An A- demo hinting at a game with the potential to be an A+.
Music:
Excellent. The Touhou themes reimagined as ambient horror music hit just the right tone. The start screen music alone sold me on the atmosphere and tone of the game. If I have one note, it's that the music during the final scene of the demo maybe comes on a little strong for the mood the scene seems to be trying for.
Gameplay & quality of life:
It's tough to comment on this since this is a demo and I don't know what might be intentional choices or already being worked on, but I'd feel remiss to not bring up those things that stuck out to me.
Overall, nice and simple. The puzzles weren't hard but satisfying enough to solve. Calling up the inventory several times to check the text for the seating arrangement puzzle was a little annoying. The password puzzle at the temple could make it clearer that you're supposed to put in the first and last letter as well and not just the missing ones.
The interactions with doors in particular are a little inconsistent: Impassable doors give you the "It won't budge" text by walking into them, but locked doors have to be interacted with. But then, to actually unlock them you need to go into the inventory and interact with the key. This could use some streamlining.
The dream levels would be enhanced by some miscellaneous background interactables with flavor text.
The text wrapping in the dialogue boxes evidently checks for length whenever a new letter is revealed, which often causes words at the end of a line to jump lines as they're revealed. That's visually distracting. Since text boxes are such a common feature across RPGs, I have to imagine there's at least a module for RPGMaker that should make it easy to fix this.
Writing:
Good, clean writing and presentation. Could use a proofread for style, syntax, etcetera. The writing style is good at setting the tone, and the shift in mood between the more relaxing club scenes and the horror scenes is well executed.
The biggest gripe I had with the demo overall, and I understand that I'm saying this off a sample size of three dream sequences, is that the deaths could use more variety. Getting ambushed and eaten by a spider for the first one is fine. Clean and simple (narratively, I mean!), and a good introduction. For the scarlet mansion dream, becoming the main course makes sense and is tailored to the dream. For Koishi's dream, though, I feel the death scene would have been significantly more unsettling had Koishi not started eating the already dying Merry, but simply watched and smiled as Merry's own repressed anxieties literally crush her into a puddle. It's sudden, not really foreshadowed by the environment the way the previous two were, and feels like it's only there because it's the Done Thing. To be clear, the scene is otherwise excellent right up until that line.
I am conflicted on the final scene because the Merry = Yukari equivalency is such well-trod ground that I find it a little disappointing (personal bias here), but on the other hand, the scene hints at a vision for it I haven't seen before and effectively recontextualizes the rest of the game leading up to it, so I'm still curious to see where you go with it.
I'm also very interested to see the development of Renko and Merry's relationship in the waking world vis-a-vis her decision in the face of the gap-woman's speech.
Very excited for the full game!