I found the puzzles quite fun, and they get progressively larger and more elaborate as you get further into the game. The ambiance also progresses, with a surprising diversity of environments. I found the exploration quite entertaining and engaging. The game ran great. But as most others have said, the combat greatly reduced my enjoyment of this game, to the point I'm not finishing it. I think I understand the artistic vision behind it, as the fragility of the protagonist makes the enemy encounters stressful and unnerving. Heck, at specific points your own body attacks you, like an auto-immune problem, taking 1 hit point (you have 8), so the fragility of your life is clearly something the developer thought about and is a gameplay item. My problem is that it's too hard: aiming the piston-gun is difficult for me, and rather than perform reliably head-shots (which one-shot the quadrupeds), I hit the body, or worse, outright miss. The gun has a 4 second recharge time, and the quadrupeds have 6 hit points. The amount of damage they take, with such long recharge times, makes combat quite punishing. Some punishment is expected, but the current amount feels excessive. This dives into the second issue, which is repetition. A game like this derives a lot of value from the novelty, either the aestherics of levels, or just the unease & lack of familiarity with levels. Key to the horror and unease that's in the game, arguably a key reason to get it, is this novelty. Because I keept dying, I kept retrying the same areas over, and over, and over... by the 15th time, you've memorized where the enemies spawn, where their projectiles clip terrain, where the lines of sight are, and you've zoned-out from the cut-scenes and animations; the game became predictable and familiar. THIS game should never become that. And still I die... I feel a setting that eases the combat so as to make areas less repetitive and aiming less punishing would go a long way towards improving my experience.
