You are Ezra Fischer, a wealthy jailer at Munich, Germany. One day, quite suddenly, a mysterious man by the name of Albert Luther began to purchase large swaths of your prisoners for vague reasons regarding 'needed laborers'. He paid you handsomely, so it was easily brushed off. However, the secretive nature of his operation, and his lack of a response to any of your letters began to make you suspicious. After several reports, and anomalous events, it becomes clear that something ancient and evil is being released into your world, with it's origin at the very place where you sent your prisoners. You leave everything behind one night to resolve it all.
Positives:
- Good level design overall
- Good monster encounters and pretty scary overall
- A lot of creativity
Negatives:
- A lot of flickering textures
- Poor testing and bugfixing
- Theme of the story is old and cliché and notes often repeat themselves
- Some puzzles made no sense at all
- Text sometimes disappear way too fast
- Some odd puzzles, like the protagonist somehow knowing he needs to climb a pipe to reach a key despite no hints of this
- I'm not sure how tying a string to a table and a door and pulling the table is going to break said door, but okay
- Chipper appears beneath the rubble after breaking the wall. Easy to miss. Why not return it to our inventory instead?
Summary:
The story itself isn't bad, it's just not trying anything new. The story about different worlds, orbs and portals is so overdone at this point. It is extremely difficult to make it interesting at all.
You really need testers next time. They can tell you things you as the mod creator don't think about. You know what text says and where everything is, but other people playing this for the first time won't.
Here are the biggest issues in the mod:
- Some parts need invisible barriers to prevent players from jumping over/through obstacles and leave the map.
- A lot of flickering textures found. I can excuse a few, but there's a limit. This mod has way too many of them to ignore.
- The ladder puzzle made no sense at all. I previously dropped down a large shaft and took no damage at all. The fall where I had to place the ladder was way smaller. So small, in fact, that I could ignore the ladder after placing it there, drop down and take no damage what so ever. Not to mention how weird it is to place one part of the ladder, then somehow connect the other one to it with tar. It was completely unnecessary.
- Reloading a save in the map with the prison bar part you had to remove broke it (could no longer remove it).
- Doing puzzles in the "wrong order" in several maps will break the mod completely and prevent progress. This is the biggest reason why you need testers. You must always try and see what happens if you change the order of objectives and never assume players will do things exactly as you did.
Conclusion:
Level design is creative and well made. Same with the monster encounters.
It's rough around the edges but I can clearly see a lot of effort here.
Do not take all the negative points too harshly. I think you have great potential and I want to see you improve, because despite all the bad things, this mod is actually quite enjoyable.
Good work, recommended.
7/10 - Good
Huge wasted potential. Awesome story considering it is the first one of the creator but still I am dissapointed at how great this story could be, considering portals and other worlds are involved, why not let us travel through them, confusing story at times and overall unsatisfying
Buggy mess, weird puzzles, cheap scares
Excellent overall.
-there are some parts of the maps that might need tweaking, either because a material or two have some transparency when they shouldn't, or because walls aren't connecting properly making what's behind them visible, or (the worst one I encountered) hidden platforms that make it possible to place yourself out of map boundaries within the first 2 minutes of the Custom Story (jump onto the window ledges, and instead of jumping right to the broken window, jump left towards the ledge around the corner of the building)
Positives:
-Really good basic design, and occasionally creative too
-Amazing scares which made me scream a couple of times
-A big variety of puzzles and items throughout
Neutrals/Nitpicks (won't affect the score):
-Some handholding (especially with the key on the pipe)
-At times, there was way too much to read and little to explore
-You could glitch out the map several times. This is partially my fault, but I
had the urge to investigate. This happened at the window in Storage, and the
two boarded corridors in the Tome map (name of which I can't remember)
-Many items were missing names
Negatives:
-A lot of texture glitches in almost every map
-Story was mostly pretty average and very confusing
-A bug in the Foggy map (read below)
-Some of the puzzles, while creative, were way too easy
Story: 6/10
It wasn't your typical cliché story, but I can't really ignore the fact how confusing it was at times. So many names and terms used for each Head Dignitary, all the otherworlds and all those shenanigans made me feel really confused about what was going on. Still, it was a great attempt of a story, but the potential was much bigger.
Level Design: 8/10
Even if it was basic, it was really good. Some creativity was also seen, especially with the map with the two fallen pilars. The mod also had some good and original creative decoration ideas scattered throughout. This would have been a 9/10 perhaps, but sadly I can't ignore the amount of glitching textures all over the place.
Puzzles: 8/10
I loved the variety of puzzles here. Instead of using the boring vanilla items all the time, you actually included some rarely seen items such as the wooden crank, copper tube and the iron bar, which is a definite plus in my books. Only downside here is that the puzzles were mostly very easy, or vague (the string to the door for example). Still, good job.
Scare Factor: 8/10
Was it the scariest mod of all time? Nope, but still scary. The storage Brute scared the absolute **** out of me and there were some areas which were incredibly ominous and uneasy to play in, to mention the Book Storage part.
Bug:
In the Foggy Temple, you could break the mod by turning the wheel before removing the rust. This would result in the protagonist removing more and more rust all the time, but not making the door work at all. Instead, you'd have to remove the rust only once before turning the wheel. This broke the mod and made me feel really confused - considering that many people might miss it, you should definitely fix it.
Overall: Such a great and fresh breath of air. Not the most original, but very good and coherent in its own.
Score: 7,5/10 -> 8/10 - Great
This was a nice surprise. As your first amnesia mod, this is really high quality, matches the details of the original game.
The story had great depth, but was confusing sometimes, so were the puzzles in some places. Like I had no clue I can attach a string to a table or use a glass jar on the web without any tool to aid me. You reminded the player in a clever way sometimes, like leaving the crowbar there, putting the key under the note. I don't see the reason why these others would come out this confusing.
Monster encounters were okay for the most part, I would have welcomed a bit more variety than the original foes however, for the most part.
In the ending there is a bug, I'll mention it in a comment. The whole final ceremony was super confusing with very little clues, I was wandering around for half an hour or more until I managed to disable the barrier.
But all in all, the mod held up well, apart from the few forcefully slowed and stagnant sections near the end. It featured good length, and it gave me a weird sense of nostaliga to mods of old, with a bit unsatisfactory ending. 9/10 for me, I'm hoping we could see more from you in the future!
EDIT: Played the story overhaul, much more coherent and understandable now, nice riddles and poems, and the puzzles are less confusing as well. There are still some story points that need addressing, some more details on things, bunch of little texture glitches throughout, and a few unnecessarily slow sections. Still, the 9/10 is more solid now then ever!
Kudos for taking criticism into account, and the willingness to fix issues!
This Custom Story is really nice. I haven't experienced such emotions from passing for a long time. I recommend it to everyone
I love the creativity in this mod, From story, Mechanism, Gameplay and Scare aspect!
The atmosphere was very immersive, The scares were perfect for most of the times, But i think some areas were pretty empty and deserves more and additional effort, also it would have been great if you hired some beta tester, the ending was pretty confusing, but apart from that this is the best mod in a while.
10/10, Masterpiece.
Outstanding
Really enjoyable mod, loved it. Couple flickering textures here and there, but it didn't bother me. Overall concept is great and level detailing is advanced and really well made. Well done. You must play this one, worth your time.
8/10 - Thrilling ride