Creating a good custom story

[Adny]

I think this is really good. But, I do have to disagree with you on one point. Lightning.

The players usually know the basics of what attracts a creature, one being light. If you've got a fully lit room, dim but lit, that monster will see you and you have no dark corner to hide in. I think that's a lot more scary than darkness. Playing to a person's subconscious fears is the best way to go if you want a scare. Why are people afraid of the dark? They think a monster is going to jump out. But they aren't sure. You can get over jump scares easily and you know that in a bright place there's no where to hide.

I think I'd rather face a brute in a dark room than a grunt in a bright one. ^^

Anyway, just my opinion. Great job!

I disagree.
Darkness = Insanity
Insanity = Louder Daniel
Louder Daniel = more likely to get caught by creature
Getting caught by creature = scary

Darkness = Scary; the player knows this is a game and that's how it works, regardless of how it might work in real life.

Lighting is the one thing many people overlook in mods for this game; lighting is one of the biggest contributors to atmosphere, yet so many people do it poorly. There's much more to it than having a torch+point light, there has to be contrast, and a sense of flowing between bright and dark areas.

Anyways, to OP:

I'm pretty sure this type of thread has been done multiple times before, or at least all the information here has been scavenged from many different help threads; either way, I feel I should weigh in on the subject!

1. Sound is extremely important, but you've barely scratched the surface with this post; the audio part of Amnesia's atmosphere is most effectively built by bombarding the player with many small, subtle sounds within a reasonable amount of time. I personally find the best mix is 50/50 random ambient sound loop/timers to scripted sounds associated with specific areas. Imo, if you open Amnesia with dev settings and it doesn't say you have at least 1 sound playing at a given time, you're doing it wrong.

On the same subject, music is vastly underused, of course I mean event music! It's not enough to just play the music, it should synchronize events happening in game. For example, say a brute's trying to break down your door and you decided on some event music for this special occasion - the strong notes (loudest) should be lined up with what the brute is doing, such as pounding on the door. If done properly, it will significantly increase immersion for these ever so crucial moments.

2. Good point to bring up; contrast between areas can give players relief or make them feel uneasy. Changes in ambient sounds and lighting can make one room feel tranquil, while the adjacent room will have an eerie feel.

3. Already touched on this at the beginning of my post

4. Atmosphere is a combination of the visual/audible aspects of the game that the player can observe; so if you have good mapping and good choices of sounds/music, it will come naturally.

5. Very important. If the story isn't good, there might as well not be a story at all! People shouldn't be afraid to try to emulate the type of literature found in the original game; hell, if your story is good enough to actually get the player interested, then hats off to you! (Please, try to avoid anything that has to do with Amnesia. Seriously.)

6. There is no limitation when it comes to scares, just the creator's imagination. Its something you want to be original in. A scare I found quite good a while back was the iron maiden scare/suitor in "Killings In Aldstadt"; it was new, and something I never saw coming (it's a shame countless PDP stories copy/pasta'd the script into their jumpscare fests, but what can you do?).

Although, there's nothing wrong with the usual types of "monster sequences"; by this I mean gradually giving the player hints towards the monster, whether they are subtle sounds, very quick visuals, then stepping it up to more dramatic encounters. In fact, it was done so well Followed By Death Chp2 I had to take frequent breaks (which I never do).

tl;dr - wall o' text crits for 5k.