Alright, I tried the game for a bit and will share my impressions and feedback. I realize this is a small project done by someone in their free time without a budget, so I'm fully aware we can't expect results to be what they would be if someone were specialized at narrative, someone else at dialogue, another at quest design, music or leveling. I also know this is a work in progress, so things might change, but that's all the more reason to give my honest opinion instead of praise only. Please don't take my words too harshly, because I will list a few things I'd personally consider worthy of improvement for me to be interested in continuing the game.
First impression: Visual: Very nice, gives the feeling of looking at an old storybook lying on a wooden table.
First acoustic impression: Too noisy. I appreciate that it's possible to regulate music and ambient sound separately, but with headphones on the default setting is far too loud, and even at the lowest, it's still a bit intrusive and dominates the whole impression. Turning it off is not a ideal solution though, because a lot of work went into that, so I personally would think the lowest volume should be lower. Music should add to the general atmosphere and frame the experience of reading through the game, not distract from it or overshadow it. Maybe it's different over speakers, but I always play with headphones.
I'm not 100% sure it's only the volume though, the music feels a bit dominating because in my (again, very personal) opinion it doesn't quite fit the atmosphere of the game. The synthesizer sound reminds me more of a sci-fi game, gives off vibes more like the music in Mass Effect than in fantasy, and the fact that the music keeps up the same repetitive pattern no matter if I'm talking in the street of the village, fighting a monster in a swamp or exploring a haunted house doesn't really help to add to the experience instead of distracting from it.
Another factor were the ambient sounds. For example, when I entered the tavern, there was background chatter and clattering of plates or something, which rightly gave the impression of entering a crowded common room, but the music remained the same all the way. Maybe it would help the atmosphere if the music stopped or at least changed a bit in a surrounding with ambient sounds.
What looks absolutely great are the illustrations, but as we know, they were AI generated, so that beauty can be a curse. If I see such detailed, warm, engaging and lively pictures, I kind of expect the rest of the game to live up to that, because no matter how rational we are, the first impression of what we see shapes our expectations. If the pictures looked a bit less refined, I would maybe see the rest in a less critical light and be more forgiving, but if the visuals are stunning, they clash too much with the content and that discrepancy has a negative impact on my overall impression, I'm afraid.
Another positive aspect I noted is how choice is implemented even when just entering the first village. As you can see in my screenshot above, there are several choices and each of them leads to a sub-choice. I can, for example, visit the tavern or the general store when firs entering the village and choosing "visit a place".
When I decide to talk to a random stranger, I get indeed a random choice of several NPCs, it's not just a pool of 3 or 4 people, and each of them has various options to interact with them again, like Suzanne here:
As we can see, the text here is written from the perspective of the omniscient narrator, not the one of the exploring player, probably to flesh out the story and give background insight on every character, but it feels a bit inconsistent with the fact that other scenes show us only our vague outside impression from the player perspective. Maybe that's comparable to being able to hover over a character in a video game and see their biography and stats though, it just feels a bit different because here it's all written down on the pages in the same way of course.
The dialogue choices you can see there have been the same for all NPCs I have seen so far. The first question about service leads to the NPC either offering you an item or a herb or someting like that for sale, or in one other case to teach me Persuasion, but I didn't have the required minimum intelligence for that yet at level 1.
The rumors make the person share a random rumor about the area or faraway places, which may or may not be relevant at some point or be a reason for further exploration in the future. I haven't tested if the same person always tells the same rumor in every playthrough or if they draw from a pool, but it adds an interesting flavour either way.
"Can I help you?" prompts the NPC to give you a quest that you can then either accept or decline.
Why does the powerful sorceress who uses her great talent to protect the village from evil need the random stranger to convince her husband the werewolf to do more housework?
For the same reason that so many games make me kill rats at level 1 I suppose, it's old tradition, but from a text-based game I would have expected a little more consistency or someting more imaginative maybe? The very short and simple statement she makes seems a stark contrast to the elaborate description of her background story.
And then the pitfalls of open world: You go to the house, try to talk to the werewolf, but you need Persuasion to convince him. Ah, so that's why, it's linked to that person who offers to teach me persuasion but I wasn't smart enough yet!
I can alternatively fight the werewolf or flee, but that old lady didn't want me to fight him, he's strong and regenerates, so I leave the house instead.
How about that Persuasion? I need a level. There was a guy at the tavern who claims to have seen me in the forest before, but he will only tell me about the people who were after me if I retrieve his boots from a swamp 11 hours away. So I travel to the swamp, there's some monster I successfully fight.
Combat is text, shows me options to fight with dexterity, 4 vs D6, or strength, 4 vs D10 and then shows the result and the follow-up action, that's nicely done.
I get the boots, get back, hear him describe the robed figures and hear from someone else where they had seen the symbol on those robes. I get a level!
Point into intelligence, and off I go to learn Persuasion. Unfortunately I had already accepted a quest from that person who offers to teach me Persuasion. Where is she? I go to the main page of the village, and now "Visit a place" includes the werewolf home and the house of that other person, who said she'd wait there for me when I have done whatever it was I agreed to do for her in some faraway place.
When I go to that place, I can only tell her that I haven't done her quest yet, the dialogue option about the services she offers is no longer available.
So if the NPCs I talk to in a street appear in a random order, and sometimes one service offered by one person is required to solve the quest from another person (the skill you learned, the shovel or torch you bought, that kind of thing), it would be vitally important to have access to that service dialogue even after accepting the quest from that person. Otherwise I need to do the quest from person 3 to be able to talk to her and get that skill or item needed for the quest of person 5, but for the quest from person 3 I first need to travel to a completely different place where I get killed because I'm only level 1 and I have to fight a tough monster there, but to reach a higher level I must do more quests, or I need to buy the armour for gold that I only get if I do the quest from person 6, but person 6's quest can only be done with the item from person 1, and so on...
In the end, you don't know what you need when. Of course it's alright to pick up a few quests and only be able to do some of them much later, or to run into stuff you're underleveled for, but the way it's built now, that gets tedious very quickly because in the end there's practically only one order in which a certain chain of events can be done. Unless you pick up ALL quests from all NPCs and go to do them to see which can be done easily at this point, and possibly have to restart the game then because you died trying.
Especially because in a text-based game, unlike one where you see the street and its people, it's much harder to keep track of who is where and offers what. And running into unforeseen trouble is fine if you visually explore an area and walk around, but if reading the text is all you can do to interact and explore, running into obstacle loopsgis more frustrating.
Long story short, if random order of quests and no level scaling are intended, people who offer services should have that dialogue option available even when you have accepted their quest. "quest accepted" = "no other interaction possible until quest is resolved" is bad.
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