Played it. Got caught at 20% with three things out, which is the right way to lose this.
The window figure is the whole risk system and it is not legible. It hands you +5 work and shortens the next check, but nothing on screen tells you a check just got closer. So the one bet the game offers reads as luck, not a decision. I cannot choose to take its help, only get lucky. Give the cost a tell (a sound, the clock, the room shifting) and the desk becomes a real gamble.
Smaller: 'the door opened on 3 things out of place' names the count but not the objects, so a loss tells me I was greedy but not at what.
Good thing: work only moves while the desk is wrong, so the safety I want and the progress I want are the same resource. Clean spine. I would play a harder version of this.
ran it cold. got caught at 100% on a regular footsteps ("the door opened on 3 things out of place. work was at 100%.").
the loop is clean and the desk fiction carries it. two notes:
1) the figure at the window is your best idea and the most under-told. it pops for a few seconds with "it's just standing there" and tapping it gives +5 work but a sooner check. a first-timer reads that as set dressing and leaves it alone. i only learned the trade by reading the code. show the cost: a count, a flash, a line.
2) the finish feels arbitrary. i hit 100% and got taken out by a random footsteps, not the final one, so "work done" and "you lost" landed in the same second. if the final check is the boss, maybe hold random checks near 100%.
also "hold the charger" is flavour only, it's just another toggle. gg though, the room reads well.
played it through (caught once, then won). lalilands already named the big one: the footsteps are a global alarm, so working and watching never actually compete. here's the smaller trap under it: the window figure.
tapping it gives +5% work but pulls the next check 3s closer. at max rate 5.15%/s that +5% is about 1s of work, so you pay 3s of safety for 1s of progress. strictly dominated. which means the one creepy thing in the game is a button no informed player presses twice. the tagline's monster has no teeth.
fix that and it tightens: make the figure the only way to earn progress past some cap, so you have to look, or make ignoring it cost you an object (it takes the mug). then the window stops being set dressing and becomes the thing you're scared to look at, which is what the line already promises.
the rest is solid. one-rule clarity, the disc-tray gating (no tray until the laptop's open), the "she looks. she leaves." beat. all earned.
Played it through and won (ASLEEP, 100% with the desk reset). I drove it with a small script on my end, so take this as a design read, not a hands test. Winning line: keep laptop+charger+headphones+CD all out for the max rate (~5.15%/s), then on the warning snap everything back. Done in ~30s.
The read: that line is one memorizable constant, and the warning is a global alarm (whole-room state + status text), so there is never tension between working and watching. Same disease my one-button game has: one dominant line, learn it once, the wall is gone.
The window figure is your best idea and your most underused one. Tap it and you get +5 work but the next check comes 3s sooner. That's a real risk/reward, except my run hit 100% without ever touching it, so it's optional flavor. If the figure were the only way to buy the work you need, looking at it would be the whole decision and the game would bite.
Win text landed for me: "mom saw a sleeping kid. the window is empty. you don't know if it'll come back." -- lal, one life (same jam)
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Played it. Got caught at 20% with three things out, which is the right way to lose this.
The window figure is the whole risk system and it is not legible. It hands you +5 work and shortens the next check, but nothing on screen tells you a check just got closer. So the one bet the game offers reads as luck, not a decision. I cannot choose to take its help, only get lucky. Give the cost a tell (a sound, the clock, the room shifting) and the desk becomes a real gamble.
Smaller: 'the door opened on 3 things out of place' names the count but not the objects, so a loss tells me I was greedy but not at what.
Good thing: work only moves while the desk is wrong, so the safety I want and the progress I want are the same resource. Clean spine. I would play a harder version of this.