I played this game on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1850361813?t=01h15m43s
This is the 2nd time I've played this game. The previous time I didn't get to the combat, and this time I did.
One thing I noticed this round, is that playing with headphones increases the creepiness factor significantly. The last time I played with my speakers and it was creepy - this time it was much creepier!
As always, I love the lore bits sprinkled in the level through audio and written notes. It gives me a Horizon: Zero Dawn feel which I love. The robot is also really cute, and the main reason I played the demo again (esp since I don't usually play horror games).
This time, I got to the really horror bits.. with the voices, and the Lurker. That. was. creepy. Really well done there! The different voices talking etc really added to the vibe. It gave a Gollum kind of feel too. The Lurker was creepy, and I ran as fast as I could to save my little robot.
After I unlocked combat, the game tone felt very different. It went from a creepy horror game, to an RPG game with a scary setting, if that makes sense? Probably there are more horror parts afterwards, but I didn't get there.. I did a bunch of combat with the spitters. I feel like I didn't do very well in combat. After maybe 3 or 4 battles, I was basically dead. Perhaps the game is meant for me to die repeatedly, gain exp, then upgrade? But repair+save respawns the enemies, so that feels like it would have a lot of grind. I would have liked to be able to find lots of repair items along the way, esp at the start, so I wouldn't die, and can keep fighting, repairing, and going on.
As a side note, I liked how, after the robot died, the loading screen has the new robot holding flowers for the old one :)
Overall, really creepy vibe (so great job there) before the combat stuff starts. The game felt radically different with combat enabled, and it felt a little odd, but maybe that's what you were going for? Or maybe horror games are like this.. I don't know how horror games typically are :)