Hi! I tried Cardboard Town and wanted to offer some feedback. First off, I got stuck in Mikhail’s bedroom so I could not complete the game. I tried interacting w/ the bed and it just didn’t do anything. Saving/reloading didn’t help.
But from what I did play, here’s some feedback.
The art is solid with some exceptions. I think the trees and some of the portraits just don’t fit/work as well as the other assets. There are a few areas w/ layering issues such as Mikhail’s bedroom (the desk).
That said, there are a lot of nice touches here. I enjoyed the design of the car, the walk cycle, and the layout/design of the town. The mirror reflection is a very nice touch, I don’t think I’ve seen that in an RPGM game before. I also enjoyed the one instance I saw of a static manga-style image in the first scene w/ Mikhail’s dad.
The narrative is intriguing and well-written. It’s clear you know how to write dialogue and weave in plot and emotional beats organically. Sometimes I would be wondering when Mikhail would react to certain details or if he even noticed them and usually this paid off because he would (the piano bit is a good example of this), making me feel aligned with the character’s experiences.
The music is really good and fits well. When it kicks up later, as Mikhail’s situation becomes more scary, it really drives you forward to see what happens next.
Gameplay is simple but effective, however I think better indication for interactive elements would be necessary in a game that sometimes requires you to hunt around for the right object/person. The “!” above NPCs does the trick for dialogue, but something similar might help w/ scenes like the bedroom, which broke for me. I liked some of the smaller touches here, as well. For example, I really enjoyed that the game forces me to brush Mikhail’s teeth before bed and in the AM.
Overall, I really enjoyed this and hope to see more from you. If you have other games, I’ll be checking them out. I’ll also come back and finish this if you sort out the bedroom bug (normally I would drop the game over this because time issues, not out of irritation – these things happen – but I want to see what happens next!).