c130 on 26/7/2005 at 08:51
:erm:
I have NEVER wanted to get a level over with quite so badly before. I finished it last night after having played it on and off for about a month. Sometimes I played it for no longer than 40 seconds in two days before I was brave enough to have another crack at it, and most of that time was spent in the Inner Cradle area.
Generally, I'm higher strung than a kitten overdosed on caffeine. People can make me jump by just walking past my bedroom door when I'm not even doing anything particularly nerve racking... like maths homework or reading. This level made me jump a foot in the air more times than I care to count... and I only had the sound on for the Outer Cradle area so I could hear the girl speaking - after that I switched the sound off and turned the subtitles on instead. You could say that was ruining the experience, but if I hadn't then I'd probably have run the risk of passing out from fright on the occasions when the puppets noticed me, screamed, and charged, lmao.
The staff weren't so bad. When they glowed, I could see their faces, clothes, etc. and they moved like normal people rather than the jerky movement of the puppets with their rotten joints, necrotic flesh and diseased brains... eugh. Zombies are most certainly not my thing. Give me hideous monsters, walking statues, ghosts, mutants, lawyers, anything, just don't give me any of the undead! O_O
So wonderful work Null, and the rest of the team that worked on it. Tell me when your next terrifying game will be out so I can give it a very wide berth, and recommend it to my friends. :cheeky:
gunk on 26/7/2005 at 09:47
lol everyone thinks this lvl is sooo scary and the noise on the attic also,
when i was young i was scared to play first city bank and trust (T2) because of the robots and now i seriously thought about playing that lvl out before i even played it, but it wasn't THAT scary
it would have been scary if the puppets aren't binded to the lights, so u won't see them always comming
i just killed 2 of them and the 2 staff members at the end cuz there were just 2 om my path if u follow the story
and the sound on the attic, o comon peeple, when i heard that sound i took my knife and flashbombs and rushed to that stupid attic
anyway i played this lvl with my tv on so maybe that's the cause of me not being scary and all, cuz i'm scared alot in games, i didn't even played the zombielvl's when i was young in t1 :cheeky:
Morpheus on 26/7/2005 at 13:51
Well, it's a lot more scary when you don't go around killing everything.
gunk on 26/7/2005 at 15:06
euhm i didn't kill everything
u even have proof of that : the first time in the past ;)
and how could the attic be more scarier without any enemies in the first part
Cybernide on 27/7/2005 at 02:39
Bah, you're all pussies, I tell ya.
Okay. I was kind of creeped out too.
only a LITTLE
Blood Dragon on 29/7/2005 at 16:47
This mission really scared me the first time I played. Although I knew that pressing against the wall would hide you safely but I still held my breathe when the puppets walked past me. Their breathless hissings were even more horrible than the zombies' screeches.
And I played this mission in 2a.m., no lights, no air-conditioning, no fans and windows closed. >_<
Hey, friends, what is the exact distance that you will trigger up a 'dead' puppet?
Pagan_3115 on 2/8/2005 at 14:25
This misson scared me too, i thought i had finished it, i remember thinking "ohh, finally, no more scary zombies with electric hats on".... but i still aint got enough loot! :( Looks like il have to restart it.... :sweat:
null on 2/8/2005 at 15:26
Quote:
Yeah. So that's how I express warmth and appreciation. Lots and lots of babbling and rambling and a few vague, ironic references to the theme of Misery which I swear were not serious! You can stop running, really! And you don't have to change your address, I don't even know what it is! But I hope you know where it comes from, and what all the insane long-windedness is about... trying to express an experience which can't possibly be expressed in words because it has to be
lived. Trying to get across how it made me feel, and make all those hours you spent on it seem worthwhile. I mean, dude, I know you got paid, but it still had to be an immense amount of work.
Well, thank you very much. I am continually flattered by the repeat visits to this thread; and furthermore pleased that the experience appears to have touched people in the way that it did.
Bad-touched, perhaps, but that was always the intent. Heh.
Thanks to you in particular, as well, for taking the time to express this sentiment. It really is the ultimate reward for a designer, knowing that your particular acre of the artificial dreamscape will be remembered.
null on 2/8/2005 at 15:40
Quote Posted by Keeper Mallinson
What happened at the end? You seem to have inferred that the Cradle was doomed by the end of the level, that it had some sort of 'downfall'. But at the end of the level I felt a sense of loss, that this evil entity was still alive and making these dead people suffer; that I had escaped, and so had the little girl, but that this supreme evil continued to exist in the city. Was I incorrect? Did the Cradle fade without Lauryl?
I would never do you the disrespect of offering you a definitive answer. ;)
The pieces of the mission that weren't explained were omitted deliberately, with some exception (text limits, et cetera... that's why I offered new details to readers of this thread). I wanted people to map their own fears onto it, imagine some of its origins -- and some of its fate -- themselves.
This is why I don't write books or make movies. I'm interested in putting the player on the stage, albeit a stage where some of the interesting elements are scripted and / or beyond their control ... just to point them in what (I believe to be) an exciting direction.
In your version of the experience, this was the end result:
The Cradle remained the darkest part of the City forever, looming like some vast, demented surrogate parent, and beckoning to the city's lost souls in their dreams.
Dussander on 2/8/2005 at 18:55
I would imagine one day, some adventurer would enter the Cradle ... searching for loot or whatever. No Lauryl to warn them off. They get stuck in the Cradle... it has a new plaything.
