itch.io

I played your game twice.  As far as spoiler free feedback goes, the biggest change to the game I'd like to see is to have the player click to finish reading the notes. On my first time through I did miss part of one of the notes because it advanced when I wasn't ready. On my second run I wanted to be able to advance through the identical stuff faster. Not being able to quicken the pace was the biggest deterrent to playing again to see new endings. I think the atmosphere of the game was effective. I thought the music worked very well. I would have personally preferred the main voice to be just a little louder. 

I think comprehensive feedback of this game requires spoilers, so this is the warning to anybody else who might want to play the game first. 

The other people that come  up behind you are probably my favorite part of the game, yet also where I see the most room for improvement.  The voices for them - which I'm guessing were computer generated - really ride the line between creepy and comical.  I can definitely see some people getting taken out of the atmosphere by them. That said, I got past it fine myself.  

It's kind of hard to give feedback on a story as abstract as this. I guess I'll just tell you some thoughts I had and you can decide for yourself what to make of them. The first ending I got was the window ending. I wasn't sure what about my choices led me to that ending, as it seemed like the notes were telling me that I was already set on that course, and I thought I was choosing to change my course. Maybe it's because decided not to insist on opening the door was considered giving up? Or maybe it's because the person giving the notes was untrustworthy? The beautiful ending was my second one, which made more sense to me. I interpreted it as a wistful "if only" type of ending. Not quite as dismal as my first ending, but still not good. Just my character imagining what could have been I suppose. Based on these two endings, I'd interpret this as a story about sticking to your guns, trusting your instincts, and seeing a task through to its end.

I hope this feedback is helpful to you. This game seems pretty complete, so I'm assuming you don't have any intention of updating it further. If that is the case, I hope some of this helps you on your future projects.

I played the game for about 15 minutes, and it kicked my butt to be honest :)

I think it's a compelling core concept for a puzzle game, and I don't think you'll need to worry too much about it being like the one you linked as long as you develop it a bit further. Here are my initial thoughts. I know it's an early prototype so some of this may be on your radar already, but I'll list everything that came to mind just in case.

• Reset button - I found myself wanting to be able to clear the puzzle and start over, especially once I learned exactly which spaces my clicks affected.
• A diagram showing new players which spaces you activate - I think you could pull this off with just one image and little explanation, and it would save a few seconds of confusion at the start of the game. It could be a nice touch.
• Level select - I can see this being useful for people who nail down a strategy for the earlier levels. Since there's no RNG, they would basically end up doing the exact same thing every time for those levels anyway. You mentioned you plan to randomly generate levels which may change the usefulness of this, but I'm not sure in what form you mean to do that, so I'll keep this point anyway.
• Visuals - If you want to distance yourself from that other game, I wouldn't use green as your primary color. It might be cool to allow the player to pick the color scheme actually, or you may find you can do some cool stuff with a completely different visual style.
• Dead Spaces - Instead of only having square grids, you can mix it up by adding dead spaces within the grids. I could see this being the simplest way to vary the gameplay.

Here are the more out there ideas that I don't know would even work, just because you want things that might make it stand out. 

• Mirrored puzzle - I'm not sure if this would work, but maybe you could have 2 grids that both register a click at the same spot, but one affects diagonal spaces or something. It would probably be impossible to solve that, but if not it would be an interesting challenge. Maybe there would be some other type of dual puzzle that would work.
• Increased radius - You could include a level where the area your clicks affect is increased to some extent
• Sensitive spots - Kind of an extension of the last one, but maybe there's a special tile that lights or darkens other tiles whenever you hit it.

The only final note I'd have is on the idea of randomly generated levels. Looking at that wikipedia article, if you're thinking of making your levels generate like in that game you'll want to be careful not to allow the game to generate impossible puzzles. Perhaps you can use the math in that article to check each generated puzzle and make sure it's solvable before presenting it to the player.  Deviations in how the puzzles are built or solved may also complicate this further, so I'd be careful to always be sure that a puzzle is solvable.

The game definitely looks a lot better now, so that's pretty awesome. I still can't get over the controls though. It's not something you can explain away imo. Controls aren't really where you want the difficulty of a game to come from. If you consider some of the best "difficult" games - from Super Meat Boy to Dark Souls - they almost all have really good controls. The level design and puzzle design are where the difficulty should come from. I feel like the hint for the controls is a band-aid for a core gameplay issue that you would be better off just solving. Maybe have it be as simple as clicking moving Bobby in the direction you're looking or something. I think there are a lot of ways you can approach it, but this control scheme is fundamentally flawed.

It might suck to have to fix something big like that, but that's precisely why it was a smart move to get feedback on your game like this.  

It could be that I just couldn't get into the maze straight enough since I was struggling with the controls. Maybe if you make them more intuitive you won't need to change the maze. 

I didn't have time to get through much, but one thing that stands out as a potential improvement is having a death animation. The hard cut to the game over screen is pretty jarring. Other than that, I enjoy the sleek and modern look of the game as a whole. I thought the controls felt good, and it seemed like a solid platformer overall.

I didn't have time to get through much, but one thing that stands out as a potential improvement is having a death animation. The hard cut to the game over screen is pretty jarring. Other than that, I enjoy the sleek and modern look of the game as a whole. I thought the controls felt good, and it seemed like a solid platformer overall.

I played the first and second level. The controls were quite a hurdle. The fact that they don't change based on your camera position is a big problem. It's very easy to get disoriented and not know which button will move you in which direction. 

I didn't beat the first level because I found the invisible maze to be too frustrating. I didn't notice anything that would indicate an entrance to the maze, and only landed on ground briefly once or twice. Generally I'd fall off attempting to enter it, and I didn't really find that aspect fun in it's current state. I think if there was some sort of clue to at least get me started it would help. For example, I thought that the nearest cube would have a path leading straight to it to get me started. However, I fell every time I tried to go to it, and didn't know what else to do. I also tried this more times than I would have if I had a handle on the controls.

Level 2 was better, and I was able to complete it. However, the floor in it's current state is kind of a problem. The flat bright blue color makes it very hard to see changes in the elevation, so at first it wasn't clear which direction to go, as I guess the ramp blended in with the starting platform. It would also be nice if there was a shadow or something to make it seem like the ball was sitting on the floor. 

But level 2 is where I started to see some potential for this as maybe a speed game of some sort. The big ramps on that level look like you could build up a lot of speed on them, though it feels like there's some kind of cap right now (or maybe the plain environment makes it hard to tell how fast I'm going?).  Still, I like the idea of building momentum on them. The controls would definitely need to be more intuitive before that would work though. And maybe instead of the brake being an instant stop, and can slow you that way you can turn easier without losing all momentum. I think giving players tools to perfect a quick path through the levels is where most of the potential fun in this game lies. 

So the takeaway: I don't think this game can be fun with its current controls. Address this before you do anything else. If you're going to edit visuals, start with the floor just because it's the hardest thing on the eyes and the only one that I think actually affects game play right now. I think there's fun to be had in coming up with fast routes through the levels, and it may be wise to design with that in mind. 

Good luck!