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And to even get to this "true" ending, I had to follow a guide because the game is extremely cryptic with how to even access the last two secret tapes. I'm supposed to know to rip a piece of the poster off the wall and scan it, and set up the wooden block toy thing in the way I did just to get the last two tapes. Some of the worst game design I've ever seen in my entire life. Look, I appreciate the creativity that went into the puzzles, but I found a lot of them to be either poorly designed, or to have elements that were vague or cryptic, the book puzzle and the monkey puzzle in particular were especially egregious. Like did anyone other than James Pratt playtest this? I've seen better game design from the Garten of Banban games. Yes that is an unironic statement. And when you compare this game's design to the original, it's not even a contest, like comparing an asset-flip mobile game with a killer nun to Silent Hill just because they both just so happen to feature a nun as the antagonist.
It just breaks my heart, as there were parts of this game's writing for the regular (as in cartoon) tapes I genuinely thought were great, brilliant even. Parts that not only had great humor, but also shocked me and made my heart sink. But there's also structural problems with the story, and writing decisions I'm still trying to wrap my head around but can't (especially whatever that "true" ending was supposed to be).
It's also riddled with bugs that for some reason I never encountered on my first playthrough (lucky), but showed up when I was trying to show this game to my sister. We're talking hardlocks you can encounter playing the game casually where you have to delete the save file and start again. Luckily it was early game with the piggy bank, but I have to imagine if there are late-game hardlocks because of how buggy this supposedly "complete" game is. I recall my sister pointing out that even Garten of Banban doesn't have hardlocks, which she shouldn't be able to point out about Amanda 2. It'd be like if a Bubsy game came out and was (nearly) bug-free, but then the newest Spyro game was so glitchy you could easily get hardlocked casually. I really hope that puts in perspective how ridiculous and shocking this is to me. I'm going to ask this again, did anyone playtest this at all?
Amanda the Adventurer 2 was one of my most anticipated games of all time, a sequel to one of my favorite games ever made, and while it wasn't all bad, where it screws up horribly completely ruins the game for me, especially the aforementioned secret/true ending. It breaks my heart to say that I have no interest in Amanda 3. Unless they completely recon and/or redo this game from the ground up (and actually finish it this time), I don't care about Amanda 3.
I was worried when I saw the train puzzle, but my sister was like "maybe it randomizes the puzzle you get?". Then she solved the puzzle (one of the better ones in the game might I add) and she got 'Let's Start the Day' instead of 'Goodnight!', the latter of which she should've gotten. That's right, you can skip half the game by starting a new game with a completed save file in the save folder (C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\MangledMaw\Amanda The Adventurer 2). They actually thought this game was ready for release. The sheer incompetence on display both genuinely blows my mind and angers me. How is it that a game that took 8 months to develop (Amanda 1) was more polished, well designed, and you know actually functional without game-breaking bugs than the game that took 18 months (Amanda 2). By the very same team nonetheless.
Remember the teaser for this game from a year ago where Wooly genuinely thanked the fans "for your support" as he put it? I'm almost tempted to put 'genuinely' in air-quotes because it reads as insincere now. If they really wanted to thank the fans, why release a glitchy and unfinished sequel with hardlocks and game-corrupting bugs? And on top of that, expect people to pay money for it. It just sickens me.
However, I do not care for the continuing of the story or expanding on the lor. BATIM did that, and I didn't mind. They did that partially with the colored tapes. The green one, however, that has to be the WORST experience ever.
But overall, I think the game was pretty good. Those were just the peeves I had. And hey, as I said before, some people didn't hate the puzzles as much as you.
The biggest roadblock for me was actually what to do with the three small keys. The keyhole on Kate's desk is not easily discernible due to poor texture quality. Initially I thought it was a round handle.
I wanted to respond to this. I personally have no problem for this. Amanda is barley taking up any space on my drive. 2 extra GB's is nothing. Plus, many games have unused content in their files.
I said before that BATIM did the same thing with cliffhangers, and it was perfectly fine. I wonder what makes Amanda not fall into the same category. The puzzles are horrendous, but some were pretty creative and intuitive. After around the first hour, the game actually gets fun. Although, for half the game I totally forgot about Joanne. The main characters still felt like Amanda and Wooly to me.
I was just talking about this. Instead of whole new games (because how would you incorporate a new game originally without destroying all characters from the first), they should've just made Amanda 2 a DLC chapter like Poppy Playtime did. Better yet, just incorporate it into Amanda 1 after you find the true ending.
And in my opinion it did get expanded, and lot's of answers were answered. We know why Kate was involved, and how she knew Amanda, where Sam was, where Rebecca is (possibly). With that, I feel like the lore is complete, because there's nothing else I have questions about.
Regarding the cliffhangers, no, BATIM didnt do it, BATIM was a chapter based game and it's "Cliffhangers" were just that, the end of the chapter with a teaser for the next one at the end.
But here, we arent talking about chapters, we're talking about a WHOLE game, this game is deemed as COMPLETE and that's where the problem comes from.
Once BATIM was completed there was no cliffhangers, there was only the showing that everything was a neverending loop , the same goes to Dark Revival, Where it showed bendy got freed from the cycle and GENT took back the ink machine .
Bendy's endings cannot be compared with "A new monster suddenly appeared and now i literally just went down a ladder behind me, but now i gotta wait who knows how many months just to see what was below that ladder".
The player doesnt even pass out on amanda 2 or anything, They're literally awake the whole time the ending happens, it isnt a true ending, it's just a sudden halt to the game with no real explanation other than "we want to charge you again to continue the pretty linear story which continues RIGHT after the last game".
As to why i think the true ending was fine in the first game?
It simply showed a mysterious figure, the game had ENDED by us destroying the TV, that was it, that was the end, we destroyed the TV and then a mysterious figure appeared, raising up hype for the sequel.
But we dont even complete our objective in the 2nd game, there is no sense of fullfillment and it all feels like a huge waste of time, we went to the library to find the tapes, and now that we had them joanne suddenly says we should grab them and only magically drops one tape onto the table, and that's it for the game, we didnt complete anything.
I do agree on your DLC statement, Amanda 2 shouldnt have been a new game, I did miss the amanda 2 explained a lot of things, and i apologize for missing stuff so obvious, but that still doesnt change the fact this game wasnt satisfying, Amanda 2 is exclusively to explain lore, it should have been a DLC that then ended in a (better) cliffhanger.
May i also add, unlike the 2nd game, we didnt know what happened next in amanda 1, we saw the mysterious figure appear and then the game faded to black, but on Amanda 2 we just get cut off in the middle of an action, we know what's gonna happen next, we're gonna go down the ladder and probably appear in some sort of secret laboratory.
Point is: A cliffhanger isnt meant to stop us while in the middle of very clearly continuing the game, coming back to BATIM, the cliffhangers mostly ended in the player passing out, which is why it worked. Even chapter 4 which had henry look to his side and then chapter end worked, Chapter 4's ending properly introduced us to a mystery with altered versions of previously known characters, with uplifting music and an ending stinger properly signifying it's ending, a major character had just died and now we had gotten introduced to these new characters coming to our rescue.
Amanda 2 on the other hand, gives us a long cutscene explaining basically all of the game, there's no player involvement and the face of the mysterious figure had finally been revealed - but this figure wasnt someone we knew, it really was just a random woman, she hadnt been mentioned in the first game, and if she was, it wasnt to the extent that made her important, so when she gets revealed we truly have no idea of who she is, of course, she then goes up to explain her plot, not giving the player any chance to care for this character's backstory as it is all explained by her own mouth in just a few seconds. We see her express regret for what happened to kate, which we only heard on a tedious to get secret cassette tape, we heard kate crash, but even i saw many people confused on what happened. did she get ran over? did she crash on her own? was it amanda?
The devs made kate seem like a really major character, but the only piece of development we get for her is a tape in which she discusses with her teammates, around 2 letters, and her encouraging parents to donate the library, and then Boom, she's now dead in the 2nd game as part of the true ending.
It would have been way more impactful if kate's cassette tape had been in the first game, where she was the reason we had the tapes at all and she actually seemed like a constant presence, unlike in amanda 2 where she just seemingly isnt important apart from explaining lore.
Now... joanne. They did joanne dirty. A character which absolutely everyone was going crazy for, theorizing it was sam himself is now introduced in Amanda 2.
when i saw a thumbnail for amanda 2 which had joanne, I felt interested as i thought it may be amanda herself, that maybe she had escaped and the tapes simply had remains of her old self, which is why she needed the player to help her get rid of them.
But instead of an exciting plot like this, where the revelations actually felt meaningful and important, we get introduced to a new character that gets killed off instantly.
Introducing new plots like this takes time, take poppy playtime as a great execution of this, they do multiple ARGs, Teasers, and trailers JUST to introduce the antagonist of the next chapter. They give their fans TIME to care for the new characters, i cant express enough just how awful it was to give people pretty much SECONDS to meet this new characters, what MOB Games does in months, they did here in a couple seconds, which is what makes it all so unsatisfying and why i talk so much about joanne's huge wasted potential.
This. If your gonna have a continuing sotryline of Riley exploring the tapes, and uncovering the lore, then why make a whole new game instead of incorporating it into a main game. If it was clarified that Amanda 1 was the first section of the story, and then Amanda two was the second in a DLC, I'm pretty sure lots of people would've been happy with the cliffhanger, but why make it a whole new game? If you're gonna do that, you might as well introduce a whole new protagonist called Roland who investigates his uncles basement.
Even still, the cliffhanger I have no problem with. I feel Amanda 2 is a filler game, bridging the gap between 1 and 3. Chapter games have this problem a lot where if certain chapters were removed, then the story would not change. If this chapter was removed, I'm pretty sure it would also stay the same.
Although, the Possum says Joanne in the tape, so I'm not giving up hope on her yet.
TLDR; I feel like this should've just been incorporated chapters instead of new game. The cliffhanger would've hit so much easier if it was.
The problem with Amanda 2 being a filler game is that it didn't need to be. The Amanda 2 I was imagining back when they initially teased it last year was the second entry of a duology, as in a 2-part story. With Amanda 1 being part 1.
I did imagine the first cutscene as involving the masked figure in the attic, but I imagined that they were Aunt Kate who faked her death, and that said figure doesn't speak at all. Who else would be able to get inside what was Aunt Kate's house without breaking in other than Aunt Kate herself? Said masked figure is even dressed like a detective, which is what they hinted at Aunt Kate being with the notes and letters in the first game that relate to her detective work. I was thinking they simply just leave things behind for Riley like say the cookies and the card from Neighborhood 1, and/or alternatively the drawings from the May teasers for the game. Something akin to that. The idea being that said character leaves behind clues for Riley and essentially vanishes. Maybe they leave behind the keys to the library plus directions to get there. I was thinking that said character would reoccur throughout the game, giving you clues and other information. And maybe they would be revealed to be Aunt Kate at the end. Something like that.
It didn't need to be exactly this mind you, just something better than some random disguised person breaking into Riley's house. Said disguised person doesn't explain who they are barring that they were close with Kate, which could be a lie for all Riley knows. And then Riley gets into their car without questioning who said masked figure is and why they wear a mask (as one reviewer pointed out, I don't recall off the top of my head their username). The series could've ended here with the masked figure turning out to be a murderer and with Riley trapped in their car.
I mean the last Amanda episode of this very game talks about exactly this. About how you need to be careful of who you trust and that some people will try to hurt you. I find it odd that Wooly's all like "oh we shouldn't talk about this" even though this is actually quite an orthodox episode for a kids show. It's literally a stranger danger episode. The first game had Amanda talking about how everything rots for context, which is a much odder theme for a kids show. Is this meant to hint at something (like Wooly being a doctor from Hameln?) or did Melissa LaMartina (the game's writer) forget how to write Wooly's character?
Oh yes and about Wooly, remember that initial teaser where Wooly was being held at gunpoint and that someone essentially kidnapped him? Maybe this wasn't actually meant to hint at something even though the tweet on the official Twitter/X was all like "what does this mean", indicating (at least to me) that this has plot relevance. Except it doesn't, at all. It feels like it almost did with Amanda being all like "yeah, if you could find him" if you say you want to visit Wooly in Let's Plan a Trip. Like originally earlier in development, Amanda kidnapped Wooly after Accidents 2 and hid him somewhere and you have to find him. I recall that someone on this Steam forum back when the demo was new pointed out that there's this empty glass box with a sign underneath that reads "Hi! I'm KLP's mascot, Wooly!" I found this to be a really interesting (and clever) metaphor for the fact that Wooly is missing. But in the final game, there's a Wooly puppet holding the treasure episode inside the glass box. I actually prefer the accidental genius of it being empty. They made such a big deal over Wooly being absent with him being missing from the first episode and also him not being in any of the trailers (I think they even edited him out of a couple shots from the June trailer No Way Home style). He's not even in the game's logo despite his significant screentime.
And despite all of the marketing for the game, they literally reintroduce him in the third episode about patience, as though they ran out of ideas for how to write Amanda solo or something. And when Wooly comes back, he really wants to be Amanda's friend for some reason? Even though he was trying to convince you not to listen to her in the last game. He at some point in the first game manipulates Amanda into giving him a present under the 'guise that she's "confused" with "facade" written in music notation on the wall. He tells Amanda "nothing is rotten here" in response to her mentioning that she feels herself rotting. This is in-spite of him seeing a rotting fox in a bear trap in the scene right before this. And not only that, he's really desperate to convince you that nothing is wrong at the end of Rots 1, almost like he's trying to hide something. In 'What's a Family?', he recognizes Sam Colton's name if you respond with 'Sam' when Amanda asks what the 'daddy chicken' is called. And you know, both Accidents episodes, especially the latter one. Amanda says that Wooly is "confused" and drugs him in Accidents 2. She asks him "It's all just pretend, isn't it Wooly?", as though she knows who he really is, and that he said something like this to her when they were both still alive. In the very last scene Amanda and Wooly were together in up until this point, she was trying to kill him (likely because he represented a wolf in sheep's clothing). But now it's like none of that happened for some reason.
And if you disagree with my interpretation of Wooly, that's fine, it's not like that matters anyway because I feel the MANGLEDmaw that made Amanda 1 is long gone. Yet another developer corrupted by the profit motive. Instead of making a sequel for the sake of art (glimmers of this more artistic sequel are in Amanda 2 which is the saddest thing to me), they made this for money I think. And that just makes my heart hurt. I really hope my more bad-faith impression of the devs is wrong, but I have a feeling that I might be spot on. If they reverse course, it may only be because Amanda 2 seems to be a commercial failure as of writing this. If you compare and contrast Amanda 1 and 2 on SteamDB, you'll notice a stark difference between the two.
Amanda 2 had 354 reviews yesterday on October 28th, which is 6 days after release. For contrast, Amanda 1 had 677 reviews on May 1st, 2023, when that game was also 6 days old. I'm ignoring today (October 29th) due to today obviously having incomplete data as of writing this. If you compare the Steam charts for the max number of people who played Amanda 1 and 2 on each day and you align them to release, you'll notice that Amanda 1 had this graceful glide down from an apex of 1,418 players, contrasted with Amanda 2 nosediving from a peak of 1,074 players into the abyss. I implore you to see this for yourself. Not only that, but the number of people following the Steam hub for Amanda 2 is pitifully low compared to the original. Despite both games having the approximately the same amount of followers on the day of release, with Amanda 1 having 2,338 followers and Amanda 2 having 2,355 followers, Amanda 1 had already soared to 4,199 followers and growing by May 1st, 2023, 6 days after launch. Amanda 2 only managed 3,156 followers by yesterday, and it's already starting to stagnate. Amanda 1 took months to stagnate, and when it did, it had already managed around 10k followers. Amanda 2 would be lucky to reach 5k by the end of the year at this rate. That's not to mention how Amanda 1 was in the mid-90s percentage-wise when it came to its review score, versus Amanda 2's just under 80 percent positive reception (Banban 7 has a higher score than that for context).
Even if you enjoyed Amanda the Adventurer 2 (more power to you, I envy you), these numbers should worry you, like will there even be an Amanda 3? Perhaps there will be, but these numbers aren't promising at all. And yes, it's not unheard of for a sequel to be not quite as successful as the first, especially if the original was a smash-hit that was some kind of best-seller. That kind of success is really hard to recreate. But we're talking numbers that indicate likely at best half the number of sales as its predecessor. It's funny how Amanda 2 managed 100k Twitch viewers at its peak versus Amanda 1's all-time high of 60k Twitch viewers, but this doesn't seem to have translated to (many) sales, almost like this game isn't anywhere near as good as the original, and the fans can tell.
I was imagining that the game would have multiple locations (think something like Silent Hill), with the last one being the old and abandoned Hameln HQ (Why would Hameln still exist as a corporate entity after 20 years? What have they been doing this whole time?) I was thinking you find Rebecca's dead body in a morgue with her body in a body bag, perhaps in some kind of weird underground facility or something, or maybe it could've been aboveground, who knows?
It didn't need to be exactly as I describe above, it merely needed to not make me wish my idea for the sequel was the real sequel.
Literally a skill issue, are you serious? It spawns one puzzle if you turn on the lamp and another puzzle if you open the curtains.