Thoughts recorded during my playthrough
+ = I liked it
- = I didn't like it
* = Comment/neutral
====================
+ Nice title screen, simple, practical, beautiful picture
+ Music & sound effects are nice, too.
- Not sure why this game is launching in debug mode? There's a console window showing various warnings & errors. Closing the console closes the game. The game is playing fine, though (at least when I leave the console window alone).
+ Lovely character sprite!
- Perspective is a little weird. Bed is practically a birds-eye view, but the rest of the game is 3/4 view.
- Walk speed is too fast. Would be better suited for a run speed.
- Collision is weird. If I walk into an object and try to keep walking, the next move will cause the character to be "teleported" a short distance from her current location, rather than smoothly moving. Kinda hard to describe in text, but try moving past an object, then walk the other way to see what I mean.
- I can walk outside the bounds of the screen.
- Kinda weird that "interact" is separate from "advance text." Pressing the interact key resets the dialog.
+ Katherine's bust art is crisp and expressive. Awesome!
- Not loving the story, though. Katherine seems to be a little too ignorant of everything.
- The background interferes with seeing the choices. I recommend adding an opaque background to this choice menu.
- Woah, a "game over" for answering the question incorrectly? That's harsh.
+ At least I start right back at that point.
* I feel like one of the answers to the question was equally valid, but I'll let it slide.
- I have noticed that you don't use apostrophes in your text. Why?
- It takes pressing buttons twice to perform actions (such as interact with elements or advance text). Minor gripe, but it's a little weird.
* I think I understand why the interact and advance text commands are separate keys...it allows you to restart the dialog to see the questions again. It works, but I'm not a fan of it.
- Ugh...If I answer the second question wrong, it takes me back to the first question. I already know the answer to the first question, so this only serves to waste my time.
- The puzzle mirror is not winning me over, either.
- There is a piece at the bottom covering the bottom edge of the mirror. Really uncomfortable to look at and makes figuring out what goes there difficult
- Some pieces overlap with each other, making it so when I click one piece, I also interact with the other piece.
- Puzzle pieces snap back to their original position, so I can't try to remedy the above issues myself.
- I understand that these pieces aren't supposed to fit in a traditional rectangular formation, but the odd shapes are rubbing me wrong.
- The pieces don't sit flush even when they're in the right place, which just looks odd.
- Why can I rotate pieces to diagonal angles? It just adds extra steps to getting the pieces into correct position.
Summary
Hats off to the character artist, because Katherine looks gorgeous! Her walk sprite is crystal-clear and detailed, her bust art is expressive, and she's otherwise just a delight to look at! Sound design was pretty good, too. The story and puzzles, however, did not leave a good impression on me. As someone who has designed a few puzzles for similar games, I can appreciate the challenge in making a puzzle that is neither too frustrating nor too easy, but this was not the way to go. Please reconsider how you are presenting this story and maybe even make some different puzzles for the gates. For example, maybe refine the puzzle piece mechanics and have each gate be a different puzzle. Alternately, if you really want to stick with the riddles, how about eliminating the answer that was chosen from the list? Regardless of what you decide, just know that I don't think you should proceed with the game with the way it's currently presented.
Side note: Have you considered using RPG Maker instead of Godot? I know that Godot is free, but it seems like part of the issue here is that you are spending time creating the technical structure to get the game working in the first place. If you went with RPG Maker, you would be able to advance past all that and focus more on the game's design and story. There's a free trial on the official site if you want to see what I mean without spending the money.
Whatever you decide, good luck to you and this game's continued development!