Things that would have made Amnesia scarier

[NPerrin]

Natural, I am convinced you know your horror. Just about all your suggestions really resonated with me.

- A greater element of monster randomness so people can't spoil it for themselves with walkthroughs or let's plays.

This is key. Even on my first playthrough, it became predictable when the monsters would disappear.

- You enter a room with a monster in restraints and are forced to pick up an item right next to it. The room suddenly caves in and you must clear debris from the door just as the monster is working to free itself.

THIS would be amazing. It's grunting and struggling to break its shackles while shaking uncontrollably and you're clearing the way... like a chase scene that the game has plenty of, but more original.

- Like beanz mentioned, they could have punished us a little more with some intense side effects and hallucinations from sanity loss.

I think the amount they did it is just fine, considering 2 things: #1 - You don't start hallucinating tons of stuff just from being afraid of the dark, it would seem unnatural. #2 - lots of people are irritated by the sanity effects mechanic, so to overdo it would put lots of people off and might break immersion for others.

- Lights go out, flicker for a second so you can see a monster close to you, then darkness.

Make this even better by being in a small room that is very well-lit; upon entering it, lights go out, door slams, and is locked. Pitch black darkness. Lights flicker on for a brief moment, during which the room is FILLED with monsters. They're everywhere and staring at you. That would make me SCREAM if it happened. Then the lights start to glow again and the door slowly creaks open.

- Creative use of mirrors.

Mirrors can be really frightening, even in real life. Ever tried to look at one in the darkness in your own room? I'm surprised this wasn't used. Perhaps it's too cliched to use the old "look at the mirror, something's there, turn around, now it's not."

For my OWN suggestion, I think that something could be done about the lamp oil and tinderbox issue. I had a little bit of extra lamp oil (though not much) by the end of the game, but tinderboxes? I had over 50 I believe. I think the feeling of descending deeper into the castle was ruined by the constant little slits that gave way to the outdoors - I told myself many times (especially before using the elevator that lead to the prison) "This is the last time I'll see daylight.... Oh god, this is going to get so much worse (better)..."

It was nice to have those little bits of light to cling on to for hope, but the despair near the end of the game could have been increased by getting rid of these. And then I might have used more tinderboxes. The problem was, the tinderboxes essentially became useless - when you are trying to constantly progress, what's the point of lighting so many torches? You never stay close to a torch long enough for it to be useful, except in a few situations where I found tinderboxes appropriate.

In any case my pants were still scared off me.

EDIT: New thing I discovered. Seems there were enough folks that managed to get on top of the monsters' heads in this game, where they could not be killed. This probably destroyed the immersion and any threatening feeling the monsters had (like in Penumbra, just stand on a crate and you can beat all the dogs to death easily without getting hurt). Just fix bugs like this next time