Dying Light

Dying Light

The Tunnel v2 - A horror story with choices.
A good start, but it needs some work.
First, let me start off by saying that this is an EXTREMELY ambitious attempt at a custom story, and that is something that we need to see more of, the level design we well thought out, and the premise was great. This map claims to be a horror story. It is not. This is a dark action adventure at best. While I think the idea of sneaking around volatiles is great, at no point did I feel that I was in any danger. At no point did I think I would screw up and send the monsters pouring after me, and that's where the horror element walked out the door with nary a goodbye. It does require sneaking, which is good, but there's no difficulty to that aspect, which is bad.

I thought the "Boss fight" with the big zombie was nice, and a good balance of combat meets puzzle solving, and raising the water levels to create a path for the survivors was genius.
But after getting to Rahim (Who is nigh unkillable) and being given a shotgun was anticlimactic. It seems like the ending was rushed, and didn't have much drive. This was the point at which you lost me. To be a horror experience, situations should be tense, and the gravity of the situation should be felt. The fun should be in avoiding death, and escaping your enemies, not walking predetermined paths to get a shotgun. (Try making the sewer more open with multiple ways to get around enemies)
Escorting the survivors was inconsequential, as all of the enemies were dead, and all form of challenge was over making the UV lights almost pointless ( Not to mention it hardly affected the Volatiles anyway)

My point is not to bash you, or tear you down, and I apologize if it sounds like I am, but this map simply did not deliver, and was underwhelming at the end of all things.

Instead of killing all of the enemies, add challenge to it by clearing the sewer but spawning enemies that randomly walk through the sewer, adding paths and shortcuts to get past them, or lure them with firecrackers scattered in some of the store rooms, all while trying to keep people alive. A situation like that would be tense, fun, and offer great replayability.

Furthermore; this game give you choices, but doesn't really capitalize on why that's important. Why is it bad to take the gun if no enemies attack the survivors? Maybe you could shake things up by making this a timed map, where leaving the gun would give you a longer time limit? There are many things that can be done to improve this, and this map definitely started off on the right foot, but strayed from it's path throughout it's course. It's not the worst custom version of something I've ever played, and as I said, it's very ambitious, which is very rare these days, but I firmly believe that you need to go back, look at the core elements of this map, and take a few steps to shake things up, and make it more immersive.

Overall, I give this map a 5/10.
Pros
-Level design was nice, smooth, and well thought out.
-Some zombie encounters were fun, and fulfilling, such as finding the axe held by one of the zombies through an optional tunnel.
-Big zombie "Boss battle" was intelligently set up using the environment as a weapon.
-Atmosphere was congruent to a zombie infested sewer.
-Environment interactivity was creative, and well thought out.

Cons
-Choices don't seem to matter much.
-"Horror" segments were boring, and lacked the pressure of a horror scenario.
-Ending was anticlimactic
-Saving everyone had no sense of urgency
-Rahim Boss fight is nearly impossible, with no negative repercussions if you shoot him and then return with the antizen.
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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
L1QU1D4T0R_  [developer] 23 May, 2015 @ 5:19am 
Thank you for your analysis Nickel Earred Nick. You're pointing there in right spots and I agree with you about most of it.

For a start I need to tell that I didn't finish the map yet - this is a concept of my idea (somehow it become really advanced for a concept):

- how player can make choices - this is important because such thing wasn't in DL and I didn't know It is a right direction to make it and if it will be fun to choose. After feedback from many players I know that it isn't clear enough but the choices are right thing to have in my map. I need to work on the moments where players make the decisions, and also consequences of decisions.
Here's what it will look in The Tunnel v2: http://veter.pl/shoot/TheTunnel_choice_yes.jpg .

- how survivors will interact with player and geometry, and if rescuing them is something that I as a player want to do. The escort is only moving NPC from one place to another but they move, and thats a start. Next thing will be allowing Yakup and Udin to fight with player side by side. And add fighting with zombies while escorting.

- I know that horror here is not as most of players expected, the map has some solid options to scare the ♥♥♥♥ out of player - but I had to decide if I want to make some things on the map clearer, write dialogs, add some medkits and stuff OR add some scary moment on the path of player. Which is important but not as the dialogs and rest of the gameplay. The time was the limit - so I leave horrorness for v2 of my map.

- The bossight ( It's not Rahim but Tahir ;) ) needs to be fixed. First of all his guards are immortal due to bug while changing theirs presets (from pro-player to counter-player), that im fixing. The second thing is that Tahir in DL can be killed ONLY by white weapon, so same is here. I want to change that in next update.

- Shotgun and UV lights - it helps a lot to clear the sewers, and actually you can't do this without the shotgun. I didn't have time before but in the new version player can kill voaltiles without fighting with them (if you choose so, still shotgun is available). Using some magic switches in room that he will find on way out: http://veter.pl/shoot/TheTunnel_generator.jpg .

- The UV lights given to Udin - yup this doesn't make sense where you go there to escort survivors and he thank you for the lights. This is because I decided to cut the way back before meeting Tahir due to backtracking. I need to re-design that part of quest to make this lights thing solid, or maybe that shouldn't be UV lights at all, maybe something that can help escort the survivors.

Thanks again and see you in The Tunnel v2 :)
Last edited by L1QU1D4T0R_; 23 May, 2015 @ 5:22am
cyrotechnium 10 Aug, 2017 @ 6:03am 
Please, take your time to create Tunnel v2. A good horror map has to be thought out carefully.
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