13 Candles

Sadly I cannot recommend this even though there is clearly some heart and effort here. There are just a few too many design decisions that even if the game had a massive budget and months to polish would make it still a rough play. I appreciate the devs sharing and going for it here. It's not a failure by any means and is something a student can still be proud of, but as a game there are some things even as students I think you guys should've caught and ironed out in the process of making it. The main issue is how difficult it is to see keys and how finicky it is to pick them up. I understand making the game dark and having a smaller light source adds to the initial terror and challenge, but making it so the keys are very tiny, and their texture blends in to the shelves and drawers they are in doesn't feel very fun. Someone might say "well who cares about that when the game doesn't feel good to play or look good blah blah" but the fact is control polish and environmental and lighting polish is difficult and takes time, and we can get used to that. A quick win here would've been just to make they keys and candles more visible. I have to think that the character walking around in the mask at one point was an antagonist, but now they don't pose any threat. I get that, AI and pathing is tricky and takes a lot of time. Again the unrealistic critique would be "why is the ai so bad? its too easy" since those changes is way out of the scope of what you guys were probably able and expected to do, in that case again here's the quick win: create scripted events to at least give the illusion that this character is chasing you or at least watching you. It may feel like too big a concession but in reality more horror games do this than you might think and in reality, most horror fans don't mind if it's just a spooky ride where you can't actually get hurt so long as it's done with care, rather than an ai enemy that is broken and/or not fun, breaking immersion. My last point of critique that i think would be the quickest win of all to add way more atmosphere and spooks to the experience even as is is my god please please turn down the frequency of the character speaking to themselves. or any dialogue, at all, the entire time. i wasn't even out of the first two rooms before I was already hearing the protagonist repeat themselves. this is bad in any game but especially a horror game which relies so heavily on immersion. I know maybe i went a bit overboard with this last one compared to the other but come on guys, this is absolutely one you should've known better well before submitting it. It's as simple as adjusting the code for how frequently the barks are called, or again, just removing it all together. I know none of you will ever read this. maybe no one at all will. but i had fun writing it anyway. maybe i miss teaching more than i think lol. just bums me out to think you might have tried hard on this to whiff it and i wish i couldve been there to help. then again, hey, maybe you were all slackers and this was the best you had, maybe only one of you did any work and hopefully they now have a job and the rest of yall dont. who knows? life is weird like that. thanks for reading.