Custom story for The Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Including 6 playable chapters and combat scenes. Have fun! :)
Positives:
- Some parts are genuinely creepy
- A lot of creativity
Negatives:
- Lightning is weird. Light from window affects one area far from windows, but not around the windows themselves. If it's bright outside, the entire room should be brighter, not just one specific area on the ground infront of the windows. Outside in the forest map, the lightning looks blocky and very odd
- Voice acting don't match what note is saying, which is confusing, as I follow along in the note while the voice over is being played
- Puzzles are very boring and uninspiring. Nothing works, everything is locked. Go to one room, find key, go to the next room, find a key. Go to the next room, pull some books, then find the next key. There are times the key is right next to the door you have to unlock. The entire mod is literally, go to point A, get item to unlock point B. Go to point B, get item
- General overuse of puzzles. I can't go ten meters without finding a new locked door. It becomes very tedious after a while, especially when so many puzzles are structured the exact same way
- It's your mansion, yet you don't know how puzzle mechanism work, like at the library with the books. "I need to find out how". You live here dude (Logical flaw)
- Sees dead body "It must be the jailer". You said he's your "jailer friend", how do you not reconize him? He's not deformed (Logical flaw)
- When you go down with the big hammer, if you look above you at the ceiling, one part has a bunch of black planes. It looks odd
- You can go out of the window in the warehouse and see there's nothing outside. It's not that hard to copy paste important outside things from the other map to make it look more believable
- In the temple, there's a static book on top of a table you can move
- Temple map is very tedious. Way too much running back and forth
- Didn't really like the combat system. Hit detection seems odd. It sometimes won't work even though I hit with high force. Sometimes I try to hit with too much force which makes me drop the hammer. I ended up avoiding combat as much as possible
Neutral:
- Blockbox placed if you try to jump left outside of the broken window, which felt like a wasted opportunity to add an easter egg or other secret there
- Window beam supporters outside windows (wooden platform) are rotated the wrong way
- "Ouch it's a acid". Should be an acid, or something else like "Ouch, it's acid" or "Ouch, it's some kind of acid" (Minor grammar mistake)
- The jumping chairs scare was creative, but felt more silly than serious or scary
Conclusion:
When you do something besides the straight forward "Go to point A, find a key, then go to point B, find another key", the mod can be really scary and very creative. The story to me felt somewhat thin, and a lot of the puzzles were way too repetitive and used way too often. There were times when a door was locked after I entered a room I had to solve five puzzles to get in to, and it turned out the key was literally right next to the door on a shelf or inside a closet.
Even at the temple, where you had every chance of making it non-linear, you instead did the same thing. Go to point A, get item (orb piece or a key), go back to pedestal. Go to point B, get item. Back to pedestel.
To say this mod is average or below doesn't feel fair considering the creativity and obvious effort you put into this, but I also can't deny how boring it felt a lot of the time as well.
For now, I'd say it's a solid 6/10.
6/10 - Decent
not bad.
Right now, it's a 7.5. Okay design, neat ideas, yet the combat system needs an overhaul as it's creative, but very punishing and not too much fun to play right now. I'll be sure to give it another go if an update comes out, as it has the potential for a higher score.
Better name this ; Find the key to continue!
1 of the worst "stories"ever made.
also, the fight with the 4?5? grunts is insane!
no health, no potions, wrong scripted bed\health only once...
FIND THE KEY...
that's what it should have named....
Play happily
Playing and testing this custom story was something whole new to me - Finally I was able to fight (not with some shortsword, but straight with the BIGGEST hammer the game could offer) in the game and not just run away.
All the puzzles in the story were challenging and you had to use your brain to pass them - I love this approach from game developers!
Also the story into which is the game set has many turnovers. For example ending - Aalot had to pay the highest price for purging the curse away.
Summed up - 10 out of 10 for me!
This is a brand new and very high quality mod by a czech author with original level design, adventure component and interesting story. I would like to highlight also the interesting possibilities of fighting with monsters, which, however, makes the game a bit more difficult beyond the ordinary Amnesia.
I did not finish this mod because I got stuck to the very last boss battle and quit.
Positives:
+ It was surprisingly scary
+ Ultra creative with the design. I am jealous for your creativity
+ Attempt to make cliché things original (The Shadow for example)
+ Lots of puzzles
+ "Animated" events for breaking things with hammer and saw
Neutrals:
~ While the amount of puzzles was good, perhaps they were a bit repetitive at times. Many things were stuck, blocked or locked - not a problem necessarily, but some variety would have been approved
~ Design was super creative at parts, but at some points it was rather average-ish - not too average to be a negative however
Negatives:
~ Story was average
~ Quite a few logical issues (read below)
Story: 5/10
I adored the fact that you did not go with the clichés here too much. Of course nothing is 100% original and this is the case with this mod too (Orb, nightmares etc.)
One problem was the real lack of consistency. All the notes I found for instance felt disconnected from each other and had little to add to the story itself. Another thing was the rather big amount of plotholes and other gaps that were never filled.
The story itself was great concept, only if it was made better.
Level Design: 8/10
I can't help but give this such a high score. Yeah, there was a massive space for improvements and some pretty easily fixed issues too. But the creativity this developer had simply can not be ignored. The outside area was, while a bit empty, awesome and I loved it. The way you designed rooms, made layouts literally left me in awe when I quit the mod.
You even made things which are not supposed to work, to work. Using floors as walls and making hidden things in those was fantastic. You also combined entities typically used for underground maps to mansion maps, and made them work somehow. I don't understand.
Making shelves with locker door was genious. How have I not thought of that before?
Impressive.
Scare Factor: 7/10
When the mod started, I did not expect to be scared at all. However, the mod managed to build the tension nicely at times and got me nicely. Also, the jumpscares here got me good. That happens rarely anymore.
Puzzles: 7/10
For someone who likes Amnesia puzzling this was a jackpot. There were a lot of puzzles and some original puzzles too (such as the Unused Torch). However, the fact that so many objects were just stuck with no other explanation felt a bit cheap.
Overall: Your creativity is outstanding. Please make more custom stories.
Score: 6,75 = 7/10