Rather cool so far! I haven't gotten very far but it's certainly an intriguing game. The artwork is of course excellent (very nice cross hatching) so great job on that. The sound design seems pretty good too. As for the gameplay it's a bit confusing and there isn't much direction but I assume that's the point, let the player roam around and figure out what to do and such. Also it seems possible to soft-lock; I fell into a room via a hole in a maze and it only has one door which can't be unlocked. Not sure if that's intentional or not.
Suggestions:
- A settings menu would be good, to change mouse sensitivity, volume, and such.
- I think it would also be better if the little pop-ups (like saying that a door is locked) didn't freeze your movement and require you to click to remove them and continue playing. I found it kind of un-intuitive and think it might be better if they don't require a click and don't impede your controls, but rather just fade away on their own after a few seconds. Probably only for doors being locked though, for other interactions like reading books it makes sense for it to be click-based.
- The the flashlight can be a bit abrupt at times changing sizes. I assume you're calculating it based off of the distance of what the player is looking at? If so then I think it would be better if you sampled multiple distances in a small angle around where the player is looking and averaged them and added some time-based interpolation to the flashlight size. That is if you would want it smoother, if it's a stylistic choice for it to be abrupt then no need for change.
- It would be nice if the escape key closed menus (such as pause and inventory)
- It would be nice to be able to skip the opening text (w/ the spacebar or a click or something)
