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!

Holy crap, a top down pixel art horror game... NOT MADE IN RPG MAKER! This already caught my interest because I NEVER see top down pixel art horror games made in an engine outside of RPG Maker. From what the demo contains, it's decently spooky. Gives some really good vibes at parts. I love the use of a television show being the staging for what we're experiencing. That said, I can see room for improvement.

I'll start with some translation hiccups I caught. The Game Over screen and the text saying to interact when near a button all remain in Spanish if you set them to another language. There's also the signs meant to say "On Air" and "Applause," which were obviously made in Spanish first. Changing these could be more difficult, but this is one of those things that I think gives a game good polish when they make it also change with language changes.

Next, I want to move into some general gameplay aspects before moving into specific parts and the horror elements. First, I suggest either keeping the character perfectly centred while they're moving around. The way the game works (which I see in a lot of Unity games) is that when the player begins moving in a direction, the camera seems to lag behind them. What this results in is the player having less view of what's ahead of them and thus having less time to react. While this is a horror game and your vision is limited by the flashlight, I would argue this should still be done as it keeps things looking better instead of making the player feel like they have less vision. The only time I feel that the player should be taken out of the centre of the camera is when they're at a point where the game's boundary exists, where then the camera stops moving. Here it makes sense for the player to fall out of the centre. If you really want to make the screen shift with the player, then you should reverse how it's done and give the player more vision in front of them instead of less. Yes, even with the flashlight.

I also think you should make the flashlight wider such that you can easily see both walls on either side of you in certain hallways so long as you're roughly in the middle. The way it is now, you need to be perfectly in the middle of these hallways to just barely see either wall. What this can create is a scenario where a player is constantly switching to look to their sides to ensure they're not missing anything. Making the beam wider would make it so these hallways can just be walked down without a second thought. Obviously, this doesn't matter in larger rooms. It's just for certain halls. If you feel this makes it too wide, then give it some length as well to combine with the camera adjustments from above.

Speaking of the flashlight, it felt impossible to keep the light on enemies chasing me in certain places. First off, the flashlight doesn't outright stop them from moving. This means that the enemy will keep slowly getting closer to me and will eventually kill me. I tested this out pretty early on. I had assumed that putting the light on an enemy would eventually cause it to drop chase, but that never happened. Meanwhile, in some parts it's downright impossible to even hit them with it due to significantly reduced space created by other enemies. Essentially, these two things mean that if an enemy starts chasing you... that's it. You're done. Better off letting it catch you and starting over. This can just be frustrating.

And now... for more focus into the horror. So right as you start the game, you can go either left or right. Ultimately you end up going left while going right offers some fun horror flavour. Since you already incorporate elements where falls will open and close with certain actions, I feel like this should be set up where the player can't even go left until they've gone right to see the trail of blood splatters. This then makes it more scary when you finally come across the dog and notice the weird effects on it. I also think you shouldn't be able to miss the telephone (again, using closed paths that open up once you interact with the phone). These bits of flavour help ratchet the tension up.

I also think that the game should either make use of the dog sooner or should show us the dog later. Right now, seeing the dog is one of the first things you'll do in the game yet it doesn't show again in the demo. I'd rather either see it be used sooner (perhaps used during the big chase at the end of the demo instead of the mannequins) or should be revealed to the player later (like just before the mannequins).

Another thing I'd like to see is special music whenever the player is stuck seeing parts of the show. I think having a song that's meant to represent the show could be really good, especially because as the game progresses you could subvert its use and also use it for scary moments (like using a distorted version of the song that gets louder right before the player enters a certain section). Similarly, there are times where I think using atmospheric sounds or even silence would work better. Something that puts the player on edge for what's coming. Sometimes you pay it off, sometimes you don't. All of this just to keep the player guessing. Lastly in terms of sound, get some sound effects to represent things going. For example, when a you want to close the path behind the player off or open a path ahead of them, put in a sound of something scraping along. Then when they see the path behind them is closed off or a new path has opened, they can recognize what that sound means. Now you can throw that sound effect at them whenever you either want them to know something's change... or you want them to THINK something's changed.

When it comes to the death scenes, I think these would be done better if they're made with a first-person view in mind, giving them a bit of a jump scare element. So instead of us watching a monster come up beside the player character and killing him, create some cool looking images to make the monsters jump out at the player a bit. Make them feel like THEY are the ones in danger, not just the character they play as.

Overall, I like what you have and I want to see it be made scarier.

Hello!  I streamed your game over two different days and really enjoyed it!  When I get the VODs edited, I will post the video to my YouTube channel and share the link here.  If you want to watch the unedited VODs, here are the links.  I had a lot of technical problems with my internet cutting out, which I am almost certain were not caused by your game (a lot of the Itch games I download take too many resources from my computer, which makes them literally unstreamable for me).  

Twitch Links: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2862226047, https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2862237214, https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2863074744

First off, this game is super engaging!  The art style is delicious, and Billy's personality is contagious!  I love his sarcastic ending screens.  I feel like Billy would be a really fun antagonist for a mascot horror game.

Also, I just want to say that "The Billy Midnight Show" is a very catchy title.  

I had a lot of trouble figuring out the mechanics for the Tic Tac Toe creatures.  I didn't realize that I was supposed to touch the red circles in front of the monsters and stand completely still to let the flashlight dissolve them.  I know that Billy explains that you need to flash your light on them, but the first time I did that, the monster killed me anyways, so I thought that I had to get through the entire level to turn on the rest of the overhead lights.  After I figured out how to dissolve the monsters with my flashlight, the flashlight wouldn't always dissolve them quickly enough, and they would kill me anyways.  I figured out a way to get the monsters to walk into a wall while coming towards me because that would prevent the monster from ever getting to me, but it was really frustrating that I had to do that. 

The ending chase with the Tic Tac Toe monsters was also really frustrating because you had to die multiple times to learn the maze and navigate it perfectly.  There wasn't any room for error, so one time when I accidentally hit a corner, I just let the monsters kill me because I knew I wouldn't be able to get to the end after that.  It would be really nice if the monsters either moved a little slower or if there were little traps that I could lure them into to make them slow down.

Some of the interaction prompts are in Spanish in the English translation.  The ending screens also have their instructions in Spanish in the English translation ("Reintentar" and "Salir").  Also, Billy's dialogue was so natural and charismatic that I forgot the game was originally made in Spanish.  

I am very interested in the lore and story of this world.  Who is Billy, and what is his goal?  How did he get in my house?  What prize is he offering for me to win his games?  I get the feeling that he's going to betray me at some point.

Overall, very entertaining!  Thank you for sharing your game with us!