[SPOILER] My thoughts, expectations, reactions of Amnesia.

[Fortigurn]

The main problem with a Machine for Pigs puzzles that you can't make a mistake. Just can not and that's all. The option to make a mistake is critical with building good satisfying puzzles. That simple. Just let me make mistakes (at least sometimes, not every time) with puzzles and I'll throat them all without a single complaint.

This is something I felt very strongly too. I actually overthought the chemical puzzle with the centrifuge, and went off in search of several items I thought I would need, which took me a very long time because they didn't actually exist. I felt sure the glass flask would be important during the process, so I dragged it around with me all over the place, then left it in a room while collecting a canister for the centrifuge.

Next thing I know the doors slammed shut, and I couldn't return to the room where I had left the glass flask. At first I thought 'Oh no, I've done it now, who knows if I can get back to that flask?', but almost immediately I realized 'Oh yeah, the game is a hand-holder, if it let you lose something that means it's not important', and sure enough the puzzle was over seconds later. Far less complicated than I had thought (and hoped).

From that point on I did my best to test the game in various places. Tried to jump to my death over a couple of balconies with no railing or a very small one, but the game somehow stopped me going over the edge. Went down into a massive pit filled with blood, offal, and human bones (some of which I could actually throw around, much to my surprise), and since the ladder was too high to reach I thought 'Aha, I've stuck myself here', but no, after I'd fooled around for a while wondering if I was going to die of starvation, the game actually went to all the trouble of lowering a new ladder for me, complete with animation and sound effects.

Quite incredible to see the extent to which the game was programmed to stop you doing anything which might test your patience for more than five minutes, or which might result in actual failure.