Hi there!
I played your new demo (also the old one) and enjoyed it a lot!
Graphically it looks fantastic! Your art is really pleasing, I love the designs of the characters, especially the wolf! Facial expressions are really good! Very small nitpick, the necks in the portraits are a little too straight/small, but it doesn’t stick out a lot (I don’t want to sound rude, it’s something I noticed when I used to draw characters-I’m not an artist by any means!) The tile sets used and mapping look great, very pleasing and atmospheric. Nice CGs too. Title screen looks amazing. Character sprites are cute, Azem is very talented in that regard (they also did sprites for Lydia’s games did they not?)
I love the music used in the mines, still stuck in my head. Kudos to the composer!
Gameplay wise, very solid! Difficulty is just about right I’d say. Interacting with environment is well done, optional dialogue and lore is always nice (stuff like the mine family history, the mole holes appearing and trying to use the axe on the iron door). Using objects on others, as expected from RPG maker horror, is done well. I will admit I did struggle with the one candle puzzle even after reading the book, but I eventually figured it out via trial and error. The first chase sequence requires some fast reaction, but the difficulty isn’t too hard or anything. I like the axe mechanic. Hope to see some more stuff like this, hopefully some harder puzzles.
A few very minor glitches (me game breaking and exploring too much as usual) you can use the axe on the door in the mine even after you’ve already done so. Examining a candle in the tavern and then again quickly can cause the game to crash with an RGS33 has stopped working message (I assume this is a script error, it probably only happened because I was skipping through the text during that puzzle). I had a similar crash earlier on, not sure why. Encountering these glitches are very unlikely and don’t break the game or anything, it was tested very thoroughly and works smoothly!
As someone has said on your blog, the ending was a great cliffhanger, after finishing I wanted to play more, so that’s a good sign! It reminds me in a good way of some other RPG horrors I’ve played/seen recently, in terms of graphics and gameplay such as Midnight Train and the Mad Father remake. I look forward to the full game!