Alright, I was pretty stoked to play a stealth game, especially since that's what I attempted (and failed a bit in my opinion) during my first run with this jam a bit over a year ago. Anyways, time for some feedback and things I noticed:
- The main gripe I've had with the game is that it's really hard to gauge stuff, one of the main pillars of stealth games is allowing the player to: make a plan, try to execute it, then either fail or succeed based on mistakes or overlooked details. That's all well and good, but it requires the player to have enough information, and this game doesn't give enough of that. What I would suggest is: (yes I know a list inside of a list, I'm that great)
1) Some sort of detection meter or other piece of UI (see Skyrim's eye, Payday's detection circle, Dishonored's lightning bolts) or making the detection system clearer, like in thief where you get spotted almost instantly in broad light, but are safe in the full darkness unless they get really close, and even then thief gave you a gem to see exactly how fucked you are.
2) A better way to check for enemies, this can take a form of a minimap like in old MGS games, leaning around corners, or a crouch which could allow you to step into the line of sight for a short period of time without getting detected, because I found myself just turning a corner and getting caught immediately by a guard I didn't even know patrolled there.
3) Some indicator for headshots, because it was sometimes hard to gauge what I'm aiming at with enemies moving so fast and the darkness in the levels, at some point I even managed to pack a full silenced pistol at a normal guy standing still and to this moment I can't tell if I was hitting some gap in their collider, or if I was hitting some invisible part of a prop.
- The reinforcement system could use a bit of work, because the enemy spawners don't get disabled even when you're standing right next to it, to the point that one time when trying to hide I entered one of these tunnels, had enemies spawning in front of me without spotting me, and afterwards leaving without noticing me despite facing right at me, which felt a bit silly.
- The camera could change during the boss battle, because I didn't even realize what killed him at first, so an animation that would show the actual killing blow could be nice.
- In the end I kind of stopped doing stealth and just started running through the levels, because the slower stealth approach started to result in more deaths than running and gunning.
- But now comes the fun part. The good stuff, and there was a lot of it: the world building, the level art, the voice acting, even when stealth became frustrating I still had fun with the combat system (even if it also was a bit clunky). And I mean, stealth games are naturally just a hard genre to get right, especially during jams and even harder when you don't have a lot of experience with the genre.