visual style. I have watched this back multiple times while editing the video, and I still think phenomenal is the only word I’d use to describe it.

I would actively look forward to seeing another cinematic presented this way. I was hooked watching it, and if anything, I was disappointed that the demo didn’t have any more cinematics like this. The ever so slight downside of the opening is that it established a standard for me which some other aspects of the game failed to reach.

The compound (Eoran) itself is very nicely presented. It feels like a believable scavenged settlement rather than an arbitrary collection of prefabs. The visual composition does a lot to sell the setting, and I particularly like the small touches like the train track, and vegetable patch. I think you’ve done a great job overall with its layout and presentation.

During my initial playthrough though, I came away thinking that Gwiravvon was considerably smaller than I expected the playable area in the demo to be. I generally travelled a short distance outside the gates, scavenged what I could find and returned. I did not feel like I was setting out into a large world. Now, as mentioned above, this proved not to be the case, and on that second run, there was much more. Though I will say that even during that additional partial playthrough, it still felt very repetitive, and not like I was really going deeper through a living, breathing map. There weren’t many points of interest, and I didn't really find the level super interesting to explore compared to Eoran, which I felt had more character to it.

That said, there were things that made me curious.Being able to change the train track made me curious about what that might mean for the full game.Some of what turned out to be just broken bridges/structures looked interesting initially, and I thought I was going to uncover additional towns, which I still think might be a possibility in the full game too.

After completing the demo, I reloaded the game and deliberately tried to advance further than I did during the main run. This time I ran past as many enemies as possible and continued much further into the level, which was a bit more interesting, but I still came across almost nothing that really caught my attention. It was just that bit more of everything I had gotten just outside the compound walls on my initial run (just a bit more of everything, plus seeing some portals). That said, my impression of the game's scale changed quite a bit having witnessed this, all for the better. I therefore do not think it would be fair for me to say that the explorable world is simply too small. There was much more there than I had realised, though its worth being aware that I did manage to go the whole demo without realizing there was more to Gwiravvon.

As shown above, I didn't notice that there was a breakable barrier that would have let me explore the wider map. This could be worth considering signposting, or simply removing the barrier (00:37:33:20). On my subsequent run, the route deeper into the map was very obvious.

I enjoyed some part of the core loop, and didnt enjoy other parts of it. I understood the broad idea that I should leave the compound, scavenge resources and return with things I could sell. The individual parts of that process are implemented reasonably well. Breaking boxes is satisfying, opening containers works nicely and moving around the world feels good. The problem was that the complete cycle did not feel particularly rewarding to me. I wanted the days to feel more like expeditions. I wanted to leave the relative safety of the compound, travel somewhere meaningful, encounter danger, find interesting things and eventually make the decision to return with whatever I had managed to collect. Instead, each day became going a little way outside the compound, finding some scraps and bringing them back. My additional run after completing the demo did show more some signs of there being more to explore, I just never naturally reached that experience during the demo itself..

I knew I was gathering and selling things to make money, but I did not regularly pay attention to the fact that I was ultimately trying to build towards a 4,000 debt payment. The fact I was collecting payment from a shop, and then seeing an end of day summary, but with no debt being paid off, created a small bit of a mismatch in my head. I kind of instinctively expected that cash held at the end of the day would go toward debt repayment on a per day basis. The importance of that objective only really clicked for me during the final interaction involving Ankou. By that point there was no opportunity for the knowledge to affect how I approached another day because I had reached the end of the demo. I knew you had presented to me in some of the dialogue that repaying the debt was essentially the main part of the core loop, but somewhere how much of that would be repaid in this installment, and how/when that would be done, became lost in translation.I understood individual tasks, but I did not spend the demo thinking about how much progress I was making towards the larger debt repayment.

I really enjoyed the combat. It is fairly simple at this stage, but it feels satisfying and works well with the movement. The bullets feel like they have real impact, and the melee combat feels responsive and satisfying.

Difficulty generally felt fair for what is clearly the beginning of the game. I died a few times because I misjudged enemy strength on several occasions more so out of recklessness than anything else, but I understood what had happened and adjusted afterwards.

Most of my deaths felt like they were fair, bar one where I got killed through a wall. You’ve done a good job balancing enemy strength, and at visually conveying enemy strength.

You do a very good job of conveying enemy strength and perceived threat. The first enemies you face remind me of emus, and its easy to infer they pose little threat, when compared to not only a large crab, but the even larger crab. There were several occasions where I decided that fighting something alone was a bad idea and I deliberately led it back towards the compound so that other characters could help me kill it.

When I eventually encountered Ankou and died while fighting his minions, I got the impression that I was supposed to lose that encounter rather than that I had simply failed it. Assuming that is the intention, it came across that way to me. I was initially just going to let him defeat me without even battling as it had that feel of a you must die here fight.

Movement feels great, and I really liked choices like having automatic climbing. For the majority of the demo it worked exactly as I wanted it to and allowed me to move around the environment without having to think too much about the climbing system itself. There were occasional places where it did not behave quite as expected, but these were rare exceptions.

I did clip through walls once or twice, particularly while attacking, but it was never serious enough to significantly affect my playthrough.

I would have liked some basic control over the camera. The object transparency when the player is behind some geometry helps when geometry obstructs the player, but there were still situations where the level geometry got in my way quite a bit, and when it obscured enemies that were right in front of me. It can be difficult to see closeby enemies when there is a certain level of transparent level geometry obscuring the view. Being able to adjust the camera myself would have made navigating some areas more comfortable.

Hawker has quite a few different enemy types. I can recall seeing the “emu” enemies, humanoid mushroom head guys, red larger humanoid guys, giant grabs, even larger giant crabs, and I think probably one or two more too. There was a good level of variety, and you did a good job at making enemies feel threatening. I enjoyed encountering enemies quite a lot. Your creature design is fantastic, and they had pretty well polished attack cycles.

Enemies also sometimes appeared and disappeared at the edge of the camera view, particularly when I was at a different elevation from them. Their pathfinding had a habit of having them end up in a corner outside Eorans gate as you will see in the video many times over.

The enemies feel very polished as a whole. They have good attack animations, their sfx are vert apt, and they definitely felt challenging for me. There were definitely some questionable spawns, where I was suddenly swarmed by enemies I wasn’t expecting to see.

The fact that enemies can't navigate elevation takes away from their threat quite a bit. I tried not to over-exploit this during gameplay, but naturally, I did. This felt like the most incomplete aspect of the enemies, which were other wise very well designed from a visual and combat POV. They just lacked off-mesh link navigation.

As mentioned in the Combat/Movement section, most of the movement controls felt very fluid, but I really disliked using F to fire the gun. I found the position extremely awkward for something I was expected to use regularly during combat. I would personally struggle to play for a long period with that binding and I would have loved to remap it in the demo. Control preferences are obviously subjective, so I wouldn't suggest to you to change it, but I would personally immediately look to remap this to a side mouse button given the option. Besides that, it was really easy to control Hawker, and I didn't find myself having many movement issues at all (I did mess up the shadow step though).

The explanation of the Dark mechanics did not land for me. I made a point of reading the information presented to me, but I still came away without properly understanding the system. I never ended up incorporating some of those actions into how I played. This did not stop me progressing, but it meant that I was playing without confidently understanding some of your core combat mechanics the game had explicitly attempted to teach me.

Many other aspects of Hawker are clearly introduced. You do a good job at introducing ducats, boon, controls etc, I would just say that there is a lot for the player to take in, and it can be hard to retain, so being able to review some of that info would be useful.

The physical process of scavenging generally feels good. Opening chests, breaking boxes and collecting items is quick and works naturally with moving through the environment. Even at this stage of development, that part of the game already feels smooth. Items are easy to spot, and stand out nicely from the level itself. I did encounter an inconsistency with picking items up. Sometimes the E interaction simply did not appear to work, and I would press it several times before successfully collecting something. There were also occasions where dropped items remained floating in the air, though this was rare.

The visual presentation of the shop area is beautiful. It feels like a proper pop up market, and visually it was very charming.

I have a feeling that the bartering system in the shop will feel great when a player actually has the items the villagers are looking for, however, the bartering system did not really serve any use for me during this playthrough due to the fact I rarely ever had what the people wanted. Around 90% of the requests I received were for items I did not have, so most interactions ended with me being unable to accept the offer. I therefore did not get much opportunity to make meaningful decisions about whether a particular trade was worthwhile.

I did like the fact there is a time limit given to make a decision. That was a nice way of injecting a small amount of urgency without making the interaction stressful.

What I never really understood was why I should put items up for sale in the shop when characters could approach me directly and request items through bartering, also when the shop items seemed to sell for less.

The shop management side of the game was also simply not something I personally found as enjoyable as other aspects of the game. I enjoyed going outside, moving around, fighting and scavenging considerably more than I enjoyed returning to manage sales. I would have liked to have been able to just let that run automatically without needing to spend time monitoring it.

It wasn’t clear to me if I could actually prevent thefts after they had happened. I often saw people running away from the shop but didn't seem to be able to actually do anything about a theft after it had happened. It's possible this is intentional.

One aspect of the shop management that I did quite like, was being able to craft items around the shop. I thought this was a great little touch. I did not try the recycling system, so I cannot give useful feedback on that. I understood immediately what it did, so you presented that information very clearly.

I noticed that when I was upgrading the shop, I seemed to have what looked like an unlimited number of timber and old tarps to constantly keep upgrading.

The Boon upgrades being purchasable through aklosis and ducats too is a good idea. I like the fact I was given that option between just hoarding the money for Ankou, or upgrading. Progression also seemed achievable on a day to day basis rather than requiring a large amount of grinding before I could improve anything. The Boon screen itself is very clear, and very easily understandable. Its very nearly designed and immediately communicates its purpose before you even hover over a node.

I did not notice a dramatic change in my strength after upgrading, although I would not expect huge differences this early in the game. I did feel like I was getting quite a few critical hits with the shotgun after a few upgrades, so that did feel powerful.

When purchasing Boons, I also wanted my current aklosis and ducats totals to be immediately visible. When the decision is specifically about spending a resource, I should not have to leave or mentally remember another screen to know how much I currently have.

I found the NPC dialogue quite disinteresting compared to other games of this type. I think it stood out to me at least in part because the opening cinematic had set such a high standard. As I started having conversations with characters such as Dulan, the writing did not have the same effect at all, and was actually quite an awkward writing style to read (lots of dashes, lots of dots, sentences that didn't feel like natural spoken dialogue, with an odd grammatical structure). I do understand you’re conveying things like hesitancy, but to me it didn’t read well.

There were, however, positives to the dialogue worth mentioning. The UI while the dialogue is taking place is very clear, and very fluid to progress through. The character portraits are very well designed, and the 2D art in the game compliments the 3D art beautifully.

Some of the conversations felt drawn out without establishing very much. You do a very nice job at introducing a lot of lore, but it would be nice to be able to consume that in smaller segments.The dialogue around obtaining the backpack and mask from Belissant is a prime example of this. I read everything, but the conversations frequently felt as though they were taking a long time to say relatively little, and I don't think a single conversation actually proved to be essential to the demo. As far as I'm aware, I could complete the demo without speaking to anyone.

There is repeated dialogue after loading the game. Dulan spoke to me again about setting up the caravan despite me having already completed that interaction the previous day, and I saw similar repetition with other characters.

I am someone that likes learning about lore, and enjoys learning about a game world through the characters as opposed to reading endless text (like in something like Morrowind), but as a player, I wasn’t gripped by any of the NPC character dialogue during my time with Hawker, despite being hooked by the opening.

There will be a small bit of repetition here as I’ve covered some of the points above, but I love the visual style you’ve gone for here. The game is beautiful, and there is a strong aesthetic consistency between the environment, characters, enemies and general presentation. I thought you did a great job with the layout of the compound. Sleeping in a broken boat was pretty cool, and the general layout with the pop up shop, the vegetable patch, and just the entire set up felt quite close to what it would actually be like to set up a base camp at a ruin. Visually, you had my interest peaked around Eoran, and as I went out into Gwiravvon, I didn’t see anything that visually I felt was on a par with Eoran.

There is generally very strong readability throughout, even with minor things such as the way collectibles become highlighted when objects are destroyed, the way the explosive barrels slightly stick out, the trees blowing, the sand at the start of the game, the water ripples as you walk through. There is beautiful attention to detail here, and the art team/person deserve immense credit.

I’m probably overdoing it with how many times I’ve mentioned the opening cinematic, but the audio associated with that (music and VO) is nothing short of incredible.

The rest of the audio supports the game well too. The ambient music fits the world and never felt out of place, although it was not something that stayed particularly strongly in my memory after I stopped playing. Hawkers audio design feels extremely complete, and IMO its already at a great standard. Enemy sfx in particular are very well designed. The screech that some enemies do is great, and the creature cries when it turns from day to night is brilliant. Small details such as the crabs tunnelling out of the ground, enemy screeches and explosions all have very fitting sfx too, and I enjoyed taking in the various sounds as I came across them. Weather sounds are really satisfying (the thunder in that starting beach area in particular). The music is beautiful and carries that sense of loneliness and loss.

Overall, the audio contributes well to the atmosphere. Brilliant jon on this.

I did not discover the portals at all during my original demo playthrough. I only encountered them when I returned after completing the demo and deliberately explored much further from the compound. I can see these being a very useful feature.

On my post demo run, I came across two portals. One was partially obstructed by scenery, so I couldnt use it, and the other I could use, but when I returned to it after dark, an enemy spawned directly on it, and killed me, which was a small bit frustrating. I had deliberately pushed further into the world and was now trying to make the sensible decision to retreat.

There were some very minor issues during the playtest.

Enemies could attack through walls during some lunging animations.

Dropped items occasionally remained suspended in the air.

I clipped through level geometry a small number of times, particularly during attacks.

Enemies sometimes popped in and out of view depending on elevation and camera position. This looks like a culling issue that seems more prominent when you are on a different elevation to the enemies.

At one point, opening a chest appeared to cause a large number of enemies to suddenly spawn throughout the surrounding area. Immediately beforehand I had killed the nearby enemy and the area appeared clear, so their sudden appearance was very noticeable.

During one night at the shop, a large crab entered the area and approached me while the large Yeti character attempted to attack it without displaying an attack animation.

After dying during the Ankou sequence with no currency remaining, I was also shown the upgrade screen. With nothing available to spend,it probably doesn't make sense to show this screen.

It would be great to have a v-sync option as I did notice a significant amount of screen tearing regularly.

When you do a roll (spacebar), there is a clear meter associated with this on the UI, but with the shotgun, it was never clear to me when I could shoot or when I could charge a shot. I eventually understood that I could perform a standard shot approximately every few seconds, but I could not see a clear indicator telling me when the weapon was ready again.

There were times when I could not charge a shot and I did not understand why. I could not see anything on the HUD communicating what resource, cooldown or condition was preventing me from doing so. The weapon itself is enjoyable to use (and if anything, I over-relied on it). My issue was understanding its state. If I cannot currently fire or charge it, I want to be able to glance somewhere and immediately understand why.

In the opening cinematic, Ankou has an immense presence, but that didn’t translate to in-game for me. There is nothing wrong with his character model in the game, it just doesn't carry that same sense of presence and looming doom that can be seen in the vignette (see Fig 2 above).

The demo ended at the right point for me. The Ankou encounter gave the demo a clear conclusion rather than simply stopping after another ordinary day. It also brought the larger debt premise into much sharper focus for me.

Despite some small bugs, I was definitely left wanting to see more, which is why I returned for an additional play afterward.

I would continue playing Hawker. There is a lot here that already works very well, and that I felt was enjoyable. Movement feels excellent, combat is satisfying, the visual presentation is beautiful, the atmosphere is convincing and the world building has given me enough as a player to be intrigued to see what comes next.

During my normal playthrough, I never developed the feeling that I was heading out on a dangerous scavenging expedition. I was leaving the compound, collecting a relatively small amount nearby and coming back to sell it. The individual parts of the game worked better for me than the complete core loop cycle but I am left interested in playing more. I didn't find the shop aspect very fun, but I did enjoy combat, and scavenging.

My additional run after completing the demo showed me that there is already more depth and scale outside the compound than I had realised, and that is where a good bit of my current intrigue has come from since. There is enough here to make me want to continue. I look forward to seeing more of this over the coming months.

1. 00:00:00:00Comment

   Initial thoughts on game plus opening cinematic.

2. 00:01:45:00Comment

   Thoughts on contrast of opening cinematic to first in-game scene.

3. 00:03:25:00Comment

   Really nice opening visuals. I didn't immediately have an idea of which way to go, so I just picked a direction and went with it.

4. 00:06:23:29Comment

   Reading the chest perk options.

5. 00:06:50:15Comment

   Abilities cost shadow. This was not immediately obvious to me.

6. 00:07:13:41Comment

   Thoughts on Shadow step, and my shadow step failure.

7. 00:08:06:14Comment

   Thoughts on shotgun.

8. 00:09:26:36Comment

   Thoughts on level composition and god rays.

9. 00:10:36:18Comment

   Thoughts on dialogue.

10. 00:19:24:32Bug

    Able to upgrade with more timber than I have.

11. 00:20:32:25Comment

    Thoughts on Eoran and Gwiravvon.

12. 00:20:51:16Comment

    First death. Was there any penalty for dying?

13. 00:23:00:52Bug

    Example of an enemy clipping through the wall while fighting.

14. 00:24:02:06Comment

    Second death. This felt unfair as I was lunged at through the gate.

15. 00:27:46:42Comment

    First time building at the shop.

16. 00:33:47:42Bug

    Start of Day 2. You will notice the top right UI immediately turns back to DAY 1.

17. 00:34:06:02Bug

    Same dialogue with DUVAL as if this is the first time I spoke with him on Day 1.

18. 00:36:55:22Comment

    Do enemies react to chest options being selected? I see it happen here, and it will happen again more prominently later.

19. 00:37:33:20Comment

    I think this may have been where I could have gone to see more of the level, but I didn't notice that this might be destructible.

20. 00:40:21:19Comment

    The detail of the player creating ripples through the water is beautiful.

21. 00:40:37:47Comment

    Enemies unable to traverse the change in height.

22. 00:41:58:46Comment

    Unexpected spawn logic? I was already in this area and now giant crabs have spawned.

23. 00:42:56:00Bug

    Enemy culling issue.

24. 00:43:12:22Bug

    Clipped through the level.

25. 00:43:26:17Comment

    It wasn't until here that I realised I was attacking in the direction of the cursor.

26. 00:48:26:21Comment

    Start of Day 3.

27. 00:49:31:49Comment

    Small clip through the geometry here. Also, when you leave Eoran through this route, you don't get the trigger displaying the Gwiravvon text.

28. 00:50:43:45Comment

    There were no enemies along the path I had just taken, but when I opened the chest, enemies suddenly spawned all over the path I had just come down.

29. 00:51:36:43Comment

    Another example of enemies clipping through the walls of Eoran.

30. 00:55:06:25Bug

    Here it triggers Gwiravvon as you are leaving it and entering Eoran.

31. 00:58:07:06Comment

    Pay attention to the giant crab. You will notice I leave without killing him. Because I didn't kill him, he will come back later at the shop.

32. 01:01:57:24Bug

    Here he comes, back for revenge. BUG Also note Brum trying to attack with no animation.

33. 01:04:51:25Comment

    Final battle. I knew I was going to die.

34. 01:06:04:31Comment

    No point in showing this screen here.

35. 01:06:15:38Comment

    Final thoughts.

36. 01:09:33:43Bug

    Inaccessible portal (at least I think it's inaccessible).

These are all timestamped above, but just in case you want them consolidated here.

Shop upgrade resources not being consumed correctly : Appeared possible to repeatedly purchase upgrades despite having very limited timber and old tarps. 00:19:24:32

Enemy attacks clipping through walls and gates : Enemies can lunge through level geometry during attacks. 00:23:00:52, 00:24:02:06, 00:51:36:43

Day counter reverting incorrectly : At the start of Day 2, the UI changes back to displaying Day 1. 00:33:47:42

Dialogue state not persisting correctly : Dulan repeats his Day 1 dialogue about setting up the caravan despite this already being completed. 00:34:06:02

Enemy navigation unable to handle elevation : Enemies appear unable to traverse changes in height. 00:40:37:47

Unexpected enemy spawning : Previously cleared areas can suddenly repopulate with enemies. This was particularly noticeable after opening chests. 00:41:58:46, 00:50:43:45

Enemy culling issue : Enemies can pop in and out of view, particularly when the player is at a different elevation. 00:42:56:00

Player clipping through level geometry : Occurred occasionally, particularly during attacks. 00:43:12:22, 00:49:31:49

Area name trigger incorrect/missing : Leaving Eoran via one route does not trigger the Gwiravvon text correctly. Another transition displays Gwiravvon while leaving it and entering Eoran. 00:49:31:49, 00:55:06:25

Brum attacks without animation : Brum attempts to attack the giant crab without displaying an attack animation. 01:01:57:24

Dropped items floating : Dropped items occasionally remain suspended in the air.

Item pickup intermittently fails : Pressing E sometimes fails to collect an item and requires multiple attempts. (Apologies, input overlay was not present for this)

Significant screen tearing : Regular screen tearing observed throughout the playtest.

Portal obstructed by scenery : One portal was positioned in a way that made it inaccessible. 01:09:33:43