Okay, here are my usual stream-of-thought comments on the game as I play it. Please simply disregard what seems irrelevant for you or ask me what I meant exactly or what have you. Note that this is basically a "play by play"-commentary, so it'll be full of even very specific spoilers, ramblings and might even seem nonsensical to people who are not aware of the level's layout. Also, because I don't want to grow tired of the earlier levels, I only continued from where I stopped last time (just outside the asylum) rather than going from the beginning. In one of the future releases I'll play from the start again, but if I go through these levels too often, I might not enjoy them as much in their final form anymore. So, I'll take a break of the first four this time around.
- Woah, talk about an unexpected ending to the asylum level.
- Did you speed Thomas up? Even while walking normally, he moves about very quickly in 0.4; is that just for testing purposes?
- The ambient sounds/music track are top-notch yet again, especially with the strange noises here and there, including... snorting? Sometimes it also sounds like tiny footfalls on stone floor, which seems odd considering we're in the wood-floored mansion. It adds to a feeling of displacement, at least for me, because it sounds like we should be inside a dirt-floored cave or cellar at times. The percussion sounds, too, seem somehow "wild" in some parts, albeit distant and quiet, like listening to somebody drumming in the dark in a distant tunnel. Intentional or a complete misreading by me?
- Nice recall to the family photo, now changed to fit the new story!
- When I saw the Latin Bible, I expected a different passage to be honest, but it still seems to be the part about "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?". That said, I only recognize that part of it ("...dereliquisti me..."), so you could probably sneak who-knows-what in there as long as it's in Latin. Just sayin'.
- Whose unmade bed is that (right after the side area with the Bible in it)? According to the photo, only Thomas and "his wife" Gabby live here. That's... odd. Who else is here?
- I really like the slight lighting effect on those windows. Even at night, there should be
some light coming in from the outside, so this works well. Plus, we couldn't see the twisting tree limbs otherwise.
- Huh, it sure is far to the kitchen or wherever we keep our milk. Ah, here we are. Somebody left the turkey out and it's gonna get really dry, though, that's a shame. Well, here's the kitchen then. Thomas sure gulps down the milk, doesn't he! Seems a bit too fast (maybe part of the same overall "speed-up" that I noticed).
- Wait, who ate the turkey?
This is exactly the sort of mind-screw I was looking for. Small changes to imply things are... happening, just out of the corner of our eyes or just beyond our field of vision. Love it! I hope there are many more touches like these (and there probably are, I just didn't see them all yet).
- Clock's still not chiming? Okay, everything must be fine then.
- Oh. Hello, dolly on the stairs... hello.
- Wait, weren't there windows before? Didn't the stairs go a different direction? Am I still in the same place? I don't think I'm retracing my steps, I think I must've gotten turned around somewhere...
- Gabby's gone. I think I'm glad, actually.
- Wait. Another double bed?
- I'm looping. Gotta turn back.
- No, nothing has changed. Maybe I should continue in the first direction after all. Let me see. Yes, yes, this leads elsewhere. A bathroom. But with no other exit. Damn. Gotta go back. Again. I can't see anything in the mirror, so I'll just leave. Back in the corridor. Where am I going?
- Giant bear! But it's stuffed. Not to worry.
- I don't know where I'm going. This place makes no sense. Good thing!
- Oh. Sparks? Oh man. Girl with knife and bloody grin and no eyes/completely black eyes? Is this a doll?
- Just a quick suggestion: If possible, have the sparks (which show up in the utter darkness) create a quickly expanding and receding "pool of light" in the vein of the dim lighting that the dark windows provide. Okay, now back to the game. What'll happen if I...
- That's not a knife.
This is a knife. Urgh.
- Okay, gotta pick up the candle. Hm. The fact that I could leave it might be relevant. Maybe I need to crawl past her in the dark? But I'll try it with the candle again for now, let's see what happens. That said, the fact that she has no eyes/black glass eyes would suggest that she's blind.
- Running past her is impossible, like with all the monsters so far. Maybe I'll try it without the candle now.
- No, walking past her in the darkness doesn't work either. I'll try walking towards her in the darkness, then stand still and see if she passes me by.
- No. She can sense me in the dark even while standing still. Okay, I'll take the candle again.
- Now that I can see again, I also see that she has a bloody blouse, kind of reminiscent of the intro video where the viewpoint character stabs young Gabby. Maybe this creature is young Gabby rather than her doll. That doesn't help me get past her, though, so I'll try drawing her towards the door.
- Well, she killed me near the door instead, so that wasn't it. I wonder if this monster has a hint built-in already because I might qualify for it considering I've died so often. Didn't find a hint as yet.
- Okay, leaving the room with her near the door just resets her position, so that's not it, either, even when you manage to draw her towards the door and survive.
- She killed me while going through the door (the screen had already turned dark for the scene transition). I guess unlike the Baby I'm not safe from that with her.
- Okay, let's try it without light again... no, even if I stop moving the
instant I hear anything from her knife-scraping, she still finds and kills me in the dark. Hm. Maybe running past her in the dark? No, that ain't it, either. I doubt the darkness really helps here. Must be something else.
- Avoiding her path with one of the "alcoves" free from furniture doesn't work, either, with or without the candle. She just homes in on Thomas.
- Maybe there isn't actually a way to get past her. Considering how much changes there were in the layout while backtracking from the kitchen, maybe that's the solution: Trigger her, then leave through the way I came in and go past the bear and see where else I can go from there? Trigger a change in level layout, basically? I'll draw her towards the door and then, with her near, start backtracking.
- Hm, no. The bear's there, alright. Everything else seems the same, also, including the dead-end bathroom. Backtracking isn't the answer here, either.
- Maybe I need to die, drop the candle, go towards her in the dark and draw her towards the door while in darkness, haven't tried that yet.
- Okay, I attract her in the dark, then run back to the door. Right, the sounds are getting quieter. Wait, now they're suddenly gone? Is
she gone?
- I'm running along the corridor in the dark. I don't hear the scraping start up again. And now I'm on the other side of it? She just vanished?!
- Okay, I made it past her, but now I'm just blindly feeling my way around the corridors beyond where she was. This can't be what it was supposed to be like, because there's
no indication of where the next door is, not even the dimmest of light sources/dark windows. I gotta go back and get that candle now.
- Huh?! I was suddenly killed upon reentering the corridor with the monster? What killed me there?! Did she respawn right next to the door?
- Okay, let's do that again: Attract her in the dark, run away, make her vanish, then get that candle and move on.
- Wah! After I made her vanish and left the corridor to get the candle, then went back in, she came back! Gotta run away again and hope she vanishes
even when I have the candle.
- Oooh. Yeah, she vanishes if you run away. It has
nothing to do with leaving the candle and tricking her when it's dark. You just run away and that makes her disappear? That's... not what I expected the solution to be. Well, moving on. And with light this time, so I can actually see where I'm going/where the doors are.
- Maybe you should force Thomas to pick the candle up upon respawning/carry it automatically after death, otherwise people like me might think we have to leave it behind to solve the puzzle, like I did?
- Well, now this monster is really, really easy. All you have to do is to make sure you're not out of breath when encountering her. I'm not sure how I feel about it. We'll see whether the level design
forces you to be out of breath/almost so when encountering her and some stage or whatever else there might be to make encounters more difficult now. Maybe something as simple as having two or more encounters in the same corridor? But that may not be enough.
- Considering she vanishes, I wonder whether this is the "being haunted"-level, by the way! Unlike the other monsters, we don't leave individual creatures behind as such as we leave; this creature vanishes. So all the encounters may be that one, singular creature, be it young Gabby back for revenge or one of the dolls come to bloody life.
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Very nice effect on the stairs there. Also a number of nice set designs in the safe areas afterwards, like the return to the dining room, the other kitchen and its storage room.
- Ah, nice. Two monsters from opposite sides. So it was kind of what I expected you folks to do in order to make it more challenging. It's still really easy once you know the trick, though. One could obviously overdo this with a sequence of spawning monsters on either side at smaller and smaller distances, "closing in on you" repeatedly. So far this encounter only had two spawns, but maybe there'll be more later on? Yeah, she's haunting us. She needs to get ever closer, even more aggressive, with very rapid spawning
and despawning as we run the other way (otherwise she'll simply close in and kill us rather than allow us to live while also coming ever closer and worrying the player/causing a stressful but survivable encounter).
- Oh, you turned off the lights? Bah. I tried avoiding this monster while walking blindly a lot on the first encounter, this isn't sca-... *light flashes* ... oh. Yeah, I expected to see sparks coming my way in the dark, not... that. Kudos.
- And here are the sparks in the dark then. Well, as I said, I have experience avoiding this creature in the dark, so I'm not worried. Maybe this setup makes it all the more important to force Thomas to pick up the candle after respawning during the first (and presumably the other) encounter(s), lest we get used to dealing with her in pitch darkness (accidentally) like I did...
- Ah, the mash-up begins. Nice. Although these are just flashes, not an actual mash-up level. Might easily be a preview for that, though.
- Gabby's position in that particular chair with legs up and blood on her groin... okay, this is an even clearer hint that this story is about pregnancy/death during or after childbirth/forced abortion/miscarriage or something along those lines. Unless that's another misdirection like the family photo with her as sister/her role as psychiatrist would be, of course. Neither her nor Thomas are reliable witnesses in this, so she could be anything, including a complete figment of Thomas' imagination/representative of some completely different conflict.
- Damn you, young Gaby, that's spawn-camping!
And that's it. Here are a few more notes I also put in the survey:
"The mechanic for the new monster is a bit too simplistic for my liking. I enjoy how you mixed it up with the spawn behind us as we run away from the one in front of us and I think putting one of them in the dark is a good idea, but there needs to be something else to change it up more. Compared to the enemy mechanics from Insanity, this is too simplistic.
Force Thomas to pick up the candle/have him carry the candle as he respawns from a death, otherwise players will think that leaving the candle behind is part of solving the first encounter.
Maybe have the monster spawn in front and behind us, but exaggerate the current setup (have, I dunno, 5 subsequent spawns, 3 in front, 2 in the back and have each spawn be a bit closer to the current location of the player without auto-killing them) to make it more tense or try and add some other gimmick into it (again comparing it to insanity, using the broken glass to draw them away comes to mind; I'm not saying the new monster needs some "drawing away"-mechanic but it needs
something different on top).
Sound design and ambient music are excellent once again. I like revisiting the mansion in its less decrepit state, especially as the "mash-up" later on throws that under a massive bus in a really good, really contrasting way.
Add an expanding and diminishing "lighting-effect" to the sparks on the monsters' knives if possible.
All in all - while I really like the dark story aspects, the messing with the level layout during the early backtracking and the monster aesthetics, I prefer Insanity over this one solely for the gameplay/enemy mechanics. Stylistically I prefer Together at Last, mechanically Insanity seems superior to me for now."
hahaha