Here are my initial thoughts;
The game genre seems an interesting mix of sci-fi and fantasy RPG. Perhaps as the story continues, the game will lean more to one than the other. This is not bad thing as it’s always good to try something new. But there is nevertheless a danger here that one side will burden the other.
The game has RPG elements, or at least appears to. Personally, i am not too much of a fan for RPG elements in IF because i feel that perfect choices can still lead to failure through bad luck and RPG randomness. Nevertheless, some people really like this so it’s by no means negative.
The presentation is good now the window fills the browser. I really like the pictures. I think they improve the IF experience, although some people disagree on this point. but i like them. I actually think there should be a setting to make the pictures larger. The same for the text. it would be sufficient to have settings “small, medium or large” for both pictures and text.
One of the pictures did not appear. At the Mantis River, the Dorges picture was blank. Not sure if there was meant to be one here, but i got a blank box. All the others worked.
The game save dialog box is a nice touch.
ok. so my main point about the game design is that it felt too linear. There weren’t enough choices. Many places had just one choice - which isn’t a choice. Some places had two, but you couldn’t choose one of them (eg use the spell if you’ve got it. use the darts if you’ve got them etc) which meant you didn’t have any choice after all.
Obviously, it would be nice if the choices you can’t choose could be greyed out in the UI. But that’s just a UI refinement.
Another idea is, consider adding clickable words in the dialog for objects. These clicks would give additional info on the object and additional interactivity.
For example, in the hut there are many things including a book and a skull;
Above that, on a bowing shelf, you inspect a row of books. One in particular catches your eye. It reads Land of Milk and Hell. You slowly pull out the old-looking book and lay it on the workshop counter.
So here, the game has you automatically pick up the book. It would be nicer to have a click-link for the book that has the player pick it up after clicking.
Of course, the player will do that anyway, but it gives the impression that you can interact with the world a bit more. Same for other situations where there are background things mentioned in the text. Click on them would give a bit more description and the illusion that you can look around and explore - without being too much work for authoring.
that’s about it. I enjoyed the game so far and look forward to its further development.
best of luck.
