I super enjoyed this. I didn't expect to play the whole thing but I did over the course of a couple days. I have some nit-picky things to mention and then a bigger thing I noticed. Starting with the small stuff:
The pickup you get from the puzzle in the terrarium is kinda annoying, and I imagine I would have wanted it disabled if I had gotten it early on in my play through.
It's confusing trying to go down back to a previous level since I could never really figure out which way the lever had to be flipped to let me descend the stairs. They would be blocked off and I could never figure out what position to flip it.
I was able to get into the storage area using the bamboo set of tools, which the game made it seem I wasn't supposed to be able to do because I kept getting the dialogue box that mentioned using a different or better tool.
When you ascend the stairs after just unlocking a new level, the window on that new level will show the old level outside. This might be intention but it didn't feel like it.
You can climb the buildings in the city and jump down into the top of the lighthouse. Not that there's much there since the game is still in development, but I figured this sort of spoils any mystery or surprise about "what is up there"
I think the biggest hiccup is that the exploration aspect of things don't tie in super well just yet; it doesn't feel like there's enough incentive or weight to explore. I felt significantly more compelled to collect resources and upgrade tools than to look around, which is a bummer because there's a lot of cool stuff to find. During my play-through the first "oddity" I had found was the treehouse, but it felt half baked and not rewarding beyond being interesting and cool to find. Since that was my first impression with exploring the world, when I got to the larger levels, I stuck pretty close to the lighthouse because I felt like there wasn't much of anything to be found beyond getting a card. In fact, I only discovered many of the stuff after finishing and going back to look around after reading comments in here. I imagine it's hard to strike a balance between keeping things mysterious (which you've done a really good job of btw, makes the game feel really cool), and keeping things comprehensive; I understand why this is the way it is. Some ideas regarding encouraging exploration that I don't think would sacrifice any of the mystery (and might even help it):
- Adding rewards/upgrades that effect the resource collecting mechanics to the "oddities" and weird areas in levels would have encouraged me to look around and explore more, particularly in the early game. If I had found something in the tree house that made my axe swing just a tiny bit faster or something like that, I would have explored more as I collected resources in hopes to find more things that help me.
- Fleshing some of the areas out a little more in a way that is story telling would also have been more engaging. The ruins in the terrarium are a good example of what i'm talking about. It ties into the story by depicting the damage of the floods which you hear about from the smither. I was hoping to find more stuff like that to help paint some more understanding of the world.
- Adding little hints/references to other areas would be a pretty low stakes way to also make things more cohesive. For example, adding an apple to the bunker area would have made me feel like I had discovered something, since I had seen (or likely will see soon) the apples on the ground in the forest. Something to connect the dots and help the player feel like they are making discoveries that tie into eachother, even if just loosely.
That's a ton of feedback and ideas but ultimately I have more good things to say than bad! It's clear a lot of thought and care has been put in, it really shows. It's super fun and surprisingly few bugs with some neat polish/details in places. Figuring out what the "peakaboo" was felt super cool, and the first time I turned the furnace off was a fun and tense moment. Thank you for letting us play your game and leave feedback, letting strangers pick apart and give feedback on something you've poured a ton of work into can be stressful lol, so it's cool you're so open to receiving it. I hope your game continues to get more traction. If you're ever looking for a hand, i'm an artist and a programmer and would love to get involved for the fun of it!