EscapeCraft 2

A friend of mine has been messing around with various fan-made adventure mods within Minecraft lately, one of which was EscapeCraft 2.

I have to admit that I wasn’t hugely interested in the mods, expecting them to be a series of jumping exercises which would frustrate me more than anything else, but after enough prodding I thought I should at least give it a go..

The game starts with a few instructions.. not to punch any blocks other than dirt, and to use Peaceful and Easy modes to prevent or allow mob spawning as puzzles require them.  Of course you could ignore these and punch straight through the walls, but that would defeat the purpose of playing a puzzle game 😉

After receiving your instructions, you drop into the starting room – the scenario is that you’ve just awoken and are in some kind of testing facility.

In the next room, I was reminded of Portal’s Companion Cube, as I was asked to pull a lever on the wall and kill ‘Subject 1089’..

Killing the hapless test subject opened the door to the next area.. once through, I found out that there was another way to solve the puzzle.. a hidden forge in this room contains a lever which you can use to open the door without harming any animals!

The next room involved two waterfalls and a lot of lava.. after a few burnings I made it through.  I should note that death results in the loss of items in your inventory.. this might not matter if it were random items of treasure, but if you lose an item needed to solve a puzzle, you’ll need to re-copy the world into your Minecraft folder and start over.

Following the waterfall and lava room came the obsidian and wool room.. and with the gift of gravel and iron I created fire!

The fire spread along the walls and to the roof; blocks then fell to create the stairs to the next area.  Very nicely done 🙂

After fire came water.. which had to be poured into the right place to not set off the TNT which lined the room.

Again, no mishaps.. though I was tempted to set the TNT off for the chained explosions that would have resulted 😉

Following these successful levels, some GlaDOS style notices warned me of what was to come.. other.. subjects?

Zombies joined me in the puzzle that was to follow, and I managed to get myself killed when one dropped down beside me and made me jump.. I blindly lashed out with the sword and smashed the glass floor of the maze.  Durrp.

After completing this level, I stopped the game on account of pub lunch 🙂

One conclusion though.. Minecraft mods are nowhere near the jumping-puzzle hell I expected, and the puzzles are actually quite clever..

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a first person horror survival game from Frictional Games.  You take the part of Daniel, a man who has lost his memory, or as an early note tells you, has drunk something to make him forget..

Daniel must find the Inner Sanctum and there kill a man called Alexander, but is warned of the “living nightmare” which is chasing him..

After starting the game, you get a few flashbacks.. Daniel trying to remember what he’s doing, who he is.. struggling to walk down a corridor and eventually collapsing at a dead end.  Daniel is afraid, which makes me afraid too.  The fear is added to by the panicked breathing, visual distortions and noises of unseen enemies.. as well as the knowledge that you have no weapons!  You can interact with objects.. light candles, open doors, pick up objects and throw them.. but all you can do to save yourself from enemies is run and hide.

The castle is rather dark; there are candles here and there, and early on you find out you need to stay in the light.  This goes a little against my will to explore, as I don’t want to run out of oil for my lantern, and tinderboxes for the candles are in short supply.. so I take small peeks into unlit side rooms, tensed up and expecting something to jump out on me!

The more scared Daniel becomes, the more he loses his sanity.  Low sanity results in hallucinations, making it harder to see and move.. when I let it drop too far, there was a piercing noise and Daniel fell to the ground.  Looking directly at enemies also scares him.. the on-screen hint suggested that later enemies might also see you!

The demo gives what I assume are the first couple of levels in sequence; enough to try out a few simple puzzles, such as removing an obstruction to a pulley so you can open a trapdoor.  While letting Daniel scare himself silly reduces his sanity, solving puzzles restores it.

The cellar level.. boxes scattered around, and knee-deep water, with some horrible unseen enemy splashing his way towards me!

I failed at jumping across the boxes the first time I tried this level, and didn’t make it out of the water before he slashed at me.. two hits and I was dead.  I fared better the second time as I was barely in the water, and was able to distract the enemy by throwing books into the water.  The gate to the next part of the cellars was opened by a lever way back at the start, which meant a careful trip back and then a mad dash to get back before the gate shut again, all the while expecting the monster to slash me again.

This room didn’t seem to make Daniel any more frightened, maybe because he couldn’t see the enemy.

In the next room, there were body parts instead of books..
If you waited around after throwing one of these, you could hear him eating it, and see the blood mixed in with the water.  Nice..

As soon as I made for the next gate, though, he was right back after me.. and this time the gate didn’t shut in time to trap him on the wrong side and I had to run for the next door hoping to beat him to it.  Here’s where the door interaction frustrated me the most; trying to open the door towards me meant I had to stop, else I would push the door shut again with my body.  The monster ended up getting rid of the door for me, in the end.

The game reminds me very much of Korsakovia, an experimental mod for Half Life 2 which I played last year.  The fear in this game.. mod.. is created from the sounds and anticipation of what might happen, especially with enemies you can only run and hide from, though in Amnesia’s case the player character’s own fear comes through as well.  As with Korsakova, I think I’d get very frustrated once there were harder enemies to deal with.  Despite the game being as atmospheric and scary as it is, and being on offer on Steam, I’m still not sure whether to get it.

Ravenholm

We don’t go to Ravenholm.  Well, except for when the Combine attack, and it’s the only way out, that is..

Ravenholm is the part of the game I remembered long after my first playthrough of HL2; creepily atmospheric with plenty of scares, but also featuring some neat puzzles and traps.

There’s also the sawblade, which is lethal in the right hands 🙂

The rotor-blades are fun too..

What freaks me out, though, are the black headcrabs, or Poison Headcrab.

I know the neurotoxin they hit you with is only temporary, but there’s something about the skittering, screeching, spider-like creatures that really sets me on edge.

So what’s worse than one black headcrab?

Lots of black headcrabs, being thrown at me..

At least I’ve got guns, right? 😉