Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs Discussion Topic Part 1

[Khyrpa]

(04-18-2012 06:06 PM)Googolplex Wrote:  

Spoiler below!

I wish to have a more detailed particle system.
I really enjoyed the dust falling down of the old wooden ceiling.
When you interact with objects or do someting, the world should process more particles that the player feels to be more in a real world. Also the textures should be improved. Give it an old dirty or mossy style, this would improve the atmosphere also.
And the environment should process more natural sounds like cracking wood or the wind howling.
This would even improve atmosphere and are good scare effects in common.
The flares on the walls should look more like real fire with heat shimmer effects.
To the lantern and puzzles I always said something a lot of pages before.

What Amnesia makes good are the sounds. Especially the crying girl you will also hear in the scary gameplay trailer - I wish more of that. Girl voices are very creepy and atmospheric.
Don't show any kind of HUD. The display have to be clean, no life energy indicator, no symbols or texts - just Clean!

And a further bigger thing: To get a bigger impact of involvement and fear in the game, the player should find an old weak weapon (like Penumbra Overture), BUT LOSE THIS WEAPON IN EARLY GAMEPLAY.
Don't mean I wish to have weapons, Amnesia 2 should be like the previous, no fighting game.
But to lose your weapon will have a bigger effect of helpless than when you never had one.
This is important to know.

For coming back to some puzzle design, the player have to read notes to get some hidden secrets to repair a machine for example. Remember Overture, where you have the generator manual and have to repair it, the user manual was full of puzzles - this is what I call involving and immersing!!!
Or to get the code of workshop. Get the key to the other side of the door etc...
Please create some similar puzzles to that using physics and logics.

If it's good, skip the auto-refill life energy, or slow down this process.
Because hints and helps are destroying a horror game and part of casual gamers, there's no place in an epic game like Amnesia for that.

The monsters, don't make too much of them. To have a horde of monsters will reduce the fear of everyone.
Do a scary design, scary animations and scary voices, but monsters should be rare. But you everytime have to mean a monster is hunting you or in the room next to you.
To have detailed scare effects (self opening doors, falling down books, piano music, girl crying etc) is one of the most important things in a scary game.

Create more various locations and make them darker, that you only see the shine of your old dusty lantern!
Add some corpses and bloody bodies, perhaps some kind of a ghost you will see behind you or a shadow next to you. The shadowing also is very important, to see a shadow of someone will shock you, but you don't see a real person.

The text creation should be more like Penumbra. The player have to note his mementos as "I have to... I should use... What should I do... I I and I". Also add more ignorance, that the player don't really know if it's right or what to do. Never give hints by a message, this will destroy thinking of a puzzle!
Amnesia did it often wrong: You have to put the coal into the burner... use the cogwheels to repair the machine... broke the window to get outside... for example. This is very bad and will destroy everything of being alone and to think.

I hope the devs of thechineseroom know what they've to do and give us a ture panic maker this year.
For a scary halloween!

Thankf for reading,
Googolplex

Afraid of girls, okay?

So you start this by saying you wish The Chineseroom to do all the art better than frictional and/or improve their engine... Sure, I guess thats okay?

Why would finding a way to fix a machine involve hidden secrets? That's out of place and could just break the immersion.

As for the helping hints, tips and casuals or something you wrote about (its hard to tell your writings a mess).
In a perfect world we might have a puzzle that everyone can solve so they enjoy it, but that is very hard to achieve and your "suggestions" are just not helping.
relevant:


Bloody corpses, ghosts, books flying, girls crying. You liking them cliché's?
I will likely find a single clever hint at something intriguingly gruesome more scary than an automatic door.

Googolplex, you should make a custom story! You could put all that great horror design knowledge to good use.