I finally finished the demo. The downside is that I played the first version so some of my bug reports are outdated and I was also going to suggest making the UI focus texture a little more noticeable, but I still encountered a couple of issues that haven't been mentioned yet.

However, I must first say that I think the game is quite enthralling as it is and I want to know what happens next in the story, and I guess before too because the passage of time is creative to say the least even if chapters are roughly linear. I think nonlinear narratives are difficult to pull off in video games, especially RPGs where constant progression tends to be a core mechanic so good job there.

I thought the story was going to be more schizo but it's not that hard to follow actually. The focus on hunting and butchering reminds me a little bit of Pathologic, especially because of the surgical tool lying around near the beginning. I bet there's going to be a level made completely out of flesh later.

Besides that the symbolism is done very well. After all that deer imagery and story moments involving deer you get the feeling that other recursive elements will have a similar degree of significance in the future. Perhaps the fish where a little explicit, I'm not sure.

The presentation in general is fantastic so far. The only issues I encountered were some instances of poor collisions and some RPG maker textures showing up such as a regular old fantasy treasure chest in one occasion. Also, I'm certain that a music track is just Nirvana, that was just a song from Nirvana, I mean come on. It broke my immersion a little bit to hear Nirvana out of nowhere, someone please hide grandma's shotgun just in case.

Finally I have a couple of bugs to report. The first one is that I could speak again with Sarah at the Hidden Pool after recruiting her. She shows up for a split second after re-entering the area and I could still interact with invisible Sarah. However, I could neither dismiss her nor get at extra Sarah this way.

Additionally, both Winter and Billy can wear little girl clothes apparently as I realized after acquiring the Farm Girl II. Actually not a bad armor before you get the funeral suit. 

Furthermore, using teen Sarah's basic attack against the Warbear consistently crashed the game while other skills did not. I had the traitor card equipped which also seemed to have no effect.

Finally, the final boss of the demo got stuck using the bloodrite shield ability for most of its turns and I won easily by spamming crackerlacker and guarding with every other character in the party. I'm not sure if that's an issue or the AI simply works like that.

Anyways, great game. My prediction is that college will suck because college sucks.

I couldn't get this to work with OBS, sorry.

Love the atmosphere of the game, it's unique and trippy as hell. The game feels like a puzzle where you have figure out what to do next and requires exploring every nook and cranny. The soundtrack is great as well, I especially liked the song in the area with the fishes.

I just finished the Hallowed Mother fight. I beat that one by pure luck because if she spams her hook attack there doesn't seem to be much you can do about it as it can kill your party members in 2-3 hits. I was only able to beat it because she decided not to use it as often and used her status effect spells instead.

I wanna install this through the Itch launcher can you tick the windows icon next to your upload?

The top and bottom of the name input screen are cut off:

I like your writing style, poetic without being pretentious.

Starting out with "Chapter 1: Regret (Nothing)" is for me a little too similar to the Eva naming scheme.

I'd like it if I could walk diagonally.

The words with contractions are missing the quote (i.e. "dont" instead of "don't").

The little cutscenes when I meet someone or get the gun are very cool.

Not sure how I feel about the sfx when I click stuff in the menu, it's kinda annoying.

I had to get uncomfortably close to Billy to trigger the dialogue.

In the combat menu where I need SWAG to perform moves, the moves should be greyed out if I have insufficient SWAG.

Walk animation could use improvement.

It would be nice to know what stuff like Strength and Endurance do.

It's a little disconcerting to me that day and night look the same in the campsite.

I assume the dialogue memory scrolling out of the textbox is intended. Very cool surprise.

The moments of "mixed media" are cool.

Jack of Deceivers is spelled wrong.

Is this her arm hanging off the bed? It's hard for me to understand this picture.

Obviously this game is supposed to have multiple party members at some point. It feels like I have to go through too many fights with just Winters and there's not much strategy, just hope for luck. I'm stuck on Meatgrinder and I'm going to call it here. I guess I could grind by fighting the fishes but I don't want to grind and waiting for a roll of the dice in the Meatgrinder fight is frustrating.

This game is kino, great work.

Man this game is awesome. I was amazed to see like, a game that can be played on AGDG, I'm not used to that. The music was great! sound design is pretty solid, and the mouth noises for UI sounds is fun. Keep adding more sounds, the more feedback you get the more immersive it is.

 i would kind of prefer to have WSAD controls in addition to point and click, I feel kind of disengaged with the way the game controls as is. 

the vibe is very strange and cool, though I'm not sure if I understand what is happening, but thats the kind of stuff I like.

also 

gotta agree with her there hahaha keep up the great work! I look forward to playing through the rest of this and seeing this game come together even more

Hello, ever since you first posted this game I've been looking forward to getting to try it.

First thing I notice, scrollbar doesn't seem necessary on the title screen, you have plenty of room. Although I'm playing with a 1440p monitor so maybe it's just a scaling issue.

Also the screen to name my characters was cut off but luckily I could infer where the enter button is to proceed.

Also I know that arrow keys for movement is a bit of a standard RPGM thing but in my opinion having WASD as an option would be nice.
I generally like the puzzle-ey approach to the enemy encounters.
I found the "confused" mood to be quite overpowered personally but I could've just been getting lucky with it.
Also I randomly encountered this while fighting a random enemy:

which forced me to quit out unfortunately. But luckily wasn't a big deal because of autosave.
I was able to walk straight onto this platform without the ladder which I assume is not intentional:


Also I went back to the spot where you pick up Sarah for the second time by the lake and I was able to interact with the spot she used to be standing and it activated the dialogue as if she was still standing there.
There was a bug where I would get stuck on the computer screen. Luckily I was able to wander around the room blindly and interact with the coffee pot which returned normal visibility. Also the AI chat log entry didn't do anything when I tried it.
Anyway, I played all the way through and had a lot of fun. I like the characters and the general style and the music is great, probably the best agdg music I've heard so far. Keep up the good work!

Neato. Reminds me of a bunch of horror RPG maker games I played years ago in a good way. Couple things:

• I would introduce Curses, Cards, intents, and the basic combat system over a few encounters. Getting them all at once is kind of an overload.
• pick related📎
• Some of the audio and sfx is nice, but also peaks really hard, like I love the gunshot, but I don’t want my ears to be shot.
• I’d like if I didn’t have to click on a character again to see another dialog branch

Really digging the art, music and overall vibe of this game. It reminds me slightly of an old game called Dare to Dream (by epic mega games), although your game is much higher quality. I haven't spent enough time in this game  to give a proper review unfortunately - as I am trying to just sample all the demo day games and then get back to devving my project. But I can tell that a lot of love and creativity has gone into this and it really shows.

I have no idea where does the demo end, so I finished after not seeing a way to progress between playground and murky waters after impressing a local grandma.

It has a strong overall style and the transitions/introductions add soul. Can't call it atmospheric though because it breaks consistency constantly. Music is nice too. The main motif reminds me of "heart shaped box" because of a very similar melody and that's actually a good thing.

I like all the options for equipment since the very early game, especially since the bonuses they offer are far from minor. Combat is ok despite my disdain for turn based. Having a sprint button is a nice QOL.

Ladder in the house is bugged and I can take however many I want of those.

The UI selection color is barely visible. If I played it at a different time of the day I wouldn't be able to see what's selected at all.

It's hard to see anything while walking around because of the fog and low contrast. Collisions and warps are weird at times (pretty common for rpg maker?).

Is this an rpg maker game? It would be an absolute hit back in the day and even more so now seeing how well those are doing recently.

dude he ate that cat

why does butchering the rabbits give me hatred, i was just a lil hungry

music is all 11/10

i think my only criticism is that this game forces me to endure turn based combat, but for turn based combat it's pretty good

game is epic, i hope sarah does good at college

Amazing game. 10/10 love the music and the spooky themes but JRPG style with guns and horror themes its all really well done. 

An impressively immersive thing, with a really coherent art style that locks me into it, probably because of how old I am. I have nothing to add in terms of critique, other than "I would probably buy this", presumably after hearing a bunch of people talking about how actually effective it is, actually. 

That sort-of Omori vibe, innit? In a good way. 

I usually loathe combat systems like these but this game was captivating, I'm curious to see how you'll tie up Sarah's story with the MC's story.

I loved the style and the music is really good, but I gotta say the whole thing is a little undermined when you start farming meatmen and hanged deers for XPs.

This sprite at the end has some visible black pixels on its top edge, pic related.

Very nice, extremely atmospheric game. Loved the setting, maps, and general feel of it.

However, I got stuck at the Meatcutter in the well. With the tools I had there just didn't seem a way to kill him being level 3 and without a way to level up. Maybe I'm missing something. If so, let me know. In general, you'll probably want some failsafe for situations like this, since it will become more common going forward as the amount of player choices increases.

Also, some miscellaneous thoughts:

• Why are STATS called STRATS.
• SWAG doesn't really seem to fit the theme.
• The menuing sounds are really obnoxious, especially the farty back sound.
• Why is there such a big spacing between lines in dialogue, is this an artistic choice? They also cut off at the middle of the textbox.
• Why does the dialogue end with Sarah after confirming a dialogue choice, with the Android it just reshows all of them so you can keep asking questions.
• Props have very agressive collisions, such as the axe in the hunter camp.
• The music choice is great by the way.
• Also like the concept of intentions/mood and the equipment in general.
• Shame taking off the black suit doesn't change appearance (or do anything).
• Bulletspray doesn't actually cost Sanity? Is sanity even a thing.
• It's strange that the attack text say that it's kill or be killed even when you're fighting harmless targets?
• Have you considered plugins that allow the player to increase combat speed? Combat is rather dull compared to the world and exploration right now.
• I learned "butchering" but nothing showed up.
• When I have a dialogue choice, there should be a short pause, so I don't accidently click stuff when mashing A (because I clicked the wrong dialogue choice).
• Also the selection of dialogue choices is very unclear, since it's a black on black selector.
• Pressing X in a dialogue choice picks the second choice.

Again, very nice and good looking game. I would have kept playing if meatcutter man didn't keep chainsawing me to death.