I'm sorry, but I'm not sure why people are praising the game (I noticed the other commenters don't actually mention much of what's happening in it). While I will say the graphics are pretty good, the music is creepy (that's good), and the story (from as far as I've gotten) is intriguing, that's about as far as I go with praise.
Here are some of the flaws I've found:
- During the beginning, you put up force fields to keep the player from progressing when explaining the mechanics; was this really necessary? And if you felt it was, why couldn't you explain the most important mechanic; dealing with monsters. They're literally the main obstacle of the game and you don't even address them in the tutorial. In many areas, they'll just stand in one place waiting for you, usually blocking places you need to get to. Is there a way to sneak by them without attracting their attention? If they're standing right next to some objects you need to break to search for an orb, how are you meant to do that without them taking away half of your health?
- The character infrequently keeps getting stuck when moving through tunnels (this especially happens in the small entrance that leads to the stairs); I'll usually have to jump (multiple times in fact) to get free. This is extremely bad in a game where you need to run away from enemies to survive. I ended up dying with 6 orbs on my way to the exit, because I got stuck on something while enemies beat me to death. This is inexcusable. I also was stuck inside a wall for a minute.
- It's also bad design to have the enemy be solid objects that can block your path; this makes it so the enemies can basically corner you and beat you to death and all you can do is futilely try and escape.
- It's never explained what the gold bars or totems do (based on the fact that a dark aura generates after picking up the gold, I'm guessing it causes the game to get harder?
- Whenever you find keys, I've seen them float away, sometimes up to the ceiling or just away from the character.
- You've randomized the orb locations in the game (are there actually more than 6 orbs in the game)? Due to this randomization, I found 2 orbs in the initial cave you start in and found the rest fairly quickly. I'm also under the impression that the more orbs you find, the more monsters that appear.
- While exploration based horror games can be good, randomized ones are usually not. This can lead to enemies spawning in extremely bad or tight places that are unavoidable and/or enemies almost literally spawning on top of you. It also leads to imbalanced gameplay where one playthrough can be severely more difficult or frustrating than others. Part of what makes exploration based horror games work is the idea that there is a small measure of control on the part of the player or a short respite from the horror or even a warning when something scary is coming, but having the knowledge that enemies can come running at you out of nowhere in places where you've already been constantly distracts from the exploration portion of the game because when an enemy finds you, you have to run and the player doesn't know where or how far to run to get to safety because no place may be safe. Consider Resident Evil 1 for example; there were rooms specifically with no zombies (the creators kept true to this) and while there were enemy surprises with nothing to give the player a heads up like enemies bursting through a window, these were limited events. You could have made it so there were a set number of enemies in the game or you could have designed the catacombs to where you could lure an enemy away from a spot so you could circle around and look for stuff there (enemies just teleport back to their spots when they're done chasing you or they get stuck). You could have made it so the enemies moved slowly toward you or you could have also just not included the monsters at all and the game still would have worked. Maybe you don't agree with this setup for horror exploration, but from what I've seen, your game is less scary than it is annoying. Whenever I saw a monster, I thought "Oh great, I guess I'll go look in some other area then." The only thing that's really scary is when an enemy literally runs around a corner extremely fast and punches me. I have yet to experience a haunt because I haven't lasted long enough to.
- I also think it's bad design that you added a stamina bar to the game. Running is a REQUIREMENT in the game to stay alive and in some playthroughs, you'll have to run more often. I may have also suggested that health regenerate on its own since there are situation where you can't avoid damage.
- The voice acting could use a lot of work. The main character's voice actor sounds bored and the lines don't come across as convincing, even when she's joking or sarcastic. The quality of the orbs' voice actors seems low, even with the added audio alterations. Also, the sound of the main character dying seems to be distorted at times, like it's bugging out (though I do commend you on adding multiple dying sounds).
- It seems there are puzzles in the game. Puzzles are good. The problem is that when you come across an object that is unfamiliar, you get "???" with no explanation or even a comment from the main character. For the angel statue, you could have had the main character say something like "it seems like it can be pushed, but something's locking it in places". I was never able to explore enough to find an actual interact-able puzzle.
I don't want to discourage you from making games, but I do hope you take this review into consideration. Good luck with your future projects.