Alpha 0.3 Discussion [SPOILERS]

[Messofanego]

Left my feedback on the survey form, quite impressed. Much longer than I expected. Personally, not a fan of the dead end rooms because while they're cool to just look at, am hoping for them to be save screens or respite areas from chases, just some functionality to them. If they're just there to flesh out the story, hope more environmental storytelling because right now I just noticed a lot of repeating doll stuff.

The bird smashing on the window was the biggest jump scare that worked on me!

For some reason, really love the 3D-ish head turn on the inmates. I love that even though by walking, they can't tell where you are, if you're too close they'll still know you're there. I only wish that if you got chased, there was a way to hide in the many asylum rooms for a quick respite.
They were creepier foes than the monster. That bit where you have to step on the glass to distract a patient away from the body pile was quite clever. That bit in the hallway where I heard a dog roar or something near the end of the screen, I booked it to open the door even though there probably was nothing there, so that was effective.

Super interested in all the new story stuff. Didn't realise the game was set in the late 19th century. Was kinda cute to see Alexander Bruce (Antichamber) on a gravestone.

Matt's voice has a certain innocence to it, actually, if there is a voice actor being brought in, I hope he's as nervous sounding ^_^

Scariness:
Not even the scariest game is scary all the time, so there's a good balance here of scares and constant dread as you're waiting for something to happen but nothing does as you reach the end of the screen. I like that the beds are basically save screens which fit with the neverending nightmares/groundhog day motif. I was waiting for the family portrait to do something freaky with the eyes. If there's too much of the stealth, it could make the game more of a puzzle rather than tense. I really liked the failure state where you couldn't get past the patient which led to the next story bit with Mrs Smith/Gabby.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Wow the new level is intense, very unsettling and keeps you on edge.

-The sound design is continuing to be top notch. There's so much going on in the background in the new level that I was never sure if something was going to jump out at me. And on that note, headphone mode sounds great. Also the Lost Child music remix works really well, it's even more eerie now.

-I didn't have a lot of problems with the enemies in the new level. I'm uploading a video of my playthrough for that level, once it finishes doing it's thing in the next hour or so I'll put that up for a more in depth take on my experience with them.

-It didn't dawn on me until you mentioned it here on the forum that the dead bodies were supposed to be the guards. Not a big deal at all, but it completely went over my head if that was supposed to be obvious. I'm pretty dense sometimes though!

-As for hints for getting past the second body pile, it took me a while to notice there is a candle near the solution to the puzzle. Would it be feasible to make the candle flicker or something after you die 3-4 times there, to draw even more attention to the glass? I figured it out after a few tries but overlooked it at first.

[JPrice]

Echoing some of the sentiments made here:

- I think that there should be something added to one of the staircase segments in the Hospital. I remember walking down them and my first thought was "Ohhhh no what's gonna be in that giant black void underneath the stairs?" I'm glad you didn't add anything underneath it the first time as that would have been a little too obvious but it'd be nice to have something there at some other point when you're walking down similar staircases. Something like having a light flicker for a brief second underneath as you're walking down to show something graphic, leaving you feeling anxious and wanting to get off those stairs as soon as possible. Maybe you could even show Gabby for a brief second with like a similar design to the Inmates, showing her with sewn eyes and lobotomy scars in a straight jacket. Just some ideas floating around though so hahaha

- I do like the idea of making that one patrolling guard that people are having trouble with go in a square pattern, then you still keep the vertical planes but with a more forgiving pattern

- Having revisited the dialogue, I would agree that it is a shaky in some places. Bit too much exposition and such but I'll talk about that more in the other thread as it's more relevant there

- Also I can +1 that idea of having the psychiatrist's office changing if you decide to go back inside. Maybe have it just dilapidated and destroyed, with where Gabby was sat being replaced by a corpse in the chair or something else.

[Messofanego]

The music is already quite memorable, with those few notes.

[AironNeil]

Most of the thoughts talked about here, I have in common. I did get stumped on the little glass luring puzzle at first, but it didn't take me too long to figure it out. I feel like the glass wasn't noticeable enough (although I'm this is in retrospect so I don't remember exactly). I like the new area, although I like Lost Child is a bit more; plus, it's a little more creepy to me - maybe because of the music though?

I think I'm fine with the way the stair parts are done since you're expecting something to happen the whole time, but nothing does and it keeps you on edge the whole time. I feel like this kind of feeling could be taken more advantage of then it does. For example, maybe when the player enters the room on the bottom of the stairs make it completely empty until they're about to exit then throw in some kind of jump scare.

For me the most effective jump scares in the game so far are: the bird crashing on the window, the lightning sequence, and when he falls through the broken plank. Although I feel like the lightning sequence is probably the most popular jump scare, so it's a whole lot easier to be spoiled of that part making it's effect diminished (kind of like the water part in the first amnesia). I think it would be cool to have it be slightly different every time so that people who were spoiled of the part, and even someone doing a 2nd play through would be surprised.

So those are just my thoughts on the new build, and some new ones I got while playing some of the older levels.

[loverofbooks]

I think i found a glitch, it happened after i had replied to one of my friends on skype and had closed out skype (in skype's script i "minimized it") and opened the game back up and apparently the game put my character in the background with the images on top of him. I've attached the screen shot of it, also his eyes disappeared as well..which makes him look like one of the dolls. I did quit after the next few levels he became worse and worse, at one point i could only see a moving figure in the background that was him.

[matt]

Thanks for all the feedback. We aren't quite finished with "Insanity", so we are already planning things that address some of your concerns. We just couldn't get everything in for the build.

There is a lot comments, and I'm not sure I can respond to them, and I'm not sure I want to because of spoilers...

Also I can +1 that idea of having the psychiatrist's office changing if you decide to go back inside. Maybe have it just dilapidated and destroyed, with where Gabby was sat being replaced by a corpse in the chair or something else.

While that might make things creepier, I think I want to keep her there coldly ignoring you. I think it really hits home the transformation of Gabby. Do you just want her to be warm, when in actuality she's your cold doctor? Or are you just having a crazy dream? I'm not telling! hahaha

- Door handles on "side-doors" are way smaller than on "back-doors".

This is definitely true. Part of the problem is that we use perspective in the world but not with the characters. The whole perspective of the world is totally wrong if you look closer. If you take perspective into account, the side door in general is way smaller.

While we thought about adding perspective to the character, it would make doing the art a lot more difficult since we would then have to match all of the instanced object to precisely where they appear. Right now we use things in the background, midground, and foreground. In addition, when you scale the character, it loses that hand drawn feel and the nice black and white look. We shrink him way down for the last part of Insanity, and I'm not really happy with the way Adam looks there. If we had infinite time, I would redraw his texture, but it'd be a big pain in the ass, so I'm not going to.

Getting the 2D look with a 3D-ish world is really challenging! I may be getting off topic though. We could probably make the door knobs a bit better regardless. It's low priority though.

I notice that we "teleport" down into the cellar, while there was a point made of walking down the veranda's stairs. Maybe enter the cellar by having Thomas descend the last two steps or so?

We are going to go back and add in the stairwells to all the earlier levels. We just haven't gotten a chance yet, but Adam is working on stairway art right now.

Is it intentional that the big clock keeps chiming 12 o'clock repeatedly when leaving the room and coming back to walk in front of it?

So that's a bug. We set the chimed flag when it finishes. Now that you can run, you can leave before the chime finishes. I'll have to change it to set it at the beginning rather than the end.

After the messed-up mansion, this place looks positively clean! Weird.

We didn't finish adding in all the dirt and grime yet. Joe was mad that we released the demo before he finished, but I had to leave for PAX, so I just pushed it out. hahah

As far as the bug, I'm not sure. I feel like it might be a graphics driver issue, which is out of our area of expertise. If it is an interaction with skype, I'm not sure I can even reproduce it. What OS and graphics card do you have?

Thanks!

- Hey, it would be cool for the ophtalmologist's reading charts to have a small, perhaps mocking or despairing message in one of the lower rows of letters! Still readable, but not immediately obvious. Please add something like that!

Did you read them both carefully?

I don't know what it is, but I really like the "3D effect" as the Jacket (as I now dub thee) is turning his head to listen. The Baby also had a similar 3D-looking aspect to its animation. Will Thomas get something like that?

The 3D effects are hard to do, so unless it's necessary, we probably won't.

Anyway, thank you so much for all your feedback! I really appreciate it.

[ranger_lennier]

I just played through the new build. No real problems with the first three levels, though they're definitely losing their scare factor for me at this point. Maybe when you add some more interactive elements it will get my interest back up. The baby monsters were very easy for me this time, but that may just be from practicing with the last build. The asylum level was awesome for the most part--great art, music, and sound effects. It took me a little while to figure out how the enemy worked, but it made sense soon enough. I did have trouble figuring out that last one, though. It was a long time before I even realized you could step on the glass, so that should probably be made more prominent (bigger, more colorful, something like that).

I ran into one bug, though I only saw it once. I aggroed the final enemy by running towards it, then tried running back to the office. I almost made it, but the enemy lunged at me right at the door. Somehow, my body fell to the right of where the enemy lunged at, and he ended up biting the floor, which released a geyser of blood. It was pretty funny, actually. I still died, though.

I know it's not what you're supposed to do, but I sometimes attempted to run past the asylum enemies, and it didn't look quite right to me. It was almost like they blocked my forward movement even before actually making contact with me.

The asylum had a couple of spots with doors with colored knobs that, so far as I know, are impossible to enter because they're blocked with a wheelchair and crutches. This seemed strange to me since all the other colored doors I've been able to go in, and the wheelchair and crutches don't actually look like significant obstructions.

[GabrielPP]

SO I Just discover this new build now, and I want to play and film again.
Next week we have two holidays here in Brazil, so I will probably have some time \o/

[matt]

It was a long time before I even realized you could step on the glass, so that should probably be made more prominent (bigger, more colorful, something like that).

We are working on it. We are adding a pool of blood under it, so hopefully it jumps out a bit more, and if you die 5 times or something, we'll display some bloody footprints that will hopefully clue you in.

I ran into one bug, though I only saw it once. I aggroed the final enemy by running towards it, then tried running back to the office. I almost made it, but the enemy lunged at me right at the door. Somehow, my body fell to the right of where the enemy lunged at, and he ended up biting the floor, which released a geyser of blood. It was pretty funny, actually. I still died, though.

These are hard to repro, so they are hard to fix. Did you start the door opening sequence? Usually the door interacting with the enemy is what causes those. I sometimes forget to have one cancel the other.

I know it's not what you're supposed to do, but I sometimes attempted to run past the asylum enemies, and it didn't look quite right to me. It was almost like they blocked my forward movement even before actually making contact with me.

Basically, when the inmate starts his jump animation, Thomas stops moving and put his hands up. This is the way we did the animation. It probably wasn't the best idea in hindsight because it sometimes looks a little funny, but the animation is awesome, and getting him to jump right on you was a challenge, so I'm not changing it. hahah

The asylum had a couple of spots with doors with colored knobs that, so far as I know, are impossible to enter because they're blocked with a wheelchair and crutches.

Good call. I passed that along to Joe, and he's going to fix it.

Thanks for your feedback!