Ok. I have some feelings on this one.
First of all, your general premise is pretty good. The story was the best part of this, but I'm not granting full stars for an ending I wasn't able to reach, and you'll see why in a second.
Your glaring flaw here is gameplay. The line of sight mechanic, the stealth, all of that? I did not enjoy it. It took forever to get through the game this way, and it was wholly unforgiving and I did not enjoy it. The only reason I did go the stealth route the whole time was the blatant, 'there will be consequences' and in my mind, a probable bad ending, or game over.
I strongly feel that the line of sight mechanic was very unforgiving and obnoxious to deal with at times. Timing was really tedious and I restarted many times trying to figure out how to get past this ONE person. Especially if the stealth is what you INTEND for the player to do. If the bad end is indeed overindulgence, then this needs refinement, maybe a way to get out of trouble without combat being mandatory.
And this is before we get into the fact that I had to negate that choice entirely at the end. I will give you points on the part of informing me that has to happen, but I have to dock points on the grounds that playing the game 'as intended' still railroaded me into having to get that ending I was avoiding.
This would still leave you somewhat in a more positive experience if the fact that important information about combat wasn't missing entirely. To my surprise, there was a whole mechanic based around upgrading skills that I do not recall being mentioned. I only remember a conversation about familiars.
The fact that I only found out about:
- The items that drop in combat let you upgrade.
- You need 20 to upgrade, and you can't do it in menu.
- One of the glowy portal things is the upgrade station.
At the end of the game is why I'm rating this as low as I am for gameplay. I also got to presumably the last battle when I entered an endless death loop because I didn't have skills upgraded and couldn't out damage. There was also no apparent way to heal, so I couldn't win before getting curbstomped. Dead end with no healing and being stuck in this position isn't the best feeling.
I will iterate though that you had very strong story scenes and general story premise. The one time I didn't like something was the random whimsical music in the dark pit segment. That was by and large it for negatives. I'd grant you a full 5 stars if I was able to experience the ending and it held up, but because I could not make it due to gameplay reasons and loss of will to continue through the game, and with no apparent way to heal, the most I'm granting is 4.
The way I rate games is entirely based on first impressions and what things *are* and while flaws were communicated in advance, I don't overlook them in my reviews.
To compress all of my long thoughts into a TL:DR version:
You had a great story but the gameplay completely killed my mood for this game. If you went back and polished this after the jam, I'd consider playing that version and seeing how it stacks up. But it needs work as it is now.