Sonic Horizons - SAGE 2023 Demo

Fun game but with many technical problems.
Most terrain meshes do not reflect their real collision, so things like going around the map area while floating are possible and just makes the player experience not as fun as it could be with the real terrain mesh. This also creates alot of player softlocks as its possible to see in the image below where i had to restart(Image 1).
This game needs some serious optimization, i currently have a rtx3060 and the FPS doesn't go above 70 in Island stages in Max and Low settings.
I wish it was possible to zoom out in the map menu.
When interacting with the portal, you can only select a option if you press TAB to show your cursor.
Its possible to get softlocked in the portal stages for dying because Sonic started to grind backwards when changing rail and now he keeps dying and i get teleported to a Camera event(Image 2).
Sometimes if you die, you are unable to control Sonic but its still possible to crouch (Image 3).
Most of the mechanics the game doesn't teach in the tutorial like opening the map.
Its easier to get an S rank by going on the lower paths
After the ending the portal level, it says to press Escape, but Space needs to be pressed

I'm at the very first portal and got the crystal after a spring on a tree and the crystal on a tree you get after grinding a rail and going up a slope. I can't find the third crystal and I've poured over the whole area, so obviously I'm missing something.

I'll also echo the technical issues raised above as well as that Dualsense input is bugged where double jump requires square when jumping is x and you can't air dash. The bounce also seems to not be a good way to get myself sheer vertical distance, I always seem to go too far horizontally even from a standstill, and the air dash being reliant on Sonic's direction and not stick input isn't ideal.

I was just recently made aware of the performance/optimization issues. It ran perfectly fine across multiple rigs that my friends used to test (including mine which by todays standards is pretty mid/average) but as soon as I let it out for everyone to play a bunch of issues started popping out that I have both no clue what get caused by and how to fix them. I'll try to look into them soon, but I doubt I'll be able to do something significant

The game just wont start after I extracted it. Do I need to download something else to get it running?

I've been unable to play even past the opening area due to an optimization issue that was pointed out. It dips around 10 FPS and stays around there despite having a decent rig and turning settings down. I do think there might be some possible theory as to why this is the case, however.

For me, the game opens with the map for a brief second before closing right after the game's opening cutscene. Not sure if that is supposed to happen but maybe the game is running both the map and the game at the same time that it's causing massive lag?

There are also strange, possibly corrupted textures on the walls in the opening area, which could be related.

I can't give much of an opinion on the game itself due to these issues which I hope could be resolved, but I figure it's important to share anyhow. Besides that, I would've liked some option to rebind the controls or just anywhere I can check what the controls are because I wasn't sure how to pause the game at all with a keyboard and mouse, lol.

Snakeorino said:

I'm at the very first portal and got the crystal after a spring on a tree and the crystal on a tree you get after grinding a rail and going up a slope. I can't find the third crystal and I've poured over the whole area, so obviously I'm missing something.

I'll also echo the technical issues raised above as well as that Dualsense input is bugged where double jump requires square when jumping is x and you can't air dash. The bounce also seems to not be a good way to get myself sheer vertical distance, I always seem to go too far horizontally even from a standstill, and the air dash being reliant on Sonic's direction and not stick input isn't ideal.

Click to expand...

The third crystal is a little further back in the area, if you go on top of the trees and use them to backtrack a little bit (make sure to stay on top of the trees), you should eventually see the crystal on a raised area surrounded by a circle of rings
Hope this helps

Boost said:

The third crystal is a little further back in the area, if you go on top of the trees and use them to backtrack a little bit (make sure to stay on top of the trees), you should eventually see the crystal on a raised area surrounded by a circle of rings
Hope this helps

Click to expand...

Thanks I found it

I have a massive issue with the game where when i launch it, all i can see is a neon purple screen like the game has just straight up broke on me. no clue what to do. hopefully when im not on my laptop and when i get home i have more luck.

The only idea I have thats causing the pink screens is due to the game running on Vulkan. Next patch will move it to DirectX, hopefully that'll fix it along with other performance issues

Despite a lot of technical issue what’s shown here is really impressive. I think having to S rank every stage can be annoying. Specifically in the second one where it’s very easy to run into enemies in the 2D sections
Outside of issue that have been mentioned already by others I found that facing the opposite direction after starting a speedtrap will cause the marker for the goal to show in the opposite direction

I can't progress through the game past the first portal. The Ranking screen shows up upon loading into the stage. Restarting the stage does the same thing.

i fixed a few minutes ago

please remove the rank requirements. i have been trying for hours to get an A rank in the FIRST LEVEL.

Here's a thing most people won't point out: on a cheaper controllers with bad circularity the game is basically unplayable due to 1-to-1 analogue movement. If yourr gamepad can't do every single degree good you are in big trouble. Also stopping is hard on even good controllers.

WhoWhatWhenWhale said:

please remove the rank requirements. i have been trying for hours to get an A rank in the FIRST LEVEL.

Click to expand...

just get rings and don't die, it's not hard. You can spindash on rails for some speed btw.

Can you add a controller support to this game?

Ok but why can't this game have the same difficulty as Frontiers? This is not fun for casual players at all.

How can I download

I played through a bit of this, so I wanted to give some feedback. I'm not going to touch on things like terrain collision and graphical bugs, as plenty of people have already mentioned those. For some context, I only played up until a little after beating the first cyberspace level. This is because I honestly wasn't having much fun, and this is due to a few different things.

One, while I think the idea of a more physics-focused take on Frontiers's open-zone concept is a great one, the level design just wasn't doing it for me. The small restrictive areas of this demo just don't really sell the concept, though I understand they're likely so small because this is an early demo. The placement of trees and other elements also feels a bit haphazard. The levels especially have a problem with vertical design, where there's too much focus on gaining height by running up straight walls and not enough gradual inclines and other tools to go up. There just needs to be more variety of things to play with, especially in an introduction area where the player is getting their grip on the mechanics and physics. Setting the demo in the dark of night was also a mistake, at least from my perspective. Instead of feeling energized and motivated to do exploration and platforming, which a brighter environment would accomplish, the light level was instead giving me a feeling of somber melancholy. Great for atmosphere, not so great for making me want to do tricky platforming.

Two, Sonic is a bit frustrating to control. He's difficult to move with precision, and he has a lot of momentum, which let to me falling off trees and missing rails a lot. Going the direction you want when wall running feels more difficult than it should be. And, finally, air control just doesn't feel good. With how the levels are designed, Sonic could really use more height and distance to his jumps and air dash.

Lastly, there were a few other small things. I'm just going to throw these out without much flow, so please bear with me. The tutorial for wall running does not seem very well implemented. I nearly made it through the first wall-running section before the tutorial even triggered. When I failed that first attempt, I suddenly started freezing in place, nowhere near the walls, because the tutorial suddenly expected me to be in the process of doing wall running and was trying to be helpful by pausing time. The aesthetics of cyberspace were pretty boring. I would fail trying to get to a new area and fall out the map, only to respawn on the platform I failed to get to. Speaking of which, in this kind of open-level design, making deep water a pit hazard is frustrating. Just let me climb out of the water myself. And with the speed you can attain, I really expected to be able to run across water. Finally, I seriously question the decision to make high level ranks required for minimum progression. I didn't have any trouble getting an A rank in that first level, but just the fact I had to get it stressed me out and cause me to restart when I probably didn't need to. Being immediately told you must master the level really makes it hard to relax and enjoy it for your first time through. I get what you're going for, but I hope you understand that you are basically turning away everyone that's just looking for a casual, fun time playing an open-design Sonic game. Requiring an A rank for basic progression also begs the question of why include more than 3 ranks at all, one for failing, one for passing, and the S rank. It doesn't matter if you obtain a C rank versus a B rank, they're both not good enough for anything.

Please don't take this wall of critique to mean I hated the game or anything. I really like the base concept and I think you have a foundation with a lot of potential. But this is the kind of game idea where the devil is really in the details.

Might benefit from a Boost