A man's home is a man's castle. Tonight you are hoping to sleep peacefully at your house. But something is coming...
Easily the most frustrating CS I've ever played...
Literally months of waiting until an actual serious mod came out. Over a year of work gave out really interesting outcome and brought some really creative ideas to the table, although it had several frustrating flaws as well.
Design is a pretty interesting case, the mod is gradually improving from generic "menson" into an entire underground complex. It's not sabatu level but cool to see someone develop on the go, 7/10
Lighting could do some work, many areas lack proper pointlight usage, prime example is the long corridor in the mansion, with black corners despite candles every meter. It would look nice for a loading screen, but walking through it just feels off, 5/10
Puzzles are similar to design, you start from looking for hidden keys to later navigate your way throughout a mineshaft. Gradual improvement the more you progress and I appreciate that, 7/10
Gameplay... Mixed feelings. On one hand it's unique and engaging, on the other frustrating and random. Shadow-like chase in the dream sequence was a great idea, but I can't even count the amount of swears from dying because of the bs "X" from wooden beams constantly making me stuck and glitching on the hatch. After like 20 retries I finally got past it just to die in the next room and restart from the brginning. At that point I have up and despawned the beams in the hps. Other thing is unbalance with lantern oil. It's so little you'd barely have enough to speedrun the mod, and if you (very likely) get stuck on puzzles you're gonna have to do 3/4 of the level in pitch Black environment. With some proper testing this aspect would've been great. I especially enjoyed the cutscenes and background events. Although they look a bit wonky with really simplistic animations, like t-posing corpse getting yeeted through a room, I'm still amazed what you managed to pull off and most important, tried to be original, just too bad it's short 8/10
Atmosphere-wise it was ok, I'm just not a big fan of jumpscares and explicitly showing gore on every corner. Luckily the more subtle aspects (ambients, screen effects) exist as well, 7/10
Story... Definitely better than "escep from spookeh menson" although a bit vague and I don't think I understood it. One butler left, one went missing, you go to sleep, start dreaming, at one point realise it's not a dream anymore and have to leave. What even happened? There were notes about orb and stuff but still idk, maybe because of english as there's a bunch of typos and weird grammar mistakes. Anyway it was interesting, at least compared to nowadays stories, 6/10
For me it wasn't scary, as I said jumpscares and gore simply won't do it, and I know the common scaring techniques in amnesia too well so it takes a bit to surprise me. Casual players might find it scary though, as the mod offers more than just screamers to the face, 5/10
Overall a good mod and well spent 1 year of work. With this amount of time you could expect it to be longer but eh, this is fine too
Well, this was a turnaround for me, and a nice surprise. I picked this mod up once, didn't like the beginning and forgot about it. Recently I found it on my hard drive, and also saw my comment on the updated version so I thought let's give it another go. And boy was it a great idea..
The story itself seems cliche-ish, but it turns enjoyable later on in the nightmare sequences, along with everything else in the mod. That was truly this story's forte, the nightmare world, one of the best chase scenes I've ever seen in a mod, with a couple mediocre ones. But the dark tunnels and events got me on edge a couple of times which very few mods do in 2022. Great job on that!
You used unique ideas for the most part, and some okay puzzles we've seen before, to fill the holes. Most things had a twist on them, some fun platforming sections, and it's been a while since I've felt like I don't want to go back to certain places where again I had a task. Really the few complaints I had were a bit too much monotonous walking, and some inconvenient stuff like the doll fight (which was hilarous by the way). And I must say I had no idea how to figure out the button combination, watching a walkthrough didn't explain it either.
You managed to make the atmosphere and the gameplay this creepy without barely ever using an actual monster, or many custom ones at that. Hats off to you sir, as I will remember these tunnels for a while. If you were to take part in any of Penumbra's fan continuations, we would be in deep **** so to speak.
The ending was quite abrupt, I hope there will be a continuation in some form, otherwise that's pretty inconvenient as the story had no conclusions whatsoever.
All in all, I'm aware of the mod's shortcomings, but I've seen how long it has come, it was your first attempt and you took your time in making it, and more importantly, fixing it up from feedback. For that, and its unique aesthetic and gameplay, I give this a 8.5 for encouragement, I really hope to see more from you in the future!
Mediocre but acceptable quality story. Frustrating chase sequences and level design that wasn't enjoyable to go through, and some things didn't work such as having to enter through the window of the house (I straight up couldn't fit through it so I used freecam). However, the scares were good sometimes such as the giant brute head in the dark cave.
This CS was kinda interesting. The atmosphere and the scares were good implented! It has a few points though which are the reasons why it's 6/10:
Red Corridor Chase: It was something new and also very intense and good, but still frustrating sometimes.
Battle with that weird Puppet: This fight was really stupid. No exact clues how to kill it, room was way too dark (why was the player forced to not use lantern??) and that constant damage was getting on the nervs, because you dropped the weapon if the screen shaked.
All in all it could've been better, it's still good though. 6/10
Where do i even begin?
The mod itself is very impressive, But its also... VERY CONFUSING AND ANNOYING.
The mementos script is not timed well, for example in the cave area, the script of the pickaxe being stuck in a rock wasnt triggered until i got in a very far place, It also lacks explanation, How do i even know the right combination in the basement area? im pretty sure i didnt miss anything.
The good things are: the cave area is one of my favorite custom amnesia maps, brings back the 2012 mods vibes, The creative chase scene, The building is ok sometimes and sometimes good.
This mod would have been a 10/10 if not because of the confusions
I don't understand why anyone is extremely upset from this cs. I found this cs enjoyable and fairly challenging. I don't get any problems from playing it.
This cs is great. Keep it up.
It's very good mod with many original elements a puzzles. I definitely recommend trying it.
First of all, I really enjoyed this mod overall, new things and nightmare scripts are pretty well made, however lacks some kind of complexity and trying too hard on some parts.
Really liked the design, how everything changed and become literall hell, my mod was kind of similar what comes to nightmare ideas, great job on that. Story was okay to follow through and exciting when you start to search the caves, but this is where I was literally frustrated how much areas there are to explore and you can get easily lost and wandering same places and backtrack too many times. Finding these items was hell, because some areas too pitch black and I got annoyed and cheated little bit with gamma 2.0 a while. Overall it was challenging to solve puzzles, but well worth your time.
Scares are strong point on this mod, it's been too long time how I jumpscared and was edge on my seat couple times too much. I was literally terrified on the cave and proceeded and when I noticed that crawling brute face coming to me, I literally screamed like a little bitch. I hate worms on all those things, idk why but they are my worst nightmares and you scared me a lot on the cave. Great job!
Overall this was pretty decent to go through, they are low points, because it's really challenging at times, because hitboxes on that trumpeter was nightmare even if you increase gamma max, because sepian vision causes to see literally nothing and it's time limited so I was literally raging and spend almost 20 minutes to figure that part out. Events and scripts are sometimes really good and unexpected what I loved on this mod, it's rare to see after over 10 years to scare veteran amnesia player like me. lol.
Pos:
- Music
- Scripts / scare events
- Chase was challenging
- Overall experience
Neg:
- Too big areas at times
- Annoying backtracking and puzzles at times, because lack of information better introduced.
- Forced enemy battle, idea was good, but way too hard to execute and success, because hitboxes doesn't work fairly
7/10 - Scare factor and worth your time.
Challenging but well made custom story.