What a fitting game for a Game Jam that ends on Halloween! <3
A friend and I took turns playing that game and we both agree it's one of the best polished games here in this game jam! :)
Biggest Plus Points of this game
First things first - the entire story, the creature, the aesthetics, and the voice acting are all amazing, especially for the little time you had to put it all together! The game mechanics are simple and intuitive, and totally fitting for a game jam game! The 3D models are also all very good, but since you havent listed any 3D Artists on your game page I figure most of them have been taken from filebase or other sources? (Which is totally fine, of course! But if you and your team actually have modelled some of that yourself, then that's even more impressive!) The fact that you had cutscenes and tracking shots at the start even is also hella awesome - the ship approaching gave me a lot of Dead Space vibes! (But for the circle/sphere with the sun texture,on it at the start, I would replace that with a smoother circle, where you dont see the edges as much so that it looks smoother!)
Things that can be improved
There are a few things that mildly irritated us when playing the game.
- The biggest thing is that dying feels way too punishing. It can happen very quick and all your progress is reset. (Admittedly, this was also why we did not finish the game, so we could not see what's the reveal/twist at the end - I hope that didnt make us miss out on too much of the games content!) It feels really frustrating having to start all over, so maybe something like checkpoints when you collect the keycards would be great?
- Something that also plays into the frustration of dying is having to listen to all the audio logs over and over. There should be a way to make the audio logs optional - like after collecting a keycard, maybe show a prompt "Press G to listen to audio log". Also regarding the audiologs: It's really hard to focus on the monster and not getting spotted, while you are trying to listen to the audio log too. That could be helped by either different things like placing the cards in some sort of safe zone, where the player can not be spotted / where the monster can not follow, or even by adding subtitles! (Even though I know thats a lot to ask from an indie game, but thats just what jumped to my mind!). Placing the Key Cards in visible safe zones would also help to make them easier to find - but I figure that finding them in the first place is supposed to be part of the challenge of the game!
- Another gamefeel aspect would be that the pathfinding and detection zones of the creature seem to be fuzzy most of the time. Sometimes walking nearby seemed to be just fine, sometimes walking alarms it immediately. It would be nice to have some kind of indicator for when the creature actually notices the player and tries to catch them (maybe a special roaring sound from them and/or animation that the creature is doing when it detects the player, so that you know its chasing you right now - or something like a looping heartbeat sound that starts playing in the backrgound as long as its actively looking for you).
- Regarding the pathfinding of the creature, it would be great to know to where it is actually going to. Sometimes crouching away from where it seems to have detected you works just fine, sometimes it seems to know where you are anyway and just follows you even when you are crouching. (Also on the topic of crouching - it feels almost painfully slow, but I think that is a matter of taste!)
- Adding to the last point about being detected - it also seems unclear where or how to hide effectively when you are being chased. The intro voice log says something about hiding in a locker, but to be honest, we couldn't find any locker whenever we were chased (and neither did we know what to look for exactly). I feel just putting a bunch of lockers at the starting area of the game, and making the player naturally interact with it out of curiosity, would help with that a lot! This way the player immediately knows how the hiding mechanic works, and what to look for when they are chased.
- One last thing is that the flashlight felt like it didnt add a lot of value. My friend kept saying that the areas should be darker, so that you would actually need the flashlight to find your way, but my approach would be to make the flashlight brighter or to give it a longer range instead! As far as we came, we could easily play through the game without having to use the flashlight once to navigate through the rooms. That is not particularly a bad thing (I for one am glad that it wasnt completely dark!) but it feels unintended that the flashlight is only giving so little value!
I know that's a lot of feedback and nitpicking, but it's all in a constructive and well meant spirit and I hope you find it valuable <3 All in all, we really enjoyed your game! :)