was looking forward to playing this after seeing it in the thread. thanks for posting it.
using k&m.
game atmosphere is very nicely autumnal and immersive. i love the rain sounds and the tree/wind movements.
spent a bit of time with the character controller.
- camera follow is... interesting. at least in the intro area, sometimes it's possible to make the player go out of the camera's view, which feels rough.
- top down view feels nice. definitely needs some kind of occlusion culling when there's an object between the camera and the player - rocks, trees.
- not reading any controls, trying to just play naively. mouse to rotate player. feels pretty smooth. mouse to light attack, Rmouse to... block? heavy attack? maybe i'll find out.
- repeated clicking, or clicking and holding, did not trigger an animation attack chain: the same leftward swipe attack plays over and over. if you're going for soulslike, you need some kind of attack chain combo. (unless i missed how to trigger it, please forgive me if i did)
- when reading a signpost while moving, player continues walk animation while frozen in place.
- needs weapon trail vfx on attack.
- there should be colliders on the traffic stakes.
on to combat.
enemy model looks nice. i like the watercolor-like textures a lot. combat feels smooth and good to play. i like that it presents a minimalist notion of a soulslike controller and doesn't add too many bells and whistles. you have parry, dodge, light and heavy attacks, heal with animation delay, and it all feels good in that it's slow and enforces a defensive playstyle. that seems to gel well with the 70s horror movie setting (which is great by the way). i particularly like the heal animation and sound.
it felt good to play so i tried to get good. managed to no-hit all the way up to the boss.
could not beat the boss without "dying." i couldn't tell if the delay on his attacks was randomized, making him very lethal (and a bit unfair feeling) in a margit-like way. (perhaps you could add subtle sound cues to telegraph the timing of his attacks?) despite the difficulty of learning his timing, i did get pretty good at parrying him to deliver the satisfying heavy attack coup de grace.
sometimes the text on the notes exceeds its background.
tldr; overall i would say two simple but big fixes would be transparency/dither/occlusion culling for player blocking objects, and varying the animations more for both the player and the enemy.
in addition to all the basic stuff which i'm sure you're dying to get to, like save/load, inventory, character customization(don't know if you'll add this or not, but i find it always nice in a soulslike)
anyways very cool demo and i'm glad i played, will look forward to seeing more as this develops. combat feels good, hoping to see more of the narrative and puzzles soon.