OBSIDIA

Hey there! Overall this has a really strong atmosphere, I was into the vibe pretty much immediately. The foundation is solid, I stayed curious most of the time, just a few UX / pacing / clarity things that added up. (Played on Mac by the way. Installation instructions were clear.)

First impressions / presentation

• Title screen looks and sounds great! Really strong mood.
• Cursor SFX gave me Silent Hill vibes which was a nice touch.

Onboarding / readability

• Disclaimer + intro text came and went too fast for me to read fully.
• Centered expanding text looks cool but is hard to follow while animating — left-aligned would be way easier to read.
• Some onboarding icons / prompts could be a bit clearer / bigger.

Also felt like narrative clarity suffered a bit here — mostly because the text is centered + moving while trying to read it, so it’s harder to actually take it in properly.

Controls / feel

• Shift as dodge felt a bit off for me (I usually expect Shift = sprint). Space feels more natural for dodge/action in WASD + mouse setups.
• I was using my pinkie for Shift and it’s fine ergonomically, but since it’s a repeated input (dodge timing), it ended up causing some fatigue over time — more just from repeated use than hand position itself.

Gameplay clarity / feedback

• In the mines, heartbeat SFX when approaching the enemy is great atmosphere-wise, but I wasn’t sure what I was looking at since it didn’t react (this was before activating the first lever).
• Then it suddenly becomes an active enemy in combat, which felt a bit unclear without earlier setup.
• Even a small player reaction would help, like:
  • “Hello…?”
  • “He doesn’t seem to notice me… weird…”

Right now it reads a bit like a bug rather than intent.

Pacing

• Took ~20 minutes to reach first combat. Atmosphere holds it up, but I expected something earlier (maybe ~5 mins) to establish interaction/tension.
• For a demo, the build-up felt a bit long.

Interaction / UX

• Some signposts are single-read only — I accidentally skipped one by pressing interact too fast. Would be nice to re-read them.
• I think the ESC key still actively pauses the game when dismissing a document with the same key. Was that a bug?
• Switches/levers could use a quick camera pan toward what changed to reinforce progression.

Navigation

• A few moments where I wasn’t totally sure where to go next. Not necessarily bad, but a bit more directional feedback would help smooth it out.

Overall, really strong first impression! Atmosphere is doing a lot of heavy lifting and I was still interested to keep going.

Main friction points were early pacing, readability during transitions, and control feel (Shift dodge especially).

I stopped mainly due to input fatigue over time rather than lack of interest — I was still curious what comes next. With a few tweaks this could land really well as a demo!

(I’m the guy who commented via LinkedIn btw; thanks for sharing your game)

this project deserves more people to see it, I like the story :D

looks nice :D Demo please! :)