Uncover the dark story of your brother and the Tome of The other World. Remastered version is being worked on.
Hard to rate this, really.
The mod itself is not bad, just there is huge space for improvements.
Does it look good? Yes, and there is not much mistakes, I think I saw one hole in a wall and one clipping texture but overally the mapping is no problem at all.
Does it play good? Well it was very hard for me to enjoy this actually. Some puzzles required looking literally everywhere and without oil Im just blind...
Overally it is a decent mod with good lighting effects, details and many objects to examine, also in the cellar part it gets quite ominous... Just if the gameplay was better... The mod is simply not "my cup of tea" to be honest.
not bad.
details: great as for the first mod, pretty decent overall too
scary? not really
scripting: simple but suffice
puzzles: most of them were vague
atmosphere: didn't really feel it
here ya go bro
Even though this has some issues when it comes to level design (like the blue color everywhere) and weird things in the story (people passing out WAY too often), it kept me entertained.
Disclaimer, just in case someone wants to use this review against me:
I usually don't review beginner mods or lower my expectations appropriately.
For this mod however, I got asked by the creator to review it, and without pulling punches.
Summary at the very end.
=========THE STORY==========
The story is pretty standard mansion stuff. Nothing particularly interesting or original.
When it comes to the writing though...
The story barely justifies the events of the mod, it had little connection to the actual levels and there weren't any mentions about who we are playing as.
I had to go back to the mod page to check that we were playing as the "protagonist's" brother.
That's not the way to write stories, because the player needs to have some goal in mind, which usually comes from the hero's motivation.
The lack of character motivations or any mentions of the hero made the entire thing feel out of place.
Lastly, this could work a bit better if it was told in an interesting way, but it's just walls of text.
=========ISSUES==========
Just off the bat, the description of the mod lists some technical issues.
Why not fix them if you know about them? They are mostly simple to fix.
The backgroubd image of the description is broken, too.
The mod starts without any context or introduction. You're just in a mansion without even a vague goal.
There is a locked chest at some point, but nothing clearly indicates that it's locked (no sounds or hints). It's quite confusing.
The mod has point-and-click style comments from the protagonist on some objects.
It's fine, but most of these don't add anything beyond what's visible or are random to the point of being goofy.
At one point you unlock a door by hitting it with a hammer. Silly in itself, but the animation was so heavyhanded it made me chuckle.
Still, at least it was a creative way of passing an obstacle rather than another key hunt.
Oh, also it's really arbitrary that you can unlock only that one door with the hammer but not any of the following ones.
Now, onto the underground part:
Placing a neon light on an object (lantern) is not the way to draw attention to it.
Put a normal source of light instead.
The chipper is obscurely placed. Looking for unfairly hidden items is not gameplay. I got it quickly only by pure luck.
You can collect a lot of tinderboxes, and they kinda come in handy in the cellar map? It's not very consistent however, many rooms lack any lamps to light.
The elemental puzzle was quite cool, it required some creativity - but it also required a randomly and obscurely placed object.
I got the bad ending - and it had like 3 minutes of waiting for a fade out. Just roll the credits, smh.
We already talked about the good ending being counter intuitive to achieve, so I will skip that.
=========MAP DESIGN==========
The general design is as generic as they come - poorly detailed maps with little creativity put in them asides from the vertical layout.
The mansion part:
All rooms look similar and have vastly high ceilings, which makes it hard to believe that it's supposed to be a home.
Also all rooms share the same floor, walls and ceilings, which is kinda off-putting.
Some of the ceilings are 10 centimeters above the walls, creating a gap.
The map is covered with navy blue lights that don't have any source. What the hell is that?
If you were going for moonlight, it's much more washed out and closer to white. And it needs windows to make sense.
The underground part:
Generic stuff, I don't have as many issues with it but there wasn't anything to praise either.
Kinda empty and repetetive.
The cellar is not lit at all. This is not how darkness works in games, you need a very dark light to do it properly.
Randomly assembled issue4s with the mapping:
- Carpets are placed randomly in perfect allignment with each other. Makes for a very unnatural look.
- Badly scaled assets
- Mixing assets which don't match (especially welders)
- The maps are filled with pointless rooms that don't have anything interesting in them.
Positives:
There are some creative elements here and there, mostly with creating shelves. This is what you should have done with the entire mod.
=========SUMMARY==========
Well, this was bad.
Of course it was a mod made as a learning process, but that doesn't change the fact that it really isn't worth your time.
There isn't much good stuff in it, and what's there is too little and not often enough.
Mods like this are why I tell people to not get invested in the first mods they create and instead start new, better projects after they are done learning.
I'm giving this a 3/10, mostly for these reasons:
- I really didn't enjoy playing this to be honest.
- According to my scale it should be a 4/10, but I played better mods which I rated 3/10
- It's at least not buggy or noticeably frustrating, so I can't in good faith rate it lower.
The puzzles are very interesting, the level design is decent and the story is quite interesting. On the other hand, the problem with this mod is poor lighting, minor illogicalities in the story and minor errors in the leveldesign (doors that hit the stairs). As a result, it's a modest but still above average mode.
From bad grammar, enormous texture glitches and a story that makes no sense, this mod is clearly the author's first work.
Level design is alright, aside from glitches, but also does nothing unique at all, and often feels empty.
The protaganist somehow knows where to go even though he has never been there before. A door with a broken lock is opened by smashing a hammer on it somehow. The chunk of ice doesn't melt by me just holding it and I can't use a torch to melt it either.
It has potential, but as it is now it's just not that great.
Pretty good, with some weird stuff and glitchs, but nothing super destructive or that could ruin the experience! I liked it.
I really liked the diaries, but the story was too short for me, it's like a wasted potential.
While it is by no means bad, it could really use some work.
What's good
The lighting is beautiful and feels natural, and the level design (while not anything spectacular) is quite good.
There were only a few monster encounters in the whole thing. And while the second one is pretty "meh", the first encounter is surprising, intense, and genuinely terrifying without feeling cheap due to proper buildup and subversion of expectation.
There were a few puzzles, but one near the end was unique and creative.
The inclusion of multiple endings is appreciated, especially in a shorter mod.
What's bad
The mod feels unfinished. I have no problem with a shorter story, but in this case it just feels like it "ended". There wasn't really ever a climax or resolution to the story, so the endings just felt abrupt.
Speaking of which, the story is a bit of a mess. There isn't really an intro: it just drops you right into the thing without any explanation as to who you are or what you're doing there. There's also the relative flaw that the entire story is told through notes. The last problem with the story is that, by the end, there are quite a few gaping plot holes that are never answered.
Could be lumped with the story, but this is more noteworthy as a separate thing. Like I said, the story is told through notes. However, the writing in those notes is just kind of bad. The prose is too stilted and fluffy, so it doesn't read smoothly at all. Along with that, there were more than a few typos, including one in the credits.
While the last puzzle is quite creative, an overarching problem is that the puzzles are just too damn vague. I think this could've done with some more mementos, because the thing took me like an hour to beat, and maybe 35 minutes of that was running around, looking for some obscure item. The puzzles are all item based, which isn't necessarily bad, but many items are so obscurely hidden that you usually end up flipping over every box in the area several times over until you find it. For something like that, there really isn't enough lantern oil, so I started to get quite bored because I was digging through a bunch of empty darkness.
The mod is notably unstable. I am aware that the creator acknowledges this, but it's still worth mentioning. One thing which started to get on my nerves was the odd physics of the doors, where swinging them open would cause them to bounce right off the wall, and slam themselves shut. Other than what the creator mentions, there was one occasion where I fell through the map and died.
Summary
Like I said, this mod is by no means bad, and certainly has some potential and redeeming value. But, in its current state, it's too unpolished and frustrating to be great. So, in it's current state, it's just average.