Good job on your alpha release! I liked the need to balance visibility and survivability; it was reminiscent of the Doom 3 mechanics where you have to choose between a gun and your flashlight when traversing and fighting within dark hallways.
Some feedback for ways to make improvements to the gameplay are:
- It could help to provide more feedback when the player is hit, something like a mini screen shake or moving the player slightly.
- The darkness and pause cause a break in the gameplay and detract from the experience. Instead of fading to black when switching between the sword and lantern, you could simply expand or contract the diameter of the light source while switching tools. This will allow the player to maintain control rather than having to pause during the transition, and it will ensure that visibility is maintained rather than always going to darkness.
- It would be great to have some visual or audio cues for how the switches relate to the door. I had thought I ran into a bug when I hit both switches but nothing happened to the door, and only later remembered about the interact button. If the doors cracked open a little, that would let the player know something changed, or better yet, just have the door open entirely (and close behind the player if you don't want them to backtrack).
- I liked the boss mechanics of stunning it and then attacking, though there are a few things that could help that encounter. For one, ensure that the red and blue sparkles remain visible in the darkness rather than blocked by line of sight; I lost the boss a few times because of that, then when rounding the corner I got attacked. Also, the second phase seemed like it had the same mechanics, but because of the regularly-spawning enemies it was difficult to find the boss once they teleported away. Possibly because of the same line of sight issue, I was not able to find the boss again and ended up dying to the enemies.
Looking forward to how you continue to develop this game!