When I played Águeda a few months ago, I really adored it. The art and the writing were both fantastic, and they contributed perfectly to the dark, oppressive atmosphere of the game. I loved navigating the derelict hallways and rooms, slowly solving puzzles while simultaneously learning more about the location I was in. Even when I got lost, it felt like a natural part of understanding and appreciating my surroundings. By the time I'd finally gotten to the chase scene, I'd naturally learned the layout of the house well enough to navigate it in such a high-stakes scenario. It was very, very rewarding to me as a player, in terms of both the narrative and game design. I was very eager to install the demo again today to see how far it had come and show it off to my friends.
Unfortunately, I had to put the game down this time immediately after starting the chase scene from the original demo. I mean this with kindness, but I genuinely think the bats ruin this experience. Speaking purely in terms of gameplay, they are incredibly frustrating to play around. Their movements are so fast and unpredictable that they often seem impossible to avoid; this problem is exacerbated a lot by the fact that you mostly face them in three-tile hallways with very little wiggle room. Because of how the game handles auto-saving, it's also incredibly easy to get locked into a state where you're one hit away from dying and can't even hope to dodge the bats because you're moving at half-speed.
I think the greater tragedy, though, is how this hurts the tone of the game. The slow, subtle feeling of creeping dread felt like the lifeblood of the demo I'd played months ago. I adored the discomfort caused by the narrative blurring the lines between the supernatural and the mundane. Until the very final chase scene, the most unsettling portions of the demo still felt like they could have been based in reality; even the chase scene itself seemed like it could be purely symbolic. The bats, though, don't seem to be grounded in reality at all, nor do they seem to tie into Águeda's psyche. The way they decapitate Águeda is visibly overexaggerated, and this saps away the beautifully uncomfortable groundedness every time the animation plays. This clashes heavily with the psychological horror that the game is otherwise steeped in.
Besides the imagery, I think even the way the bats affect the gameplay itself really hurts the game's atmosphere. Unlike my first time with the demo, I felt pressured to avoid exploring the building or interacting with anything beyond what was absolutely necessary. Rather than excitedly look for clues and immerse myself in the story, I rushed through to the next cutscene and brute-forced whatever puzzles I could. It was really, really heartbreaking not to be able to experience everything as I did before because of this, but I just couldn't bear to risk getting caught in that loop of dying and restarting over and over as I explored. For this reason, I also had less of an understanding of the building's layout when the time came for the chase scene. This, mixed with the slowness with which I moved due to the fact that all my health had been sapped by bats a few seconds prior, made the chase feel borderline impossible. After the stress of the bats, I was simply too frustrated to finish it this time.
I really hope it's obvious that I'm only leaving this comment because I absolutely adore Águeda as a game. I've been studying the art and the atmosphere since I first saw it however long ago, hoping to take what I learn from it and apply it to my own work someday. I'm so excited to see where it ends up that I can't quite put it into words. I want to experience Águeda as the best version of itself it can possibly be, because I truly think it deserves it. I really hope you'll take this into consideration.