Notes from gameplay:
- I like the progress shown in loading bar, conveys it's not hanging or broken
- Loading screen:
-- sound is super glitchy to the point it's distracting, hurts my ears and I'm wondering if it's broken. Some refinement here could be really useful as it would make it effective without being offputting
-- love the cool text details. They seem like options, however, reminds me of an old-school atari game menu, so I tried to click on all the different text lol
- Game graphics match the earlier vibe set in the menu
- Music would be nice, but very nice ambient sounds and very fitting for the game
- vertical seam showing in scrolling background
- Unsure what progress bar is for, but apparently it's going up just by me sitting here
- I think the UI is cut off? Both bars go off the right side of the game screen and the "rate for themed horror....etc" overlays on them, maybe enable launch in fullscreen
- I think we have a gun on right hand side? Unsure what the 4 dots on the bottom right are
- lil astronaut dude is cute sprite, the moving feet are adorable
- uh oh, i'm breathing heavy?
- I'm guessing breath is blue bar? Lots of dings and alarms and 1/11 salutations is still popping up, should that be telling me something useful when I walk to it?
- sounds are overwhelming, very painful to work through. We have blaring alarms and gasping and loud heartbeats
- i think I'm dying. Sounds have done an excellent job of indicating that
- I like how the vision radius decreases as I die
- Still unsure what to do
- Restarting
- ok seeing "pain" if I hover over a console?
- Oh, right click is giving me some info, needed this to be given to be much earlier, maybe block death until player has clicked through
- Cute dialog with AI, I like the [FRIEND] and details about eating microchips
- Nice job sending me to engine room after cycling through dialog
- An overall map or minimap would be helpful
- ok an alien is growing, dunno how to stop it
- nice sound effects on it tho
- oh need to right click to move. Right click is such a curious design choice, that's really not a common interaction
- interacting with objects is confusing, I right click and drag?
- I like the mouseover tooltips for objects, which they stayed around longer
- Restarting again
- Movement feels a bit too slow
- Loving the snarky AI commentary when I click on the help module, but would like to know what I have to do
- Overall map is great, lovely pixel art and design
- Can't figure out how to use items. I'm sitting here right grabbing an oxygen tank and still dying from no oxygen
- Died again
Overall it feels like there is the seed of something really interesting here, but the lack of a tutorial makes it very hard to figure out. I even read your comment about how controls should be easy to figure out, but they really aren't for me. The use of sound is great in how well you use it for indicating status changes, but it's also grating in the level of use and tones/pitches. I can't seem to get into the game mechanics, but I can see how they might be interesting to play could I figure it out.
Overall, you've done an awesome job capturing a retro vibe and with some tweaking I think this could be a fun game which excites players looking for that old-school feeling!