I've had this wishlisted since mid last year so I was really excited to hear you guys had a playtest available. I really love the character and enemy designs, environmental details, as well as the overall art direction.
First off, I played with a gamepad using the modern control scheme. For the most part I had no significant issues with that setup aside from some camera shifts and how that affected the controls. It's hard for me to describe exactly what was happening, but there was some awkwardness at times with that. Whenever the camera would change I would deliberately stop moving and then start moving again and that felt smoother. I've played quite a few fixed-cam RE inspired games this past year so this feeling wasn't exactly foreign. It isn't a huge issue for me personally.
I really enjoyed using the environment to avoid enemies with guns; having shootouts involving destructible cover in a game like this was unexpected but feels really refreshing and unique.
I didn't feel any resource pressure until the last little stretch of the demo. It wasn't until the early areas of the demo "repopulated" with new enemies did things get intense. Due to how connected and non-linear the map is, it felt kind of random as to why new enemies even showed up, it even felt like new enemies spawned in a room that I was currently in already! Since the resources in these areas were already looted I was worried I'd completely run out of ammo before getting to the end. The sudden jump in difficulty felt very stark mostly because there wasn't much indication as to what triggered new enemies to show up. All in all it wasn't really that bad; the combat is manageable and fun and enemy patterns can be clearly recognized.
If there is one piece of feedback that I really want to give it's feedback pertaing to the clothing system. I REALLY like the clothing mechanic in this game and I would say it's one the major draws for me (other than the goblins). I find that the durability system does not really make sense to me. Clothes and armor seem to break quickly, which is nice, but I couldn't gauge exactly how the game determines which clothing item takes damage when getting hit. I would check my clothes after almost every fight and it seemed random. For me it impacts immersion when underwear ends up breaking first (lmao, I know) despite being decked out in shirt, pants, and a suit of armor. The game would feel a lot more satisfying to me if clothing would take damage in a more logical way, with outer layers like armor and backpacks degrading first, and then layers like shirt and pants, eventually leaving undergarments as the last line of defence.
A couple bonus notes about the clothing, I noticed that when fighting the short imp-like dudes, my pants would usually end up breaking when taking damage. Does this game actually have positional damage with clothes? If so that is very interesting. Another thing I noted was that any shoes I found did not last very long at all, this almost felt like a running joke considering how relieved Tamara was whenever I found footwear.
One last small piece of feedback I wanted to mention concerns the mc herself. Something that was odd to me was how her voice sounded. It came off as inconsistent to me as if various lines were pitch shifted at random. Sometimes she sounds more mature and even-pitched but othertimes she would have almost a cutesy high-pitch voice. It just didn't feel consistent and stood out to me.
As of now that's all that comes to mind concerning feedback. I ought to do another run soon to get a better feel for the game but as far as first impressions go this was very good. I'm very excited to see what you guys bring to Tamara in the future (goblins espescially)!