itch.io

The presentation of the game looked great! Visually it looked and felt really good. Honestly I don't have too much to say as it's a somewhat straightforward experience that does the job it sets out to do.

I will say, and obviously there's already a lot of writing done so to ask for more is kind of a lot, but the fact that a lot of the insights (or whatever you wanna call them) into people are repeated for different people definitely breaks the immersion a bit. I was actively looking for new messages, which allowed me to catch the new stuff. But with the relatively long length of the game, once people see the repeats, I can easily see them just clicking through everything because they might think they're just skipping repeats because they're so common.

I liked the email about Josh (I think) sending your wife to the camp, but there was a small bug where checking an email wouldn't make the notification go away until you clicked away from the email and back to it, so it was super easy to miss that email coming in halfway through the day. Maybe a little animation showing that you received an email would help that a bit.

Overall though I really liked it!

I really like the character designs, as well as the ship design, but the art styles do clash a good bit. Obviously we only had 8 days and finalizing a style and creating art for it just isn't in the time budget, but if you guys are gonna continue with the project, I'd either lean into the cartoon aesthetic of the characters for the environment, or go the other way around and get some nice 3D models cooked up for the characters to match the environment.

If the environment is all original though, it looks great! Performance was a bit rough, but optimizing will come I'm sure.

One tiny thing of note: obviously a lot of games use E for interact. You by no means have to abide by the status quo, but if you're gonna switch it up, a little tooltip when you walk up to your first character would be a nice touch (even if you were to use E this would be nice, imo never let the player assume anything). 

It's a nice little prototype though! I wish we could have had a little taste of the dating mechanics, but again I understand there wasn't a whole lot of time. I'm excited to see where the project goes!

It's fun in the way a bad action movie is fun, it's got a sense of humor but the quality isn't really there. It's got a little bit of the scary atmosphere, but put fog and a small draw distance in any game and it'll make it feel scary. 

I want to give some constructive criticism but it's kinda just some 3D Among Us assets with some memes thrown in. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy the few minutes I played, but after I did the villager's tasks and walked around for a few minutes, I went to talk to the villager again, got softlocked cus I don't think I was supposed to do that, and just had to alt-f4 (because there's no pause screen).

After that, there wasn't much compelling me to start it back up.

So for your next game, one make sure to come up with a more original concept lol, and two just try to take into account as much as you can when bug testing. I know you weren't trying to win, but at least take this as an opportunity to work on bug fixing skills and overall just get better at what you already know.

Dude, this is fantastic. The menu looks professional, the graphics, while simple, work really well. The gameplay is really balanced (for the most part). The gameplay loop is simple but honestly I found it fun. The little breaks in the maze for the zoom in parts or whatever you call them are well spaced out. Overall man this is really great, you've got some great ideas and the ability to implement them. The small details go a long way.

In the spirit of criticism, I do wanna point out some small things that I think could be improved on. First and foremost, it's a bit disorienting. The look around sensitivity was super high on load in, I had to turn my mouse sensitivity to the lowest it could go to make it playable, and even then it was fairly dizzying. 

Also at one point I died because one of the red guys spawned immediately in front of me and I had no time to react. Being sent back to the beginning is definitely a bit punishing, especially when there are 24 pages to find (I'll never know what's behind that button on the menu :c). Maybe having checkpoints at each page you pick up would be nice. I do like that it saves how many pages you've picked up even after quitting the game, but given you have to start from the beginning, it doesn't mean much.

But honestly, those are my only issues. The sfx and visual effects were awesome and make the whole experience feel polished.

Super cute! I love the art and sounds, the bonk is the best. Mechanically it holds up well. It maybe isn't particularly a horror game, but it's a fun little game nonetheless. One thing I would say is it would be nice to see how long each zombie has been waiting. I know after a bit the thing comes up to say that they're getting irritated, but when two zombies were asking for the same thing, it was easy to forget which got there first, and I'd give the food to the newer one and end up having to wait a sec for the other one to get mad so I could bonk him.

Wouldn't have been able to hear the sound without that though :)

Hey, for a first game jam it's a good start! In terms of being a platformer, it definitely is that. In terms of being a horror platformer, maybe a little less so. Honestly at first I thought it was gonna be a throwback to Scary Maze lol, not that I wanted that, but it would have been cute. I know the horror was in the twist at the end, but maybe making the visuals a bit creepier, or adding some subtle hints that hint towards the twist (monster footsteps, grunts here and there) could have helped a tiny bit.

The platforming feels good though! A little punishing to have to start from the beginning when you fall, but only a little. It wasn't that big of a deal, I'm just not a pro gamer and had to start over a couple of times :P

The theme is definitely there, I like the darkness. Like someone else said, while cool, the visual filter can make it a little too tough to see things. 

As far as gameplay, I knew I had to destroy totems, but the tips and notes were very confusing to read and for that reason, I didn't really know how anything worked. Getting the writing here cleaned up and making things a bit more clear would do wonders for playability. On my first playthrough I was sitting in the camera room and lost for seemingly no reason. On the second, I walked to all the rooms and there were no totems.

You've got the visual design down for sure! Just a few kinks in the gameplay and writing department to iron out that could bring this game to the next level.

I busted out the MacBook just for you, but I don't keep it updated to the newest version of MacOS for compatibility reasons and because of that I couldn't play the game :(

People who own a Mac and not a PC :/

I know you've heard it a million times but the atmosphere is great! Right when I started it I hated it, which in this case is a huge compliment cus I absolutely hate scary games lol. The scares did get a bit old a little quick. After I saw the scarecrow and the babies, at that point the only things that would get a jump out of me were crows spawning right on top of me and being really loud. Maybe something out of Antichamber's book would be cool, where you end up at a dead end, turn around just to immediately be met with another dead end (and a jump scare), and now the original dead end behind you has opened up.

I really like the random generation idea, leads to a disorienting feeling which generally could work really well, but when you as a player never know if you're making progress, it definitely gets a bit frustrating. On my first playthrough I got to a point where the rain kicked in and the lighting changed, which I liked a lot. Unfortunately I ended up in an infinite loop (I turned back and walked for a sec hoping it would break but it didn't seem to) so I had to restart. I couldn't get back to the rain part on my second playthrough which was sad cus I wanted to see it again.

And there in lies the biggest thing in my opinion, that I never really knew what was going on. I don't know how I made it to the rain part in the first place, and I didn't know how to make it back. The crow vortex was super cool, I audibly said "oh hell yea" when I saw it for the first time, but being teleported back to the start didn't mean much to me because whether I was at the start or anywhere else I felt totally lost all the same . The landmarks like the bench areas were cool, but they felt just as randomly generated as everything else, so I couldn't tell if finding them actually meant progress or not. Reading one of the dev's comments below, I understand the intent is to create a mental map. It might have just been me that was so lost, but I definitely think more things were needed in game to fully convince me that there was a correct path and that the whole thing wasn't pseudo-random.

Overall I don't wanna sound overly critical, I actually really loved the game, I just want to share my experience and how I felt as a player so you can take things like that into consideration for the next game. You guys really have the horror thing down so I'd love to see what you do if you tackle the genre again. <3

Edit: I forgot to mention that I really liked the sounds. They were really important to rounding out the atmosphere. The crow sfx wasn't my fav personally but everything else was spot on!

The visuals are fantastic! I love the restricted color pallet and the visual design of the enemies and the playable character, thematically really great.

In terms of gameplay, was definitely a little confusing. I had fun running around trying to kill everything for sure, but I didn't really understand why the move bound to E kept changing, and it took me a sec to realize that the moves were all dealing different amounts of damage. Maybe I'm just dumb, but it's definitely beneficial to lay out to the player what exactly is going on.

I also immediately started in a battle, and I couldn't tell if that was intended or not. If it is intended to show the player the battle system, sure, but it's definitely confusing when I went to move around and couldn't and was just taking damage instead. In that vain, it was a bit too easy to accidentally walk into one of the bosses, just to get one shot straight away. 

The ideas are all there, communicating everything to the player clearly I think would turn this into a really cool experience, not just visually but in gameplay too!

I wanna start by saying I love the sfx. Hearing the zombies' footsteps in the direction relative to the player is a nice little touch, don't know if that's just a thing inherent to the engine or what but I like it. Graphics are also really nice!

In terms of the gameplay, I know I'm not the first to say it, but definitely a bit easy. I immediately ran out of ammo cus I wanted to shoot the gun and I didn't see the counter initially, which is totally my fault. I just wish that decision of mine would have put me in a more dangerous position, but instead I could just outrun the zombies so it wasn't really a big deal. Maybe the zombies could have gotten a bit faster with each doll you collect?

Other than that, some quality of life stuff would have been appreciated. Like someone else said, maybe a tracker for the dolls, or they could emit a sound when you get near them. I liked the volcano concept, I was hoping I could walk into the volcano right off the bat. :P After I beat the game, I went to see if I could, then when I realized I couldn't, I also realized there wasn't a pause menu for me to quit the game through.

Just little things to consider for the next game!

More or less :) I tried to make the atmosphere as scary as I could when the baddie is after you. The main problem is you can easily go a whole playthrough without him chasing you once which kinda defeats the purpose