[First Impression] Parakacuk Demo, Full of Potential and Problems!

Of the many Indie games made by local developers that will be released this year, Parakacuk is the one that catches our attention the most. How come? This game tries to offer a beat em’ up game experience with the theme of the life of a thug and wild schoolboy. This is why many people immediately associate it with the Bully game from Rockstar, because conceptually this comparison is inevitable.

Facing this challenge, Gamecom Team developers have put their dedication to make Parakacuk present as a game that can answer the expectations of many fans. Since the release of the first trailer, we can see how this game looks promising and has a lot of potential to be explored. While waiting for its release as well as to gather feedback from fans, the game demo happened to have been released on Steam some time ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kO1qvsYCZk

We certainly didn’t want to miss the opportunity to try it right away, and just downloaded the demo version which is over 800 MB in size on Steam. Unfortunately, after playing this game for the last few days, the impression we got was actually more disappointing than expected, especially with the technical problems that interfered with the playing experience.

But of course a more complete assessment is needed, for that we have summarized the full impression which you can see below.

Welcome to the School of Punks

The main setting of Parakacuk is a school called SMK 69 Janc*k, where you play the role of an “ordinary” school student named Budi. At least this is what we saw in the first few seconds of the game, until finally Budi tried to intimidate a group of student council members with harsh words and invite them to fight. From here the flow of the game will continue to go into the environment within the school, with many enemies to boss fights against stronger students.

Our progress went pretty smoothly until finally there was a point where the game seemed to stop, or there was a wall that couldn’t be crossed. After we checked, it turns out that you will still be presented with a final battle against a boss named Ricco Pangestu. Now at the point of meeting Ricco, we can’t interact, so it can be considered that it is a bug that some players might experience.

Chaotic Combat System Full of Holes

Without further ado, Parakacuk’s demo will immediately take you into a gameplay filled with battles against delinquent students at SMK 69 Janc*k. For a game that carries the theme of youth violence with the premise of a fist fight system as the main focus, so far we have to admit that the execution is really chaotic and full of loopholes.

The controls in this game are divided into some very simple actions. So the battle system is only set in one command button to attack, one button to protect yourself from enemy attacks, one button to dodge, and the rest are just commands to focus and switch targets to other enemies. The beat em’ up gameplay in Parakacuk feels very stiff and unresponsive.

You can only execute one command at a time. So for example when attacking an enemy and want to dodge, then you must stop attacking first before you can execute other commands. This is certainly not essential, especially for games that focus on a fist fight system with a fast game tempo. In addition to using your bare hands, you can also fight with weapons such as brooms or bicycle gear, which can actually offer cool combo options and have a wider attack area.

One compliment appeared and another problem also appeared when we faced the boss. In this demo version there are three boss fights involving three different characters. It’s just that each character doesn’t really have a strong uniqueness except SledgeHammer Boy who uses a big hammer weapon. The difficulty level is also very challenging, especially when you play the game on a high difficulty level where the enemy can finish Budi in one or two attacks. Not to mention the defense button function becomes useless, because enemies (at least when fighting bosses) can penetrate your defenses and deal just as much damage when not defending themselves.

It didn’t take long until we realized that the poor AI quality in this game can be abused. For example when facing a boss or standard mob enemies, you can dodge each of their attacks by dealing one or two counter attacks and then retreating before attacking again. The point is you can play back and forth and the enemy can’t react at all. They didn’t have the kind of anticipatory step to deal with such a lousy “cheese” technique.

After playing this demo a second time, we even managed to finish it on the highest difficulty level only by getting hit by one hit from the SledgeHammer Boy hit box attack which is indeed problematic.

A Visible Identity Crisis

The identity crisis we mean is Parakacuk’s attempt to offer some elements that feel unimportant and only cloud the quality. One that is clearly visible is a score system similar to “Stylish Point” in the Devil May Cry games. This system works by measuring how creative attack combos you can execute in a short time, plus the risk of a decreased score if the character you play is attacked.

But in Parakacuk this system feels irrelevant, because you are only presented with one attack command. There is no special button where the character can execute combos with other types of attacks, such as using legs. Reaching an SSS or “Swag, Swag, Swag” score is a very easy task as long as you can dodge enemy attacks.

Another example can be seen from the function of the dodging or dodging system which feels more like a souls-like action game, where your character keeps his distance by rolling. We feel that a beat em’ up game that focuses on fist fights like this actually requires additional close-range dodging systems such as side steps. Because besides being useful for maintaining the momentum of the battle, this dodging system also feels more natural for a real school youth battle scenario.

Bugs, Optimization, To Technical Problems

Throughout the game session we encountered various bugs and technical problems that were quite annoying. We have even experienced this before entering the game, where when using a controller connected to a PC, the game will only run to the warning screen before a force close or crash occurs. Examples of other problems that we encounter most often also arise from character models that penetrate objects and buildings.

The graphics quality offered by the game is quite low, especially for today’s gaming standards, but the performance demands are really high. We played this Parakacuk demo at maximum settings with specifications i5-9300H, GTX 1660 Ti 6GB, 16GB RAM and only got an average fps in the range of 30 only.

In addition, the English audio option in the game feels very awkward because the sound it produces feels like stilted text-to-speech audio. This is not to mention the subtitles with sentences that are less natural, where sometimes the characters use a combination of raw and harsh language that doesn’t feel right.

However, there is also potential that can be emitted

Despite all the problems above, we feel that Parakacuk has great potential to become a better game. First we like the concept which tries to bring the local juvenile delinquency theme with its own wild twist. One of them is how the boss character in this game has some kind of superhuman strength, and can even show actions that school children shouldn’t be able to do. It will be very interesting of course to see what other crazy actions players will encounter when the game is officially released.

Maybe some players feel that this seems like spoiling the impression of realism, but in our opinion Gamecom Team should be bolder to express the concepts they are trying to build, no matter how wild the ideas are. We also mentioned that using weapons in this game gives access to cool attack movesets, so we hope that in the final version there will be more variations of other weapons.

If observed more deeply, Parakacuk actually has a lot of potential to offer a variety of creative gameplay elements and relate to the school environment itself. We imagined how the teacher could catch you in the middle of a battle and take you and the other bad boys to the counseling room. Or how your actions can also be reported to parents with a felt reciprocal effect. A game scenario with real consequences like this would definitely be a cool idea if it could be realized.

Conclusion

In the end, the impression we got from the Parakacuk demo ended up being unsatisfactory. Even after trying to play it a few times, we haven’t found much to bring to this article. But of course this is still a demo version which only gives a little idea of the content that the game has to offer when it’s released. Therefore, we really hope that Gamecom Team developers can give their best effort to fix the existing problems as well as improve the quality of the game.

For those of you who are interested in trying it, the Parakacuk demo can be directly downloaded for free at Steam with a size of only about 800 MB more. As for the final version, Parakacuk is scheduled to be released on PC on October 29, 2021.

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