This demo is incredible. The movement feels very similar to RE3, very fast and smooth. The VA (voice acting) also reminded me of RE1, and I sincerely hope that it's intentionally like that, because the hammy VA is part of the charm. The end puzzle was a toughie, I had to brute force over 128 combinations before I solved it, which brings me to the two negative points:
* There is no "file" system, i.e. you can't take notes and memos with you. I could've probably saved a lot of guessing if I had the notes I'd previously read on-hand
* Enemy AI is weak and easily evaded. The only time I ever got hurt was when I decided to engage them in combat
I'm sure both of these will be ironed out in the final release, but player/tester feedback is always valuable, so I think it's worth mentioning. Looking forward to the full release. This is definitely going on my "games to watch out for" list!
Oh yea, the file menu was something that didn't make it into the demo because of lack of time but it was supposed to be where the "help" button is.
Enemy Ai will be improved for the standard dolls. The rest will kind of stay the same. Since many people struggle with the enemies.
Many good players (like you probably) feel it's toooo easy. And other people say it's too hard! So it's very difficult to find the correct balance between these 2 groups. But it sure will get polished by the full release and probably already by the next kickstarter exclusive demo.
I like the way RE balances difficulty. Enemies are always difficult to put down/evade, but the difficulty setting tweaks some basic variables, like enemy damage output, and how many items/enemies appear in each room. So on very easy, you can take a lot of abuse (something like 6-8 grabs), there's fewer enemies per room, and healing items/ammo are abundant, while on hard, you can die in 2-3 grabs, healing items and ammo are few and far between (yet still abundant enough for a surplus by the end if you play your cards right), and there are a lot more enemies roaming around. You might also notice level design-wise that the game has lots of narrow corridors to force you to get close to zombies. Or one of my favorite examples in the RE1 remake: making you walk right next to the giant shark that just lunged at you, to pick up a key. A similar mechanic in your game would work wonders--something that forces the player to get uncomfortable to make progress. Imagine, for example, having to jam a hydraulic press with a rickety piece of junk (let's say it's a steam punk style machine and you're jamming the object into the gear assembly) to crawl through it, all the while you can hear the gears chewing away at it. And then having to crawl back through it only for the gears to win the battle just as you cover the last inch. Maybe even make a cutscene out of it. The protagonist jams it in a couple times, the gears spit it out, and when it finally sticks, she says something like "I don't know about this...". That would be nerve wracking and memorable!
Just spitballing ideas ;)
I hope the dev cycle goes well for you, man.
so I might be making a kind of grab attack for enemies. A little bit based on how Sekiro does it but without the symbol telling you it's going to come. just a charge kind of attack. also I'm going to reduce the knockback/cancelation of the attacks. so they will become a lot stronger.
and I kinda like that idea of that gear/cog machine thing! I might be able to put that in somewhere : ) not sure yet but it could be possible.
Thanks for the ideas and feedback! : )