I'm gonna be honest, from what I saw of that game it looked pretty terrible (The Witch's House I mean). The insane amount of trial and error and the lack of any sort of hint as to what's going to happen when you interact with things a certain way or when you enter a certain area completely kills any sort of immersion in it. If your main gameplay idea is "we're going to force the player to die unless by some stroke of luck they randomly decide not to interact with something or have insanely good reaction time, so that way when they respawn they'll know what to do the second time", then you should really rethink what you're doing. On top of that, a lot of the puzzles just don't make any damn sense. It uses the whole "here's an item, rub it against everything you see until something happens, and then rub whatever you get out of that against every surface again until something happens" idea which is waaaay too common in games.
I can't really comment on Ib, as I never played it, but Ao Oni definitely has that same issue of trial and error. Though in that case while it's not nearly as bad (you can actually get away from monsters instead of having them kill you pretty much instantly as soon as you see them) it still brings it down a lot. A lot of the puzzles in it also suffer from that same issue I pointed out earlier. I honestly don't know why this whole RPG maker horror game thing is becoming so big all of the sudden, from what's been done with the idea so far has been pretty mediocre (or at least from what I've seen).
Posting Freak
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2012, 11:55 AM by Kman.)
I played the Witch's House two weeks or so ago, and I have to say although it's not as amazing as IB in terms of plot, and immersion, it offered a fun experience.
I had no problem with the trial, and error, as after several minutes of the game I saw the game as what it was trying to achieve: A pure fun experience that isn't trying to focus on immersion. IMO, it had quite a few creative moments. The trial-and-error actually provided a good "gameplay" experience for me even if it wasn't a good "immersive" experience.
I disagree with that kman said as to the puzzles not making sense, because the first time I played through the game I figured out how to solve most of the puzzles by using "sense", and the subtle clues the game threw my way.
It's not an immersive uninterrupted horror experience, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. You won't have any fun with this game if you're looking for an immersive experience like Amnesia. If I was to grade it I would give it a 3.5/5