The Castle of Dr. Hoot

i fw art style heavy and game

*insert thumbs up*

Good game for the price, its nice, fresh, and with a simple but interesting lore, a good first project, but it could do a little better of the day to day system like letting you skip time faster for just exploring in another run for secrets or not losing all progress of the day, maybe with another checkpoint at half of the day for example.

ruffled my feathers

To put it simply, the game is buggy and not fun to play. During one of the minigames, I walked straight through a wall. I didn't clip through it weird or at a strange angle. The entire wall just lacked any collision. Thinking maybe it was on purpose and there was some secret out of bounds, I wandered the empty map until the game progressively broke more and more and I was trapped out of frame, unable to do anything. I had to close the game and reopen it to continue playing. Also, multiple times I would try to enter a room at the same time as the in-game clock struck 3PM, and this would bug the game as well. I'd be stuck in the main lobby, unable to interact with anything, but time wouldn't progress, no characters would spawn for me to speak with, and my energy would slowly deplete until I was forced into a game over. The in-universe minigames are also strange and difficult. In the spelling one, the letters often bunch up in the same corner and you have to dig them out while they all try and run into the same corner after you move them. The computer lab minigame was just strange and confusing? There was no real tutorial for it the way there was with the other ones, you have to talk to the mouse character, and if his explanation doesn't make sense to you then you're screwed. The constellation minigame also had inconsistencies with the actual constellations when compared to the ones shown in the book, sometimes the distance between the stars is hard to discern when translating the scale. A lot of times you just have to make an educated guess, while also being careful you don't get hit by meteors. I really think this game could use some more playtesting and that would fix a ton of the issues. I feel like if whoever playtested the game had been more thorough, things like the nonexistent wall and the 3PM softlock could've been patched out prior to release.

I like the game quite a fair bit. In what I have played, it kept me on edge and I got caught off guard a fair few times. Like the other reviews have said, there is still some polish that needs to be done, but overall, I think that this is a good game to get.

I wish this game was longer! It has good potential but for me just fell a little short in terms of horror. The jumpscares rely a bit too much on loud noises and glitching visuals which is fine in moderation, but I wish the scares were more drawn out and given time to shine. The second half of the game (in the field and also with the mushrooms) is also a bit directionless which made it a bit clunky to play. The mini games are fine, and you can cycle between the two you think are easiest for easy cash. Something I hope the devs change is the time system. Basically, time doesn't pause when reading text or talking to characters, which made it so that I hauled ass through text to make sure I wasn't falling behind. Dr. Hoot has such a cute model I honestly couldn't even hate him that much.