Some quick questions. Please answer when you have finished the game

[Guyra]

One, big spoiler tag:

Spoiler below!

1) I enjoyed the early dream sequence puzzles, though such puzzles should only be few in a game such as this. Another one I liked was, ofcourse, the "sacrifice yourself" puzzle. Definetly a good one.

All in all I felt like there were too much of the same. Puzzles were more interesting in Overture, definetly.

2) Perhaps a bit surprisingly for others, I had a hard time figuring out the leaking pipe thing. I simply don't recall anything in the game that would make me think that I could just crush it(and get a perfectly cutout piece of the pipe away), and I was rather looking for a way to cut it off. It wasn't really a very logical puzzle. And how did he attach the spare part, by the way? It kind of just glued itself on there. To me, this puzzle seemed a bit like lazy work on the puzzle designer's end.

3) Pacing was decent. I don't really have anything to mention here, except that the build up for connecting to the hive mind could've been better, and both that and a couple of other things could've had more interesting reasons for you to do so. I didn't really feel like doing it, I just did it because the game told me to. That's not a good thing.

4) Black Plague could've definetly used some more variation. Overture had great variation despite only three actual enemy types - in Black Plague it felt like you were running away from the not so scary "infected ones" all the time.

5) Everyones voice acting was definetly good.

I liked Clarence, ofcourse. However, him being there also added a big minus: You never really felt alone. The pluses it had was that a couple of times he managed to creep me out, and that happening with our beloved Ms. Swanson was great! (Could've used a bit more build up, though - make the character feel a bit more close to her, before doing that, giving it an even stronger effect.) So, Clarence himself was cool, but having him with you all the time often took away the scaryness of the game. Also, he should've had more of a typical "infected one" voice once he got his own body, as he then were using physical speech, not mental.

The doc who tries to saw off his hand was an interesting character, and I felt he was very Penumbra-ish - a good thing. Too bad he was such a short part of the game.

Ms. Swanson was a great character, and the peculiarities of her person was made her interesting. Having her there was often a bit too reassuring, though. Yet another fear factor killer. But generally a good character, and her demise at the end is a big plus in my book! I've never experienced such trauma through a game before, definetly great!

The infected shouldn't have been able to talk, though. Fear factor killer deluxe. They use telepathy, anyway. And seeing them being more "machine like" - not chatting, but walking silently around, all connected to one big hive mind - would've been more scarier.

6) Decent ending. Good, but not great. What kind of ruined it was that it was no longer scary. The whole ending felt so safe that you forgot the game was a horror game.