AMFP Member Review Thread

[Lazoriss]

Another thing that TCR missed in terms of creating a scary game was isolating a lot of their horror in unforgettably terrifying areas. This is very different from making an overall horror setting. Unless you've experienced it yourself, there is no dread comparable to the feeling that you've got to go back down to the storage because you missed something the first time you went there (I had to explore for quite a while to make the explosive). By using a non-linear progression structure, players will be urged to:

a) Explore every minute detail in each area so that they don't miss anything, thus forcing them to go to places where they know monsters are lurking;

b) Fear the thought of returning to places they really hate because they might've missed something (storage / choir).

That's a very good point. I never really noticed that before, but now that you've mentioned it, it explains a lot of why there's such an absence of sheer terror in Pigs (and how it is actually directly related to the layout of the game's world). AMFP builds up to a point in horror and then hangs at that point for the remainder of the game. It also makes it rather easy to cope with the scares since you can essentially bowl your way through the game if you'd like. TDD has these nice safe hubs connected to wide, nonlinear danger zones. You enter an area with a list of tasks to do, but the layout of the area calls for lots of exploring. You can't just piledrive your way through TDD. The inventory means you have to collect items from around the area (which you can usually go about in any order you want). You're also right about how scary it is to have to go back into an area because you missed something, especially when in the comfort of the safety room. :c There's none of that in Pigs as all the puzzles are contained and you never have to backtrack or re-traverse a zone...

I've played through TDD three times and am still terrified of it. The worst would be the Choir, and I can attribute that to its ingenious design. A huge, mostly open area... easy to get lost in... low visibility... and so many encounters. o____o;;; I've memorized all the other area spawns, but I still get lost in the Choir and have at least one very tense encounter with a monster I wasn't expecting. There's also that one that won't despawn until you've gotten some distance away from it, so you can't just hide until it goes away.

AMFP has a good story, but your post made me actually realize why removing mechanics and the open exploring would hinder the game as a real horror experience.