Yes, there was a bug in the demo.  It should be fixed now.

My game project for the past five years is finally ready for beta testing, and will be released on the 4th of February this year.  I've marked all files as free-to-download for the duration of the beta test.

https://eldwood.itch.io/a-dream-of-burning-sand

Type of feedback I'm looking for:

• Any and all actual bugs, from the smallest typo to the largest game-does-not-run-at-all bug.
• Specific parts of the game that are not fun.
• Comments on game difficulty and balance.
• Easy-to-implement improvement suggestions.

Less useful feedback:

• Hard-to-implement improvement suggestions.  (I'll keep them in mind for my next game, but it's probably too late for this game.)
• Comments on overall game structure and story structure.  (Again, it's probably too late to change anything for this game.)

Don't bother with:

• "I don't like this type of game."  (Fair enough, but this is the type of game I wanted to write.)
• "This game sucks."  (Be specific about what you don't like.)
• "This game needs better art."  (If I could afford to hire a professional artist, I would have already done so.)

I feel like I'm missing something.  I have the axe.  There's a man stuck in a tree.  I can't cut him free with the axe, nor have I found any other way to free him.  I can feed the dog, but there doesn't seem to be any point to doing so.  There's the obvious schmuck bait bad end, but I'm not falling for it.  Is that it?  No real ending?  No way to free the man?  Or have I just overlooked something?

Actually, it looks like this is already working (although I didn't see it in the documentation when I last read it.).  So, never mind.

It would be really nice if butler could upload already-packaged files without repackaging them as zip files.

In particular, I want to use .AppImage files for Linux, as I feel that this provides a better use experience.  I could put these files in zip files, but that makes them less convenient for the end user.  I could also upload them through the web interface, but that makes things a lot less convenient for me.  (Building, packaging, and uploading my game is a single step for my build system.  Having to manually go through the web interface add lots of additional steps that are easy to mess up.)

The example file doesn't work because it depends on a missing file (fantasyhextiles_randr_4_v1.tsx) .

OK, that works.

I think it would be very useful to show game completion status (when browsing on the website), and even better to allow filtering by completion status.  99% of the time I'm not really interested in a game unless/until it is finished.  Especially problematic is that the website throws commercial projects that have no price because they are not yet available into the same category as finished and released free games.  This makes filtering for free games basically useless.

Crashes on startup on both Windows 7 computers I've tried.

Tried to purchase (several times over three days), but Paypal wouldn't let me.  Exact error message from Paypal: "We can't process your payment right now, so please try again later. We're sorry for the inconvenience."  I can purchase other things on itch.io just fine.  Is there a problem with your Paypal account?