Itch is a garbage website, so my absolutely gigantic review was removed when i accidentally refreshed or something. Amazing. I'll try and rewrite everything as it was.
So, I was asked in the thread by one of you (I think there's two devs?) to shit on the game extensively to help you improve. I generally don't like shitting on games and try my best to be constructive and ignore small issues that are obviously still WIP, but I'll oblige
Starting off:
Arriving on the main menu is a mixed bag. The UI SFX are great, the art and logo are great, but the buttons are standard unity font on standard unity buttons. Its really lame, especially since clearly a lot of work went into the logo and other visuals
It's bad enough that I'm getting Chinese Mobile Assetflip vibes when I know the game is better than that. You already have a nice wood texture (the one used in the background of the logo), just slap that on the buttons, get a CC0 font and call it a day, it'll be a huge improvement.
Anyway, moving on to settings. You have a LOT of settings. Even a grass and wind tab? I don't know what these are for, but more settings are always beneficial for the player. I didn't touch anything except master volume. If I were to find a fault, it would be the way you use your space. Most of the content is at the top of the tab instead of being spread out. It's really a non issue, but remember: you asked me to shit on it so I'm obliging
So, off to the game:
The spinning loading circle isn't spinning, it's static. I thought perhaps there was a crash but it appears to be working as intended. I guess the game dropped some frames at this time or something. Again, non issue.
The intro plays and it's a bit weeby. I'd say on the nose (mega mint, hmmm) but i'm not the target audience so I don't know if this is what people want or not. No issues here. The weird brown faded in color is kinda weird but whatever.
So, I'm in now. First quest says to make a farm, but I want to explore so I do. The town is BIG. Like unreasonably big for only a handful (10ish?) citizens. I wander about then decide to pull up the minimap after not running into people.
I wish I could zoom in on it since it can get crowded if a lot of citizens are bunched up. I click one and NICE, THERES A PATHING THING TO FOLLOW. VERY, VERY NICE. I did NOT expect something like this to be in a demo. Good job. The caps are there to emphasis that I really went "damn this owns" when it popped up.
So I go to a random citizen I picked to say hello. They have a talk option, but only one line of dialog. I'd like to, like, ask questions about the town or some story element, so I checked with a few others and they all only have one introductory line as of now. Kinda lame, especially since I'm given a story hook. Why does the town lack workers? How do they know eachother? What's the latest news?
Anyway, the map is huge. Like really giant. A bunch of buildings seem to have no purpose except to exist, kinda weird. Personally I'd slim down and focus on specific areas to make them super detailed and packed with content. This feel like content/scope creep waiting to happen, but I don't know how you're developing this and if you have a detailed plan. Either way, the area around the game start could use more polish and stuff to see. Remember - first impressions. You want the player to be immediately faced with stuff around him to see or do. Perhaps have an NPC in the room with you who tells you about some stuff. Perhaps they advance the story - why doesn't Edengrall have people? what can I do in the town? What are they up to? anything works
So, finding nothing to do on my own, I decide to do the main quest. Why is that the main quest? Kinda weird, but I don't play farming sims so I don't really know what to expect.
On the other hand, the f1 help menu is very well made. It is clear and informative and very helpful. Props to that.
Clicking the tool to find a spot does the on-screen path line to follow. Again, super good tool. It's clear you had some new player experience overhaul for the mechanics and it shows. I am not lost or helpless due to these 2 things.
So I go and do some farming. I cut grass and follow the instruction step by step. Somethings are a bit clunky but really nothing bad. I end up harvesting turnips, then the next goal is to go to a shop and buy/sell things. I stopped playing at this point, it's been about 30ish minutes.
My main concern is that it feel like there's a lot of hyper specific content (cooking/fishing has apparently a lot of things and mechanics to it) and a huge world, but it does not feel alive or lived in. Some things are also kind of silly, with how staircases have the wooden texture on the rails where it clearly shows that it wasn't unwrapped. Same with the characters, theres a bunch of them but they dont seem to offer anything besides a line or two of text. I saw that there was a whole character page, with moods and such. Their models are nice, but the shader is a bit flat.
Either way, perhaps there's a whole lot of other stuff to experience. The issue is that as a player I'm not TOLD about any of this, and I'm relying on what I saw and experienced so far, and that's telling me there's not a lot of general stuff to do and interact with, even though I know from reading the threads that there's things like extensive building, crafting, fishing, modding, etc.
I'd say go step by step and follow the path of a player first spawning to their first quest, and absolutely pack that path with stuff to see and do and experience. Give NPCs more stuff to say and so on. Add details to every hallway and room you'd traverse to get there. I'd do this before going very in depth with other mechanics, because I fear a player will not reach that far to experience the intricacies you've made.
Anyway, there's very clearly a lot of stuff here, but there needs to be more incentive for me to experience it. Mechanically you're set, but give me a story and more character details so I can play and say to myself "i wonder what will happen once i do this quest, or what character x will think of y"
If I am being overly critical, be mindful that I had fun playing and seeing things and I'm only being nitpicky in an effort to help you out (and since you asked).
Keep it up and I'll be on the lookout for future improvements.