Trying really hard.
spoilersI finished the map just now. The map generally looked good. I liked the lighting in the main lobby/stairwell in particular. I didn't find it to be very suspenseful, especially since you get the idea pretty early on that there's not going to be any threat. The unlit room in the butterfly cage apartment with the two candles is a cool idea, though, since it's a plunge into darkness early on and the player doesn't know much at that point other than how ineffective the lighter is. (That said, I was half expecting there to be a point where you had to turn off the lighter since it's something you let the player do, but it didn't happen, and I don't think I ever turned it off otherwise since I could barely notice it being on in the first place.)
All the Lua stuff is cool. The inventory is nice and streamlined, and the typewriter was a neat touch.
In my opinion, the map's aesthetics don't really lend anything towards making the gameplay more unsettling, them at times being kind of cartoony (caricature painting, third floor graffiti, "surrealist" hallway around the ending), and I found the bits of written graffiti to be too extreme for their context and just found them kinda funny, although maybe this was the intention. The amount of SH-inspired events in the map (location, apartment room layout, dead guy in front of TV, butterfly cage room, use of cloth) and the references to nowadays almost obligatory bits of media (1984, that Erik Satie piece, Van Gogh and Edgar Allen Poe) make the game seem a bit predictable and take away from the overall experience. On the contrary, the My Little Pony references are OK since they're just speaking directly to the audience, they get out of the way quickly, and they seem like they're not part of the game.
The story seems like it was improvised at the end of development especially since it's all crammed into the super long text-only ending sequence, and the cliches and awkward phrasing in the writing and the loose explanation for the way the player dies along with the overly sympathetic backing music made me kind of annoyed. Scrutiny:
With a loud snap, possibly a crunch thrown in, everything I've become conscious of is gone.
This was confusing to me because I wasn't sure if you were trying to be shocking or if the character was making an ironic joke about his/her death.
My senses, once complicated and overrated
I think what you mean by overrated is that the character is OK with the lack of complex thought, but him/her saying that his/her senses were "once overrated" sounds detached from the main character, like someone else once thought of his/her senses as overrated. I think you were just trying to make the sentence flow well.
The text read "an woman" at one point.
The woman has handled many situations like this one. The man shivers with something approaching joy as he tears her arm off.
Saying "something approaching joy" is really general and doesn't send a specific meaning; I guess you mean he got some sort of thrill out of doing it. Being super blatant and saying that he "tears her arm off" is another thing where I can't tell if it's meant to be funny or shocking. Maybe both.
The small boy lived on a farm close to the apartment. He walks confidently down the road, head held high with pride and joy. Today the boy was an adult, he thought, as he had been asked to walk down to town and get food!
I'm a real man now!! Super cheesy
The flowers take his ears, and his nose just for good measure.
Funny/shocking/both? Cheesy in a Troma Team sort of way (terrible)
Me? Well I jumped off of a building that I thought was a hole in the floor. Never was one for angst-filled stories.
I don't see the connection between the hole in the floor and falling off of a building. It's out of nowhere and it's disappointing. Are there multiple endings? "Never was one for angst-filled stories" sounds really awkward to me.
Ultimately, though, I thought the map was executed pretty well. The puzzles were real basic but that said I always knew what I was meant to do (maybe prior knowledge having played SH). I stayed interested while I played it and it looked good. Sorry for the ridiculous post but hopefully it's helpful
