Amnesia - problems with getting scared?

[hollowleviathan]

Lots of good points about the game design and how it appears through the cracks of immersion. However, a game that literally dead ends such that you have to start over is a badly designed game. There are plenty of ways to punish a player and make their actions have consequences than to GAME OVER, or worse, let them keep on playing when it *should* say GAME OVER.

If you forget a wallet of money in the first room, the game should make the puzzle requiring it harder or have less options for approaching it, not become impossible.

It would be very interesting for there to be multiple ways through various parts of the game, and punishing players who do not do the clever/"correct" path with more enemies, more goo, requiring a different/harder path, and less options for possible endings, that sort of thing. Those are interesting and potentially good (always playtest extensively, Momma Valve always told me) design decisions. There's just no good thing to be said about letting the player reach a dead end and not be able to win, and not ending the game and returning them to an earlier save.