Amnesia - The Village RELEASE !!

[Hunter of Shadows]

Okay

I started playing it...and here are my thoughts so far, I won't go into spelling, bugs, or anything like that, I'll be going solely into design.

And the word of the day is frustration

This custom story could have been a lot more enjoyable, but a lot of it was just damn irritating, I'll start with the carriage ride, this was well done, except for the part with the tinderbox, that was so redundant that it was actually annoying in of itself.

Next, I'll start with how it was hard to find the hostel to begin with, none of the doors were labelled, and half the time I couldn't tell if the doors were jammed or just needed a key.

Now, I personally think the village could have used some more frequent lighting, if you're going to deny the player any tinderboxes or the lantern, then being forced to run from light source to light source is somewhat annoying as well.

But here is my biggest gripe of all, denying usage of the lantern, because after I found the way into the hostel, not only was it pitch black and difficult see anything, but you also put SPIDERS down there, whom I could not dodge, you might have thought hearing the pattering of the little creatures is scary, and it was at first...till they started hitting me, when they did that, and I realized I couldn't do anything about it, I started to get annoyed, fast. I couldn't avoid the spiders(even if they do no damage, doesn't make them less annoying), nor could I see where I was going.

But I digress, I dislike not having the lantern, because fumbling my way through the dark is not enjoyable, it would be far less unpleasant if there were no spiders.

Here are some other things

The music in the hostel is...spastic, it turns on and off at the drop of a hat, if you're going to have music, make it ambient and everywhere, not just in one area so that the moment you leave the room it shuts off. Also...what was with the loud banging noises? Sounding like something was being thrown or broken, it might have been intended to be scary, and it was indeed alarming the first time it happened...but after that, when there was no apparent source of the sound, the player quickly loses interest in my opinion, simply because a ghostly banging noise with no connection to the world they are immersing themselves into is...silly.

It quickly got to the point where the banging noise didn't even register to my brain anymore.

But so far, it all looks like with a little more work this would be an extremely good custom story, but for me, I quit when I learned I had to go back into the flooded cellar and stub my toes on a twenty different objects, get mauled by oversized spider's over and over, and most of all, be really lost and have no idea where I'm supposed to go.