Let’s start with the good parts. The story is great! The slow burn and atmosphere is really well done! The sound and art are all great too! It reminds me of the first Penumbra game at times. And I like the spooky elements I did encounter.
Unfortunately there are a few bugs and the game is entirely too long. I played for more than an hour before having to give up because of a game breaking bug.
The first issue is that you can place wires in the puzzle more than once per spot. So, if you like me, and you are clicking around, you can run out of wire even though you actually had enough to fill the entire board. But, that’s remedied by restarting or going to the cabin and waiting to refill.
Worse is that I had to give up when the puzzle didn’t show the “wires” being placed at all. I could hear the placement sound and rotate sound, but couldn’t see them. Even going into the cabin and returning to the puzzle didn’t fix it. When this happened at an hour in, I was done trying even though I really like this game.
The map is too big and it takes too long to get around it. At first this seemed OK, but as the game dragged on and on, this became an issue. If there had been a ramping up of the spooky elements of the game to bring the game to a head a lot sooner, then maybe the map size is OK. But I think making it smaller and therefore quicker to traverse would be a good idea.
One other thing I think would be good is if the red lights that indicate there’s an issue with the satellite dish would turn off after the fuse/wire puzzle is solved. Or maybe turn it green. But something to visually “check it off”.
The interaction areas for some things is odd or doesn’t always respond. Like the computer in the cabin. I had to pass over the spot a few times to get the interact prompt to come up.
Lastly, the intro is really good, but needs to be skip-able and maybe shorter. If you have to choose, just allow skipping it. That way on re-plays or re-tries you don’t have to sit through it again.
I know it seems I just dumped on your game. But I think you’re hearing my frustration that I just couldn’t complete it after so much time invested (for game jam game) and that with a few fixes and additions you could charge for this. So, I hope you take all this as the constructive criticism it’s meant to be.
And we’d love to hear your constructive criticism for our game! I’m sure there’s lots we could do to improve it and we want to hear your ideas on how best to do that! So please check our game out and leave us a comment on your thoughts! Thanks!