Played the game for a while till I got stuck in looking for some plastic bag in the garage. I am sure I missed something but I simply couldn’t get into the garage.
My gameplay
I was moving around the dark school collecting books because that seemed to be the only thing to do. Was met with some random red apparition. there were numbers on the door, initially I thought it was for grade, but then I realized it was for books left to collect. eventually I found all the books and escaped. After the leave any room it was pitch black, made me think the game was still loading. This created a lot of irritation.
I liked how the passage was endless but since there was no novelty after a while it went from scary to dragging.
I came out the road and the cycling part was fun. The dialogues constantly interrupted the flow. I think none of the dialogues while cycling where important enough to break the flow of cycling. There was also text on screen like turn left which made me think I had to input something but it was automatic, that was a bit confusing.
After that the same looking houses and the dialogues made it clear that this was some sort of a fever dream. Took a while to find my house, started cleaning up and then was stuck at the garage. I searched every room for a sort of a key for the blocked door, but did not find anything.
Positives
- The atmosphere is quite nice and the game ran very smoothly.
- I am working from an old laptop and it did not heat up either, which means the game is quite performant (lol)
- I like the endless passage concept a lot and looping roads, they have a genuinely unsettling feel to them.
- Music was nice, never overbearing but leaving a haunting feeling.
- There was a lot more content than I expected.
Potential points for improvement.
- while endless roads passages were nice, there still has to be something different about them to make the player feel that there is something new going to happen. each room is exactly identical. even small changes like different boards lights missing desks differently shaped tables can give the room an identity. even if one or two things change during a seemingly endless looking passage it gives us an eerie feeling , but also a sense of progression.
- (I did not understand why I had to collect books?)
Overall a great job. It is clear that a lot of work has gone into the game. Looking forward to see what you do with this project in the future!