Just reached the Baths and wanted to chime in with my thoughts.

This is one of the best games I've recently seen. So glad I stumbled upon this. A real gem and a joy to play!

As a fan of golden age immersive sims, I am amazed. The environment is huge, very vertical and non-linear. You explore it using just your own wits; no map, compass or markers. Exploration is rewarded with items and gold and many, many alternative routes through the world. The atmosphere is mesmerizing, and makes getting lost in the world a pleasure, and finding your way back, or a new way around, even more so. You can sneak or run past the enemies or take them on in combat both using tricks and brute force. Every one of these ways to play is incredibly satisfying, and you can switch between them seamlessly. There are also light puzzle solving and platforming segments. The story is minimal, as it should be, but what's there in terms of writing is charming and interesting. Particularly the monologues when interacting with doors / keys. Most little things are interactive which totally immersed me in the world. The game fully lives up to its promises and more so!

I have encountered no serious bugs, but would like to report some minor stuff. Firstly, when playing with a 5:4 aspect ratio monitor the dialogue and options screens go outside the edges of the screen cutting off some words. This never prevented me from using the options or understanding the dialogue, but please do spare a thought for us few still clinging to 1280x1024 monitors :). Second, near the exit of the tutorial area, where you're climbing up the vines to the two bandits near the campfire, there are some narrow cave-like holes in the cliff; when you enter them, the camera clips through the walls and you can see out into the void. I didn't fall out, but I could see through the walls. Though given the surreal nature of the game and that area, that may well be intentional, and it totally works for the atmosphere. And finally, I did experience a framerate drop at the entrance to the friendly sewer town when looking in certain directions (this is the only point I've seen a performance problem).

I also have some suggestions. It was somewhat clumsy to drop gems into the shopkeeper's gem bag to sell them. I would often just miss and the gem would bounce away. Maybe that would work better as a direct "use key" interaction. It was also sometimes difficult to spot what was interactable, notably the grate unlocked with the smuggler's key. Maybe some highlight or rim lighting when hovering with the mouse over an interactable object would help. And lastly, a pure matter of taste, but I'd strongly prefer to play at my native resolution, without the pixelization low-res effect. I am a huge fan of old games, and retro graphics in newer games, but low resolution is one of the things that are not part of the charm for me. Assuming this is just a post-processing effect, I think it would be easy to add an option that disables it.

Congratulations on your first release, and best of luck in your future projects! I hope you keep on making similar stuff, as you've clearly got a "touch" for this special kind of game.