I went ahead and tried the game and I have to say I was drawn in by the description of your story. I didn't really have a favorite character, but I would probably play if the game was polished a bit more. This was my experience playing the game for the first time.
The title is designed very appealing and the music is very nice. Is the font the same as the title font? It would make it look more uniform if it was. Also putting a little more space between the Start, Load, and End could help with not accidently going to the load screen instead of the start. Then adding some more padding between End and the ground would even it out. I'm not familiar with novelty, so maybe on the title screen add a link that shows the instructions for the game since there isn’t anything like preferences available of the main menu.
When I started the game I noticed right away there wasn’t a rollback function. It’s not required by any means and is really just a person preference. However it lead me to trying to go back to the start to read a line because I missed one. At first I hit the menu button thinking I might find instructions and it took me all the way back to the start without a confirmation. I wasn’t that far into the game, but that would be rather irksome if I had found out much later in the game. Then when I hit start again it brought up the load screen with no saved files instead of actually starting the game.
I’m not sure if this is a part of novelty or if the buttons are off on your main screen. It was kind of confusing to be honest, and the back button didn’t seem to take the first time. Other than that I really like the design layout for your load/save screen.
Anyways, I finally got to the opening and to the game. My first impression was that it didn’t catch my attention right away. The grey screen and main character standing in the middle felt static as she was giving her monologue. My suggestion for fixing this is to use elements from the writing to create effects in the game, take away your main character at the start and create a blinking effect into the world she’s in. It could be black, but you could use a black background with shadows to add depth. Even adding slight movement of the whole background can simulate confusion or feel weak.
I really like the music you’ve chosen for the game and think it’s done well to keep the mood of the piece. Yet, try adding ambience to establish new areas and new scenes. You don’t need random talking or birds singing in each scene, but it helps with the feel of the environment.
Overall, it’s a good start, but needs polishing. The writing is fine, but there are a lot of times where things just didn’t feel believable and need to be changed or redefined. I was very confused at the time period of your game and its setting. It’s all right for the speakers to use modern language, but it’s confusing when you use a term like “gun” and then in the next few lines “carriage”. Also identifying with a known place like England leads to a lot of expectations. Even if this is historical fiction you need the research to make things sound believable.
Alicia is so contradicting. She says she has duties, but then goes off to escape her responsibilities and is very childish. I can’t pin point her age, but she doesn’t seem to care at all that she made a pact with a demon or who tried to assassinate her. She has people at her exposal. I don’t see why someone hasn’t come to her to give her a report on what happened or that she hasn’t demanded a report right away. She doesn’t seem to have a strong motive at the start and appears to be a very immature Queen and naïve person who thinks that a black cloak could stop someone from not recognizing her.
I'm not saying it's a bad, but I did stop playing the demo after she met Elliot. It just wasn't believable enough for me. Good luck with the project.
If you can't, that's fine. I'll just stalk - I mean ogle - I mean look at Seth on the thread.