Ok finally got around to playing this again post bugfix and finished the demo. I love it! The 10yo watched me for a bit and got interested too, said he wanted to try it. He literally said “it seems chill” so that is definitely coming through.
The records all having actual bespoke songs is a scream. My favorite part.
I don’t know how deep assigning houses to people is but there are a few hints so far (like the shrimp man accepting a house without stairs but saying he prefers a place near the water). The only design feedback I have is putting info like that in the character screen, like currently it says “lives in x house”, it’d be cool to add “would prefer to live near water”. I don’t know if you can even reassign houses or if giving people their preference has any mechanical effect but. The game is already pretty good at making a record of all the info you find, it’d be nice to close that loop.