Half-Life: Alyx

Half-Life: Alyx

Paralysium - The First Chapter (demo)
Trivvy™ 2021 年 3 月 8 日 上午 9:45
Review that didn't fit in the comments
A brilliant map that's let down in some key areas:
- Lighting. If you use all the batteries up in the areas you can access whilst trying to complete a puzzle, good luck, most of the map is pitch black without your flashlight, and whilst it does (barely) work whilst on low battery, the way it flickers and fades is more of an annoyance than something that creates tension. Tip for the developer: Absolute darkness needs to be used sparingly and in very specific instances only. It's possible to make a place feel dark without it actually being impossible to see in. Use a mixture of post-processing and tonemap control to tailor the look of your level so that it can look dark and spooky whilst still being visible in all the areas you expect the player to be looking in.

- Puzzle design. Something that stumped me for the longest time was obtaining the key. After looking seemingly everywhere I found it hanging from a lamp very close to the door I needed to unlock it with. The problem was, there's nothing drawing the player's eye up there, ESPECIALLY when your battery is low. This ties in to lighting, lighting can be used to subtly influence player direction, sound could have also been used, maybe a telling metallic "tinkle" of the key as it dangles.

I'm currently stuck trying to find some pool balls with my dying flashlight. I found one, but the others are all missing as far as I can see. Having to rely on small, round physics objects for a key puzzle is bad design. I could have accidentally had them roll under somewhere inaccessible without realising it, and I doubt I'm going to find them with my fading flashlight bumbling around in the dark. The primary idea for the puzzle isn't bad at all, but the pool balls need to be more obvious, and perhaps even frozen until the player picks them up (though this won't solve the player dropping them accidentally for them to roll somewhere inaccessible). Something to think about!

Despite this, the level design is really nice, very well detailed, atmosphere is excellent, as is the general logic of the map.