Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 7! My name's Hythrain and I'm one of the hosts and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

This was certainly interesting to play. I was glad I was persistent in trying to do stuff, because I did manage to get through the entire demo. With that said...

This game is difficult to figure out. In the first part of the demo, the player is told NOTHING. They have to just go around and figure things out. It took me a while to realize that the whispers were things I needed to see. Then there was the puzzles themselves, particularly that music based one. I actually was starting to figure it out when I accidentally solved it, which was both good but also not satisfying because now I don't know if I actually WAS figuring it out? If it's what I think (where you walk over the notes to replay the entire song), there are numerous ways you can improve this puzzle. First, reduce the song's length. By the time I figured out what I was doing, I think I had accidentally punched in half the song. By that point, I was just trying to do everything from the start and was writing out the notes by shape one-by-one in notepad. I was at 15 notes of the melody recorded. That's already a lot! The range of notes should be between 8 and 16, with a much higher preference to 8 when you're not using an actual musical instrument for the player to play. 

Speaking of, while it wouldn't look as natural, I think keeping the marks to play the notes in a straight line that just rises up in note as it goes further down is much better than the circular method you have going, especially when you're doing things by symbols. I was having a hell of a time figuring it out because of that awkward order.

The torch puzzle I think is fine as is, because the butterfly is established as a thing before you get there. However, I must request that you replace butterflies with faeries. There aren't enough of them out there with butterflies stealing their spotlight like this. XD (I kid, I kid! Maybe)

As for the night section, that is way too dark and your lantern does NOT work at all. I would say both the lantern light AND moonlight should be added, especially given how ridiculously pretty this game is. Also, players should be told what they're doing.

Speaking of the game being pretty, I highly recommend giving several passes for optimizing graphics. Maybe you've done some optimizing already, but it's always a good idea to do more passes. That way, you can do more with the graphics!

Lastly, crafting. So I think it's important that you make crafting into its own state of playing. That way, you don't need to use CTRL to do crafting because that's just silly. In addition, if the skill checks do nothing but just inconvenience you in a slight manner as they do, you might as well remove them. One thing I always try to advice people to remove is artificially extending the length of their game as it just bogs the game down. If you're unfamiliar with how to recognize artificial extension, I can explain it to you. Suffice to say, though, that's what the skill checks do. They can be outright ignored and you'll still get the craft done in a small amount of time, so there's no point. There needs to be real punishment or there's no purpose to them.

I played this game on my stream (VOD).

Overall, the graphics are really pretty, but I had a lot of trouble really doing anything in the game. I think the game would benefit from a more guided tutorial.

For example, after the instructions to follow the butterfly, I lost track of the butterfly and had to random wander around. It might be good to have the butterfly fly ahead of the player, then wait around (maybe sniff a flower) until the player gets closer, then it flies off again. When I eventually found the butterfly, I guessed that I'd need to light the torch it was flying above, but I couldn't figure out how to light the torch.

I wandered around and eventually got out of bounds. The out of bounds effect caused me to feel some motion sickness which wasn't good. Also, the camera has a bob when the player is not moving, and that also causes motion sickness for me. When I'm controlling the player, it seems ok, but stopping was a no-go (pun intended). I highly recommend disabling the camera bob or at least having an option to do so.

I found some puzzle-like box somewhere as well, but couldn't figure out how to interact with it. I pressed all the keys on my keyboard, all the buttons on my gamepad, but nothing happened. Later on, I found a crafting table thing, but I had no recipes as well.

I think this game has potential (it's really pretty!) but needs much baking :)

Gorgeous looking game, I would love to playtest for Feedback Quest 7 but I don't see where to download without purchasing. Would you help me with a link or keycode?

Look man, the game is pretty, the exposition to the story is engaging, it is stylish and has a lot of potential, but you need to give it better polish... When i playtested it in my stream, i had to alternate between using the controller and the keyboard. When i use the controller i cannot switch between itens, and when im on the keyboard i cannot move. And i could not build the camp at the night portion of the demo, and the UI in the main menu and the start menu does not show where you are selecting with the controller. I really want to like this game, it has a story that engages you in its unraveling, and the way you use sounds to make the player progress is nice and pleasant, albeit needing refinement, especially the piano keys puzzle. This game is a beautiful diamond, albeit very rough on the edges.

The parameters on how i review games: 

-Easy to play: How easy it is for you to grasp the game itself, as in, understanding the controls and what are you doing, as well as the learning curve 

-Fun Factor: Self explanatory. How fun the game is as well as how immersive/engaging 

-Overall Difficulty: Not how hard the game is, but the balance between the learning curve and difficulty curve as you progress, as well as the frustration the game can bring you (a game being too frustrating is a negative factor)

-Style: how well applied is the Art style, storycraft, level/sound design, game theme and mood/atmosphere of the game. (If a game has an "ugly"/weird art style, but it fits the game's proposal, it is a positive factor)

My personal ratings:

-Ease of play: 2/5

-Fun Factor: 2.5/5

-Overall Difficulty: 2.5/5

-Style: 4/5

Will be posting the vod to the gameplay soon