Thank you so much for playing Malefatum and especially for taking the time to write such detailed feedback.
After reading your comment, I went to your Twitch channel and watched the part of the stream where you played the game. Seeing you play gave me a completely different perspective on what the experience is like for someone coming into Malefatum for the first time.
And honestly, I agree with every point you brought up.
A lot of these things are very hard to notice when you're developing the game and you already know every system, every mechanic, and exactly what you're supposed to do. Watching someone experience everything without that knowledge made a lot of the problems much more obvious to me, especially the amount of information being introduced at once, the pacing of the tutorials, the speed of some mechanics, and the way the game teaches its systems.
I also completely agree with what you said about the Codex and the message that appears after closing it. Looking at it again from the perspective of a new player, I can see how badly that can come across, and I definitely want to change that approach.
Your example of how you would structure the first few runs also gave me a lot of ideas. I don't plan to copy that exact flow, but I really like the philosophy behind it, teaching mechanics gradually through actual gameplay instead of explaining everything upfront. After watching your experience, I already have some ideas for taking that even further and making the first few runs feel much more natural.
I'm also going to revisit the audio balance, enemy dialogue, equipment handling, ring timing, the sudden combat events, and especially how the enemy rolls feel from the player's perspective.
This kind of feedback is incredibly valuable to me. Not just because you pointed out problems, but because you explained what you were feeling while playing and why those things hurt the experience. That makes it much easier for me to understand what actually needs to change.
I was genuinely really happy that you chose to play my game, even with the issues you ran into. Thank you as well for sticking with it and taking the time to write all of this.
I'd absolutely love the YouTube link once the VOD is uploaded. I want to watch it again while I'm working through these improvements.
I'm going to spend a lot of time refining the beginning of the game, and I hope that if you come back to Malefatum in the future, the experience feels completely different.
Thank you again for the feedback and for your time. :)