Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So... I'll be honest: I didn't get to finish the game because... well, the last part of the code didn't exist. Instead, what I got was a monster that just... kept making me laugh. So I got a bunch of small notes that I'm just gonna bring up now.
First, I'd like for there to be an option to put the game in full screen. The way it shows now is a window that's at 1920x1080, but when I try to make that full screen it doesn't behave right and leads to part of the window cutting off in OBS. You can see what I mean in the VOD.
I also found that there are several lighting issues, where the lights flicker on and off depending on where the player is standing and what direction they're facing. It's just kinda odd. Also, the lack of objects to act as light sources would be nice.
Speaking of, I felt like the house was very sparse. I'd love to see more furniture and items added to make it feel like a real house. I'm particularly concerned about mom. Where's her bed? Does she use my bed? I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.
Also, while I know you state that the knocking is meant to be from "all around," I feel like it'd be better if it was coming from the direction of the front door. It would feel more atmospheric and engaging, instead of taking me out. It would also mean that I don't have this very loud knocking in my ears all the time until I answer the door.
Which brings me to the next note: why did I open the door? While this isn't as important, I'd love for there to be a reason for me to open the door initially. Like maybe I was already waiting for something and decided to ignore mom's note, or maybe I can hear mom's voice and she's saying she forgot her key. Just something to make it make sense.
While you have a slider for sound (which is good), I would suggest bringing the volume of the some of the available sound effects. I already mentioned the knocking, but the heavy breathing is just too loud as is the sound of the monster. Since I stream, I have my own controls for handling sound and normally they're enough to do the job. However, with my standard sound settings this was too loud.
I also would suggest adding a confirmation button when the player is looking at notes or the keypad that tells them to press a button to exit out. Otherwise, the player could end up feeling stuck. In a similar vein, I'd recommend having the player hit this confirm button when they enter in the code instead of just automatically ending it, since otherwise they don't naturally exit out of it.
The game could use some more sound as well. The only real sounds are opening and closing doors, pressing a light switch, footsteps and then the zombie. I'd love for some ambient sounds, maybe even some light music. Just something so I'm not just hearing the zombie's groans non-stop.
Before I talk about what I felt was the biggest issue, there are some other small things I want to cover.
1. The game has the option for jumping and crouching, but neither of these are really needed to play the game. I'd recommend disabling these.
2. I noticed when interacting with notes that sometimes I'll just start spinning in place. It's weird.
3. When checking the menu while in game, it's way off centre. Unless there's some sort of UI that makes it off centre, this just gives things a poor quality look.
This all brings me to the big thing: out zombie friend. Instead of it being a threat, it just felt like he was a delightful companion in this zombie pet simulation game (which, honestly, would also be a fun game if it went in that direction. But that's not what we're doing here). He would just pop in and start groaning, causing me to just run after him to make him go away. He'd then pop out of existence (but sometimes his groans would keep going but get distant), only to appear again a short time later. He wasn't a threat in any sort of way, and I spent more time yelling at him to get out of my house than I did trying to find the last part of the code (which, again, I could not find at all. It just didn't exist). He would even walk through objects and walls as if he didn't even have a corporeal form... even though both objects AND the zombo could stop me.
Overall, it's a good start as an alpha but I feel like it still has a lot of work to do before it could be considered "done." The zombie needs to be an active threat rather than being My Pet Zombo, and he should be beholden to corporeal objects. Also, the third part of the code needs to exist. If you happen to update the game such that it can be beaten, let me know and I'll happily give it another go on stream.