I just finished the 0.12 public build and got every scene and event except for the one with Death, I'm just too good at the game!
Everything here so far is really wonderful. The artwork is very vibrant, the NPCs have nice variety in species and design and the writing and scenarios constantly shift form hilarious to horny in the best way.
I'm looking forward to when the game is complete, I'll definitely purchase it when it's done!
Other than the pauses and shakes, the performance was normal. Nothing going too fast, slow or being choppy.
I didn't actually adjust the text speed slider, the default speed seemed alright to me. The only option I adjusted was turn down the master volume to about 80%.
A friend of mine also played the game, and for him turning off flashing effects and table rotation seemed to help with the long pauses.
I finished the demo, here's my feedback:
Overall? I liked it! I look forward to the full game.
I played the 1.0.2 Windows version and I did run into two bugs: At various points the screen would start shaking incredibly wildly and I'd need to wait for the shaking to simmer down before I could proceed again, this seemed to happen whenever the game made a loud thwack sound and I assume there is meant to just be a minor screen shake instead. This even happens during the post-séance scene at the café.
The game would sometimes also take incredibly long to load the next scene, AFAIK this happens every time the background art changes, like after the séance, when Cass takes a picture, or when Tessa leaves the café. It's load eventually, but it took a very long time.
The writing in the game reminds me more of AA than the ZE series. Tessa being the skeptic prosecutor/defense attorney, Ari the defendant, Cass and Molly as quirky witnesses and Zarah as the... judge? This isn't a criticism, I like both ZE and AA myself, so the sense of familiarity was a good thing for me. I'm sure things will be more divergent as more and longer cases are added, the ending of the demo certainly gives me the impression it will.
The journal is a nice feature, mostly for the flavour aspect. It helps with getting more in Tessa's headspace.
It was fun trying to look for silly inputs to give when the cards appear on the table, I'm very glad there was a reaction for "POG". There was one bit where there were a lot of 3-letter words you could form, and only some got a reaction. I'm not sure if I just ran out of Zarah's patience for my antics or only some combinations yield a special result. Generally the hardest solutions were the shortest words.
The section where there was no right solution had me spending more time than I wish I had spent looking for a word to form, I wasn't expecting the game to make me 'present evidence' without me having the proper evidence to present.
Tessa is best girl.
