I learned a few things watching the only two gameplay reactions on youtube and reading the steam comments.

- I have not made it clear enough that the purpose of the demo was to prove to myself the game type and art style could tell the story (and that my skill level was sufficient, mainly with drawing EGA art). Jury is still out on that, I like the black/blue screens but brown and dream scenes look like shit. People expect other things from demos like absolute polish, no bugs, being able to get a reasonable response regardless of the command/object combination. Polish and completeness is not an unreasonable demand - however that was not my goal. Same goes with the thinking screen, people reported that it didn't make perfect sense which items had to be combined - I agree with you, my focus was on trying to get Unity to import CSV files not make the items make sense just yet. That's for after I decide I really want to finish this game and spend the next 5 years working full time for zero earnings.

- Just because a game is a point and click adventure it doesn't mean that people expect the same thing. Some people are downloading the game because they want well thought out puzzles that make them feel intelligent, but which are at the end of the day as we all know, completely contrived. I do not plan on adding IQ-test type puzzles that do not fit with the story because I think it's gratuitous and overdone.

- Some people are nostalgic about point and click adventures but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are willing to put up with the game mechanics as they used to be. There are two types of game mechanics in this sort of game: 1. try everything with everything, 2. pixel hunting. Because I also do not like these, I have made the puzzles sort of trivial (it's not a puzzle focused game) - and I use the dialogues to hint at what has to be done next. The first puzzle with the ring is an exception and I'm willing to change it or make it more clear. However as a general rule if you are not ok with something like making tea (open faucet, use kettle, put teabag in cup etc) I must conclude that either you were looking for non-interactive fiction, which this isn't, or perhaps you wanted more intelligent puzzles - but, the story takes priority, he just arrived, so that's what he has to do, warm up. I am open to suggestions, if you think there's some other task that he would evidently be called upon to carry out let me know what it is. I have not given this much thought because my purpose behind the demo was not puzzle making.

(A corollary to the previous two points is that the market is even smaller than one might think, in that even people who want to play a point and click with a mouse in EGA color palette, are not necessarily looking for what I'm trying to provide)

- People will pay insufficient attention to dialogues. Therefore whatever hints are present therein, must be repeated (perhaps using a timer). Example: Kian says he wants to warm up first. So you can't go hunt for the suitcase just yet. Kian says "there's a signature". Perhaps you must look at the signature. Kian says he wants to read the envelope first. You shall comply. I realize some scenes have lots of dialogue, and it's easy to miss something after you already read 100 lines, but it's a narrative game first and foremost, and enjoying it requires the patience and inclination to immerse yourself in the mood and take it slowly like a book and try to understand what is said or hinted at. Takeaway lesson: do not assume people are reading every line.

- There are still bugs (vine hotspot doesn't disappear after taking it, etc). I have fixed every bug that was reported so far and hoping they are not popping up again. I think the "stuck in manual mode" bug should be gone but if you're still getting it let me know what version of the build you have. I made a terrible decision trusting Unity and Powerquest to develop this game. It's a non-deterministic system, that's the simplest way to put it. Some errors will only happen on slower systems (!), etc. All you really need to make a P&C is getpixel and setpixel and some sort of path finding algorithm. Instead we have a setup where all objects are disposed every time you change a room, because every room is a unity scene. This is terrible for race conditions especially when you have background tasks/sequences running. Unity won't even tell you what animation frame you're on (so mirror reflections were hell to get to work), and sprites are on the GPU so you can't just change them in real time... Depending on your GPU version textures can be magnified by 4 times, or not. Some bugs only show on slower CPUs. Because dialogue is blocking, some actions (ex popups opening) that happen when dialogue is displayed will freeze the system. UI elements won't align properly. Fonts are never pixel fonts but just mesh approximations. You can never totally get rid of blur. It really is a nightmare to try to develop a full complex game with this platform. Wish I hadn't invested so much time in it and just used C#.

I think an important last comment is the whole philosophy of the game which I think no one is acknowledging. It's trying to be a realistic simulation of a world. Ignorance is also simulated. You will hear things that do not make sense unless you have a background in the relevant scientific field. It doesn't matter. If you were there in that situation those are words you could conceivably hear. It is part of realism. The conversation between Connie and Crowe when you come out of the initial screens is hinting at things that haven't been explained yet. It is what you would hear if you were in that situation, even if you can't make sense of it yet. If you have good memory and intellect, when those aspects are finally revealed you will go "AH!" and get the intended payoff. If not, it's ok.

The idea behind the ring puzzle was also to keep with a realistic scenario. A ring would be tough to find in a desert, so it's also tough to find in the game. Could it have been a totally different puzzle? Sure. But in a dream-like state Joanna telling you she lost something is realistic in my view. Easiest fix is a timer that makes the character say something like "Perhaps I should walk around and see if anything glitters".

I admit candidly that trying to stop Joanna from disappearing when you walk to another screen, and figuring out why the animation vs dialogue time was off (misaligned) on slower GPUs, and trying to understand why the Unity TimeInMilliseconds always reported double the value that it should be, was FAR more important to me than whether the ring is hard to find. 

Despite the criticism, it was still pretty cool to see people play the game because (a) I get a feel for what was "intuitive only to me", and (b) when a joke or the mood hits and you see the other person feel something from the story (more intense than if you were to  just tell it) it's a good reward for putting in all the work.