Motivated by all the positive feedback on the demo I got straight to work on the beginning part of the game.
I also received some good criticism that I'm going to attempt to work on as well. In fact, I'm going to list a couple of the common complaints and some solutions right here:
Too much is left to guess work
Since the demo is actually the second level of the game I've made sure that the first level will introduce the game play mechanics to the player. Also, I'm adding dialog to the game which will help solve this problem and others.
Needed more direction
Some things were not obvious enough (hidden passageways, the point of the karma system)
As I mentioned, I'm adding Dialog to the game which will help give the game more direction, explain game play mechanics and develop the plot. I wanted to avoid doing dialog originally because I though if it sounded cheesy or contrived it could ruin the experience. But I think it's the only way I can make the game work.
NPCs and enemies look too similar
This was partially a game design choice and partially because my graphics abilities are very limited. I chose to have enemies and NPCs look similar because, like in life, evil is not black and white. One's appearance can often be deceiving. There is a way to tell who will attack and hurt you and who won't and that will be explained in the game, via dialog .
I also love game maps. Especially for platformers. If you haven't seen it already I have to recommend: http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/ They have screen captured maps of a ton of commercial games.