First to the most obvious. Stunning graphics, great visual effects that ties into the story and feel of the game. I like the world building and the story. It’s spookiness.
There were so much great sound that I actually noticed and was a little disappointed that the log recorders didn’t make a little sound when you picked them up to read. Not a real complaint, but something to consider if you’re doing post jam fixes.
I like the concept of BPM health. I don’t think it worked 100% here though since the threat was stationary it didn’t do much more than force me to stay and wait for BPM to go down at times without nothing to do. That bit could be improved by having the return to normal go faster if you don’t see any of the growth. But the other part that could have solved it would be if the growth was hunting me in some capacity. Another method would be if you never hit the same low BPM once you’ve been over some threshold, but that has the risk of soft or hard locking some playthroughs.
The loot and interactions were quite intuitive. First I was a bit confused because the initial door was quite discrete so I hadn’t seen it so perhaps a bit of environmental hints like a flickering light around it or such might be beneficial. Subsequent doors I had no issue noticing.
I did miss the side way in the growth the first time around so got a bit confused about where to go next, but that felt kind of good in game. And my initial thought was that I had been scared and rushed through the growth tunnels, so it was probably in there somewhere. So that all made sense and made sense within the game world.
I must say though, with the exit I found. Though I think it is the responsible one and I’m happy with it… I didn’t really understand I was taking the exit when I did, so it might be good to inject some reflection from the protagonist to the effect of “Do I really want to do this? It will … Y/N”.
Great entry as a whole, really well made.
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/C7P5DdZhMXg