Hey there. I know your game is in early development, but I definitely think there is stuff you should improve upon. Here’s my feedback. I hope you can make it useful.
Pros
- Your Itch page looks great and inviting. I like the picture frame around the thumbnails. That's a really nice touch. So thumbs up! However, I'm not a fan of the flashy background.
- The Game Menu visuals look great and unique. Same goes for the chapter and loading screens.
- The intro video is well made.
- The overall game performance seems good.
Cons
Sound
- The overall audio volume is really loud compared to other games.
- Voice acting sounds like an AI. I suppose it’s just placeholder audio.
Mechanics
- The FPS controller is acting weird when walking and stopping. It feels like it takes another step after I’ve stopped.
- The mouse (MLook) is rubberbanding. Like there’s mouse acceleration or something. It doesn’t stop when I stop moving.
- No mouse sensitivity setting in the Game Menu.
- Jumpscare galore - There are way too many jumpscares, Most of them don't even make any sense, and they’re not even scary. I would say that you could remove half of them and you would still have too many.
- Finding keys isn’t fun all alone. You need to come up with various methods to progress into new areas, so it doesn't feel tedious.
- Even though finding the puzzle pieces for the picture was a good touch, it didn’t feel challenging at all.
- You have so much environment, but there isn't much for the player to do. I felt like I rushed through the outside area.
- Why is there a cemetery outside the house? And why isn’t the player curious about that?
- I think you should also make the levels more like an open environment, so the player can open the main entrance from the inside and walk around freely. Games like Resident Evil do this pretty well.
- The player keeps telling me what to do next. “Now the monster comes, then we need to hide”. “Now he comes again, we need to hide again”. It’s alright to receive some guidelines, but not all the time. Let the player learn how to figure things out on his own from time to time. Figuring out stuff on my own is a satisfying feeling as a player.
Lore
- I don’t see any resemblance from the story from your itch page/intro within the actual gameplay. There’s no lore to be found in the house either even though there are tons of non-interactive books and documents everywhere.
- Apart from the flag, I don’t know anything about Guatemala. The game didn't teach me anything new about Guatemala.
- Three chapters just in this short demo is way too much. Leave it as just a single chapter.