IN THE VERY MUCH UNLIKELY EVENT ANYBODY FROM FROZENBYTE EVER SEES THIS -- First off, congratulations. This demo made me happy -- just happy. No videogame had done that to me in ages. Didn't even need to touch the bombs and traps. Just grappled and moved around. Demo is full of configuration options, effective in creating mood, and seems to indicate a economically-told yet captivating story (instructions video at the start might as well not be there for all the good it does). Meshing together aughties prince-of-persia -style rewinds and superhot conditional passage of time in a tight, focused stealth game with non-lethal options is one of those ideas that are inevitable and needed doing, and it took perfect skill and serious guts to pull off. I went in completely blind -- saw a demo was available, downloaded, played, and the protagonist is already my frickin' hero just from the way she's animated (and that pained perpetual frown -- it works). Had some difficulty setting a key for retracting the grappling-rope (not set by default even -- I think?). When it did, what was already excellent play suddenly clicked (a bit late into the demo), and turned into the kind of play you can only get once every 4 or 5 years it's so good. I usually do nothing but play non-lethal in this kind of stealth game, provided I get appropriate stakes. Fully intended to try for non-lethal at first. Only got retract-key to work before dealing with the last 2 guards left. If doable, a fully-featured savegame system might do well for the finished videogame, *on top* of the rewind and superhot mechanic. Don't be afraid to bar and gate progression until you can be sure users have the feel of everything down to the tiniest details of execution -- nothing here seems trite or tired, and you can get away with belaboring your points (and should). Bombs seem superfluous. Please don't stuff a crafting system in there just because. Could mar purity of everything else.
I really really tried to enjoy Divinity: Original Sin (D:OS) after I started playing. I have no major problems with the art-style, turn-based combat, tone (mostly -- the charmed orc and Bellegor are kinda messed up) or other aspects, but Agency in D:OS is backwards. You'll be dealing with a quest, getting to enjoy it, and the quest will cut off (be impossible to finish by design) until you've reached some later arbitrary point (finished/started other quests) . cRPG's often do some of this -- and that's fine -- but in D:OS it seems to be more or less the norm and there is no acknowledgment (single line of dialogue, anything) that the quest might be solvable later. Also, there is no story or setting logic tying one quest that cannot be finished with whatever quest that will allow it to finish later. Larian expects you to shut up, play along, and guess what they expect you to do (choice a, b, or c) at the exact moment they expect you to do it. Instead of Agency, where you would be able to make choices and follow them through, you get Interactivity, where you're supposed to derp around the gameworld and randomly bump into content. Derping and bumping is not very well suited to the (not bad in and of itself) pushy beef-gating of the gameworld. This is the kind of videogame you play by alt-tabbing to a wiki. It's like they took the backwardness of most crafting systems found everywhere -- and D:OS has just such a miserable, pointless, hacky, obtuse and arbitrary crafting system -- and designed everything else that way. Lots of fuss about stuff like being able to get inside a chest by picking the lock, crushing it, finding the key, burning it, etc. -- but that's interactivity; not Agency. Character builds are functionally the same. Wizard? Use your skills to create pools of oil and set them on fire, create static clouds to stun your enemies, etc. Ranger? Same thing, only with craftable arrows. Rogue? Fighter? Same thing, only with craftable grenades.
