Thank you SO MUCH for playing and for all the thoughtful feedback! I won't address all your observations because I agree with most of them, but some things that I'd like to add:
-We're still a small and new team so visually we're working with mostly pre-made assets modified to suit our purposes. Some examples: the model for Victoria didn't have a Freddy color pattern, the models for James and Sam didn't have blue and yellow colors, Nick didn't have a beard, etc. This also explains why Ollie looks more like an office worker than a college student, or why James looks older than the rest. Despite all this, I'm glad / relieved that the dissonance isn't larger and that it doesn't feel like an *blatant* asset flip.
-Design wise I really like the fixed camera angles for various reasons (mainly framing and blocking) but I do agree that the tank controls are janky and harder to parse than needed, and the camera system doesn't help a lot in that regard. Do you think that having cameras with fixed positions that follow you (like Silent Hill) would make navigation a bit easier? Ideally I'd like to figure out a way to keep the fixed angles in as many places as possible / where it makes sense, while adding and fixing the movement funcitonality in order to allow movement to be less frustrating.
-Also, do you think the mouse pointing would be an useful feature if it was better implemented? We kind of dropped that in the middle of development because it introduced a lot of extra jankiness and we preferred to use our time on content, but I made the prototype with that in mind so you could use your flashlight to point at specific things.
-A lot of things that might feel a bit extraneous to the plot are mostly references to our own previous work and/or other self referential stuff. For example: the al-juarisimi song in the jukebox is from a WIP game we're going to go back to at some point, which is also where the math drawings on the fridge are from. The beer actually exists irl, and it's homebrewed by some of my friends - I wanted to get them in there + poke fun on product placement in games (especially considering no one that doesn't live here can actually get their hands on a bottle). The arcade co-op game also exists, and is playable! We made it almost 10 years ago at a Global Game Jam with some of the team members, that was WAY before we started making games seriously so it's... not very good mechanically 😅 but we had a blast making it and playing it in front of the crowd back then. Also all the card game stuff is from another game I made this year in which I commissioned some of my pals, but we had such a great time working on it that we decided to just team up from here onwards, and here we are! There are some other references but I'm gonna be here all day if I point them all out haha
-The whole office area was a bit of a late implementation so it's a bit less content filled than the rest of the game but I've been thinking about how to make the whole eye fetch quest a bit more interesting - engaging. Do you think moving some diary entries there and / or adding more context about the fictional game company work (example: written notes from the employees) would be a good idea to make the exploring a bit more worthwhile? Also the long room with the single fixed camera was supposed to have something scary / funny at the end but again we prioritized other things above it. And yeah I definitely need to work on the AI following for Sam / James and the AI chasing for the killer.
As a final note I wanna say that I'm *really* into show-not-tell storytelling and I tried to apply that thought as much as possible (and I'm glad that the places where I did feel good!), but I'm still a bit new to writing dialogue and well, writing in general so again I'm very thankful for all your feedback. I'm very clear on where I want to get and how I'd like to tell stories, but I've got a lot to learn so I'm going to keep all this in mind for the future. I feel like I have a good idea on what things I want the player to know but how I get it across is the part where I need more practice in order to present it in an engaging way instead of just rambling on.
Once again: thanks so much for the detailed rundown, for playing so attentively and for taking time to leave all this feedback! Also I hope you'll stick around for when we eventually release an updated version 😁