An Amnesia Custom Story based on my own Horror book. From the creator of Lifeless The Abandon, comes a new special mod "The Barn's Secrets" More screenies will come out soon, track the mod for more updates...
Firstly, it's a custom story with great potential and creativity and it is surely worth a play, but some parts and in; the whole custom story in general, is lacking some important things.
What firstly bothered me the most was the fact of the levels themselves. They were nicely detailed and very well made compared to others, but other than that, most levels didn't hold anything else. It just just that catacomb, the train station and the orphanage that I felt something was going on.
What I mean is that the levels just went by super quick. It felt like a sight-scene tour like in Amnesia A Machine for Pigs, where it's mainly the levels beautiful level design and creativity, but you don't get to embrace it properly and you just move on to the next level.
I also felt kinda lost with the story. Some parts of it actually goes away from non-common sense and becomes rather strange. I could get the basic idea of what was going on, but I felt like detail could've been put into place. (plus, I saw some grammar errors here and there too, but nothing too serious).
Also, I couldn't entirely get that immersed into what the hell was going on in the dark as being in the dark generally. The level changes went on way too quick for me to actually connect to the level and atmosphere itself. It kind of ruined the gameplay for me and I wish it didn't.
Now, time for the good stuff about this :P
Some of the levels have some very nice creativity and originality. They were nicely detailed (some way better than what I ever put effort into...) and you seem to know your stuff about detailing maps properly.
The catacombs were a pretty cool place. It's like a recreation of your prison in your first custom story. The music in that level is making it very atmospheric and it build up tension. A tip in the future is to not make the levels go by so quick. Add in some gameplay so people can actually connect to it better.
So, a quick summarisation.
Pros:
- Really creative and good looking environment
- Originality
- Custom music, sounds
- Custom in general
Cons:
- Story was not too easy to connect to
- Levels are not very long in general
- Very short when you know what to do (took me 20 minutes to finish it again)
- Lacking atmosphere
8/10 Worth a run
Great map!
Great ideas.
Good details not TOP notch but reasenably good!
8\10
Just that jumping... tis isnt Spider man game!
TL;DR Version: The story had potential to be very good but was ultimately a disappointing experience.
-PROS-
-Maps are generally well designed.
-Music is really good.
-Voice Acting is well done.
-Scripting is good.
-Atmosphere is also really good.
-CONS-
-Too short for proper story and character development.
-The Monsters and their encounters.
-Not that scary.
I'm sorry to give this one such a low score but I have to say it. The Barn's Secrets sucks. I only played the story twice, beating the game on my second try due one of the flaws in this game that I will get into later.
My main gripe with this game is that while the story seems like it would have been good, the way it was executed was very poor. From what I got out of the game it seems like it was supposed to be taken seriously, but failed to make me care about anything and anyone, and was just laughing almost the entire game.
This game wasn't even remotely scary, with very few scares and relying only on atmosphere and visuals. The game is also very short that it feels like this was rushed, you don't even get time to get into the story because it's moving so quickly.
The Enemies in this game are a joke, there is only two "monsters" in the entire game. Both aren't technically even real monsters, one is just a statue entity that just teleports in a scripted event. The only other enemy, I won't give away what it is exactlly, is very underwhelming and was laughing how absurd it was. The one major thing with the enemy encounters was that you don't get enough time to run away to safety, they always manage to kill you just seconds after being able to get back in control, this happened to me with the first "monster" encounter the first time I played this game and just gave up on the story.
There are other things I found to be very annoying but I've spent too much time writing this up so just read the TL;DR version for my summed up thoughts including a Pros & Cons list.
Overall this custom story was very good. Very well made lighting, and a pretty good story. My main problem was that I couldn't interact with random objects, which ruins the original amnesia vibe a bit, and that the monster encounters were confusing and instant, but other then that it's a good, short cs.
8/10 - Wrecx Approved B)
That's very nice custom story!
Love the story line and custom entities, things etc. But there's still some confusing moments with chases.
Excellent mod.
Incredible and unique. The only bad thing of this cs was a story. Besides, it's short.
Anyway, it's playable. You can also play this cs very well with 1.3.1 patch!
Soo.. pretty short but not bad! Custom and detailed environment is the main strength of this CS. Scare factor is good enough, although the encounters are very predictable and not well designed.
On the other hand... Most of the maps consist of 2-3 rooms, which kills the atmosphere, as each level has its own style and music, and they are just constantly switching way too fast. The story does not make any sense to me at some parts, for example: (SPOILER!) I am wondering in the deep caverns and all of a sudden I find myself at the entrance of my house and the character is just like 'well I am tired so lets go to bed', or at the end when I finished that 'spirit killer' liquid, the grandpa comes in and just takes me to my bed. That could not have been a dream though because then that liquid should not have appeared in the inventory afterwards. These parts I got confused at.
Anyways, there are many custom stories out there which are much worse than this. It is worth a try, thanks for the experience!
Beautiful level design
Story was really immersive and the voice acting was phenomenal!