Excellent work on the game! Even just from the demo alone, you can tell a ton of effort was put into this, and your team should be very proud from what seems to be your first game!
Regarding feedback, there are points that I wanted to highlight:
Art & UX
- The art & animations are outstanding, and easily ranks as one of best tickle games out there visually!
- I especially love the menu art & animations, however I do agree with the others that menu animations take a bit too long to finish. Some have pointed out about the sfx issue as well.
- As someone who's into tickling + petrification, I think Marywell being frozen wide-eyed, with her mouth open from laughing would be a lot more titillating than eyes closed with a smile. But this is just purely my opinion!
- It would be nice if the ESC key could be added as an alternate way to open/close the menu, since some of us are used to that.
- I notice that it takes 2 clicks to reach the inventory screen. Since the inventory is likely gonna be one of the most used screens, it might be good to consider having a shortcut key for it.
Story
- I really like the story so far! I'm intrigued as to what Marywell's backstory is and why she seems to be travelling from place to place. I hope these are addressed in the full game!
- You might wanna consider adding an option to skip the prologue, especially for those who want to replay the game to find collectibles.
- Love the colourful & distinct personalities all the characters have, including the NPCs! I really like how the game doesn't take itself too seriously.
- I think the dialogue text formatting is a little odd. Many times it doesn't fill out the textbox entirely before the next line.
- In the starting scene outside the city, Marywell said that she was looking for a doctor. I think changing it to "veterinarian" makes it clearer she means for the horse.
- During the scene with the Head Priest, the Captain said: "To my knowledge, she wasn't allowed to hurt anybody in the city". I think what the writer meant here was, "she didn't hurt anybody in the city"?
Hub/Mines Level
- I think you can be a bit bolder with the level design! So far, the levels are essentially straight lines which makes traversal somewhat uninteresting.
- Set dressing can be a little sparse at times, especially in corridors which makes it feel kinda empty.
- At the southern end of the hub, the path splits into two. I think it'll be a good idea to add a path through the wall to connect the two sides to save the player trouble from having to walk around the bath each time, especially when going to see the Witch. (Above the brazier to above the 3 stacks of firewood, perhaps?)
- I really like the bath scenes! Other games would just have the character wash themselves off with a simple description. It's details like these that make a game great!
- Bug: At the cave's entrance, if the player did not call Batty to trigger the dialogue about the magic barrier, then after the demo, the player will be unable to trigger that dialogue with Batty despite the exclamation icon being present.
- Bug: In the mines, at the crevice where you can call Batty to retrieve the marble within, Marywell can step into the crevice and then move around inside the walls.
Plant Level
- I think this is the most interesting part of the demo! It has a unique puzzle where you have to be strategic in the wood you cut, and then adds a twist to the challenge in the second half!
- However, I think the difficulty spike in the puzzle after walking through the leaves is a bit too high, since the previous one was relatively very easy.
- Furthermore, it's very annoying having to slowly walk through the leaves every time you restart that puzzle. This is mitigated if saving was possible, but there's probably a technical reason why it's disabled (my guess is there's issues in saving the states of the wood?). In that case, maybe shifting the puzzle to the next room would be a better idea.
- I was stumped for a while at the last part, just like a few others. This is due to in the previous room, the player was only guided to the front of the pillar. And since the player was only ever informed that you could interact with it from the front, they wouldn't know that they can interact with it from the sides as well. I would suggest adding emeralds to the sides of the pillar to visually signify that, or have a 2nd pillar in that room and guide the player to interact with it from the side.
- In addition to the difficulty spike I mentioned, the puzzles in the 2nd half are relatively quite easy to the previous puzzle once the pillar thing is figured out, which makes the difficulty curve in this level not very smooth. Perhaps consider breaking the difficult one into two parts instead?
Marbles
I think the most critical issue in the game is currently the marbles. Since the main quest's progress is directly dependent on them, it is super important for the player to know that they exist, however the only time the player is explicity informed about them is by the guy with the hatchet.
Players who go straight to objective markers might be confused by what he's talking about, and might run around the hub talking to people & interacting with random objects not knowing what to do next, which can lead to frustration.
I think the cave entrance is the perfect place to inform the player in a "natural" way. For example, you could add a locked door which the player must find the key to hidden somewhere in the area, before they can enter the hub. This way, they'll naturally come across the marbles during their search, while also setting the tone for the rest of your game, that it is heavily based around exploration. (In other words, try to avoid word-based tutorials as much as possible!)
Final Thoughts
All in all, it's a top-notch tickling game, and I'm super stoked for it's full release! With a few tweaks, I'm sure you guys'll have a great game on your hands! :)