You are Maxwell you wake up in your house with amnesia and start to uncover your towns dark secrets.
underrated mod, very good atmosphere and good puzzles, nice!
Excellent, but flawed. Bugs, bad grammar and a rushed ending (especially an ending full of more bugs...), but overall too good to go below 9, cuz of how refined the gamplay felt (despite the bugs) and how fun it was. Probably one of the most fun mods I have played for Amnesia so far!
This mod was the biggest transformation I have ever played really.
When I started, and played the first half, I got the general idea of a beginner's mod. I do admit, there are some rookie mistakes, but nothing I can't look over by how the mod's second half turned out.
Literally, rarely have I been so amazed by a quality increase. The dungeon and sewer parts were exceptional, the mod featured the best encounters with pigs I have ever seen. Your intention was to mix TDD and AMFP, and you performed that perfectly in my opinion.
The mod throughout has generally good-looking design, the ending parts lean into exceptional. The monster encounters, altho the smaller pigs are a bit overused, had some excellent moments. Music, atmosphere all in place. Bossfight was a good addition altho pretty weird. For a first mod to nail this so right, is very rare. Good job!
Now we arrive at the only weak point everyone could expect, the quality of the notes and the narrative. You tried to also mix the story of aformentioned 2 games, but you chose the most generic parts of it. The notes are still full of grammar errors as of latest patch, and the story stretches from very basic to barely existent.
Now, I still rate this mod with 8.5, for encouragement, it was your first mod, had a lot of secrets to collect, multiple endings, even though with not much impact. I contacted you about a possible rewriting of the story, worst case I can help you out with your english. It'd be sad that such a great mod is held down by its shallow writing, so let's try to change that. I didn't encounter any bugs, save for a small issue with a checkpoint, left a comment on that too.
8.5/10, exceptional first mod, and possibly the best one featuring pigs in the modding roster! I'm glad you came back to it to release it, and I'm hoping to see more stuff from you.
Fantastic.
Positives:
- Very good level design
- Creativity
- Spooky encounters
Negatives:
- Story is terrible
- Grammar is awful
- Bad pacing
- Map name bug
- Electric pig enemy is so annoying
Summary:
Story:
One major problem with a lot of mods, some of my own old mods included, is copy pasted concepts from Amnesia or other games without any understanding of why it works as well as it does.
In the vanilla game, Daniel drank the amnesia mixture to deal with the shock and guilt in order to stand a chance of stopping Alexander. What is the purpose for Maxwell to drink the amnesia mixture here? Really? The pigs have yet to escape into the world, right? Unless you get the bad ending, they never do. And Maxwell and the others didn't know what the core was capable of, so... what is the reason for Maxwell to forget his memories here?
Just because the vanilla game does it does not mean you have to follow a similar plot.
The rest of the plot is close to a copy paste of the vanilla game also, or otherwise extremely cliché "Oh no we found some artifact and it's killing us all now". This concept cannot be interesting any more. It has been used to death.
Grammatical mistakes every once in a while is one thing. In this mod though, reading a sentence without grammatical mistakes happened occasionally. I used to not bother much with grammar either, but as I have grown older, I have learned how unproffesional poor grammar is, especially when reading is a big part of a mod/game.
Like for christ sake dude, you wrote "Mawell" in the bad ending credits instead of "Maxwell".
And please don't write things like "U" instead of "You". To friends sure, but in a professional environment (like while writing a letter, essay, story for a mod, etc) it's very silly.
Pacing:
This mod is terrifying. You used the monsters very well here, same with music and overall level design. However, you used monsters way too often. Do you know why the vanilla game have several safe hubs? Because meeting monsters in every single map all the time makes them annoying and frustrating rather than scary.
It went from being scary to me saying "oh **** off already" when the pig spawned in for the hundredth time with no break in between.
Other issues:
Your map names must have unique names. Giving them basic names can cause them to clash with other mods, which it did for me. Suddenly, a map from a different mod loaded in. Since you did not add any autosaves (despite the starting screen while starting this mod for the first time said it would) I was forced to restart from the beginning after playing through a fifth or so of the mod. This is a classic beginner mistake.
In the future, name your maps something unique. For example: "Amnesia Secrets Storage". Or "AS Storage room". Anything that is unique to your specific mod.
The electric pig causing the screen to flicker is extremely annoying. I know that isn't your fault, but I wish you wouldn't use it. This is especially annoying for people with autism or other disorders that may cause light sensitivity. This enemy model is just awful.
Conclusion:
Level design is really good for the most part. Good music choice and overall scary. Puzzles were a bit too basic to begin with but got better later on. This is unfortunately somewhat ruined by a terribly cliché story with grammar so awful it completely ruins the immersion as soon as you pick up a note.
I can excuse some of the issues as beginner mistakes or personal preferences, but the story is inexcusable and is holding this mod back a decent bit.
7/10 - Good
Positives:
-Absolutely awesome design. Especially the maps at the end. Nice detail,
creativity and uniqueness
-Scariest mod I have played after 2018 (actually true)
-Some uniqueness with puzzles (only for original ones)
Neutrals: (won't affect the score)
-The map near the end was way too reminiscent of Choir - Main Hall of the
original game. It even had the same unfitting menu music in it. Not too
annoying to be a negative however.
-Way to many doors were locked, blocked or jammed, making the gameplay very
linear at times. Again, not too annoying to be a negative
Negatives:
-The story was very, very weak and the grammar in the notes was absolutely
terrible
-Not only in notes, but the grammar at item names and mementos was rerally bad
as well
-Some repetition with the monster encounters at the end
Story: 3/10
Yeah. Unfortunately a huge miss. The story starts with the most cliché note of all time, and the story never develops into anything. All of the story was written in notes, and given the awful grammar, understanding them was super difficult at times. Unfortunately the weakest part of the mod.
Level Design: 10/10
Absolutely phenomenal. A lot of details, unique layouts and creative areas. Crystal clear 10/10 here, with my favourites being the Sewer machinery areas, the last maps and pretty much everything else too. Design-wise probably the best mod of the entire year.
Scare Factor: 10/10
It has been ages since my last 10/10 for the scare factor, yet here I am now. The monster encounters were absolutely terrifying, timed perfectly, and teased properly. The fear of the unknown was present here clearly. No cheap scares, great atmosphere and scary overall.
Puzzles: 8/10
The first puzzles were straight up copied from the main game, but towards the end they became better and better overall. Fixing the sewer machine for example was really fun. They were not vague at all, and I could solve them with no real problems.
Overall: Such a great custom story ruined by nonexisting story and terrible grammar. With a proofreader and a more throughoutly thought story, thus would have been an absolute masterpiece.
Score: 7,75 = 8/10 - Great
Outstanding and creative mod, great details and layouts, Atmospheric maps.
10/10, Masterpiece
Very good 👍