Over the weekend you visit your aunt Benz at a family reunion. But the visit turns out differently as planned...
Enjoyable!
Creative map design and puzzles are let down by obtuse difficulty, nonexistent story, and a paucity of lantern oil toward the end. Still, a very enjoyable brain-bending experience for Amnesia veterans!
10/10
10/10
10/10
This isn't an extraordinary mod, but it contains several quite interesting puzzles, thanks to which it deserves attention.
I see it's changed from early access to released so I think I can review
Level design is far from good. Where with small rooms it's not that bad, they look decent and detailed, bigger ones and corridors are usually empty, mainly containing stretched carpets or some random shelf. There are no welders as well and you can see where the walls are connected. There is some creativity shown though, 4/10
lighting also needs a rework. I suppose you wake up at night? Yet you end up with extremely bright rays coming from windows(they're too bright even for daytime imo). If I recall correctly those cannot be disabled with scripts so consider just copypasting the map and removing/editing those rays. Point lights usually don't exist, there's really dark areas despite torches all around, light coming from windows also looks really weird, 2/10
There is not much for story, but at least something is happening. You have a goal to follow, but I wish something more happened, 4/10
Puzzles, with a few exceptions (just god no with this key in piano) are interesting and unique. They were more or less fun to solve and engaging. Even if the execution of some puzzles, like that with a rope, wasn't the best with scripts, the ideas were interesting nevertheless, 8/10
With puzzles comes gameplay, which also wasn't boring for the most part. You should change the locations of medkit and lantern or give hints how to find them. I literally left the room and turned left walking both with no light source and at the speed of krole(inside joke). At least I had dev environment enabled and could speed it up. First monster you encounter that's only supposed to walk and disappear doesn't have disabled triggers, so it can abandon his path and destroy the door that shouldn't be destroyed if it hears you. But overall enjoyable, game gives a task to do which isn't just get a key to open a door, 6/10
Generally mod isn't scary but had several moments when it managed to make me jump. Shelf scare was good, elevator as well. There's also minor events to build up tension and atmosphere. Not much to pick on but not incredibly scary either, 6/10
Scripting is also ok I guess, you tried to do something unusual, which is appreciated, but it doesn't look too good for the most part. There could be more interaction with the environment, music for the events that are currently happening etc, 5/10
It's a rather ok mod, with no real strong point but nothing frustrating as well. Worth a shot if you feel like playing some short non-committal custom story
Positives:
- Creative idea with the Alexander painting
- Rope swinging idea is creative
- Elevator scare got me, not gonna lie
- Exploding doors at the end also made me jump. **** you
Negatives:
- Rooms lack details. Either make them smaller, or fill them out with more objects
- Why do I see strong lightrays from windows at night? It's dark outside right? If it's bright outside, it should be brighter inside
- You should consider turning the rightrays 90 degrees at the mansion (like you did in the cellar), it usually looks better in situations like this
- Consider using a movehead script (MovePlayerHeadPos), as now it doesn't really look like you are lying down when you are sleeping or falling down
- Lantern is very easy to miss, since you don't expect it to be up in a ceiling, especially not when all other lamps don't look like that
- Easy to miss the first aid kit as well if you don't get the lantern first
- Flowers are growing on the wooden floor in the attic somehow
- Triggers that activates hint messages are displayed, even if you already solved the puzzle. "I need to fix the machine" "Seems like this door work with some kind of engine", as a couple of examples. Should be deactivated if player already solved the puzzles
- Rope should be called.. rope, not string. String is something different
- How does the elevator floor sign change? It's not electronic
- On the third floor after using the elevator, a castle door is glitchy and gets stuck a lot
- Using the bone at the lever mount magically turns it into a wooden lever apparently (I get the idea here, but it looks silly)
- Story is lackluster. Where's my aunt and what really happened? Why is the mansion full of monsters? It's never explained
Conclusion:
Meh. A lot of creativity here, which I really appreciate, and a couple times you legitimately scared me, which is hard to do considering the large amounts of custom stories I tried over the years.
However, aside from a lot of creativity, it's kinda lackluster. What happened with my aunt? Who killed the baby and why? Why are monsters patrolling the mansion? Story never developes further than "a corpse is found, get out". Level design, aside from creative details here and there, are also sorta lackluster. Empty environments and average looking maps in general.
Right now it's decent. Far from a bad mod, but not a mod I would highly recommend either.
If:
1: The story is better explained
2: Empty areas are filled with more furnitures, details and ornaments
3: Small errors are fixed (some of these things I can turn a blind eye to since it doesn't take away too much of the believability of the mod, but at least fix the most prominent issues)
Then it has every chance of becoming a good mod. It's a diamond with rough edges at its current state.
6/10 - Decent
Nice job
Clever