Departure Of Darkness - DEMO

I'll be buying this day one. wow! for an alpha demo, this is great!!!  The traditional resident evil style. 2025-2026 is going to be the year of nostalgic survival horror revival: departure of darkness, phase zero, jungle rot, echoes of the living. at least 4 classic survival horror games coming out and each one stands out with it's own style. 

1. i love the menu design and tv. it's perfect and makes the game feel like a high quality playstation game that came out in the mid 90s.
2. i love your enemy design, very creative. and i learned that if you walk past the eggs in the security area they will not hatch.
3. the save room theme sounds wonderful, a little too slow, but still great. thank you for giving us unlimited saves using the fax machine.
4. the soundtrack is perfect so far, it's only a few tracks but they feel high quality, and much better and memorable than a lot of other indie horror games.
5. i like the design of emma, and the item box. i hope you have some voice actors ready, or ai voices, and it's not text only.

I do have some constructive criticism for you guys if you want.

1. i found a game stopping bug: the key that opens the office where you use the computer to turn off the metal detectors disappeared on me, i saved and reloaded my game and i think the key disappeared. i had to start over.
2. bug: on my second playthrough when i check a locked door,  the text always displays "you have successfully unlocked the door" message, even though they are still locked. the message needs to be reset each playthrough.
3. you need to change the note that warns you about the eggs so the player knows that if you run past the eggs or make a noise near them they will hatch a parasite but if you walk, the parasite won't hatch.
4. if you can later on, you should program the enemies so when you do a head shot, the zombie should stumble back and turn around, giving you a chance to shoot the parasite directly and save ammo.
5. if you can, make it so the rooms on the second floor have a different soundtrack than the rooms on the first floor.
6. a lot of the hallways look the same and it's easy to get lost. to fix this in a long hallway you can either change the wall colors or put yellow posters at one end of the hallway, blue trashcans in the middle of it, and red posters at the other end of the hallway so that visually the player can tell where they are. you can also add posters, plants, fire extinguishers near doors so players visually remember each room better.
7. this game desperately needs a map, it's easy to get lost. but if it's too difficult to put one in the game, just put more poster maps on the walls all over the airport, every hallway and large area should have one. that way you don't have to program a seperate map view into the game.
8. the airport needs more posters and signage to be realistic and believable. honestly just use ai to generate some ads for fake airline companies or products.
9. the footstep sounds terrible. i'm sorry, it just doesn't sound right. it sounds like gunshots in the distance. try some free sound effects and add echo and reverb to the footsteps so they sound like they are in a large airport. if you want something more realistic, use the quieter footsteps in all rooms, and the echoed and reverbed footsteps in all large areas at the airport. (resident evil 2  1998 did this, they changed the footstep effect depending on what room you were in.)
10. the sound effect that plays when you bump into a wall should be more "muffled" like a soft bump, because right now it sounds like she bashed her head in the wall, lol.
11. there's something wrong with the movement, when i run up to a door and hit the button to check it, it's like the character gets stuck in the wall a little bit, and i have to back out because emma won't turn or gets stuck turning after checking doors and objects.
12. the area of effect for checking objects is too small. you have to be very close to an object to pick it up or check it, maybe expand the area of effect more.
13. I wish there was auto aim.

i ran the product and game design blog chrisnorstrom.com (it's coming back soon) and love game development and indie games, especially zombie / dinosaur and survival horror. let me know if you guys need a game tester. i can sign a notarized nda and email it back.

cool

Do you plan on releasing this this year or next year?