So, this game isn't bad. But there is much to be improved on.
Improvements for future games (Gameplay):
- Make the game longer. This can be done by adding more rooms, or making the game harder. I feel it was too short.
- Keep difficulty balanced. Unless it's a narrative game (where you can't die until the very end or something), you don't want to make the game too easy. On the other hand, you don't want to make the game extremely hard for no reason (unless your game is too short and you need to extend playtime). Keep it balanced.
- Make the player feel immersed. This makes the game more scary (which I feel your game was lacking in) . This can easily be accomplished with ambient sounds and simple visuals (such as lights flickering, pipes dripping, etc.)
Improvements for future games (Technical Game Dev Things):
- The running footstep sounds had a delay when I stopped moving after running. The way I did footstep sounds was to have the object that has the footstep sounds on a loop, and I had it non-active when I stop moving & active when I start moving. That seemed to work for me anyways.
- The enemy AI was a little generic and didn't feel like the enemies described in the story. Especially in this setting, the AI doesn't work. I would do research on certain AI behaviors that you could implement depending on what you wanna do with your AI. Maybe make them have the ability to hear, investigate, that sort of thing. Though I do understand that you had a deadline for the game jam, so I won't judge too harshly.
Things I liked:
- The story was pretty interesting. If the game was longer, I would've loved to explore more of the lore throughout the gameplay.
- I enjoyed the stylistic choice. I'm not sure if it's inspired by Puppet Combo type games, or if you're just not a 3D modeler (I'm not either. The monster in my game is a cube, and I tried to work with that T_T), but I think it works for a game jam game. If this was a real game, I would maybe just add some post-processing, Film Grain, or something like that.
Other than that, the game wasn't bad. I'll drop a follow. Can't wait to see your game dev journey!!