Enjoyed the story, not the generic horror

[RocketPillow]

The story was pretty good, except for "perhaps it was just a nightmare though", of course. I was intrigued and liked the twists at the end.

But the actual game itself, in terms of the horror sections, didn't appeal at all. The way the main monster first appears 'ice-skating' straight into you, was 1. GMod 10 minute horror map levels of spoopy, and 2. I was able to move out of the way, even with my camera locked on the monster.

I understand this game wants to tell the story, first and foremost, and it's a pretty good story. But a lot of the time the game doesn't create an illusion of some kind of freedom. The escape elevator was a prime example:

I enter, the player camera snaps around, and I can't move, let alone my mouse. I think a Half-Life style of approach where the player is usually in control of their body, but other story events still play out in front of them, would be much better than forcing the player to look at this and that.

A monster at the end of a corridor doesn't need a camera focused on it, after all, it's a monster at the end of a corridor I'm already looking down.

An elevator doesn't need to lock me in place and force the camera down to look at a pair of static hands holding a black box, when the black box, held by hands, could instead be held up in front of the player-positioned camera, even while they're moving around freely in the elevator.

To sum this up: no locked cameras and frozen movement would be nice, to create an illusion of freedom from the player so that they are more immersed.

I also didn't like that spot where you scooted along the wall. The quick time events in this game just aren't good, and it'd do without them. If the scooting along the wall was simply a 'hold W' deal like Outlast or Mirror's Edge, then it would've been much better.


To add to an already long post, I will make a couple nitpicks:

Crawling in vents doesn't sound like crawling through vents.

In that one corridor early in the game, with steam-leaking red pipes, there are three windows underneath some concrete on the right-hand side of the corridor. Crouching down and looking through these windows you can see out of bounds.

The audio recording found after getting chased by the monster and scooting along the wall is mostly good, but ends with a weak "What was that? Ah-" which sounds more like he got pinched than if some reality-bending anomaly was forcing itself into his mind.

I also have to question how he managed to stop recording JUST as he made the weak "Ah-"

The mannequins look silly when they ragdoll.

And jumpscares are weak, and the game would do better without them, with more tension.

I only felt a little shiver once, and that was by the end of the game, which was mainly built through the documents, the plays, and the glimpses of the hanged than anything else.

A main menu tab that lets you look back at all the documents, files, and collectables you discovered would be really cool.

[RocketPillow]

P.S. I noticed how even after exiting the game, in the Steam library it was still registered as playing. Not a good sign.

[Mortecrane]

Jump scares can be good when they're earned and properly built up to. This demo gives away the moving mannequins before the jump scares and then proceeds to do the same thing several times in a row. IE take something out of its hand and now it moved to a creepy position( while a musical sting plays!) I stopped taking it seriously when they started badly ragdolling.
P.S. It also didn't turn off when I quit the game.

[Nargacuga]

The jumpscares are easily the worst part of the experience, but overall none of it is terribly good. I also don't expect the devs read any of this, so I don't expect things to really improve between now and release.

Sloppy, lazy plot, boring gameplay mechanics, overuse of nearly every standard horror trope, and just a complete disregard for the actual source material. It's pretty disappointing, especially since, if anything, SCP should be easy to make good games off of. I mean, all the hard work of coming up with the setting, themes, and style are already finished for you. You just need to find a way to fit a game into them. Which. Well, 701 probably isn't the best one to try and leash a game to. When you have that many options to choose from, it's pretty baffling to choose pretty much one of the worst ones to base a game on.

[kamyk]

I have always found The Hanged King to be one of the more unnerving SCPs, and was pleased to see someone flesh it out more than just the "Everybody kills each other" bit. I always wondered how a failed containment on it would play out.

Sadly some of the better SCPs have already been done to death, although I'd still love to see a professionally done version of The Old Man that involves more than just "run away". There was a side story where he was out stalking a towns halloween celebration that was rather interesting.

Another SCP that could provide a lot of interesting exploration would be The Factory,