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[Rl]

Hello !

I played the demo of "A Door to the Mists", I was intrigued by the narrative and the art style in the trailer.
It is an ambitious project and I really enjoyed playing it!

I don't know how to present my feedback, so I'll do it level by level

Tutorial

Not much to say. I like the shape of the pyramid, and the puzzle was great. I liked the narration that surrounds it and the composition is good I think. I liked the ambiance that emanated from the place.

Crypt

Again, I really appreciated. I was not too stuck. I liked the place. I loved the translation mini game. I liked the way the narration was set up and how the chapter ended. I got the alternative ending the first time.

City under the city

- It was a little more complicated. I did not understand that you have to examine the objects to interact with them. I was stuck in front of the debris and in front of the shelf. It was a little frustrating because I understood what to do but I didn't know how to do it. In front of the shelf, I immediately right-clicked, but not on the tracks, and I totally forgot to do it. So, maybe it is more my fault than a design one.

- I had a great adventure story with two broken chairs, it was amusing 

- I like the atmosphere of the city, a city under the city, it's a beautiful idea. It was very immersive. Run from roof to roof, jump in a window, understand the topography of the city, it was great. The city is vast so I got lost a lot. The solitude, the oppressive darkness, the labyrinthine aspect of the city and the golden walls made me think of the video game Torico.

- The level is long, maybe the decor becomes a little monotonous after a while.

- I am a little disappointed with my encounter with the adventurer. The level is large and very immersive. The glow in the distance evokes something very mysterious so I was a little sad to have no information and end up on a dead end.

- I found that there were fewer elements of lore than in the first chapter. But it is a detail.

- Going back may not have been necessary. I was blocked so long that I knew the level by heart and it takes time to backtracking.

I encountered two bugs (I suppose):

- The first: I fell from a very high roof and I died. By mistake, I made a quick save on the game over screen. When I loaded my quick save, I started over at my fall place with my whole life and I was able to continue my adventure.

- The second: During the ladder puzzle. When you put the ladder the first time to reach the window of an apartment, the ladder falls. To prevent the player from being soft lock I guess. But when I put the ladder a second time, it does not fall any more and I was able to take it from the apartment.

To conclude, I think it is a very original idea, with an unusual gameplay and it is not often that I am caught in this kind of atmosphere in a video game. Thank you a lot for your work!

I'm sorry if my feedback is a bit rough and not very detailed, but writing in English is not very easy for me.

[RealScaniX]

I really like the new level. The shape of the room and all those books look really nice.
I won't have that many books in my shelves, but in your case I'd try to use LOD and replace them with plain boxes when they are far away. I don't know if those polygons are a problem anyway, but it would be one way to improve it.
 
And doing those tool scripts is totally fun. I like doing them although - as you mentioned - it sometimes takes the same (or even more) amount of time than doing it by hand. But it just feels nicer.

[Thaumaturge]

@Rl:

Hello !

Greetings! ^_^

I played the demo of "A Door to the Mists", I was intrigued by the narrative and the art style in the trailer.
It is an ambitious project and I really enjoyed playing it!

I don't know how to present my feedback, so I'll do it level by level

I'm really glad to read that you so enjoyed it! Thank you for trying it out, and thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate both! :D

Tutorial

Not much to say. I like the shape of the pyramid, and the puzzle was great. I liked the narration that surrounds it and the composition is good I think. I liked the ambiance that emanated from the place.

Crypt

Again, I really appreciated. I was not too stuck. I liked the place. I loved the translation mini game. I liked the way the narration was set up and how the chapter ended. I got the alternative ending the first time.

I find it really interesting that you got the alternate ending--and the first time, too. I don't think that I've yet heard of anyone else getting it, that I recall!

I'm really happy that so much landed so well with you! It's really heartening to read. ^_^

I will note that the aesthetics of the game have changed a bit since the demo, prompted in part by other feedback that I've had. Hopefully it'll look even better in the next demo!

City under the city

- It was a little more complicated. I did not understand that you have to examine the objects to interact with them. I was stuck in front of the debris and in front of the shelf. It was a little frustrating because I understood what to do but I didn't know how to do it. In front of the shelf, I immediately right-clicked, but not on the tracks, and I totally forgot to do it. So, maybe it is more my fault than a design one.

On the contrary, you're not the first to express trouble with this element; I think that this is very much a design issue.

And indeed, since the demo I've removed the feature of "hidden" objects: as it is now, potentially-interactive objects always show their names when the player moves the central cursor over them.

This doesn't remove the mechanic of examining objects in order to reveal interactions, as in the case of the scratches and the shelves--but it should hopefully make clearer that there is an object present than can be examined, at least. (Especially in the case of the scratches, which might be mistaken for inert decorations.)

- I had a great adventure story with two broken chairs, it was amusing 

Those chairs can be fun things! ^_^

- I like the atmosphere of the city, a city under the city, it's a beautiful idea. It was very immersive. Run from roof to roof, jump in a window, understand the topography of the city, it was great. The city is vast so I got lost a lot. The solitude, the oppressive darkness, the labyrinthine aspect of the city and the golden walls made me think of the video game Torico.

Ah, that's excellent to read! :D

I'll confess that I don't know Torico, but I'm going to take the comparison as a compliment. ^_^

- The level is long, maybe the decor becomes a little monotonous after a while.

Indeed, I'll confess that this is a bit of a worry for me. Alas, filling the level with even more detail would likely be prohibitive, I fear. :/

- I am a little disappointed with my encounter with the adventurer. The level is large and very immersive. The glow in the distance evokes something very mysterious so I was a little sad to have no information and end up on a dead end.

It's not quite a dead end--more a new lead to chase down. It's a long road that our adventurer has started down...

That said, I do hear you on the potential anti-climax.

- I found that there were fewer elements of lore than in the first chapter. But it is a detail.

I don't think that there are fewer lore-entries in terms of absolute numbers--by my count there's one more than in the crypt, in fact. However, they are more scattered as a result of the size of the level.

(And some of them are more difficult to find than in the crypt-level, in all fairness.)

- Going back may not have been necessary. I was blocked so long that I knew the level by heart and it takes time to backtracking.

I considered letting the player leave the level from that final area, but I was concerned that some might want to backtrack for elements that they'd missed. Since the way into that final area is difficult to backtrack through, I wanted to leave a path back open for the player.

Still, I'll give this some thought, I intend.

I encountered two bugs (I suppose):

- The first: I fell from a very high roof and I died. By mistake, I made a quick save on the game over screen. When I loaded my quick save, I started over at my fall place with my whole life and I was able to continue my adventure.

Ah, that's interesting! I've made a note to check whether I've fixed this--various changes have been made since the demo, and that may well be one of them. If I haven't already done so, then it should be fairly simple to fix, I think!

Thank you for reporting this! ^_^

- The second: During the ladder puzzle. When you put the ladder the first time to reach the window of an apartment, the ladder falls. To prevent the player from being soft lock I guess. But when I put the ladder a second time, it does not fall any more and I was able to take it from the apartment.

This is intentional, actually. The ladder doesn't fall because there's a risk of a soft-lock--it falls because it's too powerful: carried forward, it can trivialise some of the later challenges.

On the other hand, I want to allow the player to somewhat find their own way, and if they want to cart that ladder through the rest of the level then I'm inclined to allow it.

(Plus, having the ladder later on allows access to a secret... )

So, in order to discourage players from taking the ladder further, I have it fall down at the point at which you saw it fall. But any player who wants to go and pick it up again is free to do so...

To conclude, I think it is a very original idea, with an unusual gameplay and it is not often that I am caught in this kind of atmosphere in a video game. Thank you a lot for your work!

That's really encouraging to read, and I'm really glad that you had such a good time with the demo! :D

I'm sorry if my feedback is a bit rough and not very detailed, but writing in English is not very easy for me.

It isn't rough at all--and it's been both useful and encouraging. Thank you for it--and for putting in the effort to write in a language that you're not comfortable in using. ^_^

@RealScaniX:

I really like the new level. The shape of the room and all those books look really nice.

Thank you very much! I really appreciate that! ^_^

And hopefully it'll look even better as I fill things in further...

Indeed, this has been one of the levels that I've been excited to get to, I think! ^_^

I won't have that many books in my shelves, but in your case I'd try to use LOD and replace them with plain boxes when they are far away. I don't know if those polygons are a problem anyway, but it would be one way to improve it.

In all fairness, I may well be over-optimising--but either way, with these new book models no LOD implementation should be called for, I think!

(I'll want to merge the individual books into a smaller set of "book chunks", I daresay--but that's a matter of the number of nodes in the scene-graph, rather than of polygon count, I believe.)
 

And doing those tool scripts is totally fun. I like doing them although - as you mentioned - it sometimes takes the same (or even more) amount of time than doing it by hand. But it just feels nicer.

And if they do take the same amount of time, then why not take the nicer option? ^_^

[Thaumaturge]

Blog post (29th of June, 2020)
A Lived-In Library

Summary: In which the book-generation scripts are expanded; the books of level five are re-generated; some personality is added to the resultant book-collection; a note-keeping system is added to level five; and a saving-while-dead bug is (hopefully) fixed.

Greetings and salutations!

This week's screenshot once again shows bookshelves, their contents now reworked and touched-up to have a bit more personality:



The week just past saw continued work on the books, and later the interactions, of level five:

To start with, the books.

I wasn't quite happy with the results of my previous round of book-generation: it was a little too uniform, and its use perhaps a little too fiddly, I think.

So, in the week just past I expanded the script: Previously, it made similar books within a set of variables, relying on me to change the variables as desired for each shelf. Expanded, it instead took control the variables itself, altering them for each shelf in a controlled manner. The result then was shelves of books that were more varied, and more consistent in the manner of their variation, I feel.

With the lower storey of books thus re-generated, I moved on to the upper walkway. This area has books of a more consistent style, being generally somewhat thin and pale. To this end, I used a copy of the script described above (so that I would still have the original if desired), modified to produce the sort of results that I wanted.

But even as generated by the new scripts, the shelves still lacked a bit in "personality"; in a sense of being part of a once-living library. So, once I had the first pass provided by the automatic generation, I went over the shelves and added various touches: books that were leaning; gaps in the shelves; books placed haphazard atop others; occasional pieces of paper; and even a few books or papers lying on the floor.

This, I think, looks much better!




And with the shelves pretty much done, I turned to the interactions of the level.

This level is, essentially, a period of research: the player explores the archive, looking for a clue to the location of that city which they hope will contain a door to the mist-world.

To that end, I've begun working out what clues might be found on the shelves. This process is pretty much in its initial stages: I know the canonical series of actions that leads our protagonist forward, but may well want to expand upon that to add more challenge, and to include red herrings and perhaps some lore to be found.

And since this is a matter of research, the player may want to keep some notes. Now, A Door to the Mists doesn't have a dedicated note-keeping feature. Thus I've added a simple--if perhaps slightly clumsy--implementation specific to this level.

It takes the form of a piece of paper and length of charcoal that might be found near the start of the level. Collected into the inventory, this can be selected and "used" in the world to be read. And as the player discovers points of interest it should--once that logic is implemented--be updated with reminders of those points.




Having to use the page in the world in order to read the clues is, as noted, a little clumsy. However, it fits with the usual interaction paradigm of the game, and doesn't require that I add a feature specifically for this one level, so I'm hoping that players will be understanding towards it!

And finally, at the prompting of some feedback on the demo, I added a little extra logic to prevent the player from quick-saving when dead. There was already some in place (added, I think, subsequent to the release of the demo), but this new logic should patch over a small gap that may have been missed.

That then is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^

[RealScaniX]

The new book layout looks a lot more natural, this will make the place much more believable, I think.
And I like the "looking for clues" gameplay. I bet this will play out nicely.

[Thaumaturge]

The new book layout looks a lot more natural, this will make the place much more believable, I think.

Thank you! I'm really glad that it does achieve the desired effect. ^_^

And I like the "looking for clues" gameplay. I bet this will play out nicely.

Thank you again, and I hope so! ^_^

[Thaumaturge]

Blog post (6th of July, 2020)
Glowing Gems

Summary: In which development of a research-puzzle continues; level five sees some changes and refinement; crystal lights are added; and a crystal shader is developed.

Greetings and salutations!

This week's screenshot shows a light-fitting for level five, its central crystal alas dim and inoperative:



The week just past was a bit of a slow one--but nevertheless, a number of things did get done:

To start with, work continued in the week just past on the research-interactions central to level five--and indeed, I believe that I have a handle on it now!

In particular, I've expanded out the process of searching the lower shelves, building it into a matter of chasing down references from author to author. It won't be extensive, but I'm hoping that it'll be interesting. (And along the way, there will likely be some foreshadowing to stumble upon, and perhaps even some lore...)

Furthermore, I've begun the work of implementing these interactions: I've added the relevant colliders and script-functions, albeit that they do little of interest as yet.

(To this end I ended up slightly extending my level-importation logic, such that it now allows me to specify script-methods and action-names in the level-model.

The level itself saw modifications in the week just past, too.

Perhaps most saliently, I felt that it was a little too big as I previously had it, and so scaled it down. This, of course, incurred a few other changes, such as modifications to the central tables and the removal of a few shelves. Overall, I'm rather happier with its new layout, I do believe!

On a more minor note, I also worked on the form and texturing of the central tables.




In addition to that, and as shown above, I started fitting the level with the lights that would have illuminated the place when, once, it was an active, working archive.



These lights are magical in nature, their radiance coming from enchanted crystals. Furthermore, I have it in mind that crystals will likely appear later in the game. Thus in the week just past I set about building a crystal shader--a task that I had expected to work on as part of this project, but not quite so soon!

For the most part this shader is very much like the standard player-light shader--it enforces full shininess and doesn't bother with changes to lightness or saturation, but otherwise it's pretty much the same.

Where it primarily differs is in the implementation of an "internal glow" within the crystals.

Now, a fairly accurate method to rendering this might be to first render the depth-values of the crystal's back-faces, followed by rendering the front-faces. The difference between the depths of the two passes could then be used to determine the thickness of the crystal at that point, and from that the intensity of the glow.

However, my rendering arrangement isn't really set up in a way that makes that easy, and in any case doing so may incur a performance cost. Thus I set about thinking of a way to create a similar effect with the elements that I had to hand already.

What came to me was this:

In modelling a crystal, I use a simple script to write its normals to vertex colours. Importantly, this can be done with the crystal in a near-spherical conformation, allowing the effect to "stretch" with it should it be extended into a more-pointed gem.

In the shader, I then reconstitute the colours into a vector, which is dot-producted with the light-direction. The resultant value is further offset using the standard lighting dot-product, such that faces angled away from the viewer (i.e. with a near-zero dot-product) are offset more greatly, thus somewhat suggesting refraction.

That value is then used to add a bit of colour to the rendered fragment, and further to slightly affect the transparency of the surface.

The results aren't all that obvious in the cylindrical lighting-crystals shown above, so I worked with some test-crystals while developing the shader. You can see some of the results here:



That then is all for thes week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^

[RealScaniX]

That still (or even more than the last time) sounds like a really nice puzzle.
Those crystals are an awesome light source. Will you still see some faint glow in the dark when you are so far away that your own light (torch?) is not overpowering them? I think that would be a cool effect.

[Thaumaturge]

That still (or even more than the last time) sounds like a really nice puzzle.

That's encouraging to read! Thank you! ^_^

Those crystals are an awesome light source.

Thank you very much! ^_^

Will you still see some faint glow in the dark when you are so far away that your own light (torch?) is not overpowering them? I think that would be a cool effect.

Funnily enough, I do indeed have it in mind to have one of them emit such a faint glow. (In fact, although not shown here, it already does.) Specifically, I have it in mind that that glow will serve as a hint that the crystal in question is the sole remaining functional one; if it's then used (should this be implemented), it will emit a brighter light. ^_^

[RealScaniX]

Nice! You could even use it in a puzzle. Only by turning off your own light, the faint glow of one of the crystals mark the right place or point you in the right direction.

[Thaumaturge]

That's an interesting idea! I'm not sure that it quite fits with what I have in mind for this location, but it's neat in and of itself I do think! ^_^

[Thaumaturge]

Blog post (13th of July, 2020)
A Search Amongst the Books

Summary: In which puzzle-building continues; crystal lights are placed; one such light may be activated; crystal shaders are improved; and a musical instrument is made.

Greetings and salutations!

This week's screenshot shows a brass instrument, its gut strings long since rotted, from the lower districts of Tenereth-that-was:



The week just past was another slightly-slow one--but nevertheless some things did get done:

To start with, work continued on the puzzle encountered in the lower books of level five. Indeed, I think that most of the logic is complete!

On first entry, the player discovers a swathe of books, with little place to start. When they interact with the books, a short in-game cutscene depicts the protagonist going through the shelves--until at last a lead, albeit tenuous, is found.

From there the puzzle opens up: The shelves are arranged by author, with each bookshelf holding a given range (indicated by an initial name and a final name). Each book that is part of the puzzle may reference one or more additional authors, opening up the indicated book to be found on the relevant shelf.

Of course, not every reference progresses the puzzle--some are side-paths that lead nowhere. (Aside from some foreshadowing...)

Once the final relevant entry has been discovered, the puzzle in the upper books is "unlocked"--but that has largely yet to be implemented!

As I said, most of the logic for this is done; the main of what remains is to actually write the entries!



Sticking with work on level five, I completed, I believe, the placement of the level's crystalline lights. Furthermore, I added a minor interaction: one particular light yet has a bit of magic in it, and should the player get a chair and reach up to touch it, it will glow.

(I may want to work further on the effects around that glowing gem, but we'll see.)

I did discover a minor issue with my "blob-lighting" in implementing this glow: I was handling back-faces in a way that didn't quite function as I wanted. This is now fixed, I believe!

Speaking of the crystals, I touched up my crystal shaders in the week just past: in particular, they no longer dim when seen end-on and have more texture and variation in their internal colours.




And finally, as shown in the first screenshot above, I modelled a musical instrument in the week just past. Made of thin brass and strung with gut (now long-rotted), it's intended as an addition to level two, to be found amongst the ruins of the lower district of Tenereth-below.

That then is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^

[RealScaniX]

I love the look of the crystals, very nice shinyness and a subtle glow!
 
The music instrument is looking authentic, you are really good at building those assets.

[Thaumaturge]

Thank you very much, on both counts! And the compliment on my asset-building is quite heartening! :D

[Thaumaturge]

Blog post (20th of July, 2020)
A Return to Level Two

Summary: In which level five sees work on puzzle and audio; some goal-texts are added (and logic for one removed; a glowing crystal light acquires a new effect); a musical instrument is placed; the beginning of a new, small lore-entry is made; a new exit is added to level two; some minor issues are fixed; and the aesthetics of blob-lights are reworked.

Greetings and salutations!

This week's screenshot shows some changes made to the aesthetics of "blob-lights":



The week just past was a bit of a miscellany:

First of all, work continued towards level five: there were touch-ups to the logic behind the lower-level puzzle; the creation of audio for the (automated) search that begins said puzzle; and the making of footstep sounds for metallic surfaces.

(Those metallic footsteps I'm not quite sure that I'm happy with; we'll see.)

I also added goal-texts to level five, both in coding the appearance of those texts and in writing the texts themselves. Further, I did the writing for level four's goal-text. (And removed some superfluous goal-text logic in level four, too.)

One piece of work on level five that might be worth detailing is an update to the effects involved in the single working crystal light in level five:

I had been finding that the "internal glow" presented by my crystal shader didn't show up as well I wanted in the case of the cylindrical lights: in short, the "internal glow" effect relied on there being at least one visible vertex "pointing towards" the viewer, which wasn't the case with these brass-capped cylinders.

So, after a failed attempt to update the crystal shader to fix this issue, I fell back on older ways. (And perhaps inspired in part by an old fire-particle effect that I made back in my raw-OpenGL days.)

Simply put, there is now a semitransparent, additively-blended "glow effect" overlaid on the active crystal.

But a circular glow wouldn't fit the length of the cylinder, and an elongate glow wouldn't look good end-on. So instead a bit of code in the level-script (broadly speaking) measures an angle between the viewer and the gem, and stretches the otherwise-circular glow when this measure indicates that the crystal is seen "from the side". Thus the glow is elongate from the side, and circular end-on. And the effect works quite well, I think!



You may recall that in last week's blog post I mentioned a musical instrument, intended for level two. In the week just past I placed it in that level.

It's nowhere particularly out-of-the-way, but it is in a region that I felt was perhaps a little over-empty on exploration. Hopefully that region is now just a little less empty!

What's more, I've set up the logic and bare structure for a short lore-entry that's acquired on examining the instrument. None of the art for this--written or visual--has been done yet, but the functionality is there, with a blank entry and stand-in images.



Staying in level two, I added a new exit to the square in which the level's goal is found. It was pointed out to me that the journey back through the level is a fairly long and uneventful one

I did hesitate a little over this: I wanted players to be able to backtrack in search of elements that they may have missed, and blocking off the place in which the exit stands might prevent that.

In the end, however, I did add the exit. My approach to backtracking, then, was twofold:

First, the exit is non-solid, allowing players to simply walk through it if desired. Now, this does go against the usual behaviour of the game, and so may not be intuitive, but it's something at least.

And second, it occurred to me that I had an autosave point shortly before the entry to the square in question. A player who wanted to backtrack and who didn't realise that they could pass through the exit could then perhaps reload that autosave and backtrack from there before returning to the square.

Not ideal, perhaps, but also perhaps better than requiring that all players traipse through an already-explored level.



(And along the way I discovered and fixed a few minor issues in level two.)

And finally, and as shown at the start of this entry, I made some changes to the aesthetics of my "blob-lights". In the week just past I realised that, with the aesthetics of the player-light reworked, the blob-lights were no longer in keeping.

After some experimentation, the new look that I came to was fairly simple: two steps, one near the brighter parts of the lighting (adjusted for distance from the light), and one near the darker. In addition, an offset prevents hard-edged blob-lights from becoming near-perfect circles.

It's simple, and I'm not sure that I won't tweak it further, but I think that it's an improvement at the least!




That then is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^

[RealScaniX]

I really like the new harder light/darkness shading of the new blob lights.
 
The new crystal glow looks fine, although it is a bit hard to see on those screenshots, I think. It looks really nice, nevertheless.
 
I like the idea to place details in places that the player can optionally stuble upon that add to the lore, like this professionally placed musical instrument.
 
PS: I think the exit is fine as it is. It is more like an optional shortcut. You might add a different icon for it, but I'm not sure that it's necessary.

[Thaumaturge]

I really like the new harder light/darkness shading of the new blob lights.

Thank you! That's rather good to read! ^_^

The new crystal glow looks fine, although it is a bit hard to see on those screenshots, I think. It looks really nice, nevertheless.

It is a little unclear, I'm afraid; the effects surrounding that particular crystal are still a work-in-progress. (For one, I'll likely have the "blob light" that provides the crystal's illumination not affect the gem itself, thus removing that bright blue "background".)

Still, I'm glad to know that the effect there does look good! ^_^

I like the idea to place details in places that the player can optionally stuble upon that add to the lore, like this professionally placed musical instrument.

Thank you! I do have a number of such things already in place in level two, but the level's big enough that it can sometimes feel a little empty in places, I fear.
 

PS: I think the exit is fine as it is. It is more like an optional shortcut. You might add a different icon for it, but I'm not sure that it's necessary.

Ah, I'm glad to read that. I do still think that it somewhat breaks the "language" of the game--but perhaps the broad, open street behind it will help to suggest that the player can, in fact, pass through! ^^;

[RealScaniX]

PS: I think the exit is fine as it is. It is more like an optional shortcut. You might add a different icon for it, but I'm not sure that it's necessary.

Ah, I'm glad to read that. I do still think that it somewhat breaks the "language" of the game--but perhaps the broad, open street behind it will help to suggest that the player can, in fact, pass through! ^^;

What came to my mind as an alternative was some (glowing?) footprints on the floor signaling you that you can click on it for a shortcut or just ignore it and walk across. Less of an exit, but a "quickly walk to" thingy.
 
PS: It could be a new element in the language of the game.

[Thaumaturge]

Hmm... I'm not sure that I want to so insert the UI into the world in this game. However, I could modify the exit to have a different name and description--something to indicate that it's optional. (Something like "Exit (Shortcut)" or "Exit (Optional)".)

[edit] Or, as you say, make it a "jump to actual exit" object, rather than a "true exit": instead of exiting the level, it teleports the player to the region of the exit. That, along with an indication that it's optional, might make a bit more sense...

[Ishi]

So after following this thread for a while I was suddenly inspired to download the demo and give it a try! I have a long weekend and am trying to spend it doing some new things.

In general I found the game compelling, I wanted to keep exploring. Below are the notes I made as I went along - I'm aware that the demo may be quite old at this point, but I hope the feedback may be useful to you!

Main Menu

- I can move the main menu with a gamepad (with the Left Stick but not with the dpad, strangely). I couldn't find any way to actually confirm my selection, though.

Level 1

- Inventory controls are awkward - tried to press RB to change tab but it brought up the sword description instead.
- Sword description stayed visible after exiting inventory (Edit: I later realised that this is just how descriptions are displayed throughout the whole game, however it did feel like a bug on this occasion, because it felt like the description was part of the menu that had incorrectly remained on screen).
- Pressing Up on the dpad in the inventory shows "Loading" and then closes the game?
- Rebooting the game, the intro screen shows "Press Left Trigger or Back to continue" - why not just the A button?

- Climbing the pyramid was awkward - had a lot of trouble jumping to the narrow ledge, and also doing the long jump from there to the next block. In first person platforming it's always difficult to judge where things are. I ended up making the wide jump only by looking straight downwards so I could jump when I reached the end of the narrow ledge.
- Analogue movement controls on gamepad would be nice. Also the looking around does seem to have analogue controls, but the minimum speed is very high so it's hard to turn by small amounts.

- The inventory tutorial could also tell me how to pick things up. I couldn't figure out any way to do it on the gamepad. The controls menu suggests that Right Trigger should work but it didn't seem to work. Perhaps this is the same issue that prevented me from selecting the main menu items.
- I think ESC should still bring up the pause menu even if the gamepad control config is loaded; otherwise it's awkward to switch back to using keyboard controls - especially if the gamepad is unplugged, which the game doesn't seem to respond to.
- It's a bit strange that, when gamepad controls are being used, the mouse still works for looking around, even though all other keyboard/mouse inputs seem to be disabled.
- After entering the pyramid I switched to keyboard and mouse controls as I was finding the gamepad too awkward. These controls seemed to fit the game much better.

- It felt harsh to be told that crossing the blue circle would begin the fight, and then have the enemy move towards me suddenly when I was going to examine the room. It makes sense for the enemy to initiate a fight with me, in terms of the story, but I felt that the tutorial text was misleading and suggested that I'd be able to choose when to begin the fight.
- The fight tutorial did a decent job of explaining things. I appreciated especially being told when to dodge the first special attack.
- Perhaps some more effects and feedback would be nice to make it more obvious when my attacks against the animatum are successful - satisfying sounds of splintering wood, for example, would really tell me that my attacks are doing some damage.

- I like the subtle magic effect on the inside of the brass bowl, that's a nice touch.

Level 2

- When jumping from the tree to the roof of the structure, I felt that maybe a sound at the point of 'grabbing' the ledge would be nice. To provide feedback that I've successfully begun climbing onto the ledge.
- I feel like I remember you mentioning this in the devlog previously, so it may not be possible, but being able to use the mouse wheel to scroll through menus (in this case, the inventory menu) without needing to hover the scroll bar would be nice.

- The hitbox for the stone plate is so big that it overlaps the keyhole - it can make it awkward to do actions on the keyhole itself, especially when standing quite close to the door.
- The translation mini game was enjoyable. Not very difficult - which is fine - rather it was nice to just spend time examining the words and seeing which parts I recognised. More satisfying than levelling up Lara's Greek language skills in Tomb Raider :D
- Some visual distinction between the keys would be nice, given that they each fit different locks.
- I enjoyed the puzzle of putting together the symbol from the three pieces. At times I felt like I had surely got it right - but after looking more carefully I was able to figure out the correct solution. It was nice to have full control over the placement of the pieces without them snapping into the correct place in any way. I'm curious how precise the placement has to be?

- The paintings of people felt like they should be examinable, given that old flecks of paint seen previously were examinable. The full paintings are surely more interesting!
- Genuinely scary to see the mummy standing in the darkness. Thankfully quite an easy fight but the sudden whisper of "die" was creepy o_o

- I was surprised that the metal rod wasn't able to push the key out of the locked door. I also went back to the silver dagger in a previous room which seemed like it would be perfect for the job, but was still unable to pick it up. At this point I felt a bit lost as I felt I'd explored everything fairly well.
- Immediately after writing the above, I found the smaller rod, which did work to dislodge the key. Perhaps when trying to use the larger metal rod on the locked door, it should describe that it's too wide to fit in the lock, rather than just 'that doesn't work'.

- I found a hole behind a curtain and crawled through into a series of tunnels. I found this area very disorienting - while the rock is very visible, the soil is extremely dark, which makes it hard to make out the shape of the rooms and tunnels.
- I was trying to climb some blocks - it was in the first pit that I had dropped into initially:
<insert picture>
while trying to grab this rock, I fell down died! This felt extremely harsh, not least because the most recent autosave was quite some time ago - it was saved just as I was entering the large room that contains the small metal rod. This was very demoralising; in such a puzzle- and exploration-heavy game I basically never want to lose any progress, as it's not very interesting to comb through all the rooms again to find all the objects that I can interact with. I would suggest at least making the game autosave when entering the room in which I died. Alternatively just removing the instant death here would be very welcome.
- I investigated a little further; I found some loose soil that I presumably needed the metal rod to break open, but after dying I hadn't bothered to pick the metal rod up, so I stopped playing at this point.