A realistic adventure with a focus on puzzles and logical thinking, based in a fictional lodge. You must uncover the secrets the place holds, all the while fighting for your life in the bitter cold of the Northern Rocky Mountains...
I think this story is amazing! The house itself is so extremly well detaild and the layout is just epic!
The story is good and for once not unoriginal, which in my opinion is a good thing. I also love the scares! There are pretty few scares, but due to the fact that the wolf can sneak by on you at anytime in more or less every room is so spooky and is keeping you on the guard during the whole gameplay more or less. I even accidently ran right on to the wolf once. He took the way at the kitchen and I didn't hear him so I ran right on him :p
I also loved your cassettes and the fact that you can combine them and listen to them how many times as you like. I also loved the puzzles! I admit, some of them are a bit hard to solve. Almost too hard. I do like challanges thought.
And I agree with the others, add subtitles. I understood mostly everything, but I know alot of people don't
Not much bad I can say about it actually. A bit hard to solve some of the puzzles and subtitles should be added. Oh, and the wolf upstairs can spawn over and over again which is pretty annyoing to be honest and the story could sometimes lagg, otherwise awesome!
10/10 - Masterpiece
The attention to detail in this mod was admittedly overwhelming at first, but quickly became incredibly respected and adored. Not only that, but the story was well thought out, and executed perfectly. The tapes gave cryptic and at times comical advice, always trying to steer you in multiple ways. This mod had me running in circles for hours, but I never seemed to mind. The prospect of continuing the story drove me to keep going. Props to the developer for making this polished full conversion mod a reality.
10/10 Excellent.
One of the most difficult mods I've been through.
It's a pity that I know English very poorly and that there are no subtitles for the cassettes.
This CS was amazing! It brings a lot new stuff into Amnesia which makes it different from other standard storys and I love it. Especially when it comes to new types of puzzles and atmosphere, the custom story gets even better with it! Storyline was interesting and cool to hear, atmosphere and puzzles were made very well. The only thing that was annoying are the wolfs that spawned almost everytime and they destroyed the feeling sometimes, but it could been worse. 8/10 a need to play!
Very original and interesting mod.
Pleasantly surprised, thanks.
Well it seemed really interesting and unique, but I believe I encountered a bug after referring to the walkthrough, as I was running around in circles trying to figure out what to do. So I went and got to the correct cabinet, got the paper, got the tape, but no key, i clicked on the pile of papers and the game said I found a key, but there was no key in my inventory or anywhere else in the room. Now maybe, somehow this is because I got the chest tape early by grabbing it through the little crack when it was slightly open, but I doubt it. Hopefully other players don't encounter this bug like I did, as it seemed to be a well designed and polish story and was having quite some fun up until then, good Penumbra stuff and story, unfortunate.
I played this mod a long time ago but didn't have a ModDB account until afterwards so I never wrote a review for it.
This is without any doubt at all one of the best custom stories I've ever played, and by "one of the best" I mean in my top three, and while I might not necessarily say it's THE best, it's the only one of the hundred+ Amnesia custom stories that I kept on my computer to replay after the first playthrough.
I can see in the comments that some people have complained about the lack of keys. Please. This was so much better than that. I loved the concept of having to find tapes and particularly the mechanic that allows you to look all throughout the entire house without finding a single tape except for the right one.
One person in the comments said they'd love to have this house in real life, and I absolutely agree. If I somehow ever become really rich, I am definitely getting this house built for me. I loved the amount of detail. One thing I would like to point out is that for me, there's a missing cabinet model just down the hall from the bathroom door on the first floor and also on the second floor in the locked room you have to jump onto the ledges on the balcony to get to. I know it's missing because the doors are visible and things inside and on top of it are visible, but the cabinet itself isn't there. Fortunately it doesn't effect the gameplay so it's mildy amusing more than anything else. My only real complaint is that the level design in the house itself is so good that I think there isn't enough of it. I wish there had been more levels in a similar setting to the rest of the house, although I can understand why the story prevented that.
I liked the way you can fall and get knocked unconscious and then wake up and at night, but I think it happens too easily. The first time I played the game I went out on the balcony at the front of the house and fell off without even moving. I thought it was a scripted moment where I got pushed off deliberately (as if there was a person behind me who pushed me). And I had hardly made any progress at all, so I had to do the last 80% of the house-centered part of the story in the dark, which was mildly annoying.
The music was good overall and I liked the use of some of Jessica Curry's work, espcially "Always", the menu theme. However, the music in the house during both the day and night levels was much too repetitive and got annoying after a while. For the two times I replayed the story, I actually replaced the music files with the theme for the second (library) trial from the custom story "The Subconscious Trials" and that was much more enjoyable. Still, high marks for the soundtrack.
I really can't complain about the general awkwardness of the dog enemies because most of that's not the developer's fault, but I do think there are some things that COULD have been done better. I would have liked it if the screeching sound plays when a dog is chasing you, because otherwise it's often impossible to know when one's after you until it actually bites you. I know that might be more realistic, but in this case I just found it to be annoying, especially when I was trying to get into one of the locked bedrooms on the first floor. There was a doog there that kept patrolling right in front of the door, and without the screech sound and with very few audio cues from the dog itself (growling and such) it was hard to tell when it was actually chasing me so it was very difficult to lure him away from the door and then not lead him right back to it. I think with some editing to make them behave more like the TDD Grunt and Brute stock enemies that they could have been much better. For my replays I actually turned them all into hallucinations so they disappeared when they got close, since I didn't want to risk causing a fatal error by actually removing them from the code because it got confusing in some places. Still, I'm not going to complain too much about the dogs.
Overall, this story does have some downsides. But in the end, it was so good that I'm not going to take any points off at all and it still earns itself a solid 10 out of 10.
Not bad. Kinda funny I had to play this at night because I fell down the balcony. :P
The music was really annoying after a time though.
Still my favorite custom story, this one actually makes you think!
the ambiance and maps are truly perfect, what made this custom story
more tense and scary was the fact that it was completely grounded in reality, it could have happened! The use of wolves as the threat was
excellent, you even went as far as to have holes in the walls here and there to show how the wolves were able to enter the building. Another thing that is a testament to your amazing dedication to the custom story was that some people may not even know about the "night" portion, you can finish the entire custom story with-out suffering from one of the falls. I played through it a second time immediately to see if you could beat it during the day, and you can!
the pros:
The voice acting was superb, probably the best I've heard.
The cassette hunt puzzle was fresh and actually made you think.
The ambiance, oh my god the ambiance, this is where Bitterwood peak truly shined.
The story was amazing, finding out the truth of what happened in the lodge, it was an adventure to say the least.
the cons:
There was but one little hindrance, as I have absolutely no musical bone in my body and am probably tone death, the puzzle with the piano was the only part I looked up how to do, while I'll admit this isn't the game's fault, the music that plays during the game should have went away when you were next to the piano, because you have a hard time hearing what to play on the piano on account of the background music overlapping the cassette's audio.
Overall, this is a truly perfect custom story, that offers an original experience that no other has. 10/10