I really like the idea of this game, I hope it succeeds, and I look forward to seeing what y'all do with it. :3 I haven't taken the chance to really peruse all the devlogs or any newer content of the game on other sites, so my experience is limited solely to the demo shared here, on Itch.
I imagine that many bugs, etc., that I experienced in the demo have probably been fixed or worked-around to varying degrees, since the demo's release, and I hope that the performance has improved a lot over that time. That being said, I might recommend updating the demo, here, with at least some of those bugfixes and general user experience improvements (not new features or content, etc. - that would understandably be fine to withhold for paid release, and all), as the current state of the demo is quite iffy. There will probably be a lot of folks like me whose first - and possibly only - impression of the game will be the demo they run across, here. I'd like to share some of the more glaring issues I seemed to run into (and, quite likely, have already been addressed).
[Edit: After skimming through the April Update, I think it's mentioned that the "free version" may be getting updated, soon? If so, cool. c: ]
From the start, I was immediately thrown-off when the default keybindings that were given did not match the actual keys to which they were assigned. For example, "whistle" should have been 'T', but was instead 'F'. However, keys like 'E', 'W', 'A', 'S', and 'D' were fine. Perhaps this was a keyboard layout issue? I am using a standard US keyboard. It didn't seem like I could really adjust the keybindings in the settings, for some reason, either. Anyway, I was at least able to figure out which-key-does-what, for the most part, through trial-and-error.
I think it's already a known issue that something is buggy with LoD of textures on characters like the wolves, among others, but here's my mention of that, anyway. It was like they were suddenly wearing a trippy, mostly-black outfit when they were 20-30 feet away, or so.
More pertinent, something about the shadows or lighting in the dungeon areas - particularly around the bright, greenish-yellow lights - really bogged-down my PC. It was almost unplayable, depending on which direction you're looking, while traversing one. (My specs: Windows 11, Ryzen 5600X, Nvidia 1660ti, 32GB RAM.)
Unreal engine is notorious for being a little difficult for devs to optimize well, so I expected as much as soon as I saw the Unreal logo. For some reason, changing most of the settings didn't really seem to change very much in the way things looked or performed - I couldn't really tell if those settings did anything at all. Outside of dungeons, for most of the rest of the game that I experienced, things chugged along well-enough, for the most part. Sometimes I'd get my target 60+ fps, but most times I was running in the 30s and 40s, I think. (I'm capable of coping with games running in the 40s or 50s on my 60Hz monitor - I only have a 1660ti, so I've no choice but to compromise with any title running a heavy/modern engine. That said, this still bogged down a little more than I'd hoped.)
From one of the devlog posts that I briefly glanced through, here on Itch, I think this is already addressed, but: I did run into quite a few instances of getting fucked either in the ground or up in the air, lol. :p It sounds like newer sex stuff happens in a completely different way, so this is just an honorable mention. [Edit: I think this has definitely been addressed in devlogs, so this is prolly irrelevant to fix, now.]
Speaking of the sex stuff, though...I ran into quite a lot of issues with that, practically becoming soft-locked and/or stuck in animations. (This was made worse by the keybinding mismatch issue, as I still wasn't really sure which key was supposed to be the "get up/recover" button.)
Examples:
Whenever a male wolf caught my female squirrel, he'd do his thing to me and all, and then we would just both stop and stand there - I wouldn't be able to move, and other wolves that would run up to us seemed to think we were still boinking. At first, this seemed to be a total soft-lock, but hitting my 'Z' key seemed to trigger something. Whatever it is supposed to do, I don't know.. But, suddenly, my character would start performing the blowjob animation that she would normally perform if caught by a wolf while crouching. Wolf-man would still just be standing there (not T-pose or A-pose, just idling), though. I still wouldn't be able to move. Sometimes, I'd get a "wiggle your mouse up and down" prompt, at this point; but, even when I maxed-out the meter, nothing would happen, and then the meter would eventually decrease back to zero and just be permanently stuck there.
At that point, if I do nothing, I'm usually still soft-locked. But, if I were to hit 'Z' or something else (I don't remember, now) again, I would be able to move freely, again...but, it was a 50/50 chance whether my character was "normal" again or if she would be stuck in a deep crouching pose, sliding around everywhere, while I moved, jumped, attacked, etc. A tad silly, but at least I could move and progress, again. Getting grabbed by a wolf at that point would seem to reset my character into the appropriate animation for that interaction, but then I'd just be rolling right into another soft-lock/stuck-animation opportunity. Xv
I didn't seem to have the same soft-locking issues while playing the male maned-wolf character.
Plant interactions seemed to work fine. I didn't have issues exiting the animation after being caught. Although... if the idea is that they're supposed to be traps that we accidentally spring, it feels like it defeats the purpose to mark them on the minimap, to be easily avoided. :/
I know y'all have been working on getting new animations and stuff done for the game. Definitely will be more fun getting caught when there's more variety in the "consequences!" :3 Separately, I do like the range of clothing and stuff, finding more gear throughout exploration, and etc.
There's a lot of minor complaints, here, but I wanna re-emphasize that I like what y'all are trying to do here, so far. :3 I like the premise of the game a bunch. Heck, as others have mentioned, if possible, this almost looks like something that could be done multiplayer, somehow. (Although that's quite difficult and requires a lot more time, money, and infrastructure investment to pull-off. So, I doubt it would happen - at least, not anything more than maybe a p2p thing with a small relay server involved.) Anyway, I hope the best for this project, appreciate the free demo, and really look forward to seeing the final product! :3
Edits: typos, corrections, small comments