Not repeating anomalies is a fatal flaw

[nathan081994]

Hello,

I've played this game several times a day since I bought it, and beat it twice, and at first I wanted to say it is 100% perfect game, just by how brilliantly and simply everything is designed and communicated. I absolutely love this.

However, after playing it enough times I realize there is a fatal flaw, in that the anomalies don't ever repeat. You won't ever see the same anomaly twice until you've fully exhausted all the anomalies that exist in the game, but the exact order of which anomaly appears is randomized. It seems that an anomaly isn't "checked off the list" until you've successfully identified it by turning back, because then the game acknowledges that it has been "seen".

On paper, this seems like a good idea in order to keep the game fresh with new changes. In practice, however, this causes the game to artificially become harder and harder the more times its played. Let me explain:

Let's say the game randomly assigns you five anomalies. Of which, four of them are "obvious" (the twins, lights going off, door banging, blood flood), and one of them is really easy to miss (all posters being bigger). Naturally, you successfully identify the four obvious ones and miss the subtle one, resetting back to zero. This now means that the next time you play, you have four fewer obvious anomalies, but the subtle one remains in play.

As this process repeats, you eventually reach a situation where the ONLY anomalies left are the ones which are nearly impossible to find, and it will remain this way no matter how many times you restart the game. I've seen other posts on this forum of how people had to DELETE THEIR SAVE DATA just to have a fair chance at beating the game. I think this needs to be fixed ASAP, making it so that all anomalies have equal chance of being seen no matter what the player did the last reset.

On a related note, I want to mention that some anomalies are so subtle that it borders on unfair, such that if such an anomaly happens to appear in my run, then it will kill the run inevitably because I literally have no way to avoid it. For example:

- Posters being too large: There's no real frame of reference. Even in a video demonstrating the anomaly, they have to overlay what the posters normally look like to show the difference

- Face on ceiling: My computer doesn't have particularly stellar graphics, and the ceiling is always dark on my monitor. If a face is there, I'll never see it.

In summary: the more times I play the game, the more the "obvious" anomalies gets filtered out (as the game checks off that i've seen them), making it increasingly more likely that the "unfair" anomalies get used.

[midapiet]

For the anomaly where the posters are too large anomaly, the posters are actually growing in size. They don't start bigger.

The face on the ceiling doesn't look very different on low graphical settings from how it does on higher settings.

[MongoMike]

On my computer the face on the ceiling looks like dirt, that confused me a lot as I than checked if the floor seems more dirty.

[nathan081994]

Originally posted by midapiet:

For the anomaly where the posters are too large anomaly, the posters are actually growing in size. They don't start bigger.

The face on the ceiling doesn't look very different on low graphical settings from how it does on higher settings.

It's impossible to see on my monitor. I can look at it a thousand times and its just a blank black blob

[TSense]

I'm am 70 minutes in and had the staring man twice in one run

[Yzil]

I got to the point where there were only a couple left and I kept missing whatever they were and not understanding how I couldn't be progressing. It was super frustrating until I saw this post and realised that anomalies don't repeat. I got through it by turning around randomly even if I didn't know what the anomaly was because that would "cross it off the list" and then because they were all gone they started to repeat and I could finish.

I absolutely loved the game until that point. I was stuck and had no idea why. Obviously there were anomalies but it felt like there weren't and I was still going back to 0.

[Plumcrazy]

it might make sense to include a mercy mechanic, especially if the devs are ever considering adding a DLC or making EXIT 16 or something. something like 'if number of remaining anomalies is less than 2 and player has failed 3/3 attempts with one of the remaining anomalies, then mix in 6 SEEN anomalies' .

[Plumcrazy]

Personally though, after a number of failures (3 or more) at or near exit 8 , I have a suspicion that the developers gave me a handful of very obvious anomalies the next time I got close to 8. Either that, or I just lucked out :)

[Vercci ]

Or just put in the sign earlier saying there's [x] unseen anomalies. That'd clue them in.

[HorrorofQuinn]

Yeah I just finished this game and I started realizing I wasn't getting the same Anomalies, the one I DID miss was the posters slowly growing in size, so I'm only going to assume that is the one I missed on repeated over and over and over and over again haha. I did a recording and it took me about an hour and a half to complete. in the intro it was easy to get to 5 or 6 multiple times but at one point I was stuck at 1 and then 0 over and over. Although I see your point in saying this is a Flaw but I feel like if you don't notice these things in time and are stuck with anomalies you don't see, that is apart of the challenge and a part of the confusion and the simulation itself. BUT I would agree that maybe once you get to a certain point have it completely reset all together. Also I didn't see the Face on the ceiling haha maybe I missed that all together. VERY good game!