itch.io

Yeah I understand what you mean by the flash having a cooldown, but I'm not sure if the "doll get away from me" effect part is following the cooldown too? I noticed that the dolls/mannequins would sort of twitch in their starting spots if I pressed space again even if the flash was cooling down still, which to me seemed like maybe it was moving the dolls back every time I hit space rather than every time the flash actually went off? I could be wrong about that though, it's just something I noticed since I was hitting space repeatedly a lot haha.

But that's just a nitpicky thing, all in all, still great work!

Absolutely would come back to play this again if you do wind up adding content like that! Having to cut out features is always the curse of the game jam haha

Neat game!! I'm always a fan of Weeping Angel-type enemies so it was exciting to see them in here. I particularly liked how the concept was introduced with the dolls then foreshadowed with the mannequin in the closet, to the reveal of ALL the mannequins in the basement because by that point you just KNOW they're gonna come to life. Very nerve wracking!

To me, the weak point of the game were the "pocket dimensions" after finding pieces of evidence (looping room, endless hallway, maze). I think it lessened the impact of the main conflict of "evil guy stuffing souls into inanimate objects" without really adding new details. That's why I LOVED the basement, because it confirms the threat you've been reading about actually happened! Otherwise, I didn't really ever feel in danger in the house (a looming doll enemy that's just around the house would've been cool after getting the child room's tape). On a technical note, I also noticed that you can just spam space and it resets the enemies even if the flash hasn't reset yet, so I was able to cheese my way through the doll/mannequin parts that way.

Great job though, I had a lot of fun with this one! :)

This game was a super weird fever dream and I absolutely loved the humor and cheesy slasher vibe to it! My only complaint was that the ending boss battle was pretty clunky/maybe bugged? The killer's hurtbox should definitely be more forgiving or something (only like 1/20 swings would ever actually "hit"), as I eventually had to cheese out the ending by finding a spot where the killer got stuck so I could swing at him freely without dying. But besides that, I thought this was super fun, so great job!

Got major Petscop/haunted EXE vibes from it, and it honestly freaked me out a lot.  Really fits the architectural horror theme well in more ways than one. It made me wind up digging through the game files to see if there was anything hidden (but as far as I could tell, I don't think so?) because I loved this so much! Awesome work

I was super impressed by this! I missed that this was a demo and was so sad to find that out by getting hit by the "thanks for playing our demo!" screen because of how invested I was.

The atmosphere of the game was easily its strongest part for me.  Particularly in the beginning part of the caves (before you actually open the gate) where I was wandering in the dark caves, hearing rumbles of the monster in the distance made me paranoid wondering if anything would pop out of the dark at me. The jumpscare + chase at the end really got me, there was enough time between the encounters that I had gotten comfortable just wandering around freely again, even with all of the notes explaining how it'd be obvious that I wasn't alone down in these mines.

Some points for improvement: some of the controls felt a little clunky to me, specifically the few moments where I had to crouch jump into small areas like the mines or air vents and opening doors. I don't think I would have been able to do either of these things gracefully if I were being chased by a monster, for example. Also since the monster doesn't insta-kill you, having the red tint last for the entire rest of the demo was a little bit annoying to deal with.

All in all, I had a really fun time with this game, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing the final result! Great job!

-----MILD SPOILER WARNING-----

This game was honestly such a short and sweet experience, great job! The way you used the sound design to build up the atmosphere was the highlight of the game. I typically don't get nervous while playing games, but the looming threat of "POPULATION: 2" was honestly enough to make me sweat a little... Especially in the tight hallway parts!

My one nitpick would have to be the gate cut scene. Since there's no interaction in the rest of the game and there was only ever one option at each step anyway, I think you'd be fine to just have the dialogue progress automatically. I honestly thought the game had crashed since there was no indication that I could "choose" a dialogue option, and it wasn't until I watched part of a playthrough on this page that I realized I needed to click at all.

But besides that, I had a ton of fun with this game! Will definitely be recommending it to friends :)

I agree with the comment below that the art is definitely the strongest point of the game. I get heavy Blade Runner vibes from it!

I also played in the web-browser version and had some difficulty with the controls as well. Weirdly enough, I had no issues getting long-ranged kills but if a robot was about mid to close range from me, I'd have a lot of trouble actually hitting it. I constantly felt like I had to be aiming more to the left than what was intuitive for me from other 3rd person shooters, so I'm not sure if I should chalk that up to the smaller web-player window or maybe there's room to play with camera angles vs aiming angles? I didn't really feel like I could properly maintain control of the situation if a robot got within attacking distance, since I had trouble aiming and also couldn't get away due to being so slow.

The Megaman Battle Network series is one of my all-time favorites, so of course I absolutely loved this game! Definitely a very hard game, but I enjoy the way that it ramps up the difficulty in a steady way that would feel very rewarding if I had more time to really sit down with it and beat it! Maybe once I'm done with finals? ;)

I also really love the boss design as well, it really keeps the game fresh and interesting considering the fact that a "one boss boss-rush" as a concept has a high risk of becoming either repetitive or too short. Even though gathering the glowing tiles technically makes him more difficult to beat (which as a player I should be conditioned not to do), I honestly didn't even mind because I was always excited to see what new attack would get thrown at me next. Really fun game!!

Had a fun time with this game! The fact that having your eyes closed is safety is pretty unique, and the sound design/atmosphere was pretty strong and often left me feeling tense most of the time. From what I could see of the monster too, it had a really neat design that I enjoyed :)

These were some of my pain points while playing the game:

• Since the main mechanic takes away vision, as a player it conditions me to heavily rely on sound as it's the most reliable sense I have to evaluate my surroundings. Having the tree owl (?) warn me about danger was great for this reason, since it taught me shriek = close your eyes. However, there were times where the monster killed me if I ran into him by chance and there were no warning shrieks, just because I couldn't hear its footsteps if I had my eyes open.
• I had no clue where I was 90% of the time. I get the impression this was maybe intentional based on some of the game's flavor text, but personally I could've used more landmarks to track my progress and reorient myself after walking around with my eyes closed. It kind of turned my experience more into "let's just wander and hope I stumble into this key" rather than feeling like I was really exploring the space or anything.

I hope that you plan on continuing updating the game though, I thought the concept was super neat and I think it could be a real stand-out game with more iteration on it!

Really enjoyed this game! Here are some of my thoughts as I played it. 

[SPOILER WARNING FOR ANYONE WHO HASN'T PLAYED YET]

So first, what I liked/memorable moments:

• The atmosphere was incredibly unsettling. If anything, having very little ambient noise was a huge strength, leaving me painfully aware and paranoid of all the noise I made doing anything and made other noises really stand out.
• The moment after the phone call when you see the door leading to the jack/queen/king area was great. I knew I HAD to go in there since there was nowhere else to go, but the anxiety of just finding out that I'm not alone in the house made me dread going in there. Same goes for when it was time to walk into the basement.
• The radio... lol.

Some room for improvement:

• You use lights and locked doors to guide the player through a linear track through the house, which is great. However, the globe lights going up the stairs encouraged me to try to venture up before I was "supposed to." Once I realized that and tried to go back downstairs, I struggled to go back downstairs because I couldn't see the railing in the darkness. I'd suggest keeping these globe lights off until it's time for the player to travel upstairs.
• I picked up a key, but to my knowledge I didn't do anything with it? When I reached the locked front door, I tried to pull up an inventory by randomly hitting typical inventory buttons (I, tab, escape), and it wound up freezing my game (I believe Escape was the culprit). I assume in later versions there will actually be a use for the key, but until then I'd suggest keeping them out of demos.
• Convincing a player that actively moving towards a visible threat is usually pretty difficult. Already being kind of anxious from having to walk into a dark basement, the reveal of the killer at the bottom made me expect some sort of chase/hiding sequence through the house, since being at the top of the stairs gave me a head start to get away. It wasn't until like 15 seconds later when I was still at the top of the stairs and nothing had happened did I realize that I had to go down to trigger anything to continue.

Again though, this was great! Definitely will be following development and can't wait for future updates :)