University Project: Stairs

[Bridge]

Just finished playing this. Have to admit it made me quite unsettled but I have a lot of problems with it. I took some notes while playing:

Spoiler below!

• Echo - The echo effect is just horrible. It distracts from the actual dialogue and just makes no sense at all. I recommend redesigning it completely, perhaps opting for a more traditional effect that brings both clarity and mystery.
• Flashlight flicker could be improved - When the flashlight flickers on and off in tense situations it doesn't do so the way it should. Seems quite erratic and clumsy.
• Voice acting is goofy - Don't really know how you could fix this per se, I realize you guys are both the devs and the talent (presumably?) but it's just distracting sometimes. In general you have poor control over the timbre and dynamics of your voices, and your thick Swedish accents cause the dialogue to be a bit poorly enunciated.
• Framerate issues - No obvious cause, but the framerate would drop in random locations. Nothing game-breaking but it is noticeable.
• Camera flash lasts too long - I know the camera flash necessarily needs to illuminate the surrounding area but the light in the game doesn't behave like it would in real life. With something like a camera flash in complete darkness, the light is gone before you know it. In fact, you need to really pay attention and you have to know what to look for to actually be able to see anything. If you want to sacrifice realism for the sake of gameplay that's perfectly alright, but the way it's designed now is too excessive. There is a fine line and I believe you crossed it.
• Bland level design - There are invisible walls all over the place, I'm sorry to say but it is a telltale sign of poor level design. You turn a perfectly traversable (and yet architecturally insane) blocks of corridors into a maze (as if it wasn't one already) just for the sake of pacing. Sorry, but that's really not a good enough reason. There are plenty of ways to do both.
• Confusing ending - I don't understand the relevance of Samuel eating someone and going to a mental hospital. I did not find it obvious at all within the context of the story, especially since Samuel is barely a character.
• One-dimensional characters - Apart from having different names and voices, everyone is essentially the same. No personality whatsoever.
• Fractured, incoherent story - I just don't understand what happened or why. At first he was a reporter debunking some myth and then he's suddenly trapped with a group of supposed friends and they have to resort to cannibalism? It was entirely unappealing in its storytelling and just the story in general. Not very interesting.
• Obvious scares - Nothing earth-shattering. There certainly could have been more imaginative scares.
• Very tense chase - I actually liked this part, it got my heart pumping for sure. I almost ran into a game-breaking glitch getting stuck behind the door trying to open it but I got out. Might want to find a way to protect the player from that.
• Sparse, uninteresting music - The game is almost completely silent and the few notes that the cello/piano play are not very interesting IMO.
• Obvious and tedious puzzles - The puzzle design is so obvious it might as well have not been a part of the game. The whole buttons thing took 2 secs to figure out and after that it was just running back and forth, occasionally getting startled by the "flashback commencing" sound. Who on earth, other than SCP, would design a facility like this, where only one door can be opened at any time that is controlled by a room all the way in the corner? Inefficient and idiotic for sure. It just doesn't provide for interesting gameplay. The only puzzle that required any thought was opening the door that ends in 5 in conjunction with the right hand one on the end of the room - which in itself took not much more than 5 seconds. Apart from that there were no "puzzles" as such which was disappointing.
• Unsettling yet colorless atmosphere - I dig what you have going on here, but you can do much more. The monster thing is not very interesting and while the layout of everything makes me a bit uneasy it isn't a special kind of uneasy that is subtle and multi-faceted. There are so many missed opportunities here. There is just so little mystery.
• Typical pacing - As I said, you can see most of the scares coming from a mile away and you can see the pacing unfold as if you were following a literal "storyline". Quite unappealing IMO.

Sorry to be so critical but these were my genuine thoughts while playing. I still wish you good luck continuing this project and I am sure with some improvements it can turn out pretty well.