Thank you for taking the time to give thorough feedback! And no worries about me taking it the wrong way, I genuinely find this stuff interesting to reflect on and discuss. In this spirit, I hope it’s okay if I also respond in more detail.
To me, the empty rooms in KQ and QfG games (or in Heroine’s Quest, another AGS game of this type) added a sense of scale, a feeling of actually travelling around a world rather than jumping between scenes. Before the jam, I had been doodling my imaginary Quest for Glory title (I have ideas for a whole combat system and everything :)), so this was a way to get it out of my system and focus on the other, slightly more modern point and clicks I’m trying to make. Ideally, there would be something of significance or interest in each room, but given the choice between 29 mostly empty rooms and, say, 10 rooms with each having some significant content, it was a conscious choice to go for the former and I’m happy with the sense of place it creates. That said, it *is* nerve wracking to see people who aren’t wearing my particular set of nostalgia goggles hover their cursor around each room and find nothing... if I decide to make a bigger update to the game, at least some hotspots to examine in each room would be one of the first things to be added.
As for the text, it’s... complicated. I’m sure it could be made leaner with smarter and more focused writing, and some of it could be relegated to interactive elements rather than forced on the player. But I also think the narration often serves a purpose that may not be obvious from a casual playthrough and cutting it would have some downsides and potentially damage the flow of the story. This was my first attempt at a game that has straight-out text narration (I had only used dialogue/the character’s direct comments before), hopefully more feedback and playing around with the text will help me improve - if it turns out I can achieve the same effect with less writing, I’m happy to do it :)!
Some of it will probably also boil down to personal preference. As a player, I don’t mind occasionally reading what I already know or see, because it reassures me that my character knows what I know and that me and the game are on the same page so to speak. I may be in the minority in this regard.
We could take this up on Discord if you want, the feedback section is pretty quiet now anyway :). Thanks again for the thoughtful comment!