Eternium: Sins of the Father [Full Release]

[Wapez]

This review will be a rather big one, so I'll split it into several sections.

This review will mostly focus on the bad things.

Contains spoilers.

Mapping:

Spoiler below!

Overall, the map detail in this mod was above decent. Proper use of decals and the placing of most entites makes the maps stand out from the really simple Custom Stories, and adds a somewhat more interesting touch to the exploring part. However, this is ruined by the architecture and major level design. It's in many places weird and confusing, and sometimes almost impossible to keep track of. I often found myself struggling with something as simple as walking back the way I came from just a minute ago. The "basement-mines" part is a perfect example of this. I strafed around for a way too long time down there, and I hard a time getting it all to make sense. By the time I was crawling around under the floor, I was completely lost. Creating a map that remains "unknown" to the player can have a great effect to some extent, but it was overdone in this mod.
Now to the lighting. This part is something I know you put a lot of effort into to make it look good, but I feel like it's too much effort, and that you lost track of the "reality part" while trying to make it beautiful. Looking at a window while it's midnight and seeing that enormous beams of light is shining through and that it's lighting up the entire room in a bright blue color does not feel right. While sometimes good looking to the eye, it's far from realistic. The same goes for small candles and lanterns that lights up enormous areas in a sometimes really dumb way, while my own lantern literally cannot light up the smallest spot on my screen.
Another example of this is the one below:



While this may cool to some people, it looks completely unrealistic. The fire on a candle is small and the light it gives away is not even close to what the giant PointLights that you placed does. A real candle gives an effect that looks like this:



This is something that I think you need to work with: your lighting is simply too complicated - and this makes it look unrealistic. Very often due to the enormous amount of light coming from sources that shouldn't provide any at all. Below there's an image of the same scene as above, but in the HPL editor. The image to the right is what it looks like in your final version. The left version is what it looks like after I deleted 10 of your 11 PointLights. I did not modify it in any other way myself.



I think most people would agree with me that the left version looks better and more realistic. It's far from perfect - I just deleted a bunch of lights - but it's a lot better than the scene in your version. Below is a few more of the areas that just didn't make any sense.

MORE PICTURES IN THE POST BELOW!

Other than that, there were several clipping textures and decals, as well as randomly placed planes and surfaces that is really buggy. I get a strong feeling like your maps haven't been tested at all.

Testing and improving is what makes perfection.

This picture explains itself:


This ends this section.

Gameplay:

Spoiler below!

In this mod, several huge changes to the gameplay was made. The first major change was that you used normal swing doors as level doors, without any warning to the player first. Maybe it seems like a good idea at first, but it's really annoying while put to use.
Several times I tried to grab a door to open it and see what's inside, to decide wether it's worth taking that way, or if I should choose another. But when I instead I get a loading screen, and I'm transferred to another map, without being able to return to the previous one without an unspecified amount of items really makes it feel like a stupid and really unecessary function. Why not use the normal level doors, or at least the hand icon that lets the player know that a loading screen is coming up? I don't get it.
On top of this, several doors were uninteractable and had static physics, until you used a key on them. Why not simply lock them, and let the player unlock it as usual? The static physics gives the impression of the door not being involved in any gameplay whatsoever. If you necessarily have to implement this feature, I suggest you at least give a feint hint about it. Changing the way original Amnesia entities work, without a logical or detailed explanation either makes the player very confused and/or annoyed, as well as that it might look like a bug.

The puzzles in this mod were few, and not complicated at all. However, I can't recall more than one or two hints, notes or mementos giving any information on what to actually do, which made the "puzzles" way too hard for anyone who didn't develop the mod. It was basically just me finding a key, and using it. Sometimes I had to find a path leading somewhere, but with no clue of me having to find it, or it existing at all, it's really hard to do any progress.
All the puzzles eventually just led to unlocking a door leading to the next area, and the ways of unlocking them was basically the same all along.
- Just use key.
- Use key and acid.
- Just use acid.
It rarely makes any sense at all - and is above all incredibly boring and repetitive.

The scares, too, feel cheap and rushed through. Most of them are unoriginal and not scary at all. The second you pick up a container you hear a loud crash from the next room, and when you pick up a key a monster jumps out of a closet that you obviously knew he was hiding in. I don't understand why he'd break the door to that room to hide in the closet anyway. I'd call it cheap jumpscares - and that's what the fear in this mod is based of.

By the way, there's an empty note in the "basement-mines" part.

That ends this section.

Story:

Spoiler below!

There is rarely any story at all in this mod, and what's actually implemented is terribly uninteresting. It's basically just explained through random, short notes, and I barely understood who I was or what I was doing there. All I can say about this part is basically that more story should be in the mod, and through other ways than notes. Flashbacks, sounds, disturing events and voice acting would give it so much more depth.

I didn't feel like I got any connection at all to the main character. I really didn't feel like I was a part of the game, I just followed an already decided path for a man that I didn't know anything about. Yet there was areas where I could interact with objects, to get the character's thoughts about it. Most of these didn't make any sense to me, but that might be because I didn't understand the story in the first place. However, implying exact thoughts into the players and main characters head is something that's very hard and should be done in a carefully and subtle way. Not like the way you do it in my last image, below.

Please, be careful when you're in control of someone else's thoughts. This sentence itself put a major distance between me and the main character.

That ends this section.

I would give this mod a 3/10. Those 3 points are representing the detailed mapping that you have created on several places.

---

MORE PICTURES:

Spoiler below!

Way too much and too bright light:


The light stretches incredibly and unrealistically far:


The candle's light should at least not reach that table:


This feels incredibly immature, and could offend some people.