Thank you so much for playing!
I truly appreciate all your feedback! It’s really awesome of you, that you spent your time explaining everything in detail. :)
Firstly I wanna say that originally the whole pumpkin carving thing including the witch, was part of a Halloween event in one of my other games, but I didn’t really think it was that great tbh. So I decided to build a small standalone Halloween game instead, since I already had the witch’s voice lines, and the pumpkin assets to build around.
The lighting - I 100% agree with you about everything you said. I simply haven’t been able to nail it right, and it really bothers me. Lighting is definitely my worst enemy when it comes to making games, but I know it’s so important to get right, because it sets the mood in the game.
I also think that the player’s light is too bright. Especially when looking at the bulletin board, so I'll see what I can do in order to make it blend in better.
Mechanics - About searching the houses. I was actually struggling a lot with coming up with new ideas about what to look for in the houses, because reading notes doesn’t feel like enough. That’s why I invented the map as a requirement in order to leave the village and the lockbox to force the player to at least explore two houses. I also have a quest that I’ve currently have disabled, which is about finding some oil for the lantern, because it runs out before leaving the village, but I had to disable that objective due to the darkness. It was hard to see the pumpkin faces on the doors without a light.
About finding the chest, I noticed that pretty anyone that I’ve seen so far, have missed it at first glance. That’s also why I've added a voice line triggering when passing it. I used to have the same problem at the witch’s house with the wooden lid that you had to break. Then I added the voice line about the draft from underneath.
I also like the idea about finding ingredients and making the poison, but I think that would give away the idea of poisoning the witch’s brew too much. Maybe not, I’m not sure.
The lack of scares - The game isn’t scary right now, that’s true. I’m currently brainstorming for ideas on what to make. Especially when wandering in the woods needs a little spice.
The Lore - It’s a short game, and it was my intention to keep it that way. I don’t want it to be overflown with too many documents scattered around everywhere, but that doesn’t mean that you’re wrong in saying that we don’t really know much about the protagonist, Molly and the village. So I guess it’s up to me, finding different ways to inform players about lore.
About the SFX - I do agree with the creaking SFX. I’m gonna tone them down a bit.
The Game Menu - I’m basically using the menu as my other games, since they all use the same core, but I’m aware that it has some flaws. The “Refreshrate” option is also a fairly new addition, but I’ll address it as soon as I can. It’s definitely not an easter egg, lol
The language setting obviously can’t be changed yet, since I only have English localization, but it’s already built for other languages as well. I should probably disable the arrows until it’s ready.
The performance - While I do agree that the game has some performance issues, I’m curious to know which kind of PC setup you have, because I run the game with a GTX 3070 and it runs decently. It never comes below 70 FPS. Mostly it runs at 100+ FPS. I’ve already disabled shadows on most lights, which helps a lot. However, I can definitely do some more tweaks here and there.
I think that covers it all. If you have some additional cool ideas you wanna share or anything else, always feel free to reach out!
Cheers