Reviews - PuerNomine

I'm glad a lot of people seemed to enjoy this mod, but I could never connect with it. The levels were GIGANTIC, which would have been great except they were barren and boring to explore. Lots of been-there-seen-that moments, familiar scares, predictable puzzles, and White Night references that only expose how much weaker this mod is by comparison. The ending was actually well-done and mildly interesting (and there was some chilling original music), but I found this dull and unimaginative up until then with an indiscernible script that distracted from the immersive experience. Again, a lot of people like this mod and that's awesome, but it just didn't work for me.

This is only the second 10/10 I've given (the other being La Caza) to an Amnesia mod. The setting is phenomenally horrific and immersive. If Hell exists, it's probably something like this. The makers of this game are absolute geniuses and have a cinematic eye to visual detail. The mechanics of Amnesia are warped and reapplied so thoroughly that it hardly resembles the original game. It's terrifying. The originality is impressive and the puzzles are clever. Downsides: one platform puzzle towards the end was tedious and not very interesting and the plot could have used slightly more clarity. The problem isn't that the ending is downbeat, but that it doesn't even clarify very basic questions. It's great to have a confusing atmosphere and a few ambiguous elements, but this eventually crosses the line from, say, Mulholland Drive to Lost Highway - it just becomes boring to keep searching for metaphors and explanations when you're never on any semblance of solid ground. Still, this is a brilliant and relentlessly haunting dream of dark, disturbing things. The voice acting and original music are quite strong too.

This game was really well-designed. The mansion looked fantastic. There were a couple effective scares. The part with the portal in the library was phenomenal. It was all going well and then BAM it was over with hardly any warning. The ending was just ridiculously anticlimactic.

This mod started poorly - the first map had way too many keys and was boring. But it rebounded and improved considerably after that. This ended up being one of the better mods I've played. Interesting story. Solid voice acting. A handful of really, really great scares. Some of the levels were too barren, but there were also some great innovations. I'm excited for the next part of the story.

Superb custom story. What a bizarre, Lynchian setting. Way too many 'wtf' moments to count (Washington and the Back to the Future reference come to mind). Super, super creative with the secret passageway, monsters, storyline, and otherworldly elements. The only big downside was the the writing and dialogue were all terrible (and all seemed like they were said/written by the same person instead of different people). But the game mechanics were awesome. Just when I thought these mods were getting stale I find something fresh and often scary. Great job.

An incredible demonstration of the medium's capacity to deliver art intertwined seamlessly with scares and entertainment. A masterpiece of atmosphere slowly building suspense. Make sure to play not to win but to be immersed in the environment, as helpfully included in the instructions. The water monster is terrifying. Maybe a bit too short and the puzzles feel a bit at odds with much of the style of the game, but these are only superficial gripes with one of the scariest and most unique gaming experiences I've come across.

By far the best mod I've played and well-deserved winner of the original contest. Scary, challenging without being excessively difficult, and very original. The interactions and goals vary, which is nice. You have to do a lot of things (potions, explosions, switches) to move through the game instead of just constantly finding keys. The setting was neat, very different from that of the original game, and a lot of fun to explore. The presence of voice acting was a plus. Gets really scary towards the end, especially with the knights. Excellent storyline with a strong ending. Frictional Games should include this along with Justine as part of the game.

I loved how minimalistic this mod was. It really pushes the artistic elements of Amnesia, making for an incredibly engrossing experience. I think a lot of other reviewers are missing the point of the original game, which was not to play to win but to put yourself into an environment, and this mod captures that almost perfectly. The atmosphere was stunning - the beginning establishes that you were in the freezing cold, an element I never lost over the long course of the game. The empty rooms, vacant buildings, and icy landscapes were all incredibly creepy, and searching for items in these gigantic environments was actually quite fun. Kind of like an old "I Spy Spooky Mansion" computer game I used to play, but with monsters who will kill you. I've seen other complaints, but I thought the pacing here was masterful. The dog was awesome, as was the final environment. Basically a super-long buildup for a great ending. Personally, I thought it was really cheap having the narrator collapse towards the end without any real explanation and the game transferring from sneaking around in dark corners to a generic escape and then the usual "I've been expecting you" nonsense. The biggest problem, by far, though, was that I had to start over near the very end. I never got the hammer (and didn't even know there was one) and then got stuck in the cell where the hammer was needed to escape. I don't know if anyone else had this problem, but this game needs to be updated to either add a second way to escape the cell or make getting the hammer mandatory to move on at an earlier stage.

There is practically no story! Just running around for no apparent reason. Who's escaping? Why? I didn't like that there was only one villain either, and that he never went away. It was fairly scary without relying too much on jumps scares, so if the goal of the creator was to figure out how to use the tools at their disposal, then this succeeded. But I never knew what was going on, and that matters a great deal. The ending (was there one?) was super-anticlimactic too. Everything felt arbitrary. So the hammar can't break the lock, but the bone saw can? Bleh. Where is this even taking place? In the largest house in the world? Why does the door open at the end? What does the last key do? Way too many keys and predictable monster appearances after you get them. Still, the lighting and like I said the scares were at least there.