Thank you so much for the in-depth feedback and for giving Requiem a playthrough! I’m really glad to hear the visuals, audio, story, and old-school vibes landed for you, especially with how much went into creating that retro survival horror feel. It was actually a solo dev project (we had four composers and a character modeler as well, but I did everything else) with a one-week time crunch, so it means a lot that it came across as a team effort!
I totally understand your points about the navigation challenges and the ambition being a bit much for a week-long jam—I pushed hard on scope, and I’ll definitely be streamlining things to make key items and pathways more intuitive. I’m also planning to add more subtle guidance (like the dumpster code puzzle) in a future patch to smooth out that early learning curve.
I also appreciate the heads-up on the “dodgy” feel of the browser and desktop interactions; while I wanted them to amp up the ARG vibe, adding a disclaimer at the start should help players feel more comfortable. There are disclaimers on the main game page, but they're woven into the lore so they're likely not obvious enough.
Audio-wise, I’ll definitely look at adding more retro-style effects to the recordings to better match the game’s setting and apply a filter to give them that vintage feel! I intended to run everything through a bitcrusher to get the sound appropriate for the time period, but just didn't have enough time for it. As for the AI-generated images, I get it—it was a quick way to add some polish under tight time constraints, but moving forward, I’ll likely create original assets to keep it fully organic. For what it's worth though, all AI-assisted assets were only roughed out with Adobe and then were properly completed by an artist. Still not an entirely human workflow though.
Thanks again for all your insights—it’s incredibly helpful, and I really appreciate your support and kind words. There’s a full release on the horizon, and with feedback like this, it’ll be better than ever!