Castle Dorian [Full Version] [Download is now online!]

[Alex Ros]

Very mixed and ambivalent feelings after the walkthrough...
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On the one hand it's absolutely clear that a lot of work and patience are invested into production of this Custom Story. And that alone is worthy of respect, because objectively most of Custom Stories lacks of elementary investments of time and patience. That's a real win.

Next thing is that those work and patience are invested in attempt to make something unique and stand out from other stories. Nearly the half of the story develops at outdoor areas and these outdoors aren't simply a pack pines. Outdoor areas are quite different one from another and as a result as player I got a very immersive feeling of a journey. That's another one real win.

What is more important that the journey is not just about to show up level design skill, but through that journey I am slowly step by step was merging with the main character of the story. And by the time I finally get to the castle I completely merged with my character, I was William. That's the biggest win of your Custom Story as I personally see it, because it's only a... hmm... only a second one Custom Story which gave me a real feeling of merging with a character.
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On the other hand the story itself completely lacks of any intrigue. When I just finished the reading of the description of the Custom Story I already knew everyone is dead, including my mother and likely I would also die in that godforsaken place. There's no unexpected turning points at all, everything is transparent from the very beginning to the very end. I'd say that's a big fail.

Next bad thing is that all of the puzzles are just about finding different things. It's always just about opening a new door, no less, no more. That's also quite a fail. I can explain a bit more about that. The secret is that in truth it's fine to make puzzles in such primitive manner. For example, most of Silent Hill puzzles are just about finding different objects and going on further. I am exaggerating, of course, but it doesn't really matters right now. What is matters is that Silent Hill was real driving me with an extremely mystic-detective-horror intriguing story. And as a player I just wanted to find out what the f**k is going on? But at your story there's no such a driving intrigue. Contrary I knew everything from the very begging.

The last bad thing are scare-moments. Most of them scares were nearly the same. It was always (not always but most of times) only about another one appearance of a monster. There's thousands of possibilities to scare a player, but most of times you were simply spawning a monster in front of me or behind my back. And finally it just became a little bit boring.
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Finally I am just confused what to say. I really want to congratulate you with a break-through, but simultaneously I can't do that, cause in general everything is ruined without a well-thought-out intriguing story. As a result I'd say your Custom Story is extremely good thing for a demo version, but surely not good for a final product. The story is a basement and so it's impossible to build up a house without a basement.

I really hope you won't get me wrong. There's no prejudice or negativeness. I love to thank people and love to say their work is the best. But yours is just unfinished as I personally see it. Anyway, my opinion is just a personal opinion. You're free to just ignore it and no problems.