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(+2)(-1)

Hello,

I streamed your game last night. Overall, I think the art, character design, and broad strokes of the story concept are interesting, but from a game play perspective, it's has fundamental flaws.

Before diving into any critique on the game itself, I have a critique of your store page and how it may not technically be lying, but it is very much deceitful; when stating the game has "voice acting" but the voice acting amounts to just adlib grunts and single word-samples may *technically* be voice acting, I think most expect a voiced story when you use "voice acting" as a part of your game's sales pitch. I hope you clarify this on the store page as soon as possible, and hopefully it will differ in the final release.

On to critiquing the game:
The character is cute and the concept for the game is interesting. I wasn't able to make it very far into the game to provide much feedback beyond that on the story/writing. This is partially due to how I format my streams (limiting games to just 35 minutes), but also due to technical decisions within the games design that I would encourage you to avoid in future iterations.
The game clearly wants to railroad the player a very specific way, and it seems there is compensatory logic developed specifically to prevent the player from engaging with the game the way they want, which not only just makes it boring to play from a game play perspective, removing any of the fun of game play surprises, but also leads to confusing design. I wasted a large amount of my 35 minutes trying to solve a puzzle that I *technically* should have solved right away, but because I interacted with the puzzle element before the game wanted me to, the puzzle piece didn't activate, making me assume it was a deadend, sending me on a wild goose chase when I had already discovered the correct path.
*If you are going to build railroad logic into your game to prevent you player from playing the game the way they want,* then I highly suggest making sure that is clear in your design. A door that prevent players from interacting with puzzle pieces before the intended point in the story, or a message on a lock box that prevents the player from fiddling with it until they have found the combination will prevent players being confused and/or wasting their time. However, once again, I think railroad design is fundamentally flawed and should be avoided since this leaves little to be surprised about when it comes to the game play.

If you'd like to watch my experience with your game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing your game.

(+2)(-1)

Hello! Thank you so much for taking the time to both play my game and write such a detailed review about it! I'm really honoured. ♡ I watched the entire segment of you playing my game and I left it with a lot of notes for improvement, so I'm really grateful! 

As for the voice acting, usually, for RPG-horror games like these, the community considers 'voice acting' just the gasps and laughs, and many other games have pitched their works with that description! I think what would make it different is writing 'fully voiced dialogue', but I can still definitely see how my description might have been confusing! Therefore, I'll change it to 'voice acting sound effects'. Thank you!

As for the railroading comment, I completely agree! Thank you for pointing it out. I didn't want players to speed-run the first locked puzzle as you mentioned, since I put time and effort into it, but your unique outlook on the fact that some people might consider it fun to 'outsmart the dev' has changed my mind! I will change it in game to avoid that railroad. Thank you! I will also change the second one with the chocolates. ♡

Once again, thank you so much for playing my game and giving your feedback, and I'll do my best from now on to make it the best game possible!