Alpha 0.3 Discussion [SPOILERS]

[ranger_lennier]

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.

Well, I definitely pressed the A button with the intention of opening the door. I thought I'd made it, but I don't remember seeing the door start to open. Should you be safe once the door starts opening, or is there still a window of opportunity to be attacked?

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

I noticed this. It was frustrating trying to get Thomas to move run away, but having him just stand there waiting to be eaten. I suppose you could say he was paralyzed with fear, though.

[JPrice]

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.

Ohhhh I like that idea, helps it stand out that way and it's not that intrusive to the atmosphere of the world

[matt]

Well, I definitely pressed the A button with the intention of opening the door. I thought I'd made it, but I don't remember seeing the door start to open. Should you be safe once the door starts opening, or is there still a window of opportunity to be attacked?

Well, there are two parts to the door opening - the first, where you walk into position, and the second for the actual animation. I suspect you were already in the first, and it flipped the direction around for when you were attacked. I usually have to figure out per enemy the best way to handle that interaction. I'll have to think about it.

I noticed this. It was frustrating trying to get Thomas to move run away, but having him just stand there waiting to be eaten. I suppose you could say he was paralyzed with fear, though.

He puts his hands up to block the attack during this time, which looks nice I think.

Ohhhh I like that idea, helps it stand out that way and it's not that intrusive to the atmosphere of the world

Yeah hopefully it works! I do a lot of stuff to try to drop hints. a lot of the cell scares with the banging are positioned deliberately to teach you about the sound based detection the enemies have. Trying to create a game without help messages is a challenge, but I think it really helps with immersion.

[Grabthehoopka]

Alright, I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you. After solving the technical problems of the last attempt to make a reaction video, I made another one, only to come across a whole new bevy of technical problems. So, regrettably, I gave up on it. Anyways, here are my thoughts, having been giving weeks to mull them over in my head-

The first two levels are still solid. I already told you what I thought about the dialogue on the other thread, so I won't repeat myself. I appreciated how the backer portraits were less frequent, and the problem/possible bug I had with the timing of the growl and the death in the dark basement was fixed. The transitions you added when walking around the corners of the hallways are nice, but they were a little jarring at first. If there was a way you could have the shadows fade down, rather than the light just popping on, I think that would feel a little more natural and a little less startling. Also, I don't know if I asked this and I don't you if you've answered this question before, but do you plan on having a wider variety of footstep noises at some point?

The one bug I brought up before of the shadows in the "why have you forsaken me" cutaway is still present, though. So far, it's still the only place where it occurs, and I feel a little weird if I'm the only one reporting that problem. If you think it might lead to problems later on, perhaps when you release the next build, you could bring the bug up and request that people inspect that wall with the candle to see if anyone else can reproduce it? Plus, I encountered one more graphical glitch - in the first room of the second level (the one you wake up in), when I left the door to go the hallway, the shadows outside the door faded away as they faded up on Thomas, so it went from normal to the character model fading to black and walking into the wallpaper texture. That was the only doorway I encountered that problem with, and it was only going from the room out to the hallway, not the other way around.

You will be happy to know that after playing through it like a dozen times, from the kickstarter until now, I still jump like a chihuahua at the lightning jump scare, even though I know it's coming. So. You can put that on the "accomplishments" part of your resume, which is nice.

I got through the chase sequence on my first try, barely, the first time I played the level, but I did so by apparently triggering the door opening by mashing the space bar, thus allowing the baby monster to run right past me and look confused as I calmly walked through the door. It was a little more sensible this time, but then again, I already knew it was coming, so I'm not the best source to ask about the difficulty. Perhaps one more thing to add to your "To Do* (*if there's time)" list is a dash of your old friend, Dynamic Diffculty? Maybe you could scoot the door closer to the player (off screen, of course) if the game detects the monster is getting too close too quickly? Something like that? I don't know.

Oh, and I loved the ending.

Alright, the fourth level. Indistinct/muffled voices from other parts of the building are one of my phobic buttons, and you pushed it good and hard with that intro sequence. I was expecting a higher concentration of blood and carnage in the area immediately outside your cell door relative to the rest of the cell block, but overall I wasn't disappointed.

I LOVED the enemies in this one. I encountered the first one as it was coming towards me and it scared the shit out of me, but that behavior, coupled with his appearance, followed by the animation of him stopping and listening, told me the basics of everything I needed to know about this enemy, all in a handful of seconds with the first one you throw at us. Really good job at that. I died 2-3 times I think, and each one of those times I didn't know what caused them to leap on me like that, but while it was a little confusing, it wasn't frustrating, for two reasons: first, your forgiving death mechanics. Second, it made the encounters scarier. The mechanics behind them aren't that hard to grasp, and their behaviors aren't that complicated, but the fact that I felt like any one of them could attack at any moment for no discernable reason gave them an element of unpredictability that the baby monsters lacked, and made each encounter with them really intense. I don't know how much of this was design and how much was luck on my part, but I think you did a fantastic job with the enemy encounters.

I didn't get stuck on the puzzle. It took me like a minute to figure out, but you did a good job on drawing attention to the glass. Stepping on glass is another one of my phobic buttons, and you pressed it good and hard again, probably laughing and tenting your fingers, by putting that in there and including the little trickle of blood when you walk. It seemed like an innocuous detail at the time, but it stuck out in my mind because of how horrible it was, and then there were enemies with some piles of broken glass on the floor, and I put two and two together. When I came across the line of glass going across the entire hallway, I said "Oh, fuck you, Matt" out loud. It was nothing personal, I assure you, it just means you were doing your job. So anyways, I was a little stumped when that room with that puzzle came, but I figured it out after a minute or so.

The one problem I had with the new level was that it seemed like it went on a little too long. Once I hit that cutscene with the dialogue and everything, pacing-wise, it felt like that was the end, or the beginning of some kind of transition. But after going through that climactic enemy encounter and then being given a quiet breather, and then going out the door into another identical hallway covered with gore, I laughed. I'm sorry, but it was just too much, to the point of being laugh-out-loud funny. That doesn't mean the enemy encounters were any less tense, though. I don't really know how to fix this issue without rearranging, changing or removing sections of the game, though, so I don't know.

All in all it was awesome and I'm really looking forward to seeing where this goes next. I think it's definitely taken a darker turn, first with the dead little girl and then with the new enemies. I was casually thinking about what the new enemies could symbolize, and I thought of Korsakovia, an early Half Life 2 mod by The Chinese Room. Long story short, the entire game takes place in the delusions of a hospitalized man with Korsakoff's Syndrome, and while he constantly forgets that he's in a hospital and doesn't remember why he's there, you find out through several conversations between him and the doctors that he punched his hands through his TV set and wrapped his hands in the copper wires within as they caught fire, and then at some point ripped out his eyes and ate them.

So, with that coming walloping back into my mind, I figure that things might seriously be less on the up-and-up with Thomas than I previously imagined, especially with his penchant for arm mutilation (oh, you didn't think I would notice all the severed arms, did you? Well, I'm onto you, mister...I'm onto you good...)

Anyways, I'm sorry it took so long for me to give feedback. It was going to be a surprise, but after I made my reaction video, I was going to have a friend of mine play it as well (FOR SCIENCE!) and make a second reaction video of him. He ordinarily has no problem with scary stuff, but he's a big wuss when it comes to scary games, and I thought it would be useful to compile data based on someone who plays a lot of video games, but doesn't play horror games. I was going to do this to make up for not making a reaction video for the previous build, but now I'm thinking I'll just make him play it anyways and just keep him under careful observation and take notes, and afterwords, I'll ask him the questions from the poll and post the results from that.

[matt]

The transitions you added when walking around the corners of the hallways are nice, but they were a little jarring at first. If there was a way you could have the shadows fade down, rather than the light just popping on, I think that would feel a little more natural and a little less startling.

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you take a video of what you are referring to?

Also, I don't know if I asked this and I don't you if you've answered this question before, but do you plan on having a wider variety of footstep noises at some point?

Well, we have some different ones for the metal stairs, but I keep forgetting to put them in. Beyond that, I would have to talk to our audio designer. For the regular wood floors, we have something like 12 different footstep sounds playing them in a random order, and I think we do random pitch variation on top of that... That's basically what every game does - or perhaps a little more. I don't have a footsteps taken measurement, but I suspect it is hundreds, so it is going to be really difficult to make them sound completely varied. I've heard about some generative audio techniques, but that is really too much work given our limited scope and development budget...

The one bug I brought up before of the shadows in the "why have you forsaken me" cutaway is still present, though. So far, it's still the only place where it occurs, and I feel a little weird if I'm the only one reporting that problem. If you think it might lead to problems later on, perhaps when you release the next build, you could bring the bug up and request that people inspect that wall with the candle to see if anyone else can reproduce it? Plus, I encountered one more graphical glitch - in the first room of the second level (the one you wake up in), when I left the door to go the hallway, the shadows outside the door faded away as they faded up on Thomas, so it went from normal to the character model fading to black and walking into the wallpaper texture. That was the only doorway I encountered that problem with, and it was only going from the room out to the hallway, not the other way around.

I suspect this is a graphics card driver bug. What operating system are you running? What video card do you have? Are your drivers up to date? Updating your drivers is *usually* the way to fix issues like this. Let me know what your system is like, and I'll try to see if I can reproduce it, or we could at least ask someone with similar hardware to update that.

Perhaps one more thing to add to your "To Do* (*if there's time)" list is a dash of your old friend, Dynamic Diffculty? Maybe you could scoot the door closer to the player (off screen, of course) if the game detects the monster is getting too close too quickly? Something like that? I don't know.

I already did that. I think I discussed it in this video. The short answer is I do rubber banding on the baby monster like in a lot of racing games. As he gets closer to you, he slows down. I think it helps a lot.

The mechanics behind them aren't that hard to grasp, and their behaviors aren't that complicated, but the fact that I felt like any one of them could attack at any moment for no discernable reason gave them an element of unpredictability that the baby monsters lacked, and made each encounter with them really intense. I don't know how much of this was design and how much was luck on my part, but I think you did a fantastic job with the enemy encounters.

Thank you! I think the idea of walking by enemies even if they are blind is pretty unnerving. I agree that unpredictability or perceived unpredictability helps things seem more threatening. It is a little challenging for horror game developers because you want things to be predictable, so enemies can be understood and overcome.

But after going through that climactic enemy encounter and then being given a quiet breather, and then going out the door into another identical hallway covered with gore, I laughed. I'm sorry, but it was just too much, to the point of being laugh-out-loud funny.

Hmm... Personally, I like that hallway. I usually play with headphones and headphone mode on, and the hallway is pretty eerie with the 3d positional drop sounds. I'm not trying to be critical, but the "insanity" level isn't quite finished nor is the level that comes after it, so I hope the pacing will work better for you once we have more content finished. That being said, if you find that hallway funny, I don't think anything we do will fix that... I'll give some more thought to the pacing, but I was pretty happy with it...

Anyways, I'm sorry it took so long for me to give feedback.

You have nothing to apologize for! You are under no obligation to play the game. hahah

I'm thinking I'll just make him play it anyways and just keep him under careful observation and take notes, and afterwords, I'll ask him the questions from the poll and post the results from that.

As I am sure you are aware, I appreciate all feedback about the game! The more people play, the better!

[Grabthehoopka]

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you take a video of what you are referring to?

In the second level, in the corners between the hallways, where it goes completely into black, when I approach them, part of the shadows suddenly disappear, and I can see a bit of the corner of the opposing hallway, like the lights were off and then they just flicked on, and then when I transition to the next hallway, I can see a bit of the corner of the previous hallway where I just came from, and it flicks back to darkness as I walk away from it. I assumed this was deliberate, since you upgraded the door animations, so I thought it was all part of one general initiative to clarify transitions between rooms, but now I'm starting to think it might be another graphics card issue...

Well, we have some different ones for the metal stairs, but I keep forgetting to put them in. Beyond that, I would have to talk to our audio designer. For the regular wood floors, we have something like 12 different footstep sounds playing them in a random order, and I think we do random pitch variation on top of that... That's basically what every game does - or perhaps a little more. I don't have a footsteps taken measurement, but I suspect it is hundreds, so it is going to be really difficult to make them sound completely varied. I've heard about some generative audio techniques, but that is really too much work given our limited scope and development budget...

Oh, no no no, I'm not getting snooty about the 12 footstep sounds, don't worry. The floorboard footstep noises are perfect! I was just talking about the floorboard sounds playing when you aren't walking on floorboards.

I suspect this is a graphics card driver bug. What operating system are you running? What video card do you have? Are your drivers up to date? Updating your drivers is *usually* the way to fix issues like this. Let me know what your system is like, and I'll try to see if I can reproduce it, or we could at least ask someone with similar hardware to update that.

Admittedly, I'm a console gamer at heart and if I hadn't ever seen the inside of a computer, I'd think there was a tiny wizard inside. I'm on Windows 7 and my computer informs me that it's an "AMD A4-3305M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics 1.90GHz". I'll look into an update and see if it helps.

I already did that. I think I discussed it in this video. The short answer is I do rubber banding on the baby monster like in a lot of racing games. As he gets closer to you, he slows down. I think it helps a lot.

Ah. Well then. I'll admit, I didn't actually watch that video, since I was trying to avoid spoilers until I got the technical issues worked out for my reaction video. I intended to watch it afterwords, but I guess I forgot...

Hmm... Personally, I like that hallway. I usually play with headphones and headphone mode on, and the hallway is pretty eerie with the 3d positional drop sounds. I'm not trying to be critical, but the "insanity" level isn't quite finished nor is the level that comes after it, so I hope the pacing will work better for you once we have more content finished. That being said, if you find that hallway funny, I don't think anything we do will fix that... I'll give some more thought to the pacing, but I was pretty happy with it...

It wasn't the hallway itself that was funny, actually quite the opposite. Since it's SO creepy, and SO oppressive, it was more the fact that you give us a reprieve and then just dump us back in the scary hallway with no pomp and circumstance. The hallway itself is not inherently funny, it was more gallows humor at the situation.

[matt]

I assumed this was deliberate, since you upgraded the door animations, so I thought it was all part of one general initiative to clarify transitions between rooms, but now I'm starting to think it might be another graphics card issue...

We didn't change the transitions for the hallways at all, so I suspect it's a graphics card issue.

Oh, no no no, I'm not getting snooty about the 12 footstep sounds, don't worry. The floorboard footstep noises are perfect! I was just talking about the floorboard sounds playing when you aren't walking on floorboards.

Oh yeah. I need to fix it for the metal stairs. We probably need one for cement in the basements and stuff. I guess one for tile as well for the asylum. I'll talk to Eduardo about those.

I'm on Windows 7 and my computer informs me that it's an "AMD A4-3305M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics 1.90GHz". I'll look into an update and see if it helps.

That is an uncommon one. It's basically the AMD equivalent of the new graphics chip on the CPU. I only have experience with the Intel side of things, but I am willing to wager that it's just a bad graphics driver. AMD isn't as good about drivers as Nvidia in my experience, which is unfortunate. Intel is pretty bad as well, but they are getting better.

Ah. Well then. I'll admit, I didn't actually watch that video, since I was trying to avoid spoilers until I got the technical issues worked out for my reaction video. I intended to watch it afterwords, but I guess I forgot...

No worries! I figured I'd just point you at that if you wanted more info.

It wasn't the hallway itself that was funny, actually quite the opposite. Since it's SO creepy, and SO oppressive, it was more the fact that you give us a reprieve and then just dump us back in the scary hallway with no pomp and circumstance. The hallway itself is not inherently funny, it was more gallows humor at the situation.

Oh, okay. I understand more. The way I see it, is that I'm constantly trying to mindfuck the players. You are in this crazy place, and you wake up, and everything seems normal. JUST Joking! It's actually worse. So the fact that you expected the level to wind down when really it just ramps up, is what I was going for.

I also really love the idea that Dr. Smith is sitting there reading her book callously ignoring you, when there is super CRAZY SHIT going on RIGHT OUTSIDE her office. The idea behind that is to make the player wonder if they are just imagining it. Maybe things are normal, and you are just crazy. Or maybe not. We haven't quite finished the ending yet of that nightmare.

Anyway, I really appreciate your feedback, and if you could update your graphics card drivers and check on the hallway transitions and the scene in the library in "The Coming Storm", I'd greatly appreciate it. Hopefully, newer drivers takes care of one or both of the issues... Otherwise, I don't have a ton of ideas... :-/

[nsane]

Let me start out by saying that this game holds a lot of promise. I feel, however, that it kind of falls off towards the last two levels. I'd also like to say that for me, the first two levels blended together, having a similar setting, so I'll address those together. Also, I hope I don't come across as snooty or condescending; I just have really high hopes for this game and want to see it be the best it can be.

First level and second levels (I can't really differentiate between the two):
Just excellent. This is what horror is truly about. The pacing and atmosphere are perfect. The feeling of being alone in a dark and unfamiliar place puts you on edge. Is that really a silhouette I see sitting on the floor slumped against the wall, or is it just my mind playing tricks on me? There are a couple of jump scares, but they are well placed and don't come across as being cheap or out of place, they actually serve a purpose. These two levels are definitely my favorite out of the four.

The third level:
This is where the game starts losing me. I feel the sequences with the steroids babies (as I've come to call them) are a bit too repetitive and there are too many of them. The more an enemy is seen and understood, the less scary it becomes. After the first few encounters, they stop being menacing and scary and instead become a nuisance; simply another obstacle. I feel that spacing them out a bit more and giving the player something else to think/worry about would help alleviate the problem.

The fourth level:
Aside from waking up in the doctor's office, this was my least favorite level. The pacing was off. The first part was OK and did build up the atmosphere, but it went on a bit too long before you see the first enemy, then you see it too much and too often. The actual sequences weren't that bad in and of themselves, but I feel they'd be better served with more in-between. Perhaps a really dark hallway or two with only a couple of dim lights and perhaps some shadowy movement, especially in the big, black space under one of the sets of stairs (my apologies if I missed something there).

Once again, I feel this game has very good potential.The pacing and atmosphere start out great and just fall flat towards the end. I feel in both the later levels spacing out the encounters and giving a bit more attention to the setting and atmosphere would greatly improve them.

[ranger_lennier]

The first couple of levels are definitely atmospheric, but at the same time, I think you can start to let your guard down as you realize that nothing can actually hurt you. So I was glad to see some enemies show up in level 3, and if anything, I'm concerned that they'll end up being too easy to get past. If it's trivial to get past them, then that takes away a lot of the tension, at least for me. Now that you mention it, I do agree that level 4 had too many long, repetitive sections with no enemies. I don't think you'd lost anything from cutting that down a bit. Or alternatively, there could be more unique locations/features like the bloody shower room and the pile of limbs.

[matt]

I actually wrote a big long kickstarter update addressing your concerns nsane because I read feedback which sounded very similar in the post-play surveys. (I assume it was yours, but you know what they say about assumptions!)

The short answer is that we aren't finished with the asylum yet, and we are doing some things that I think will improve the flow and pacing of the level. Obviously, I don't want to say specifically what we have planned, but I think it will at least address some of your concerns.

As far as having too many enemies, the spacing between them, and the keeping their mystery, that is a longer discussion, which I get into more in the update. I am open to changing things, but I don't want to mess with it too much before I am happy with it, so I would say wait to see it when we consider it "done" and have everything in context with the rest of the nightmares.

We are hoping to have a full playthrough done hopefully by the end of June or beginning of July, so hopefully with the pacing of the entire game, the pacing of those levels will make more sense.

Thank you for your honest feedback! I really appreciate it.