When Life No Longer Exists [RELEASED!]

[WALP]

I played until a bit into chapter 2, were you encounter the weird naked guy, that makes demonic sounds or whatever you wish to call them.

Though it would had been nice with a better and more informative intro scene, I think your mod starts off pretty well. The lighting has a nice feel to it, rooms are mostly well detailed, and even if its minor the white version of the door gives off quite an unique feel IMO. The custom lantern is also really cool, you gave it some good sound effects and customized the candles to refill 100% percent which makes sence since you're replacing the candle and not refilling it.
At the first encounter you continue to build up with the smashing of doors. the moment I hear the footsteps though without any music I realize that: Hey this is a fullconversion, you cant rely on music.
and so my heart starting pumping real had as I sneaked out into the corridor to proceed.

and you dont stop here.
Later you come with some innovative ways of creating suspense and fear, the first being the do not look at the enemy thing, sure some people might say that we have seen this in games such as slender, but here the enemy is actually moving around and the system also seems quite a bit more unforgiving making this some really tense stuff. I worry a little if it may be too unforgiving for some people though.
Second the crucifix part is really well done. You dont just force the player to hold onto it, but you even temp them to drop it by putting medicine on a table and placing a door that begs for you to open it.
Im also curious about whether or not the crucifix protects you against the grunt as I instantly hit when he came through the door.

This is all very nice but just about here ends the niceness.
slowly the quality falls apart, levels become less detailed, you stop doing building ups, and you barely give the players any breaks from monsters resulting in them getting used to them and bored.
Just to put it in perspective, first theres a water monster level(with bad pathfinding), then theres a brute level, then theres another water monster level(a short and really bad one as well),
and then theres either a grunt level, or was it the level with the naked guy....ah I dont care anymore im bored after all this.
If you ever listened to FG commentary on Amnesia you will at one point hear them talk about the importanse of contrast, having a bright/save level to make the dark ones seem darker(fx the back hall, and the storage).
At the point I quit the game, it doesent really feel like that nice mod I played at the beginning, but rather a crappy CS a newbie made in 2 weeks.


So I just had this guy in a Sauna tell me machines kill people, and yet here I am having turned on a machine 30 seconds later...wtf is wrong with me o.o
It is as if you started doing something nice and pretty, but then you lost motivation or something, and was like "fuck it lets just get this over with".

If I had to judge solely on the beginning I would say 7.35/10
(everything above 9 on my rating means surpassing amnesia btw.)

As for everything I played together it goes more like 5.25/10


Other positive/negative things about mod:

-You use too much unnecesary first person dialouge. The problem with it is that it sets the player and character further appart therefore making the story hard to get immersed into.
an example would be right in the beginning where the character expresses that he is wondering about the hole in the roof. this could have been done in many other ways without having to use fps dialouge
fx1: use playerlookat
fx2: make some debris fall down from the hole and making a little noise. the noise should cause some curiosity.
fx3: make dust come out from the room, making the player wish to find the source of the dust.

-You often reveal the solution to a puzzle with the dialouge. I understand that tester might have had trouble and you therefore found it necesary, but could you at least not just give the player some time(say 5-10 minutes) to try themselfes before forcing the solution upon them.


-You can use subtitles instead of setmessage ya know.

-The effect when drinking that drink is AWESOME

-The water monster is buggy and doesent follow you unless you slow down enough for it to kill you. this makes trapping it in that room close to impossible, if not impossible

- the story simply sucked, there was not much excitement in it and it felt more like an excuse story rather then something that should add to the experience and motivate the player to move on.
this hurt your rating a lot.
How can you improve?:
-Put detail in all maps
-care more about story
-think more about the relationship and differences between maincharacter and player when designing your story and dialouge
-make sure to use contrast between levels. listen to 09_thomas_contrasts.ogg for more info. it can be found under Amnesia The Dark Decent(redist)/commentary/09_thomas_contrasts.ogg
-Use subtitles for dialouge
-Dont think that suspense does not work again, simply because you have released it once in an encounter. so keep on doing suspense throughout your story rather then just throwing monsters at us all the time.
-Lolled at the Sauna level, fucking loved it. Cant tell if thats a good thing though.
-Not related to the mod, but I did not check for spellings mistakes at all.