I haven't played this type of game before, and I'm also trying to develop games, so take my background into consideration since I am probably not the target demographic. But I like the game and here's why:
The lower resolution and rasterization paired with the muted colors definitely creates a memorable aesthetic. The difficulty of the enemies combined with the limited ammo forces the player to plan out their path — I can really feel the stakes when playing. There also seem to be multiple viable strategies, like using the knife to repeatedly evade while plinking enemies with the pistol, or saving the pistol for dire situations and leaning on the knife otherwise. That shows real gameplay depth.
A couple of UI things also work well: the GPS's green outline contrasts nicely with the background, so it pops and stays readable, and the yellowish highlighting is high-contrast enough to be easy to spot.
Here are the critiques:
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The UI is a bit confusing to me overall. I think it's a combination of the font, the color palette, the placement of buttons, and the "screen changing":
- The close button for the inventory is near the bottom of the screen. As a PC user, I expected it near the top-right or top-left, similar to closing a window.
- The shortcut key next to the "INVENTORY" button in the player hub looks like a lowercase "L" rather than an uppercase "I". A lowercase "i" would be more legible.
- The other buttons in the player HUD only brighten slightly on hover, without a yellow outline. This makes it hard to tell which option I'm hovering over. One fix would be a thin bright-white border by default that turns yellow on hover, similar to the inventory menu.
- The language for toggling between the two GPS views, "FOLLOW" and "FIT", is a bit confusing — I'm not sure if that's intentional, to mimic handheld GPS jargon. Renaming "FOLLOW" to "ZOOM IN" and "FIT" to "ZOOM OUT" might read more intuitively.
- A nitpick: When I use the keys to navigate the gps and the icon for a bandit or infected shows up, I feel like clicking the "bandit" or "infected" icon directly to enter battle feels more intuitive than clicking their square on the GPS. Different types of controls (keyboard/mouse) have been taken into account, but I think the average user would use the keyboard and mouse together, rather than one or the other exclusively. It may be a good idea to take into account that sort of synergy when developing the controls.
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The point I most want to emphasize is the "screen changing" — and this may just be from building too many single-page React apps — but switching scenes to reach the inventory and other menus is a tad disorienting. My suggestion would be to have the inventory slide out from the side as an overlay when selected, and to make the other menus overlays too. That way the player always knows where they are and how to get back to the main screen.
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The tutorial popups are useful, but they interrupt the gameplay loop. Toast messages instead of popups might be less invasive.
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On the "more content" point others have raised: the core mechanic is solid but a bit thin. That's expected for a demo, but adding horror elements and constraints could deepen engagement. Some optional brainstorming — take or leave freely:
- A timer, so the player has to leave or descend to the next floor before time runs out.
- An undefeatable enemy that occasionally enters floors and stalks the player, forcing them to think about where to move so they don't get cornered in a dead end.
- Additional objectives (e.g. someone calling for help that you have to find).
- More resource management.
- There's already an "escalation meter" — maybe a fear/psyche-style meter that, when full, increases strange events (new characters, unique enemies, different environments) or affects the player's stats. In a way the game reminds me of traversing the map in the original Fallout — might be an interesting reference point.
Anyway, I hope this feedback is helpful. I admire your work and regularly watch your videos on YouTube. Good luck with the project!