Hello Bee!
I just played your game and just died twice right off the bat, lol. But I liked the concept of the game not holding your hands making you be really thoughtful as regarding each choice!
I'm a horror music composer & sound designer as well so I'm always checking out what horror games folks are doing, yours picked my interest because I really like dark / dense / mysterious stuff! Yours get the concept really nicely done since there's some abstract horror in your game - such as when you fall into the lake and "something" grabs you to f%ck you up.
As for my (more technical) feedback:
Things to be improved:
* I think some of the SFX are too loud compared to the others, so maybe it would be interesting to even them up.
* Add some more VFX, such as "moving images" on the background - parallax effect.
* Check out the music mastering to see if their volumes are more or less at the same parameters (that will make the game more professional).
Extra ideas:
* Maybe add some AI generated whispering when Noah whispers to you. You could add them as occasional SFX instead of having a complete voice narration which I know is not really the point of Renp'y.
* Maybe you could change the text font to a more sinister one and with a different color during the more intense moments... If that would be feasible...!
* Depending on the length of the game you could, maybe, add some more intense horror music!
That's my thoughts for now I'll keep an eye on more updated and try not to die the next time I play it. lol.
Hello there and thank you very much for your feedback, I really appreciate it! :,]
It's very awesome knowing that you enjoyed the gameplay overall and the choice concept I'm trying to go for! I am aiming to make choices matter/have 'value' where and when I can versus making the player feel like they have to make the 'right' choice if that makes sense. It's great to see people are enjoying the aspect of it! :]
Speaking of the dark /dense/mysterious stuff, since the beginning I really wanted to branch the 'horror concept' so I'm glad that abstract horror detail was noticed. >;]
I also welcome the technical feedback! I've been working very hard at balancing out all of the SFX, I didn't know how to properly even it out at first but I figured it out a few weeks ago and it is being adjusted appropriately! As far as the parallax effect goes, I've been testing/looking into for some time now but it'll take some time for me to get just right and I want to get the exploration down pact first! :]
For the music mastering, I appreciate the helpful mention of it! When I went through and got all the SFX/Music in early development, there were some weird noises that came with them that I tried to remove and unfortunately some still made it through into the demo but they if not most of them have been replaced/adjusted with something else instead!
Thank you overall for the advice, I will see what I can do going forward! > :]
You should totally expand on the abstract horror concept. It's interesting that you kinda mixed the concept of monsters vs. supernatural "things" vs. psychological influences (due to decreasing physiological / mental health of the character). Have you played Darkwood by the way? I think you'd find a lot of resonance in there!
As for the SFX mastering it's kinda tricky because the process is kinda the same as mastering music, but not really, because even after you even out the LUFS levels of all the SFX files you still need to go by ear and correct each specific SFX file (if needed).
I need to play more games like these to understand the Dev's choices of horror music, I've just launched a horror music pack recently (still working on the promo art, very cool stuff coming soon), but I had the impression that it was the atmospheres that were appreciated the most, so I'm not sure if the other music are really useful.
That being said I'm curious to see what do you think of this one:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F2x-c5bU87eNaZG-C8FSsYk_e24P8ZJO/view?usp=drive...