Demo Feedback

[splendidlyimperfect]

I just finished the demo (well, I quit when I ended up driving the trailer into the lake) and I really wanted to love it. I love tiny homes, I love decorating games, I hyperfixated on House Flipper for months - this seemed right up my alley. Unfortunately, most of the demo was more frustrating than fun. I do think it has potential, but with a lot of refining and improvement.

Things I liked: I loved the setting - the little island was so cute, and having it populated with people and houses and buildings made it feel real and lived-in. The options for customizing item color, texture, pattern, etc., were also really great.

Things that need improvement:
- Lack of instruction: The demo throws you in without any instructions and the controls aren't intuitive. A tutorial for basic actions would be really helpful. Painting/tiling is particularly unclear, and it would help to go through each of the actions and give a brief overview on how they work.
- Room/quest organization: The "completion percentage" on the side of the screen tracks the whole home, but the quests are tracked room by room, and the disconnect is confusing. Tracking each room's progress separately would make more sense, or even showing each room as a portion of the entire percentage.
Painting/tiling mechanics: This system is very confusing. First, walls and floors/ceilings should be separated - or at the very least, separate painting from tiling so you don't get the "out of paint" message while laying tiles. Also, using a paintball-style spray gun for wall painting clouds the screen and feels out of place - a paint roller would make more sense. Including a mini tutorial for this would be really helpful. In addition, there should be a "picker" tool to paint or texture-match with existing walls and floors/ceilings. When I accidentally tiled over a portion of the wrong wall, I wasn't able to fix it because I couldn't find the matching paint.
- Accidental selling: You shouldn't be able to sell items that aren't supposed to be sold. I had to restart the whole game because I accidentally sold things that I couldn't put back. At the very least, include an "undo" feature so you can recover accidentally sold items.
- Buying multiple items: There should be an option to purchase multiple copies of the same item, rather than having to go back into the store and re-purchase each item manually.
- Object placement/centering: Some objects don't fit properly, like the lamps on the desk hanging off the edges. Also, some of the required items are impossible to center in the rooms (like the sink/mirror in the bathroom), which is frustrating, particularly in the smaller spaces.

Things I strongly disliked:
- The driving mechanics: This is a dealbreaker for me, and if this is a mandatory part of the full game, I won't be buying it. Driving to the shop was bad enough, but trying to deliver the trailer was a nightmare and I ended up quitting the game after landing in the lake twice. This mechanic doesn't align with the actual focus of the game and I'm certain I'm not the only player that would be turned away by it. If the driving stays, it should be optional, maybe replaced by a cutscene.
- Music: This might just be personal taste, but the background music was very twangy and bizarre and didn't feel relaxing.

Bugs: I fell through the wall of the loft several times. Also, I couldn't place rugs after placing other furniture, it was only possible to place them in a clear space.

Overall: I'll keep it on my wishlist because I think it has potential. I've seen a lot of other similar feedback to mine, so hopefully it's taken into consideration and the game is given some tweaks and polish before being released.