I first tried playing without instructions and was confused. I realized I was collecting a bunch of parts but wasn't really sure what that meant intuitively. Going to look at instructions now for future runs.
It would be great if there was a "selected item" UI element where you could swap between your selected items rather than have to push lots of different unique buttons to use them.
Didn't know there was a map for a while.
The headbob camera movement was pretty disorienting. Would probably tone that down or remove it.
I really wish time slowed down or stopped when using the map. The game is so quick paced I never felt like using the map b/c I just felt like I was losing time.
As far as the balancing is concerned, I'm not really sure how to survive a long period of time. I was playing on easy and I found myself just getting corned by the fire over and over at roughly the 3 minute mark every time, give or take 30 seconds. I wish there was a better way to combat the fire or perhaps something super hard to get that could reset the fire back to it's starting position or something.
I wish 'tab' also opened the map.
I had trouble placing the water fountains, I kept pressing the C button but they just wouldn't deploy most of the time.
Not sure what the difference in purpose is of the water vs the wooden planks, are they just doing the same thing effectively?
B/c I couldn't safely use the map, the markers felt useless to me.
The heat vision is cool, but when I feel like I can't do anything about the oncoming fire anyways, it didn't feel all that useful.
Overall really interesting use of the theme and was definitely an out of the box idea, just doesn't feel like there's a high skill ceiling b/c of the lack of real powerful tools to fight the fire and extend your time.
Thanks for your submission and best of luck!