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Thank you so much for including a windowed version. I hate fullscreen games with a passion

I was very confused at first because I was trying to understand what “Extraterre strial cheese” was supposed to mean (the title screen has a line break)

The rain (and accompanying ambience) looks good and I really like the impact particles it creates when it hits the ground

Usually I wouldn’t recommend mixing multiple styles (in this case pixel art and just normal low-res involving things like gradients) but I feel like it looks pretty nice and gives it a sort of charm especially since it’s like the style shifts between the foreground and background

I don’t like the sun and the mountains though. The sun is very pixelated but since a gradient is used it stands out and creates a weird banding effect where you can see how the pixels change and group together. The mountains don’t have the same issue but I just don’t think they really look like mountains. Their shape is pretty recognisable as mountains though

The dialogue system is lovely. The way the characters appear over time is very nice. Though I feel like the SFX that comes along with it (which I assume is supposed to be the mouse) gets a bit repetitive since it seems like it’s the exact same SFX each time. Perhaps randomising the pitch slightly could help or picking a random SFX out of a few pre-made ones?

The road/path has these things on it but I’m not really sure what they are. I think it also looks quite jarring because of the mixels (mixing of different pixel resolutions)

In terms of the player sprite, I feel like some of the colors used don’t have enough contrast. Some of them practically completely fade into the white fur. There’s also quite a lot of similar colors which makes it seem a bit noisy (especially in areas like the cheeks)

Someone else mentioned that the mouse does not look like they’re starving but I strongly disagree. I have an ongoing mouse problem so I’ve seen a lot of mice recently and they all look cripplingly obese even when they’re hungry (their fur adds a lot of bulk, the bodies themselves are actually quite small). I applaud you for your accuracy

I feel like the camera moves too much when the player jumps

The movement itself feels good and responsive

I don’t think the walking animation looks very readable. It seems a bit slow as well. I think the way it speeds up when the player is sprinting is a nice touch though

I love the names of the NPCs

One of the only games where I didn’t skip the dialogue because it’s actually good

I didn’t expect to meet an eldritch horror when I jumped in that first hole

The tentacle guy’s sprite is pretty good but I think it could do with a bit more hue shifting

I’m a bit confused with how the running section works. I just avoided all the platforms and ran straight into the rocks which made by progress bar hit the bottom. I was then picked up by the tentacle guy like 3 times before I was brought to the “Try again” menu. Edit: It seems like when the progress bar runs out you can no longer move and then the tentacle guy kills you. I think you have 3 lives? If so, that’s not very clear. Maybe a health counter would help? I also think the progress bar itself is quite hard to read as sometimes the progress bar looks empty even though it’s not actually empty

The lightning adds to the atmosphere but I feel like the mixels grab too much of the player’s attention

I keep on forgetting I can sprint

The running section is really difficult but it was very satisfying once I started to get the hang of it

The platforms feel a bit maze-like in that sometimes you have to go a specific path (which seems unpredictable) or you will die which is a bit frustrating. For example, here I cannot go anywhere except left which leads to my death:

I like how the tentacle guy’s hitbox wasn’t just a giant wall since it made it quite a bit more forgiving as you could kind of manoeuvre around him to get away

I don’t really understand what the 2 NPCs are doing during the running section. When I get picked up it seems like they run past. Are they saving me?

I like the cheese sliders for the volume settings

It feels like once you get caught once during the running section you’re destined to lose since it messes up the flow of things. I find that this is even more true if you’re progress bar has already hit 0 as well. I’m not really sure how to give much critique on this but a restart hotkey would be nice. Perhaps the tentacle guy always drops the player on a platform? It’s quite frustrating when I get dropped on the ground and am just left there to suffer until he comes back to pick me up

I think the tentacle guy’s hitbox should be just a little bit smaller. It’s always fun when you just barely scrape death

I think there should be a progress bar showing how much of the running sequence you have completed

I like how the tentacle guy doesn’t start moving until the player does

At first I thought the lightning was just for decoration but it seems like it also depletes the player’s progress bar? If it does I think this should be made more clear

I think the movement would feel better if things like coyote time and input forgiveness were implemented

The “Play again” fade out transition is nice

Sometimes it feels like I just get teleported into the tentacle guy’s tentacles and carried away

I spent over 30 minutes trying to run away from this tentacle guy but I wasn’t able to do it. If you have any tips please let me know because I really want to finish the game and see the ending as it’s pretty fun. The dialogue is really entertaining as well. Well done!

Edit: I just replayed the game but this time I ditched Julies Cheeser hoping it might be easier but it was actually harder! Good attention to detail though. I understand the interpretation of the theme now