Your Demo Failed

[opinionatedhuman]

I loved the Penumbra series (except for requiem, surprised?), so I thought I'd give this game a go. What you have to realize about demos is that they're supposed to make the player want to buy the game. Your demo did not do that for me.

Let me start simply with time. The demo took about 45 minutes for me to complete. Judging from a typical value of demos being 1/4 - 1/5 of the total length of a game, I decided it was not worth my $20 for 4-5 hours of entertainment.

Judging by posts I've read here (and watching someone beat the game on youtube), the game's length could actually easily be 6-8 hours or more. As such, you failed to give me a sense of the total length of the game, and thus part of its value.

In the demo, barely any of the story is revealed. Your goal in designing a demo is to give the player just enough to want to know the rest of the story -- whet their appetite just enough. You failed. What do we know about the story from the demo? Well, for some reason there's meat all over the place, my name is daniel and my past self left notes all over an old castle-esque structure, one of which told me to kill a guy I've never heard of before. Also, there's a water monster and stepping on meat sometimes hurts you.

What kind of introduction is this? In the end I got past the water monster and it was like "BUY ME" Really? Why? Why should I want to keep playing? I don't care about killing this guy because I don't know what he did. I don't even know what the heck this meat or monster is, and frankly I don't yet have a reason to care. It just seems like a jumble of randomness. Not to mention the conveniently caved-in pathways. Pft.

But you guys obviously excel in quite a few aspects. Level design and atmosphere, namely. Obviously loving penumbra and watching the trailer, this would be a game I would be interested in. The atmosphere did not disappoint.

At the end of the demo in one of the last few rooms, I had so much fun with that river monster. I was like "what's this blocky thing?" "oh... a torso? o.0" So I threw all of the limbs in the water at where the river monster was last seen out of spite. Darn thing started eating them! Good Lordy I was surprised... I literally said out loud "oh my God he's eating that" as blood splattered in the water and I bolted away. I died because I wasted all of the meats playing with the monster instead of using it as a distraction at first. Then I discovered the exit was blocked

I suppose your hint system was well thought of. Ex: At first when I encountered the water monster I just hid behind a box in the water. I sat there for 2 minutes and he was still splashing away trying to kill me. I was like "wth go away" and he was like "OM NOM NOM". Eventually, I just tried running around because I had no idea what I was doing and died. Then I get a lovely message "STAY OUT OF THE WATER". Oh. Makes sense.

Also, the demo was not scary at all. I was expecting to be scared playing this, but it was not so. Sure my character was scared, "omg there's a trail of pink stuff and noises, I wonder what's there", etc, but I had no reason to be scared. The water monster was only mildly scary until I realized what I was supposed to do. Hot dog, that thing travels fast when you're in the water O.O Being advertised and praised as an adventure horror, whateverelse, I had no basis for how scary the game was going to get.

Now, it's important to note here how good I thought this game was going to be: I was livestreaming me playing the demo to a handful of people. Literally the response given to the end of the demo was "What?" by those watching. It was stupid, and I am extremely disappointed.

In the end, I watched someone play through the entire game on youtube, and am now slightly disappointed in that fact. The game seemed great and I had wished I bought it now, but because your demo had failed me I didn't think the game was going to be worth the money, and now would have no joy in buying and playing through it.

So, improve your demo. Disappointing, lost at least one sale, etc.