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Thanks for all the feedback guys! As always, every bit of it has been noted down and will be a big help in the process of smoothing things out. :)

RE: the code in the cell, you didn't miss anything yet. It (along with one other item) doesn't come into play until the following sequence, which is largely constructed and playable but still has a couple vital design and writing issues holding it back. I'm hoping to add at least a WIP version of it to the demo at some point in the not-to-distant future, but no exact time-table on that at this moment unfortunately.

The ranged dodge system definitely needs a lot more consideration, it's quite one-dimensional in this version. Originally the execution was the same as melee defense but you could 'shield' instead of dodge to spend shield meter and negate damage. We tried changing it up so that melee attack/defense and ranged attack/defense had alternate mechancs, but the shield was taken out for the moment.

One possible idea for reintroducing it is that having the 'shield' resource stocked will give you a buffer on the right side of the green-zone on the timing bar, allowing you to wait too long and miss and still giving you a freebie success, but shrinking or eliminating the buffer as it depletes through use. We may test something like that out at some point, but like Cheeseness pointed out we're still working on the balancing of how difficult it should be for the player to negate attacks vs. how much room for error there is.

I'm planning on some tests involving increasing starting health numbers considerably and rebalancing risk vs. reward. As it is currently, it's balanced around having to play pretty perfectly, and I can see how that's super stressful and not fun. Perfect timing on attacks and defense should feel like an extra bonus, and not a necessity, so I'll work on making the target timing more lenient but still rewarding, while leaving perfect timing as a bonus option that's more challenging and considerably riskier.

There was initially a line of dialogue with Rook annoyingly pointing out the auto captioning software (aka dialogue boxes) was censoring profanity that might have addressed this partially, but even after that got taken it out for some reason the partial censoring remained and I got acclimated to it without noticing.

Looking back now as an observer, I agree with the majority that it feels out of place in what is otherwise unabashedly dark and violent, so I'll gladly make an effort to get rid of all censoring in the next build.

Thanks for the input guys!

Really glad to hear you're into the game overall Archendrus, and thank you for your useful input on combat! :)

Combat is very difficult, you're definitely not alone on that. Even I still lose a battle sometimes, and I designed the attack patterns myself, hehe. I agree it's too punishing at the moment for the tutorial area of the game and we'll do a major rebalancing for the next build to continue trying to find the sweetspot.

In addition, since all enemies have each of their attacks and overall patterns totally customizable by swapping around some variables, ultimately we'd like to have an assortment of difficulties, with higher difficulties keeping shorter windows of reaction to maintain super challenging combat for those that like it.

Awesome, this is super helpful feedback. Thank you for the kind words and for taking the time for the lengthy write-up! :)

Lots of great points that we've also discussed and identified internally, and we'll definitely be working on addressing as many as possible in the next build, particularly in regard to difficulty balancing.

As mentioned, on keyboard 'Tab' (and on gamepad 'Start') will give you on-screen input hints where applicable, along with info on combat skills when they become available.

The mouse and keyboard control scheme is very preliminary at this point as we've been focused on getting gamepad controls right, but we'll be sure to work on ease of use and customizability in subsequent builds!

Super helpful, thanks! :)

Thanks for your input there, you make a good point! Different drafts of the script have gone back and forth on how prominent profanity is and whether or not it's censored. The working idea was to try and implement a toggleable censor in the options, and in the meantime it was just half-censored.

Ultimately since it's really a rather dark game with some pretty heavy themes and graphic moments throughout, it's possible we'll leave the censoring out as it doesn't make a ton of sense. That said, profanity might also be toned down for the most part (with the exception of one later party member with a sailor's mouth, hehe) just because it can be a tempting crutch to fall back on when you've got nowhere else to go.

Awesome feedback, thanks for all the input! Some thoughts:

- We're definitely trying to err on the side of too little rather than too much hand holding, but of course there's a thin line to walk between respecting the player and totally frustrating them, so we're listening closely for how common certain problems are to adjust balance for subsequent builds.

- We've gotten consistent feedback that the black narration boxes/dialogue options are not appealing, and I agree. The confusion because of the lack of visual contrast between narration and active choices is also majorly problematic. It's near the top of the list of priorities to begin testing alternatives for both, and to make them clearly different so the dialogue selection interface is more aesthetically interesting and more clearly presented.

- As for the ladder puzzle, there's definitely a solution, and like Cheeseness mentioned it requires some backtracking downstairs.

Sorry to get you stuck there Ripley, you're certainly not the first person to miss that in the steam room. It's on the fix list to make the valve more obvious, or make it interactable so it can be looked at.