[SPOILER] Some suggestions for the developers to improve game mechanics. (SPOILERS)

[Jdog8998]

Hey there, I'm a huge fan of your games. I love all of them, Iv played them all plenty of times. And I would like to send this message to the developers as a suggestion to help you guys develop your already terrifying atmosphere. I'm personally talking to Tomas Grip because I feel he'll like what I have to say.

What I'm about to say is minimal, I dont have a huge list of suggestions, Its just one particular aspect of the game you could improve on and multiply the horror factor and suspense almost without changing the game play style or pacing in any drastic sense, In fact, the only thing Im suggesting to modify is the sound and possibly monster behavior, but only so slightly. What I'm suggesting is a slightly different communication style you use to speak to the player and tell him whats going on in the environment.

In first part of the game right after you read Daniels first diary entry, you explore the entrance hall. Shortly after that you enter the archives room. Iv watched so many play throughs and it seems that this part of the game is among the scariest parts of the game next to storage and the Water lurker part. Because of the unknown, and the unclear sense of whats happening in the environment. In the archives you hear lots of foot steps and monster groans but there's no music to indicate whats happening. So the player is extremely hesitant in this part of the game from fear probably more than in any other part of the game, at least from my perspective. This is because the game mechanic's haven't been reviled yet. This brings up my suggestion and point for helping out your next game possibly. You see, the players exploration style and hesitance changes as the game progresses. In the begging they dont know what to expect so they are very nervous. But as soon as you start encountering "spawned" monsters, everything changes. Iv noticed a sense of confidence and rush that develop, because of one thing. The music. Whenever a monster is spawned, the monsters theme plays and its a dead give away when the monster is and is not really there. Therefore it breaks the tension in the game because it makes things more predicable and raises the players confidence, because players will know when the monster is and is not present, so this makes the atmospheric sounds less powerful, because they wont be focusing on it. They don't need it to know whether or not they are safe. From what Iv noticed, not everyone figures it out. But most of the common gamers figure it out around the first couple confrontations. But I believe that its over half of your buyers that figure this out. I'm reading this message over to make sure I explained this clearly, because I'm not very good at being specific, but I'm very confident if I explained this clearly you'l find this advice very useful because it will help make your games more seamless. Unless you knew from the begging what you were doing and and did it on purpose, then I guess this message is pointless.

If one of you guys did read this message, please let me know and don't be afraid to talk to me about it if you want to have a more detailed discussion about what I see in your game design. With that said, I'm not looking for a job or anything like that, I just like to help. I really like your guys ambition and I'd like to help out. Not to say you need my help...lol. I hope you got what I was saying. Maybe you guys already know this. I guess I might find out.


EDIT: I just read your dev blog, you guys already know this I guess. I figured you would anyway.