|
Speaking of the art, the game really reminds me of this old Flash game I used to play as a kid. Had the same sort of dark lines for shadows and junk, and there was something about a knife and using a candle to look in a room; I dunno, it was one of those old murder mystery flash games. Although I do wish I could find it. As for the game itself, there are definitely some parts that should have been cut out, or at least shortened. In the last video, I started to just scroll down so I could only see the subs since nothing was happening. (If I wasn't on Windows 8, I'd probably would have been playing Solitaire in a separate window.) Like everyone else is saying, this game showed promise, but then I think it fell back on too many standard horror tropes. If I had help to fund this game, I would have been really disappointed. Although I will admit that the scene where he puts his hand in the meat grinder made me turn away. Thomas has some hosed up dreams, man.
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2014 15:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 21:09 |
|
|
The video just finished uploading, so maybe give it a bit before watching. Episode 6: The Final Descent The next episode will be the last one where we'll go back to the forest in Childish Things. I already have it recorded so it won't be long until we're done with Neverending Nightmares.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2014 12:00
|
|
|
I also suffer from a multitude of mental health issues and that gives me problems with sleep, sleep paralysis is the worst but I usually have reoccurring nightmares about losing my teeth like just all of a sudden they feel loose and they all just start falling out and talking spits them out. Then I wake up and check all my teeth. They always have phantom pains the next day.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2014 14:56
|
|
|
By now, all I'm really curious about is what's with Thomas's extremely creepy fixation on his sister.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2014 16:40
|
|
|
Spudd posted:I also suffer from a multitude of mental health issues and that gives me problems with sleep, sleep paralysis is the worst but I usually have reoccurring nightmares about losing my teeth like just all of a sudden they feel loose and they all just start falling out and talking spits them out. Then I wake up and check all my teeth. They always have phantom pains the next day. Dreams about losing your teeth are actually very common and I believe they're reported across all cultures. Not sure why. Look it up if you want.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2014 16:52
|
|
|
Carbon dioxide posted:Dreams about losing your teeth are actually very common and I believe they're reported across all cultures. Not sure why. Look it up if you want. This is mostly my personal armchair psychology, but a loss of teeth represents helplessness, either a retreat into an infantile stage, or the advancement of old age. And also losing your teeth hurts like gently caress and its an unpleasant memory your brain likes to relive when your mind is not in a happy place.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2014 17:26
|
|
|
dotchan posted:This is mostly my personal armchair psychology, but a loss of teeth represents helplessness, either a retreat into an infantile stage, or the advancement of old age. I've had similar dreams before, and they do always seem to crop up when I feel as if I'm stuck. So there is that.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2014 21:26
|
|
|
Yeah, this game definitely drags on too long. The first couple of stages were short, punchy and had a good shock at the end (never seen anyone dig the veins out of their arms before, that's for drat sure). The game goes on and it's long stretches of nothing with the occasional vaguely interesting thing. Then you get to this point and you're wandering around the basement of the world's messiest butcher for no adequate reason, it seems, other than 'organs and blood are creepy'. The game did a much better job when it was sparing with the claret and the shocks were genuinely surprising (the aforementioned vein-digging scene, for example). I'll stick around for the final video, but I don't have high hopes for it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 00:03
|
|
|
Episode 7: Wayward Dreamer The LP is now finished but a couple of things to note: 1. The game only has 4 achievements, 3 for getting each ending and 1 for going down each path. I never went to Destroyed Dreams from Together At Last until tonight. I didn't think to record it because I thought there was nothing special. Turns out I was right! Behind that door is a hole you just climb down and then Destroyed Dreams starts like normal. 2. The directions I took for each ending are in the video description but here they are in spoiler tags: Up, Down, Up, Down, Down, Up gets you Destroyed Dreams Up, Down, Down, Up, Down, Down gets you Wayward Dreamer 3. I'll leave the thread open for a day or two to get final reactions, though I don't except this video will change anything. After that, I'll close it. Anyway, thanks everyone for putting up with me and this LP! EDIT: The final video got copyright claimed by AdRev Publishing. The video is still there, but I am going to dispute the claim out of spite. countzio fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Nov 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 02:52
|
|
|
StrangeAeon posted:By now, all I'm really curious about is what's with Thomas's extremely creepy fixation on his sister. On his sister's horrifically mutilated corpse, most of the time.  I was halfway expecting one of the endings to be Thomas turning out a serial murderer who's been ritually reenacting his sister's death at the hands of either an abusive parent or his incest-minded self.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 03:49
|
|
|
That's it. That's the third ending. Jesus Christ.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 04:06
|
|
|
I would personally feel the real nightmare is buying this game and finding out there's little to no game to it and nothing but scareotypes. I'm simply not moved by it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 04:08
|
|
|
Well, at least the dolls finally did something. I dub them Chekov's Dolls. The double wake-up at the beginning of the episode actually made me wish there were more transitions like that in the game outside of dying. The beginning landed well because you were going through a seemingly normal house with things increasingly seeming a bit off. Waking up to wander aimlessly around a ruined version of the same house or an insane asylum didn't work because we've seen that in horror a thousand times before. Putting you in different settings that start normal but turn nightmarish would've had much more impact, and there's so many common nightmares to choose from: being unprepared for school, everything going wrong at work, etc etc all mundane fears that could spiral into the grotesque. The recurring sanitarium levels just reminded me of why Asylum Jam exists. The games there are a mixed bag since they were all developed in a short timeframe, but they all at least try to approach horror without falling back on the old insanity tropes. I really recommend Lullaby, personally.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 04:37
|
|
|
Cheez posted:I would personally feel the real nightmare is buying this game and finding out there's little to no game to it and nothing but scareotypes. I'm simply not moved by it. I made the mistake of buying it sight unseen and was almost fascinated by how terrible it was. One more Kickstarter dud to throw on the pile.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 05:29
|
|
|
Oxxidation posted:I made the mistake of buying it sight unseen and was almost fascinated by how terrible it was. One more Kickstarter dud to throw on the pile. I guess I would have been more upset if I paid the price for the game after the pre-purchase discount but I had that and a couple of bucks from Steam card sales at the time so it was under 10 bucks. Which isn't bad when you consider worse horror games were priced higher on their release dates and were shorter, like Daylight. Oh god, do I regret buying Daylight.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 06:06
|
|
|
The only neat thing about episode 6 was the sudden transitions into other areas. But yes, the obsession with sister is weird. Especially because she's somehow his wife in some parts of the game. Thank you for LPing this game that turned out boring in the latter parts.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 09:36
|
|
|
Oxxidation posted:I made the mistake of buying it sight unseen and was almost fascinated by how terrible it was. One more Kickstarter dud to throw on the pile. I made this same mistake. I was so bored I gave up within an hour of endlessly walking around a bunch of uninteresting environments and constantly hitting dead ends. I honestly was not surprised when I watch the LP that most of the game involves you doing the same thing. I'm more curious why the developer fell back to the typical tropes of gore and violence blatantly for the sake of it. The kickstarter mentioned the developer has had some mental issues which inspired him to create the game, yet everything is absolutely shallow, which is exaggerated by how terrible all the endings are. You would have thought there would be at least a few more layers to the game but nope, there's zero pay off to anything you do and nothing you do makes sense/is worth it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 09:36
|
|
|
The last two endings/areas are at least somewhat more interesting than the first one. Kind of feels like it came a bit too late though. I rather liked the transition from one area to the next with the ruin of the current area, though they could have done it a more gradual pace. Would have been nice to see leaves and dirt, holes and other naturey stuff for example way before the full on transition into a forest for example. Or capitalized on the dream like nature and had more surreal things happening. I was expecting at least at one point for the paintings to move, or for a doll to do more than just blink [ Final path excluded. ] With as often as you passed similar paintings you'd have expected something to happen in them, but the only one I noticed was the painting where someone is standing on a stool, then in another painting you see them hanging. So much wasted potential. Its such a shame they padded the game out so much. It feels like they either got scared away from using their own personal experiences, or just was trying to pad out the game by reusing assets to a ridiculous degree. This feels like if they had removed all that padding it could have been a short and maybe a little creepy flash game, but trying to pad it out just undercut any kind of tension or creepiness it had. DeliciousCookie fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Nov 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 13:45
|
|
|
The paintings were the worst wasted potential because instead of using them as creepy content, they were made as drawings of kickstarter backers, and at least half of them dress and pose as utterly goony fucks.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 13:56
|
|
|
The Saddest Rhino posted:The paintings were the worst wasted potential because instead of using them as creepy content, they were made as drawings of kickstarter backers, and at least half of them dress and pose as utterly goony fucks. I'm really curious if the dude with the waxed Snidely Whiplash looking mustache actually had one in his photo or if he asked for that to be added.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 14:53
|
|
|
Whelp, that was certainly a... thing that happened, I guess. I think "wasted potential" kinda sums the experience up nicely. It was a cool concept, but there was so much more that could have been done with it. With all the recurring spiderwebs alone, I was sure that a spider with Gabby's face would be an enemy at some point.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 16:16
|
|
|
Octarine Dream posted:I'm really curious if the dude with the waxed Snidely Whiplash looking mustache actually had one in his photo or if he asked for that to be added. I want to know if that one gent from episode 6 requested to make him Dad-like as possible. The Saddest Rhino posted:The paintings were the worst wasted potential because instead of using them as creepy content, they were made as drawings of kickstarter backers, and at least half of them dress and pose as utterly goony fucks. I agree. Though on the bright side, we did get a tombstone with Adam Sessler's name on it. StrangeAeon posted:With all the recurring spiderwebs alone, I was sure that a spider with Gabby's face would be an enemy at some point. A level with that combined with the dolls might have been worth doing a level with live commentary and blind. What could have been.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 16:42
|
|
|
I feel the need to say something about this man's house, but I think Will Smith can say it better.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 17:20
|
|
|
My favorite recurring painting, by the way, was the portrait of ham.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 17:33
|
|
|
I actually liked that ending. Nothing bad happened that his subconscious is trying to cope with, it's just some kid's overactive imagination at work and everything's okay after all. The patients are supposed to go off on sound and proximity, yes? But that range of "who the hell knows what's going to happen" when it comes to proximity makes me wonder if there's some esoteric conditional stuff going on like with BoI's secret room rules, or perhaps some unintentional black magic occuring in the programming. The Saddest Rhino posted:I'm more curious why the developer fell back to the typical tropes of gore and violence blatantly for the sake of it. The kickstarter mentioned the developer has had some mental issues which inspired him to create the game, yet everything is absolutely shallow, which is exaggerated by how terrible all the endings are. You would have thought there would be at least a few more layers to the game but nope, there's zero pay off to anything you do and nothing you do makes sense/is worth it. To the thread, what sort of dream/nightmare content do you think would work to unsettle a wider audience? The teeth thing, for instance, is apparently common enough that it should get to a lot of people, especially anyone who hadn't heard of it before ("how did you know?!"). The Saddest Rhino posted:The paintings were the worst wasted potential because instead of using them as creepy content, they were made as drawings of kickstarter backers, and at least half of them dress and pose as utterly goony fucks.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2014 21:33
|
|
|
Fish Noise posted:To the thread, what sort of dream/nightmare content do you think would work to unsettle a wider audience? The teeth thing, for instance, is apparently common enough that it should get to a lot of people, especially anyone who hadn't heard of it before ("how did you know?!"). That's a good question. The basic nightmare "tropes" like monsters, teeth, or finding yourself in front of the class naked don't really happen for me. The worst dream I've had in recent times was one in which my only remaining parent died. Not like in this game which has all the bloody scenes, but I dreamt I had to take care of the funeral and everything. While that is of course something most people have to deal with, it's still highly personal, and I don't see any way that could be translated to a video game.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2014 00:02
|
|
|
Dreams are inherently personal experiences and therefor you can't make a catch-all nightmare based game. You really can only stick to the standard tropes because those are the only things widely recognizable enough to a general audience. Honestly, the biggest thing issue I have about this game is that it's concept in creation is a flat-out lie and are not represented in the final product even slightly. This is a game about mental illness, designed by a man suffering from a multitude of issues. However, the game has nothing to do with any of that, it has everything to do with nightmares, a thing even the most mentally of healthy people suffer from. Everything in the game is completely trivialized to the player because they are constantly aware that it is a dream. Something weird happened? Well, it's a dream, of course something weird happened. Instead of the world twisting into horrible sights because of Thomas's mind and senses failing him, it's his subconscious affecting his thoughts, things completely separated from the real world. It's a shame, because a game really about mental illness would be extremely interesting. Also, a game about nightmares could be extremely interesting too, but it would probably require a little less generic spooky poo poo, and more fantastical horror, settings blending into one another, and would probably require more than 2 mechanics. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2014 00:17
|
|
|
Did anyone besides me while watching these videos hear someone whispering "wake up" all the time? All in all I agree that this game had a lot of good ideas that they had trouble implementing. I also think that some of the use of gore was less more unsettling then anything else and didn't really add much to the game.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2014 23:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 21:09 |
|
|
cokerpilot posted:Did anyone besides me while watching these videos hear someone whispering "wake up" all the time? Nope! That was the game doing that and hearing "Thomas" and "Wake up" lead to the thread title. There was also something I keep trying to make out during the first asylum level. It was a lot of whimpering/crying and "I can't *something* before it goes into a big "Noooooo" that got on my nerves. I think it's "I can't breathe"? EDIT: I am going to close the thread and ask for it to be archived now. Thanks everyone! countzio fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Nov 12, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2014 23:41
|
|