The demo for Berathen Spirit Detective is now live!

I'm pleased to say that I think it's quite well crafted.

I like the level of charm you've put into the text. Stuff like a barrel with DK written on it, a cabinet of tableware that you're tempted to knock over and possibly magical bottles are really nice little bits of fun that add to the experience. It's also fairly well structured as a narrative. Sure it's short, but it's a demo. I hope you can make a longer but equally interesting story arch for the whole game. But we'll see about that.

Furthermore, I like how you didn't resort to anything even remotely action based. The finding the truth segment was rather clever, although to me I'd rather it was a tiny bit more difficult. Not sure how I'd make it more difficult, but it kind of takes me out of the experience when the person restarts their monologue for you to re-question. I realize this is because getting a game over because it didn't occur to you to question a specific part of it is really poor game design, but it feels like this is a bit easy of a way to do it.

I liked the characters as well. For the short time they're there, they're given unique personalities, and stay consistent with it as well. They don't exactly feel real, but I've seen far worse characters in a plethora of other games. Again though, with it being a demo, it'd be difficult to fully round them out. I also rather like the explanation of the lore to the setting. It's not explained in a long dialogues, or in a little codex nobody reads, but rather like Half-Life 2, you're dumped into it, and have to develop an understanding based on what you see, and what other people occasionally talk about.

I'm not that keen on the actual plot you made for this demo, but since that's not going to be in the game, then that's not really a huge issue. There's a couple of typos as well, but I have no doubt you'll remove those. I'm not so sure if I agree with all your music choices, but I have a feeling this is more like temporary stuff.

In general, I have to say that I think this is a pretty good start. Keep it up, I'll gladly pay for the full game when you finish it, provided it's more of this.

It's really nice. But I had a glitch that made my playthrough painful. Try examining a clue, and while the text box appears, go to any other room without closing it.

I didn't play much of it, only thought that the characters were sloooooooooooooow.

Sounds good though, definitely keep working on it.

Thanks for the reviews guys! I will definitely work to improve on what I have thus far. Thank you all so much for playing it!

I'm really glad you enjoyed the game Oddey. I personally wanted to make the game as easy as possible. I really like games where the player explores things and figures things out on his own, but at the same time a good amount of my players easily get confused.

On one hand I have players who have inspected everything there is to experience in my game and wish there was more challenge, but enjoyed the experience. And on the other hand I have players who think they are the greatest geniuses ever for figuring out the 'extremely difficult puzzles.'

It's a hard thing to balance, but I am trying to improve upon it so everyone can enjoy the game.