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Oh shit, okay. I even got footage of me looking at every damn poster because I loved the little jokes and story hints but that little detail seems to have slipped my mind completely hahaha. I'll just blame it on ADHD (which I dont really have lol). 

The Gate Thingy was before my playthrough then lol. I mean, I knew I had to do something, since I just kept looping in the pitch black train with no changes but since I didn't even have a light source I could not for the life of me figure out what to do hahaha. I think I ran into a pole for a solid 2 minutes before I realized that I didn't even move forward lmao.

Ah and no problem. I really see a lot of potential in this project and just complaining and moaning instead of offering solutions or actual criticism won't help making this game the best it can be. I really hope to see a full steam release some day!

I'd love to add to this discussion

Well yes, it is true that people like "challenging" games. I would know because I am a person who does.

Yet, there is a fine line and a difference between "challenging" and "frustrating". It's why so many of the so called "Soulslike" Games completely fall flat on their face.  It's a topic thats been talked about for years now and just having a discussion about what makes games "hard" and what makes them "challenging" would take a lot of hours. 

A base explanation I can give is, for example: Call of Duty's "Veteran" difficulty is just making the enemies into bulletsponges with laser like precision and you yourself die in like 2 hits. It's hard for the sake of being hard. It's not fairly or even remotely balanced. "Ready or Not" on the other hand is also a game where you will die in a few hits, but the damage system for the player is balanced in a way that you get a bit more breathing room since you can get hit on different parts of the body. You will die in 2 or 3 good hits to the chest. but if those hits are spread out to different body parts you can take many more. Like 1 or 2 to the right leg, 1 or 2 to the left arm. 1 to the chest. And other variations. It's perfectly balanced and thus challenging. 

The idea of looping before being sent into the "other-world train" as a failsafe was really good. That's definitely something you can roll back. It sends the player a message without screaming into their face what they need to do. It's, dare I say, challenging. 

Stumbling through the other-world train because you picked up a limb without the torso even being spawned cost me about an hour of my life since I couldn't figure out if it was a bug that I couldn't equip my gun with the flashlight anymore or if it was intended. Again that could also be fixed with a simple inventory system and the TV not despawning when entering the "Dark Train". At least I couldn't find one on the "Other World Train". 

(I don't know how hard it is to implement an inventory system. Have only ever been a normal player without any game development background except for like... crappy lunar magic SMW Rom Hacks back in 2010 or so lol)

That was a really cute experience. I like the shotgun mechanics. One problem: The fast crawlers can push you through walls. That can lead to out of bounds shenanigans