itch.io

The art direction is impressive. Gameplay however is kind of rough. With how chaotic the physics were going on in there and the camera shakes I was finding I was starting to get a headache from it. If that could be toned down or just make it so you don't collide with dead bodies at least, maybe with a faster character cause it also felt a bit slow, this could have the potential to be a pretty good speed shooter type.

I'm digging the alien aesthetics, with the neon HUD, the Silent Hill-esque graphics, the shooting is responsive despite the tanky enemies, but the platforming isn't that great with how precise you have to be to make some of those jumps. It become kind of frustrating to make those exact jumps multiple times in a row. That being said, it has potential! It's weird and that's amazing.

Funny enough, me and my team were thinking of doing a similar concept although none of us are artists so that wouldn't have turned out well. I think the idea is solid, but the way the game is made right now could probably use some polish in regards to general accessibility. Namely, being able to go through text faster, more blatant feedback from putting in a ingredient into the drink, and a recipe book of some kind. I had a scenario happen where I reloaded my browser before a checkpoint happened so I had to go through the whole segment again, which felt really slow when the dialogue progressed slowly. If you could implement a constant save feature like other VNs, that could help a lot. There's a lot of good work done here, just need to add some QoL stuff and it'd be amazing

The enemies are very durable for how quickly they can just kill you on the spot. While I recognize the want to have leaning as a mechanic to shoot around corners, the fact the machine gun enemies are on the same corner and the door closes behind you makes a scenario where there's no place to take cover and you're dead before you have a chance to kill them. I tried it three times before I decided I couldn't deal with it

The potential is absolutely here. Art's great, the gameplay's foundation is solid, the gameplay loop is established. It does however need some polish. Front loading info on how to play in the start of a battle made it a slight struggle in the beginning, and RNG can destroy you if you're just real unlucky like I was. Still, this is easily a great prototype and I'm all for it

I don't really know if this counts as a horror, sounds like it's just a sweet dude honestly. I'm curious if given more time how that would go down, as the writing is pretty good. Nothing felt redundant and it's a nice concept to make a small VN out of. The only real complaint I have is maybe the color palette. Things seem quite literally too dark on that end. Maybe some extra bloom off the candles can give more color without sacrificing anything cause otherwise it looks a bit stale to me.

The camera being so zoomed in plus the player being so slow makes the game a bit of a slog to play. There are also some wonky collisions and layering that needs to be addressed before I can say personally that this is presentable. Basic mechanics are there but the polish is needed

I've had two bugs that made the experience rather poor for me. One, the camera is bugged out for me and I kept spinning over and over again to the left. I suspect it's cause I have two monitors, but as I don't know the cause I can't really do much about it. Two, there was a bug that was colliding with/attacking with the character on the main menu.

The core concept, from what I could try to do by powering through, has potential though. Art-wise it looks nice and I can see it escalating if given the proper time to make everything. For now, it has the good foundations of a arcade game and I'm all for it

Repeating the same sequence again after dying certainly took away from the experience, but for a solo dev it's not that bad. The writing is fine but the gameplay needs to be tighter/more clear to the players as while it can be considered straight forward, not everyone's played this kind of thing and so instructions help. Some play testing could have pointed out these issues, which is why I'd recommend having friends look at the game first so they can make these kind of comments since as a solo dev you might be blind to things you think are fine while they're not.

The movement was smooth, which is always a positive, but the pixelation does seem rather aggressive. As others have mentioned before, with the dark light as well, this makes the presentation harder to appreciate. There wasn't much else to do other then pick up skulls and avoiding monsters, but the mood hits pretty well. Just need to make it easier for the player to realize where they are. And maybe make the notes not squished in the center like it was for me.

The writing could have used another read through, as I found there to be many repeating sentiments throughout the dialogue that padded out the experience more then necessary. There's only so many times I can read and see the words moon and blood before it gets repetitive. Likewise, there is dialogue that serves to just be a repeat on what was said just before, making it redundant. Both of these together end up creating a lot of telling, but not a lot of showing.

But hey, you made a visual novel with multiple branches. That's still something to be proud of, just need to edit the script some more.