If a discord is made please let me know, I have an obscene amount of thoughts about this game. Its amazing how such a small game is this good, especially the whole concept of a chill farm game turn horror survival.
HexTouchStarved
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A member registered Mar 31, 2022
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Long comment, apologize but I just LOVE this game and its concept. Those chill farm games like stardew valley with the cross of horror is something I’ve never seen before, I think you are on the cusp of something genre-breaking and may even make a new subgenre. I really want to support you and I know as soon as I have some extra cash I’m going to donate with the hopes you can make this an actual full game, I know I would buy a full release for something like $20-25 CND (because I’m Canadian). First of all, the style and is genuinely pretty despite it being an obvious first draft of the game (Mean this positively). I think the whole texture of the solid colours being either a fabric or almost crayon look compliments the ‘cute’ aesthetic, which intentional or not I think could be extremely effective if played around with. But also, in a weird way I compare the style of the art in the same way the game Little Nightmares perfectly uses its style to further feature the game’s ‘feelings’. The art style gives the feeling of vertigo, like your about to fall over when standing over an edge or cliff. Being that everything is overgrown, morphed or disfigured in a way that feels like a child’s perception of the world- especially a scared child is so ingenious. So, with this game using it’s ‘cute’ and classic chill game vibes it creates such a harsh contrast with the horror aspect and highlights the potential scares in my opinion. And as someone who loves monsters, draws a lot of monsters, and would love to help create/build concept art, I think making the monster art jarringly realistic or in a different style could also be effective. At the moment I do have some critiques of how the monsters currently look, as when in game its effective to cause a scare I think theres a lot more that can be done. I’m not sure exactly which creatures you are using, I’m assuming it’s a notdear, Rake, and whatever the hell is the thing in the well- which I have a lot to say.
Starting with the Deer enemy, its hard to tell if you are going specifically for the entities of ‘Not Deer’ or of a Wendigo. As Wendigos are closer to the depiction of when you get too close to the deer enemy in game, only problem is that in the culture/folk lore of the Indigenous people, or at least to my knowledge, they don’t really try to disguise themselves. Wendigo’s are more hunters, they’re stalk and follow their prey before attacking but not try to fool them in the same way ‘Not Deer’ do. It might be too much work but potentially you could eventually separate this enemy into two different versions, one as the ‘Not Deer’ and the other as a Wendigo. I’m not as familiar with ‘Not Deer’ but from what I understand is that they are preditors that hind themselves as deer, just they’re all wrong. Walk weird, occasionally have some form of deformation like wolf eyes, or eyes recentered to be front facings, sickly and frail with odd behaviour, just a few examples. But for the game it would be interesting to see different ‘versions’ of this enemy spawn with slight variation of behavour, could also add to the game play loop as I found once I understood all the entities it was easy to survive. But for example, some ‘Not Deers’ could be more ‘aggressive’ in how they approach you but also have more obvious signs they’re not a deer. Which makes them easier to notice and deal with but if caught off guard quicker to get attacked, throw in events of normal deer grazing and even maybe eating your crops and it’ll encourage players to chase off the deer. Which if it’s a ‘Not Deer’ then acts as a jump scare when the thing grows teeth and eats them, or morphs and disfigured into something more monstrous. Then other ‘Not Deers’ can be more subtle like for example the eyes being distorted in some way, they hover around your farm and try to slowly approach you to then attack. Which if you have deer constantly around almost waiting for you to leave so they can eat your crops I can imagine how someone could be caught off guard or even ignoring the entity mistaking it as another deer.
Then for the Rake or whatever is the pale naked thing that chases you, I think its pretty good but little changes would make it more threatening. Being that the game is so small I understand introducing the enemies so quickly but I can’t help but wonder what kind of build up could be done in a full game, especially if you market the game as a ‘normal farming game :)’. Like for the first 3-5 days its just you farming but slowly you start to hear weird sounds in the forest at night, its vaguely human. But it grows more frequent to not only just at night, then have eyes looking at you when its dark from the forest and boom you got people terrified. I feel this would be especially good if you have that weird reflective glare that animals have when at night, were its almost that glassy green colour. Anyways, point is that giving the Rake more ‘stalking’ behavior or even times where it’ll come out when you don’t expect can cause more chaos and threat to it. While I find all the monsters super well choreographed, in terms of sound queues, there’s a certain balance where you want them to be understandable but also unpredictable to make them feel like a fair threat. One example I have is that maybe you leave ‘offering’ to these entities to try and reduce the amount they’ll attack you in order to deal with them, the longer you don’t appease them the more they’re try to attack or hell maybe even sabotage you. Maybe the rake is smart enough to start tampering with your tools, or leave certain things the player values out close to the fence by the forest. Somewhere it’ll be much easier for it to grab you when it wants, maybe it takes advantage of the fact you can’t see well in the dark and use sounds to corral you to a corner. These are all just suggestions I have no idea how you would implement if you do.