Really enjoyed this game! Here are some of my thoughts as I played it.
[SPOILER WARNING FOR ANYONE WHO HASN'T PLAYED YET]
So first, what I liked/memorable moments:
- The atmosphere was incredibly unsettling. If anything, having very little ambient noise was a huge strength, leaving me painfully aware and paranoid of all the noise I made doing anything and made other noises really stand out.
- The moment after the phone call when you see the door leading to the jack/queen/king area was great. I knew I HAD to go in there since there was nowhere else to go, but the anxiety of just finding out that I'm not alone in the house made me dread going in there. Same goes for when it was time to walk into the basement.
- The radio... lol.
Some room for improvement:
- You use lights and locked doors to guide the player through a linear track through the house, which is great. However, the globe lights going up the stairs encouraged me to try to venture up before I was "supposed to." Once I realized that and tried to go back downstairs, I struggled to go back downstairs because I couldn't see the railing in the darkness. I'd suggest keeping these globe lights off until it's time for the player to travel upstairs.
- I picked up a key, but to my knowledge I didn't do anything with it? When I reached the locked front door, I tried to pull up an inventory by randomly hitting typical inventory buttons (I, tab, escape), and it wound up freezing my game (I believe Escape was the culprit). I assume in later versions there will actually be a use for the key, but until then I'd suggest keeping them out of demos.
- Convincing a player that actively moving towards a visible threat is usually pretty difficult. Already being kind of anxious from having to walk into a dark basement, the reveal of the killer at the bottom made me expect some sort of chase/hiding sequence through the house, since being at the top of the stairs gave me a head start to get away. It wasn't until like 15 seconds later when I was still at the top of the stairs and nothing had happened did I realize that I had to go down to trigger anything to continue.
Again though, this was great! Definitely will be following development and can't wait for future updates :)