Untold Cases: Still Water lake demo is a short indie game where you play as a park ranger(i think) that gets reports of things happening on small islands you can explore. Gameplay: you as the player get told over a radio what your quest is and then are let off to explore for yourself. you have a boat which you use to travel, which i feel is way too slow.the scale of the world, woods etc is in my feeling not big enough. you have a couple of items and 2 flashlights which are almost identical(maybe try to make one for distance and the headlamp as the normal one). you walk, pick up items and move to locations of importance. Visuals: the game looks very atmospheric but on some things like the water, scale of worlds and objects not so convincing. Overall it uses a indie game look that a lot of games use thats okay.sound: i feel the rain and other prominent sounds feel repetitive which can be okay(rain sounds like ASMR) but i think mixing it a little more up sometimes to make the woods feel more alive would be really cool and easy to do. the lack of music in the beginning is also a little weird but once i came to the first body, and it started i found that very fitting and it gave off like a horror movie atmosphere. its all going in the right direction, but wood and wildlife sounds will make it a lot more alive. Story: i like this type of open story where you get calls and then can act. it reminds me a lot of kona which is a AA game but features some similarities in its way on how to progress. i played till the island where i got hit over the head after going inside a container, so i not a lot happened but it was alright because it felt like it tried to built tension and give a more grounded approach to the traveling across islands. i give the demo a 6.5\10 because i like this style of game and hope that the full release will have a way more immersive world that lets you actually feel like you are traveling properly in a bigger world, with more soundscape overall more immersion. btw please look into kona i think it will be a good inspiration for this game.
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Thanks a lot for your feedback :) - Will be making the boat faster, and the held flashlight have more of a spot-like beam for distance. Will definitely been checking out the game Kona! As for the maps scale, it's not really supposed to be open world with it sorta being a little on-rails with some freedom of movement for the initial start of the game (full release) this demo has like half the lake blocked off. It doesn't have a lot of the main game story elements, its sorta just a prologue for the main game and gives players a little taste of the atmosphere and general gameplay.