I'm grading this game as a game, and not as research as I think most people are on Itch.io for primarily gaming.

Beautiful menus and the levels looked good. I like that it clearly explains and walks me through master thesis research information. I could see myself playing a full version of this game. I'm a sucker for walking simulators, so a good story is all it needs. No combat.

The game felt like an asset flip for primarily two reasons:

1. It was unoptimized as hell. My RTX 3080 started sounding like a jet plane, even after I capped the frames to 60. This is exactly what I imagine a game running like if you go to an asset store and drag-n-drop everything into your game.
2. The character felt extremely out of place. She looks like she's going to the club and not exploring/adventuring in the woods.

I understand that this is master thesis research, so I don't blame you.

Survey 101:

1. Everyone needs to be able to express their opinion - it's extremely important. Meaning, the "Other" options should have had an optional text field associated with it. I feel like the reason why I choose one over the other could not be represented fairly in the survey.
2. In the grading disagree/agree there should be a "No opinion"/skip option. Eg. I did not quite understand the question "I felt focused during the level", so I wanted to skip it but I couldn't. Meaning, you got bogus data from me there.

Shorten the time of the demo. Your openly asking for 30-40 minutes which is an eternity to ask of strangers. I was curious so I played along, but I also didn't decide to explore the levels properly because of it. It's something I usually do in games like these. If there were hidden paths in the game, I would most likely have found them if it was a full paid game, but I didn't really want to spend 30-40 minutes on this demo. Half the time should've been the target.

Now, maybe there's a bigger reason here that I don't see, but, some paths felt EXTREMELY opinionated. I mean having two paths, one being many golden particles and the other fewer white ones tells me you're trying to guide the players to one path over the other. Wouldn't it have been more fair with two paths that felt "right"? Again, I realise your conducting research here but consider this: If you're driving a car and you approach an intersection with a red sign, what do you do? You stop the car because you assume it's a stop sign. The actual text don't have to be there. We've been taught the meaning of some colors and signs since we were children. I realise that this might be culture specific, but I do feel like some (maybe most paths) in your game was opinionated to the level of a "red sign at an intersection".

Good luck with your research!