Finally got to beating this! I really enjoyed your writing. The characters' personality was able to shine through, and your face edits helped sell the interactions. Reid got a bit weird didn't he? Also Tea, Biscuits, Accessories store? Lol. The few custom tracks sounded nice, but they were interspersed with those super heavy and loud MZ tracks, so the contrast caused some suffering.

For the sake of the jam, my biggest suggestion is that less is more. It was a WIP for sure, but you had a gameplay loop gathering the four shades. There were some distracting irrelevant parts, like shops with items to buy, jumping juice that I never understood where to get or why to get, secret tents and moveable boulders hinting at secrets but leaving nothing. You could definitely note the game will be continued and be a WIP, but curious players will likely explore the unfinished maps and leave with a feeling of being incomplete, whereas if you had ended with the shade possession reveal, you'd have a strong finish.

To sum it up, if you had taken your story and gameplay and concentrated it, removed all the things that didn't matter or got players lost, the product would have been much stronger as a whole.

Hope to see some mighty polish if you keep up with this game!

Been excited to play this one since you first brought it up in the Discord. Haven't finished yet but here's what I have so far.

Gameplay: I liked the fast leader switching and the way it affects dialogue was a great little touch. It did come at the cost of not being able to run using the keyboard (as far as I'm aware). I also would've liked it to pause the game if possible so monsters couldn't attack you while you switched. The shadow footprints were welcome as well, albeit navigating the main town outside of them could get confusing especially when collecting the three shadow essences. I would have liked something like a quest log where you can see where you're supposed to go.

Combat: Action-based combat was fun, although I wish there were more of an indicator like a flash when you hit an enemy. Likewise, I wish when enemies hit you, you could see how much HP you lost in that moment.

Comedy: Hard not to love how quippy the cast is on a regular basis.

Sound: Your buddy writes some damn good music! Quality of the music was great all around although some tracks didn't fit their surroundings. A weapons shop theme has no right going that hard. Ambient SFX added a lot to the game as well.

Visuals: Pretty standard RTP fare done well. Loved the ambient weather and time of day effects.

Story: Nice to see a more typical RPG-style story. While I liked the overall writing, the story felt kinda disjointed from time to time. Could have used a spell check as well honestly.

Overall very ambitious and refreshing.

I got up to unlocking the barrier out of town so I think I reached the end of the game so far. 

This town definitely has a rat problem! Interesting rat exterminating minigame. It was a little difficult to hit them, but the damage they do was forgiving enough. 

Possessed Reid was definitely creepy!

The town map looks good. It was nice to walk around with the soothing music. The footprints were a nice touch as guidance to not get lost too much in a large town like this (although I didn't realise only Harold saw them until the church scene as I was too busy smashing boxes as Therese!).

Impressive with some of the features you made with just eventing.  On-map action combat system. A party leader swap system with on-map abilities. Crafting system with Marsha (which I didn't really dive into). A day and night cycle system etc. There's also some sort of RPG battles with monsters in the miners cave. 

Hopefully as you finish this game, these features would be polished and feel more cohesive together. Sometimes, less is more!

I think most critiques I can have has been discussed in the discord already but I'll rewrite them anyways. When it comes to making a book, you can have as much story ideas you can have but you're ultimately limited if you don't have the available paper for printing the story content. Games are kind of like that.

You mentioned you've studied writing for years and it shows. Your dialogue has been the most engaging for me to read of all the games I played. I think my only hiccup was the shock at Therese emasculating Harold by saying she's stronger.

I like to think about how writing literature entails using as few words possible. Map design works like that too. Whenever a player checks a door to a building that is locked, this slows down the pace of the game and story. Most importantly it also slows down the speed you create content! While railroading can be an issue, derailing is probably the worse problem if the player explores in a way that they've lost touch with the main story or even get bored. Game maps usually have just a few select functional areas like inn, shop and a couple filler buildings.

If visiting Disneyland and looking at their maps taught me anything, it takes a only a couple of street blocks to create a feeling of a big town.

You're a talented writer, with the right game design strategy I know your best strengths will be put forward

Gave this game a try. Overall feels decent, but I'm just so bad at action fights. Those rats took me forever to kill. Also I got so lost in that town some directions of where things are would be helpful as well.