Will there be an all-in-one edition/bundle once the Artbook and Soundtrack arrive?

Your curators are really into that horror stuff, aintcha?

That's a fair price for a one-hour game with some replayability I suppose.

Disturbing, I refuse to wake up, no matter what!

Well, hopefully, some users will sleep better now, since the release thread's screenshots feature English captions, instead of the German ones in the "coming Soon" thread. ;)

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/coming_soon_a_night_at_the_watermill_33a99

I played through it in less than an hour, and the experience was underwhelming. Repeating words and sentences, easy puzzles, and before the story could develop, it was already THE END. It felt more like playing a short prologue, with several characters whose backgrounds and history remain in the dark, because there is no time for character development. I would not describe it as Horror or Psychological Horror, as the tags suggest it is, but rather as a mild suspense thriller because what's there is way too weak to shock or be scary. There is some replay value to see how the only pivotal choice changes the story, but the incentive to explore was too low for me to try.

The art and graphics are great, but the background music doesn't quite fit the theme. Additionally, the sound effects are not utilized to their best potential in creating a suspenseful or scary atmosphere. If you're seeking something short and budget-friendly to play, this is a good candidate.

I mean - it's not as if they hid the short playtime from potential buyers.

Also, the "full price" of €3,99 could kind of give it away, that this isn't a "20+ hours" experience.

No, they have not, and my critique isn't about its length or the price but about how little it has to offer. Other very short adventures at least manage to tell a full story, while this one starts promising only to end at a random point where it doesn't make sense, so it can't even be called a cliffhanger.

"Short playtime: ~45 min - 1 hour" (at a low price) was a genuine draw-card for me. Combined with the fact that it was available for my platform of choice, that was good enough to get it into my shopping cart. I'd love to see more titles with those particular attributes. (Nothing turns me away from a game so quickly as it advertising 50 hours of gameplay...)

If I were going to troll, I'd say, "Demos used to be free, dammit!"

But seriously, there have always also been demos that I would have paid for. In fact, I think I did for Doom back in the day. Okay, that was shareware, but IIRC, the demo for The Pandora Directive was pretty good, and if it had been a bit longer, I think it would have been worth paying something for. In the end though, I ended up paying full price for that game, so it all worked out.

So where does that leave us with a full game that charges a reasonable amount of money for a very short game? I for one have no problem with it whatsoever, as long as I can get something from the game that I enjoy, whether that might be atmosphere and/or puzzles. And the story also has to feel complete for this to work.

But according to some, it behaves more like an introduction rather than a full game. I guess then that if a full longer game were coming that would complete the story, I wouldn't mind paying for the demo. But it sounds like this is all there is, and that it doesn't feel complete.