This game was an absolute joy to play. I found myself laughing in approval at the delightfully sinister character. The environmental storytelling through careful object placement kept me curious, even while I was stumped trying to solve puzzles. I especially loved your use of the UV light, not just for puzzles, but to create another level of storytelling as I re-traversed old ground. The narrative was incredibly well dolled out.
The Good:
- It's a tiny thing, but I adored your animation on locked doors. It felt good to see it rattle, and gave feedback even if a player couldn't listen to the sound.
- Instant feedback for correctly solving a puzzle was fantastic. Often, the reward was around a corner or in another room, but giving me a cue the moment I got something correct felt good.
- The layout of the main building and the shed. The rooms were decorated so distinctly that I was able to put together a really good mental map of the place—vital with how often you teased a puzzle solution before I found the problem. This ties in with your excellent narrative: I started associating people with locations, and found it even easier to remember where to go to find something I saw 20 minutes ago.
- The cheeky UV 'directions'. I was enjoying the creepy splatters and commentary so much I spent most of my second half of the game using the UV light. The variety of smears and splatters and arrows you used to direct my attention was fantastic. By combingng real puzzle solutions with 'keep this for later' pointers and story-only items, I never felt like using the light was an instant "Solve All The Puzzles" button. I felt like I was exploring and discovering instead of being handed the answers. That's a really fine line to walk, and you did it excellently.
The Bad:
- The secondary building is a big contrast to how well everything else was layed out. I stumbled into this early and noted the boarded up door, but by the time I'd obtained the crowbar, I didn't actually remember there was a second building. The shed is placed so fantastically within line of sight of the first exterior door you open, right next to a note giving you 'permission' to wander around. It immediately conencts the Shed to the 'home base' of the art gallary. But that second building doesn't have a good sight line, and the interior decoration of the first floor feels too similar to rooms in the first building. Once I'd broken through the door and got up to the second floor, it was easy to nagivate and find, but the "discovery" of your second building was difficult.
- Your clock puzzle was ambitious, and pieces to solve it were scattered from the begining to the end of gameplay. But because of that, every hint that mentioned "time" in any way was suspect, and there were a number of hints that didn't actually play into the puzzle. The note in the art gallery sent me off on a wild goose chase for almost an hour with the hint that "it's not when they died, but where", because I was certain that the painting placement would tell me something about the time I ought to associate with the clock. I loved the long, drawn-out puzzle, but I think to make it feel better, you need to double check and make sure you don't accidentally make time references where it's not related.
The Ugly:
- Solving the clock puzzle. This stumped me. I did have to get someone to give me the answer, and even once I had it, I couldn't quite figure out how to reverse engineer it. But I think the most frustrating part of this puzzle for me was that I felt like I had all the pieces, and it was still wrong. For the other puzzles, you have fantastic rewards for having gotten something right. I think because the clock puzzle was so big, and interconnected with other puzzles, this needed mini "You're getting closer" rewards. I think if each clock had given me a smaller version of a reward sound when I got it right, I wouldn't have been so disheartened having to ask for help on the final piece I couldn't solve.
Overall, I'm really astonished with how much you managed to do for a 2 week game jam. It feels like a whole, cohesive game. The mystery was engaging, the puzzles were mostly really enjoyable, and the twist at the end made me clap with joy. Very satisfying, so long as it comes with a 'solution guide'! I hope to see you polish this up and put it up for sale.