I got through the game and I gotta say the story was touching, and very sad. I really wanted Maro to make it out. I've listed some of my critiques below:
What I liked:
- I really like the font animation, and the red font for Papa was very fitting
- The story kept me intrigued the whole time, and I was really rooting for Maro.
- The interactable objects that add background to the story are a great touch
- I loved the little popups where you get to make choices for Maro, like leaving or staying or trying again
What Needs Improvement:
- In the bedroom, the distance between the guiding grey pixels is too large, and it isn't always clear to the player which direction they need to go in to find the next area of interest. If you didn't tell me in your game description that the grey pixels were clues, I might have gotten lost instantly. Instead of starting the player on a set of them, you should have a sprinkling of those pixels at the edge of the players visible light radius, then gradually increase the amount of pixels as they walk in that direction. As they get closer, put an interactable object or the first area of interest there, right at the beginning of the level to teach the player that following them leads the way. Then, from there, you can leave trails wherever you want and the player knows to look for them. You could even make the pixels glow or shimmer, following the "let there be light" theme (see attached image). Then, the next time they see those pixels, they will be encouraged to walk towards them.
- There were no walls or floor textures in the bedroom level, so I often found myself wondering in the dark unsure of where I was going. If there were no grey pixels to follow, I would just pick a direction and start walking. I couldn't tell if I was still moving or up against the wall or walking somewhere I had already been. Adding a floor texture and wall boundaries would help restrict the play area and tell me when I've got the wrong way. Once you get out of the room in to the hallway, the floors and walls are a HUGE help.
- When I found the bottle of "Papa's favorite drink", it was at the end of a hallway that was in an optional direction. Later, when I was trying to encourage Maro, I stepped on a bottle and lost. I'm not 100% sure if it was due to the bottle, or if it was something else, but I had no way to know since there were no audio or visual cues when I did step on a bottle. I think it would be a huge help if you added a sound cue to the bottle that made a noise and had Maro react with fear to teach the player that the bottles are to be avoided. Also, make sure that the first bottle that does this is on the main path and is unavoidable. That way, a player must interact with it, trigger the audio cue, then learn that bottles should be avoided. If you leave them at the end of that uppermost hall, there is a chance a player will miss it and will not understand that they are a hazard.
- During the segment where I had to encourage Maro by pressing enter, I lost because I only pressed enter once. I did not know I had to press it repeatedly. Once I figured out I had to repeatedly press enter, I found out that you have to press it insanely fast. Probably too fast. It was hard to continue mashing enter when I wasn't sure where I needed to go, so I had to explore a bit while still mashing the button as fast as I could.
- This may just be an issue that I ran into on my personal PC, but when I get to the 'encourage Maro' part, the performance drops and the game doesn't run smooth anymore. It is still playable, but I'm not sure what is causing the performance drop considering the game is pretty simplistic and my PC is no slouch.
Overall, I thought the story was great (although sad) and I think you have the foundation of a good game. You just need to polish it some and teach the player how to play through more visual/audio cues.