I love the paper aesthetic for the characters! It looks really good!
Unfortunately, I got blocked by my inability to solve the riddles. Honestly, I don’t really like riddles in games for the most part. Video games are an interactive medium, but riddles are just “you either know the answer or you don’t”, there isn’t really anything to interact with. It would be more interesting if I could find the answer to the riddles hidden throughout the playspace (if that is the case and I missed it my apologies). Having said that, I did play it for a fair while before giving up, and I have some notes:
For some reason on my first attempt I got soft locked as the stairs and Q/Esc wouldn’t let me return to my normal self.
The menu doesn’t properly remove highlights from buttons that are not currently selected. Also, if I’m controlling the game with mouse and keyboard, I want the ability to control the menus with my mouse. When the player pauses the game, you need to make the mouse usable until they unpause it
- When talking to the old lady, it took a while to realize I had to push Y for “Yes I want to play the game”. When the player is on WASD and Mouse, don’t use any buttons that require them to move their hands. Pressing Y made me remove my hand from the mouse, which is annoying. Your available keys should be Q, E, 1, 2, 3, 4, LShift, CTRL and Space. In any event, when you include check boxes in the text, I should be allowed to click on them anyway. Would definitely resolve that
- The camera could really use a crosshair. With the switches puzzle I kept accidentally hitting 2 switches at once. Also, I’m not really sure how I was supposed to solve the switch puzzle normally. I just brute forced it to spawn the dog
- When I move my mouse really fast the camera doesn’t move along with me. It kinda glides a bit, then slows to a crawl. Not sure why this is happening but it doesn’t feel right
- The one interactable bookshelf doesn’t stand out enough to make me realize it is interactable. You could use an “Interact” tooltip to make it clear what is and isn’t interactable
Honestly, I don’t think this works super well as a puzzle game. I’m not really having any “aha” moments in this game. There was only one puzzle that actually felt like a puzzle (the paper game). Other than that, I brute forced a switch puzzle, and found 2 riddles I couldn’t solve, and a bookcase I couldn’t translate because of the riddles I couldn’t solve. I fully admit this is at least partially a skill issue with the riddles, but riddles just don’t feel that interesting as a video game mechanic to begin with.
Alright, I’ve been negative for a bit, but let’s be clear. The fact you built anything at all is wonderful. I’m frustrated as a player certainly, but it’s still obvious that a lot of work went into this. The animation of the note falling out of the fan had me smiling, noticing how well done it was. I really enjoyed the character art (the dog was super cute), and I genuinely liked the paper puzzle. Honestly, I would have made a whole game just out of the paper puzzle instead of what is here. I hope at least some of this feedback helps you with future projects, and I can’t wait to see what you make next