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Ok so lesson learned don't join the discord

yeah, I played a bit more afterwards and rediscovered the crowbar; it rids of all the laggy crate remains very fast and honestly better than the woodchipper (to be fair it should probably be something you get from the start in order to give it a use before you find better alternatives) and while it can break the supply crates too, it takes a stupidly long amount of time and bashing to do (throwing the crowbar didn't help either).

Though as for the discord server, I visited it for a slight period in order to do just that, but in general I'm not a fan of public servers, whether it be because of the fast-paced medium of discussion or just general wariness of any large discords, so I was looking for an alternative way to contact the dev. But I suppose I'll look into it again if it nets me better results. cheers :beers:

Played through the entirety of story mode over the course of three days, and it ended up being genuinely one of the most horrifying experiences I've had in a while; the game is incredibly good and scary. However, there are a couple of things across the game that I found to dislike, or have come up with ideas for, so I'll list them off here now:

First off, it is incredibly easy to feel safe in your own home. In a game like this, it's incredibly essential to feed the player's paranoia as much as possible, as half of the time they are staying in complete solitude, waiting for the next scary thing to happen. You can purchase around 8 levels in the server stability upgrade, and you'll basically never have to go out again, allowing you to just process signals every day and get the daily objective bonus quite easily. There isn't anything that requires you to go outside either, besides the occasional entity radar signal every now and then. During my playthrough of the game, I experienced about 6(?) events; mannequins in the windows and doors, the power shutting off, zero gravity mode, huge tremors shaking the ground, that one god forsaken picnic ship in the north-west appearing in my radar every day, the hash code spam emails, and the third ship floating far north. I wasn't actively going out of my way to avoid them, either. But the one that scared me the most was the hallucination ghost that appeared in the corner of the player's eye; and then straight up jumpscared them. This one was the most effective at making me paranoid of even my own home, as for the rest of the playthrough I was constantly looking at the same spot where the ghost had attacked me. The other thing to make me paranoid the most was the entity that would appear during the night on the radar, slightly shifting up and down. Had I not been determined to catch it on camera, I would've probably never found it anyways. I set up cameras in the south-east section of the map, because for some reason the radar direction is flipped from the actual map (what's up with that anyways), so when I realized my mistake I became incredibly paranoid of the day segments as well, for I had been walking into the alien territory with no worry this entire time. However, this second experience happened much much later into the game, near day 14ish. Besides the hallucination ghost basically giving me PTSD for the rest of the playthrough, there really weren't any moments where I actually felt like I wasn't in control of my base; cameras were able to completely cover all ground near me and I had been careful enough with the locks and memorized the locations of objects to be able to navigate even in the pitch black darkness. The only time I felt like even my own defenses weren't enough to cover my skin was due to one of my doors randomly making the error noise, which would only play if I tried to open a locked door. At that point, I had completely ignored the radar in order to huddle under a bunch of boxes in the bathroom (or is it bedroom?). It didn't really help that the main gameplay loop is a bit too repetitive, without much variation, with the little variation that is being easily removable via the upgrades system. The radar being able to tell me if there were any entities or not made going out in the night to fix satellites much much less mentally taxing, which is probably an unintended consequence of terrorizing the player by letting them know if there is actually an alien hunting them. Also, the daily task bonus for obtaining the satellite hashes is fairly inconsequential, and is only really worth it if some of the satellites on the list are also broken as well. A solution to this would be to allow the player to send only some of the satellite hashes instead of all of them, and increase the amount of satellite hashes required per server stability upgrade. Overall, you can just find signals, complete the daily tasks, remove the hassle of going out via upgrades and then make big bank till the end of the story mode without there really being anything to stop you from doing so, cause why would you go out in the middle of the woods to find the very obvious posing threat? Are you nuts?

So, some things: First off, it would probably be best if the radar became incredibly nerfed, making it only find entities in a MUCH much smaller radius around the base, aprox. halfway from any satellites in the main inner ring. From here, it could either become upgradeable allowing the player to see further, or allow the player to actually purchase more radars to set up near other satellites, giving them reason to go out more in order to verify the logs and whatnot besides fixing or anything else the game might offer. If needed, the player can be incentivized via earning credits in some way from these logs.

The game's landscapes are incredibly beautiful, and I found myself setting up cameras in specific locations in order to catch certain views at sunrise or sunset, so I found it a bit disappointing that the game doesn't take much advantage of that aspect. As of right now, the map is just a big empty space with not really any memorable locations besides the satellites, and perhaps the initial entry gate. I was thinking perhaps some areas are darker, more narrow and hard to traverse than others, basically blocking the player from using the ATV or any other shortcuts, making them basically memorize the path and general surroundings as "that one place I REALLY don't wanna go to", maybe even the fabled nuclear reactor mentioned in the welcome email. Perhaps there could be a power supply building that the player has to sometimes perform maintenance on (even during the night), or else their base runs completely out of power and becomes unusuable; said building could also warn the player beforehand if such event would happen, and it would be much more uncommon than servers breaking down in order to not make it as much of a hassle as going down to every single satellite seperately. Perhaps some satellites would break down in a way that couldn't be detected by the machinery at base, and you'd need to climb a watchtower high up on one of the mountains, allowing the player to have a view of the entire valley, and see which satellites are in need of fixing, giving them a way to memorize the locations of the map via certain enviromental signs. If this is too much of a hassle for the player, even just having certain "landmarks" to allow the player to memorize segments of the map without requiring them to just look at the map or do sv.target all the time. After all, there's not really any reason to actually use the pre-constructed paths instead of the ATV, unless you forgot to fuel at home. Maybe there could be a supply shed out west that the player can visit when needing to stock up on some supplies; such supplies couldn't be taken to home either.

But easily the best and most important way to scare the player is to just simply make them as paranoid as possible, despite there being no scares or events happening. Making certain events rarer, and creating mini-events to build up the tension before the next big scare would be a good way of making the repetitive loop of getting signals and fixing satellites much more varied and interesting before a starfox spaceship decides to take a picnic in the middle of the woods. Such mini events could be objects simply falling down before a player enters a room, like buckets in a supply shed or curtains in the bathroom. Other ways would be just playing indiscernible noises from the woods that the player just cannot tell what it actually is (such things are common occurrences in wooded regions, even if there aren't really any animals), or door opening, closing and error noises playing in the middle of the night. Under no circumstance should the player truly feel safe at any place, at any time. They should always be doubting whether their own equipment and defenses are capable of even protecting them from the smallest of things.

I found the eyes that would build up into a complete creature when you are low on stamina as being one of the best examples of building up paranoia in the player; looking at it makes it disappear, making it basically be something that only exists in the corner of their eye. However, limiting it to existing only when the player is low on stamina would only incentivize the player to sleep more, thus skipping the nights and days. A good way of making more hallucinations appear, without requiring the player to be low on stats, is to have these mini-events start appearing the most after a unique signal is heard, such as the "end is near" skull signal playing. After the player hears it, the could begin hearing hums and clanking in the middle of the night, basically raising their own tension through the roof, making even the simplest of tasks like going out to fix a satellite the worst thing they could have ever done. Or maybe the player could be afraid of the hole in the ceiling of the garage by making a certain alien peek in at certain points. Perhaps certain cameras far away near a spotted activity zone could sometimes turn off, and when the player comes to turn them on again a mannequin or something is there. Maybe these suggestions would be too evil for a game like this, where each big event is far inbetween, but with a payoff worth more than anything, but making those events pop even more via pre-built tension would be perfect to making the player as uncomfortable as can be, and would elevate the playing experience to a whole 'nother level.

I'm not sure how much I should say here, considering I haven't experienced all of the main events yet, but I believe there should be more large-scale events in the middle of the night, that instead of making certain aspects or locations of the playing field, it would make the entire region the player finds themselves in completely altered either physically or in the player's eyes. Perhaps one night lights from the sky could raise giant stone monoliths out of the ground, or the river could turn blood red as the forest critter crickets are tuned to an all-time maximum. Hell, turn the sun into an alien or something. Most of the events right now are honestly kind of inconsequential, besides going "Yeah. Aliens exist." or "wtf!! !". Altering the player's perception of the land around them is enough to make even repeating the same satellite fixing a completely different experience.

Another thing I found issue with is the lack of information in the shop screen: you really don't know if half of these items actually have any use bundled with them, or even what they do. I had no idea how absolutely terrible the low quality camera is compared to the medium, or the untitled item at the bottom being an arcade. I expected the crowbar to have functionality too, such as the player being able to hold it and then click on the supply crates in order to open them, but it ended up just being decorational. I don't even know what the server repair and protect kits even do. Perhaps adding a tooltip when hovering over the items would help a lot in making such information clearer, much better than adding the information on the help screen. Also, cut the price of decorational, non functional items by half, such as carpets, plants, etc. 50 credits for a rug is absolutely insane, especially when you could be spending it basically nearly tripling your ping speed, or be used for purchasing 25 drives, and you need multiple of those in order to make them even have an impact. A lot of these decorational items could be given hidden functionality by making them become affected by mini-events and whatnot, making even the player's own furniture a point of paranoia. Also, add a room or two to the players base purely for decoration purposes. Getting them to feel homely and then pulling all that safety under the rug by having an alien pop up in their hub of wonder for a split second is enough to send the atmosphere of the game into the, well, atmosphere.

Probably one of the coolest moments in the game was the initial walk to the base in the middle of the woods, illuminated by the lighting sticks in the ground. The ATV is great for making the walk to the satellites not a complete time waster, but it's a shame there aren't any other scenic moments in the game. Perhaps have the ATV break down sometimes, and it requires taking it to a repair facility for a while, by having it be taken by the delivery drone? Maybe during then server failures would be lowered down, but other misc. tasks could have higher priority, allowing the player to take in new views.

Some other minor nitpicks:

- Make sleeping faster or more efficient. It's a pain in the ass to waste time doing nothing when for some reason you can't do 1st grade maths to fix your servers yet you can handle complex government machinery to obtain signals from space. Make the player suddenly wake up due to a loud noise in order to not make sleeping overpowered, if needed. Add paranoia.

- Add flowers, mushrooms, and a lot more colors to the woods. Maybe even some edible stuff to make running out of food mid-trip not as much of a pain in the ass. Said mushrooms could be poisonous too, making the player hallucinate events.

- Portable map that doesn't cost 250 credits, aka an actual map screen. However, it shouldn't actually tell the player's current location, only a view of the region's terrain, like the map at home. Another way to make the map more useful is by allowing the player to set the compass target to wherever they click on said map, so getting to specific locations won't make you as lost. I found planning ahead what route I should take to fix the satellites incredibly rewarding and fun, so seeing it be able to be altered when a new satellite goes down would be a way to not make going back to the base to find the map a chore.

- Remove delivery crate wood remains. Absolute laggy, loud pains in the ass. Getting a woodchipper for them should not be required.

- Setting up some furniture in specific spots such as the bed in a corner is kind of impossible, as there isn't really any way to make the player be able to nudge the bed into the correct position, making it awkwardly angled half of the time, cause you cant get into the corner to move it and you can't push it either.

- I found the throwing mechanic fairly underutilized. Maybe some satellites need to have something thrown at them in order to calibrate properly? Or there could be an attic whose ladder can only be activated by throwing an object to dislocate it. Don't know why there was such focus on this in the tutorial despite being not really used, other than being a nudge to source games.

- Count drones activated just before the next day as if they were for the previous one, and make drones accelerated by sleeping as well. I had it happen to me thrice where because I had all the drives set up for a daily task yet the drone took too long to deliver and as such I had completely wasted 2 days in a row. Not fun.

- I loved cleaning up all the garbage in my base, but I wished there were more wastebaskets available. Roombas are for the lazy man only.

- Make the water, well, water. Allow the player to float and swim in it, and have the ATV slightly float up as well. Maybe it'd be too much of a hassle to find the bridges that way, so perhaps there could be some building involved and the player can just either build rudimentary ramps or brides?

- The notepad has a weird bug where you can click on a previous spot, but typing a new character sends you back to the end of the text you've written. Kind of annoying for filling reports. Also, add an actual journal / diary / whatever to the game, in order to immerse the players more. Have some pages be changed with alien writing in some events as well, to spook the player more.

- Despite me saying that server stability is overpowered, PLEASE don't make the early game stability as bad as it is now. You'll basically NEVER have all the satellites fixed at the same time unless you invest either some or all credits into upgrades. Not fun, at all.

- Low stats should affect exclusively running and hallucinations. Not being able to do server fixing because I was .1% lower than required as I scramble to get to the satellite in time is bullshit; the only stat to keep track of should be fuel.

- Later on I had my game freeze for a moment when saving new signals and opening the laptop, which was caused by there being too many signals. I had to delete a bunch of them, but it was incredibly slow and time consuming. Making a maximum of 32-ish signals, but having the oldest one be automatically deleted would be a great way of cleaning clutter. Another thing is I found storing "special" signals on seperate drives incredibly fun. Having a drive rack and allowing the naming of drives would be an incredibly fun mechanic that could tie in with some events adding drives with creepy signals onto them.

- Please don't make the alien ships exclusively the triangle ones. I found them extremely silly cause they could only remind me of starfox, and the picnic didn't really help. Adding noises like humming and other unexplainable stuff would help quite a lot, besides changing the shapes and whatnot.

- Found quite a couple of typos and pieces of weird grammar. Not sure how they got through to a release.

Voices of the Void has been an incredible experience overall, and I hope to god this game continues being worked on, cause this has been probably my favorite horror game in ages because of how well executed the tension in this game can be. Paranoia is key to making a game like this work. I hope the dev succeeds in polishing this game up to a full release, because the potential that there is right now is absolutely killer, and can elevate this game to the highest of highs.