I'm glad you liked the art style! As for the monsters, the idea is that they are hiding in specific locations to mislead you even if you memorize the drawing. This is largely the reason why the art style is simplistic and the drawings are in black and white only; since you can only see lines and nothing is filled in, it's a matter of observation and trial and error using the glowing paint. So yes, the core game loop is essentially a memory game with "on the spot" thinking thrown in. 

The game has a fairness system in place when it comes to painting required areas: if a monster overlaps any required paint areas, said areas become optional. Otherwise it would be unfair if you were required to paint some of the monster to advance. Though, I will admit the monster "detection" areas are far from perfect and could have used a bit more tuning. Also, to make painting less tedious, the "background" part of the drawings are not required, only the objects and scenery are required. However, looking back, I think there should be more information given to the player in regards to that because for some levels it can be hard to tell what is required and what is the background.

Thank you for your feedback! It means a lot to us.

The idea is that the monsters are hiding in specific spots to mislead you even if you memorize the drawing. Currently, the only hint at monsters is with the glowing paint, but it was intentionally made unreliable due to the randomness of the light flickering, which added to the fear aspect. However, I'm not opposed to adding subtle cues to hint that there is a monster nearby to make the "trial and error" aspect of the game a lot less unforgiving and to make it a bit easier to detect monsters (without making it too obvious). I can understand the frustration of having to start all over after spending a lot of time on a drawing, especially in the later levels; fortunately, we have plans to add a "free draw" mode in a future update so players can paint as much as they want without needing to worry about monsters. There are also plans to add a difficulty system, which changes the quota and how many monsters are hiding at a time. We'd like to give players more flexibility with the game to ensure the best possible experience while still providing a fair challenge. 

Thank you for the feedback. I will admit that the later levels can be a bit too much with the amount of hiding spots I placed, especially levels 5 and 6. It was mainly to demonstrate the difficulty curve of the game, which is far from perfect but it's decent enough for a demo. Despite that I ensured several "safe spots" would remain, in which no monsters are near, allowing players a guaranteed starting point (hiding spots are placed manually in the drawing and only a handful are active at a time). 

Originally there was only going to be one monster that could hide in one of several hiding spots for each level. But this would end up making the game too easy and not really scary in my opinion because once the monster is spotted early on, the rest of the level is basically free. To keep the tension high, levels would have more than one active hiding spot so even if you memorize the drawing, there would still be the risk of not knowing where the monster is actually hiding or how many are hiding at a time. The only exception is level 1, which will only ever have one hiding spot for the monster because it's an easy tutorial level to ease new players into the game's mechanics.

Yeah, this game spooked us a few times when playing through it. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thx :)

Adding the monsters and their hiding spots for each drawing was fun, even if it got a little tedious in the later levels. Thanks for playing!

I love that description! It's very funny. 

To answer your question: VioletNightro first came up with the idea of a "lame" horror painting game in which you paint a black piece of paper, one that represented "darkness", and then I added the monster twist shortly after. Originally, you would simply paint the picture to reveal a "scary" monster, but the idea soon evolved into what Paint in the Dark ended up being: paint the picture and avoid painting any monsters to not get jumpscared. The game was envisioned to be part memory game and somewhat trial and error without being unfair. 

The "horror" aspect was initially meant to be satirical and very lame (because it's Lame Jam), but we ended up loving the concept so much that the lame aspect flew over our heads, even though "make a lame game" wasn't a strict rule for this jam. We're very happy with how the game turned out in the end. 

Thanks for playing! We had a lot of fun making this game even though the painting mechanic was a pain to set up. Is there anything about the game you think can be improved on?

Thank you for your kind words and for playing the game!

A time constraint mode sounds very interesting. It's definitely something we wouldn't mind adding to the game for a future update. Thank you for your feedback!

Ah yes that would make the game ever more spookier and a panic thanks for the suggestion.